City of joy

I have to admit I am still trying to get caught up with my reading of the 50 bloggers who synchroblogged on ‘what is missional?’ The reading has been intense and given added fuel to my thinking.  Thanks, you know who you are.  But it has significantly reduced my blogging time this week!

In light of the missional conversation, I found my friend Chris’ thoughts on the City of Joy, the well-known book about Indian poverty and the hope Christ brings.

It’s the story of a collision of two men’s lives in a Calcutta slum. One man, an Indian from a rural village ends up in the city trying to find a better life for his family. Tragically, he ends up spiraling further and further into the clutches of poverty, eventually finding home in a slum. The other man, a Polish Catholic priest, voluntarily chooses poverty and in a gesture of solidarity and moves into the same slum as the Bengali farmer.

While studying in Jerusalem back in 1992, a Ugandan Bible translator gave me his copy of The City of Joy. Perhaps more than anything I had read up to that point in my life, this book changed me.  The thick paperback story of courage and hope hidden in the folds of oppression and suffering disturbed me.

Suddenly, the reality of poverty took on an embodied and humanized face. Flipping through these pages illuminated the complexities of poverty not as the experience of an individual, rather that of a community. The commitment and solidarity of the priest with the slum community challenged my own willingness to sacrifice and submit to the suffering of the world. The sad and real cycle of poverty, hopeless and fatalistic, seemed a daunting challenge, yet an invitation to hope for an end to it all.

I was overwhelmed. I was devastated. I was filled with compassion. I was inspired.

Read Chris’ whole post here.