Sunday, August 24, 2014

Fân fest: on humility.

Last week, I (Kelly) took a couple days off of work to go visit Roșia Montana, a beautiful little town in the Apușeni Mountains made famous by a gold-mining controversy (we have written more about it here and here).  Every year some of the anti-mining activists in the community host a big festival called Fân Fest ("fân" means hay, but you pronounce it like "fun").  A couple of friends from the Fundația were going, and Jack was up at camp for another week, so I decided to go too.

Roșia Montana is gorgeous.  My camera was dead, but here are a few photos of the village for you from the wonderful worldwide web:




It's a tiny little town nestled in the mountains, and the festival takes you up and down its hills and valleys, into glens and pastures, to visit various tents where there are discussion forums, concerts, film premiers, arts and crafts, food... it's an activism-focused festival, so the majority of the activities are somehow related to mining, social responsibility, and grassroots activism (though there is plenty of just plain fun, too -- hammocks in trees, paragliding and horseback riding, musical workshops, etc.)

I attended a few really interesting discussion forums, and one of them has stuck with me.  It was led by a British guy who works for a London-based advocacy group that is working to help speak up on behalf of indigenous people affected by British mining corporations.  Their approach to advocacy is really interesting and wise -- it's not based on their own opinions or outrage, these British men sitting in London.  Instead, it's always based on the voice of the local community, whoever they may be, and whatever they may be saying.  This group sees themselves as a catalyst, an amplifier, for groups of people who would otherwise never have any voice in the British political system or media.  When they are contacted by people whose homes, livelihoods, sacred spaces, or environments are being affected by mining, this group goes there to learn about the situation and listen to the voices of all the affected parties, trying to help find common ground where possible.  But when not possible, they consider it their responsibility to speak up for those who otherwise have no one speaking up for them.  And so they return to Britain, often with people from the local community, and do everything they can to get the story told and put pressure on British mining corporations, holding them accountable to the British public for any abuse they are causing in other distant corners of the world.

I think I was especially struck by this man's presentation because of its contrast to some of the other people I met at Fân Fest.  The festival was a strange thing, as it takes a very strong stand on one side of a complicated issue -- and then hundreds, if not thousands, of outsiders come in and join in that protest, without much room for dialogue.  It's quite obvious that not everyone in Roșia Montana likes Fân Fest: from the graffiti at the entrance of the valley pointing people in the wrong direction, to the men in Gold Corporation SUVs roaring intimidatingly down the street, to posters decrying the anti-mining protesters as naive and anti-jobs, to the signs proclaiming the renovation and restoration of historic parts of the village thanks to the Gold Corporation's investment.  The retired gold miner who we stayed with refused to even give his opinion on this topic (which I can't blame him for; I'd be sick of talking about it too!)  Much of the village has been "bought out" and have moved away, as the company needs to empty all the houses before it can begin its surface-mining operations -- but a good number of people have stayed, for a whole variety of reasons.  And it leaves the town with a really interesting feel, like something half-finished.  I don't know what it is like during the rest of the year, but during Fân Fest it feels like everyone is just very wary... and then in come all these hippy twenty-somethings with opinions, who are sure they're right about what's best for this community, and spend a few days broadcasting that with their t-shirts and concerts and films.  It has to feel a bit insensitive.  At least, it did to me.

I still think there is plenty of room for outsiders to care about what's happening in Roșia Montana.  The fact that the planned method for mining includes blowing up part of the mountains and creating a lake of cyanide?  That affects people far beyond the citizens of this town, and so it seems right to me that others should be able to say, "This affects us too, and this seems wrong."  But there are other parts of the story that are a little less simple, and that I am not sure as an outsider what to think about them.  And I guess what I found challenging about Fân Fest was that there wasn't much room for real dialogue about these areas that are gray -- the other side was ignored, often cast as ignorant, immoral, and sell-outs.  And I don't think that's fair.  When all is said and done, I still fall in the anti-mining camp.  I still think that the plan for mining in Roșia Montana is disastrous and tragic.  But I also think there needs to be much more humility from those of us who don't live there.  It's not our home, and that changes things.

