The Inevitability of “Progress”—and Collapse

This blog post is not a book review, but it is based upon a novel that I first learned about from Thinking Friend Anton Jacobs. The book in question is How Beautiful We Were (2020) by Imbolo Mbue. 

Author Imbolo Mbue was born in Cameroon (in 1981), educated in the U.S., and became an American citizen in 2014. She now lives in New York City with her husband and children.

Mbue’s debut novel is the award-winning Behold the Dreamers (2016) and was selected by Oprah for her book club. I am currently reading that intriguing book.

But soon after learning about How Beautiful We Were, I was able to check it out on Kindle from my local library and to read it in a few days. It is the poignant story of the people who live in Kosawa, a small village in a fictional African country.

On July 28 (see here), Anton cited what Yaya, the old grandmother, said about Christian missionaries who had come to that part of Africa when she was a little girl. She was troubled by what the missionaries said—and even though I was a missionary for 38 years, I found their talk troubling also.

But Mbue’s book is not anti-Christian. In fact, in “Acknowledgments” at the end of the book, she thanks her aunt “for making me go to Bethel Baptist Church, Kumba”—and says that “that led me to become the person of faith I am today” (p. 364).

The pivotal issue of How Beautiful We Were is corporate greed, which caused a severe environmental crisis in Kosawa and the surrounding area. Paxton, an American petroleum corporation, began working in that region, and their oil drilling operation led to massive pollution of the land and water.

An increasing number of children in Kosawa die from pollution-caused disease, and the once peaceful life of the Kosawa villagers is increasingly thrown into disarray.

The main struggle against Paxton is led by Thula, the most precocious child in Kosawa, who ends up spending years getting an education in the U.S. before returning to Kosawa to continue the fight against Paxton. There are often signs of apparent improvement, but the struggle ends tragically.

The novel begins in 1980 and concludes in 2020, the village of Kosawa gone, the descendants mostly working for Paxton in Africa or even in the United States. The older people still left in their native country woefully say,

Sometimes we ask our children about the cars they drive. The cars seem to be bigger than they’ve ever been, needing more oil. Do they think about it, about the children who will suffer as we once did just so they can have all the oil they want? (p. 358).

“Progress” seems inevitable when considering industrialism or capitalism. Rather than people maintaining their traditional way of life, the lure of money to buy those things that make life easier and, supposedly, more enjoyable is irresistible. And corporate greed is insatiable.

But as I have already written repeatedly this year, such “progress” leads to overshoot and the inevitability of the collapse of the world as we know it. As Thinking Friend David Nelson remarked earlier this week, “Uncontrolled capitalism is cancerous.” That is a primary reason collapse is inevitable.

When the collapse will come is not known, and action taken now can either hasten or delay the collapse. For example, the Inflation Reduction Act signed by Pres. Biden on Aug. 16 happily postpones the inevitable—but it does not remove the inevitability.

Someone anonymously posted (on Aug. 10) this comment on my blogsite: “We are always looking for an alternative to the only true solution—a radical change in how we consume everything—by consuming far, far less.”

I think that is certainly true—but highly unlikely to happen. The desire for upward mobility, which includes greater consumption, is boundless; the willingness to embrace downward mobility is rare—in spite of Henri Nouwen’s correct insistence that it is “the selfless way of Christ.”**

Sadly, as Jesus declared, “small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it” (Matt. 7:14, NIV)

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** See Nouwen’s The Selfless Way of Christ: Downward Mobility and the Spiritual Life (2007). I last read that book in Jan. 2021, noting that it is “a small but quite profound book that could/should be read often.”

“The Return of the Prodigal Son”: A Tribute to Henri Nouwen

Henri Nouwen was an internationally renowned priest and writer. He died 25 years ago, on September 21, 1996. Fr. Nouwen authored 39 books, and his personal favorite was The Return of the Prodigal Son. I have read only a few of his books, but The Return is my favorite also. 

"The Prodigal Son" by Rembrandt

A Bit about Nouwen

Henri Nouwen was born in Holland in January 1932. He was ordained in 1957, and then after studying psychology at a Catholic university in Holland he moved to the U.S. in 1964 to study at the Menninger Clinic in Topeka, Kansas.

Nouwen went on to teach at the University of Notre Dame and at the divinity schools at both Yale and Harvard. But as an advocate of “downward mobility,” in the early 1980s he lived and worked with the poor in Peru, and then in 1985 he joined the first L’Arche community, which was in France.**

In 1986 Nouwen visited the Hermitage in St. Petersburg, Russia, and spent hours and hours looking at and meditating on Rembrandt’s 1669 painting titled “The Prodigal Son.” In the Prologue of his book, he describes that encounter with Rembrandt’s famous painting.

Also a Dutchman, Rembrandt died at age 63. Nouwen died at age 64, four years after his book The Return of the Prodigal Son was published in 1992.

