Jacob runs a struggling orphanage in India, but he is no
distant administrator. Rather, he is
personally involved with the children, loving them with all his heart. He is committed to the cause of poverty and
he had dedicated his whole life to doing his part. He visits his origin hometown in Denmark, to
attend a wedding. After the wedding he
is made an offer: never go back to India and a very wealthy supporter will give
enough money so that the orphanage might be established firmly for decades to
come.
 |
| I just love how awkward he looks |
I could see myself being places in that same vice. I run a church for the homeless, and we provide
services for hundreds of economic refugees in Portland Oregon and its neighbor
Gresham. I’ve been doing this work for
twenty years and it has grown as homelessness itself has grown. We monthly struggle financially, and given
that we have very limited political support in city or church, we regularly
face extinction.
What if someone gave me the opportunity to make sure that
all of my people were cared for, at least as well as I could or better, but I
would never see them again, I would not even be able to say goodbye. Not only could I get a break, but I could do
what I have been longing to do for more than a decade: give the work over to
someone who isn't exhausted and overworked every day. However, I would belie one of the principles
that I base my work on. That this work
for the poor wouldn't be clinical or two dimensional, but would be personal,
based on true friendship and care. To trade my relationships for what
fundamentally is a sum of cash changes the very structure of the work I have
established, transforms it possibly into a monster, a facade into which a
stranger would insert their own motivations and principles. It is not just my own retirement, a breaking
of deep relationship, but turning my back on everything I've created. I think of this, deeply consider this, on a
regular basis, without the sum of money (the possibility, say, of housing half
my folks) because I am that exhausted and I often look for an escape
route. But the cost is the trust that I
have built.
All this to say that After the Wedding isn't a thought
experiment for me. Well, I suppose it
is. I created and maintain my work with
no one but those I serve wanting to continue it, so no one is offering me a sum
of money for the name and shell of my work. In the last month I have been
rejected from two opportunities to work with the main cities I work with,
because my answers are too radical, too insistent that the homeless are equal
citizens of anyone else in the city and so worthy of equal rights. I enact illegal actions, again and again, in
order to save lives the city find inconvenient. I suppose they find my solutions inelegant,
or impolitic. My point is this: there is
no one who has a sum of money who would like to infuse it into the structure I
created. I can't get grants, I can't
gain support from other churches, I can't even get food from the local food
bank. My work is formed out of a twenty
year growing emergency, that the powers that be finally recognize, but they
don't want me or my work on the team to create solutions.
After the Wedding threw this moral dilemma in my face, and I
"knew" what Jacob should do.
But do I now choose a different option for myself? Am I a hypocrite because I choose a path for
a fictional character, but in my life I would chose the opposite
direction? Pramod, the orphan in India who does not stay with Jacob because he denies his own principles, would he look at me and
gently accuse me?
All this to say that a powerful movie like this causes us to
question our whole lives, to re-examine our motivations and hopes. This one just shaves a bit too close. It is one of the great films, especially for
me, but damn.
No comments:
Post a Comment