There definitely are signs of hope and people who are acting with amazing wisdom and integrity in this whole issue -- particularly local people whose story this really is.  My friend Smara told me about some of them, as she has been visiting Roșia Montana for years and has become close friends with many of the people in the community.  Her opinion carries weight, I think, and so it was good to hear her say that behind-the-scenes are a lot of local people who are in dialogue, and who are working hard to find mutually-agreeable solutions and do advocacy in honest ways.  Maybe a festival that wants to "grow the revolutionary spirit" can never be so nuanced.  But I think that us festival-goers need to try.  We need to try to care without becoming blind to those whose priorities are different.  We need to learn to hold strongly to an opinion, and fight for a cause, without demonizing or ignoring the other side.  We need to learn the humility that comes from recognizing that we almost never have the whole picture.

A lesson in humility, learned once again (will I ever stop needing reminders?) for this activist-minded expat who is searching for home...

Tuesday, August 5, 2014

Oh church.

Most of you who read this regularly probably know that Jack and I attend a small Pentecostal church on the far edge of Lupeni.  Neither of us had ever attended a Pentecostal church in the United States -- Jack grew up Presbyterian; I was the daughter of Reformed-turned-evangelical-Covenant-church-planters; we both graduated from Calvin College.  Although the church we attended there for almost four years was a pretty charismatic one, its connections to both the CRC and RCA kept us in mostly-familiar theological territory.  And although the racial diversity of that congregation, and the eccentric and lovable personality of its pastor (Biker Gang Sunday, for instance, or Super Bowl parties in the sanctuary) often brought us new experiences and questions to grapple with, this transition in our ecclesiastical experience has been... a leap of faith, I guess.

Let's start with last Sunday.  We were attending the evening service, as we often do (true confession, lest my CRC relatives admire our devoutness -- we don't go to both morning and evening services, as they are both at least 2 or 3 hours long and that's a lot for me on a day of rest.  We also almost never attend the Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, or Saturday services.  Err.)  Anyway.  After the service ended, someone mentioned that a "sister" had died, and that her wake was that evening.  The funeral parlor is just a five-minute walk from our church, and it's on our way home, so we were sort-of swept into the crowd as everyone herded across the street and into the funeral parlor.  And there we stayed for the next hour, filling the lily-scented room with its cracked blue tile floor, arranged in a semicircle around the foot of the coffin where this sister lay in her Sunday best.  I had never met the woman, and I don't think many of the others had either, as she was apparently a recent convert.  But yet we sang from tattered songbooks that somehow emerged out of pockets and purses, and then listened as a few of the church's elders preached, impromptu, about the importance of being prepared to meet our Creator.  Honestly, it didn't seem like a particularly comforting experience for the grieving family members who stood there listening silently, occasionally wiping away tears or brushing away flies from bouquets.  But afterwards we were gladly served sugary pastries and Fanta, poured into plastic cups in that persistent way of Romanian hospitality, and I just wasn't sure what to make of it all.

Or then there was last Thursday, when Jack and I decided to attend the prayer service so that we could meet with a youth afterwards to practice some music for the following Sunday.  We were late, and walked in just in time to hear a preacher on a video announcing that anyone who wanted to be baptized in the gift of tongues could come forward to receive the Holy Spirit's anointing -- and then there people went, for the next 45 minutes, praying fervently and wildly and loudly, clapping and singing and yelling.  And again, I just wasn't sure what to make of it all.

I'm really thankful for this church, and for the ways it is stretching me and making me wonder, opening me up to new experiences, and forcing me to take seriously parts of the Christian tradition that I'd always sort-of ignored.  I'm not at all able to wrap up this blog post tidily with some sort of conclusion about "making progress" or "coming to peace" or anything.  I still am skeptical much of the time.  I still have lots and lots of questions and reservations about all sorts of things that happen at Betel.  But I also find myself caring more and more for the people there, and finding them more and more inspiring, and becoming more and more curious about the ways the Holy Spirit works in ways unfamiliar to me -- and open to it, even if it's only one grudging centimeter at a time.  I'm not about to take off my thinking cap any time soon, and the Biblical teachings that were so ingrained in me in my childhood are still present and always, always bumping around in my head.  But the questions of culture and different Christian traditions and poverty and language, plus the wild workings of the Spirit... and I'm just not sure what to make of it all.

Which maybe, now that I think about it, is just about the right posture to have when it comes to things that are Holy... like church.