Ryan Pugh
December 29th, 2011, 03:47 PM
St. Francis of Assisi said, "May God bless you with holy anger at injustice, oppression, and exploitation of all people, so that you may tirelessly work for justice, freedom, and peace among all people." It was this holy anger that I felt as I read through Unnoticed Neighbors: A Pilgrimage into the Social Justice Story (http://www.thehousestudio.com/store/unnoticed-neighbors/) by Erina K. Ludwig, published by House Studio.
From the beginning, Erina takes the reader on an oftentimes difficult-to-read but necessary journey through the injustices that exist all around this beautiful and ugly world. As she states in the Prologue, "It's on pilgrimage that our souls begin the journey of being torn open and made vulnerable." I was surely torn open and vulnerable.
Throughout the book, Erina uses the biblical narrative of God's defense and protection of the weak and hearing the cries of his people to build the foundation of his mission for us in the world today. With eye-opening statistics of the deep and dark injustices regarding lack of food and water, health, education, sex trade, slavery, war, and other areas of exploitation, readers are invited to consider how they can love their local and global neighbors as themselves.
Numbers can be heart-wrenching and numbing. As Ludwig writes, "We deal with such huge, sweeping figures it overwhelms and depresses. But the whole crowd is still made up of individuals. Individuals are what we can relate to and sometimes all we can manage" (71). For this reason, the stories the Erina shares make this book stand out. Stories of street children in Columbia inhaling glue to relieve hunger pangs. Stories of the sixteen-hour, 7-days-a-week jobs occupied by cotton field workers so that we can have several versions of the same cardigan at a cheap price. Stories of kids given cocaine, heroin, and speed to give them courage to kill the enemy in war. And stories of hundreds of thousands of girls sold for sex, both around the world and in our hometowns. Multiple times while reading the stories of horrible oppression, I had to stop, take a breath, and literally re-gather myself in order to continue reading. Not because the stories Ludwig tells are too gruesome for the reader but because my heart was breaking over the realities that our brothers and sisters live in. These heart-wrenching stories must be heard.
Two particular pieces of Unnoticed Neighbors provide the key to seeing a mighty river of justice flowing throughout the world.
... social justice invites us to partake in the messy affair of human life, both its horror and beauty. It asks us to examine our own lives, to see beyond the borders of our neighborhood lines or far-reaching geographical and linguistic differences to see what we all have in common - humanity. (30)
Perhaps until we see others as ourselves or as Jesus himself, we won't see a lasting end to these horrible practices. (171)
Whether you are already familiar with social justice or are just beginning to consider and be aware of the injustices that exist in every corner of the world, the pilgrimage of Unnoticed Neighbors is a necessary one. As you read, may you be willing to be open and vulnerable so that we may have a holy anger at all that keeps humanity and the world from being what God intended it to be.
http://vimeo.com/28123177
From the beginning, Erina takes the reader on an oftentimes difficult-to-read but necessary journey through the injustices that exist all around this beautiful and ugly world. As she states in the Prologue, "It's on pilgrimage that our souls begin the journey of being torn open and made vulnerable." I was surely torn open and vulnerable.
Throughout the book, Erina uses the biblical narrative of God's defense and protection of the weak and hearing the cries of his people to build the foundation of his mission for us in the world today. With eye-opening statistics of the deep and dark injustices regarding lack of food and water, health, education, sex trade, slavery, war, and other areas of exploitation, readers are invited to consider how they can love their local and global neighbors as themselves.
Numbers can be heart-wrenching and numbing. As Ludwig writes, "We deal with such huge, sweeping figures it overwhelms and depresses. But the whole crowd is still made up of individuals. Individuals are what we can relate to and sometimes all we can manage" (71). For this reason, the stories the Erina shares make this book stand out. Stories of street children in Columbia inhaling glue to relieve hunger pangs. Stories of the sixteen-hour, 7-days-a-week jobs occupied by cotton field workers so that we can have several versions of the same cardigan at a cheap price. Stories of kids given cocaine, heroin, and speed to give them courage to kill the enemy in war. And stories of hundreds of thousands of girls sold for sex, both around the world and in our hometowns. Multiple times while reading the stories of horrible oppression, I had to stop, take a breath, and literally re-gather myself in order to continue reading. Not because the stories Ludwig tells are too gruesome for the reader but because my heart was breaking over the realities that our brothers and sisters live in. These heart-wrenching stories must be heard.
Two particular pieces of Unnoticed Neighbors provide the key to seeing a mighty river of justice flowing throughout the world.
... social justice invites us to partake in the messy affair of human life, both its horror and beauty. It asks us to examine our own lives, to see beyond the borders of our neighborhood lines or far-reaching geographical and linguistic differences to see what we all have in common - humanity. (30)
Perhaps until we see others as ourselves or as Jesus himself, we won't see a lasting end to these horrible practices. (171)
Whether you are already familiar with social justice or are just beginning to consider and be aware of the injustices that exist in every corner of the world, the pilgrimage of Unnoticed Neighbors is a necessary one. As you read, may you be willing to be open and vulnerable so that we may have a holy anger at all that keeps humanity and the world from being what God intended it to be.
http://vimeo.com/28123177