A Bit about Jesus’ Parable

There are three main parts in Nouwen’s engrossing book: The Younger Son, The Elder Son, and The Father. Those of us who grew up in evangelical churches have heard most about the younger son: after all, he was the “prodigal” in the usual title of Jesus’ parable recorded in Luke 15:11~32.

Evangelistic sermons on that parable usually concluded with an “invitation” that sometimes included singing the hymn “Softly and Tenderly” with this refrain,

Come home, come home,
Ye who are weary, come home;
Earnestly, tenderly, Jesus is calling,
Calling, O sinner, come home!

Jesus’ point in his parable, though, was about the elder son. Luke 15 begins, “Now all the tax collectors and sinners were coming near to listen to him. And the Pharisees and the scribes were grumbling and saying, ‘This fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them’” (vv. 1-2, NRSV).

So Jesus told the parable to liken the Pharisees and scribes to the elder son, whom the father also dearly loved.

The parable also is about the father, who sometimes (such as by Michael Denk, here), is referred to as the “prodigal father.”

Fr. Denk points out that prodigal can mean lavish and Jesus’ parable teaches that “all it takes is one step towards Him and The Prodigal Father will lavish you with His grace, tenderness, and unconditional love.”

The Point of Nouwen’s Book

Currently, one of the major criticisms of traditional Christianity by the younger generation is that it is too judgmental. So now, even more than thirty years ago when it was first written, Christians need to take to heart Nouwen’s main point: we need to be more like the compassionate father.

Nouwen puts considerable emphasis on the father’s hands in Rembrandt’s painting. The two hands on the kneeling younger son are different: one is a strong masculine hand but the other is a tender feminine hand. Nouwen declares that this depicts the “love of God who is Father as well as Mother.”

In his concluding chapter, Nouwen asserts, “Becoming like the heavenly Father is not just one important aspect of Jesus’ teaching, it is the very heart of his message”—and the key characteristic of the heavenly Father/Mother is not judgment, it is compassion.

Nouwen writes, “Looking at Rembrandt’s painting of the father, I can see three ways to a truly compassionate fatherhood: grief, forgiveness, and generosity.” And he concludes his book with these words:

As I look at my own aging hands, I know that they have been given to me to stretch out toward all who suffer, to rest upon the shoulders of all who come, and to offer the blessing that emerges from the immensity of God’s love.

May we all become more like the compassionate father—and like Henri Nouwen.

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** In January, I read Nouwen’s small book The Selfless Way of Christ: Downward Mobility and the Spiritual Life (2007). I noted, This was a small but quite profound book that could/should be read often.

The Wonderful Concept of Kintsugi

For whatever reason, during the many years I lived in Japan, I never learned much, if anything, about kintsugi. But in the last few weeks, I have seen references to kintsugi in recent English-language books/articles, and I have read part of Candice Kumai’s delightful book Kintsugi Wellness: The Japanese Art of Nourishing Mind, Body, and Spirit (2018).

So, What is Kintsugi?

Kumai, who was born in California to a Japanese mother and Polish-American father, calls kintsugi “the Japanese art of golden repair.” It is literally the repairing of broken dishes by joining the broken pieces with lacquer and dusting them with gold powder.

(Kintsugi, 金継ぎ、is pronounced like keen-tsu-gee [as gee in geek without the k].)

“The Japanese believe the golden cracks make the pieces even more precious and valuable,” writes Kumai--and you can see from the picture below an example of a broken tea bowl repaired by kintsugi. 

For those of you who might want to try your hand at repairing a broken piece of china or something, you can purchase a “Kintsugi repair kit” at Amazon.com for a tad over US$100 (see here).

What is Metaphorical Kintsugi?

As might be expected, many people have seen a metaphorical meaning in kintsugi. Indeed, on page four of her book, Kumai states that kintsugi can be “a metaphor for your life.” It “teaches you that your broken places make you stronger and better than ever before.”

The website of a British organization called “The School of Life” has a short article on kintsugi. They say that the kintsugi process symbolizes “a reconciliation with the flaws and accidents of time.” Their article ends,

In an age that worships youth, perfection and the new, the art of kintsugi retains a particular wisdom--as applicable to our own lives as it is to a broken tea cup. The care and love expended on the shattered pots should lend us the confidence to respect what is damaged and scarred, vulnerable and imperfect--starting with ourselves and those around us.

(I had not previously heard of The School of Life, but, interestingly, it was founded in 2008 by Alain de Botton, who is the author of Religion for Atheists: A Non-believer’s Guide to the Uses of Religion, 2012--and the book to be discussed this Wednesday at Vital Conversations, the local study group June and I are members of.)

Kintsugi and the Wounded Healer

Religious people also, of course, have found the concept of kintsugi beneficial. For example, Christy Bonner, a Christian counselor, posted an article in April under the title “Kintsugi: The Way of the Wounded Healer.”

Many of you are probably familiar with Henri Nouwen’s idea of the “wounded healer,” explained in his 1972 book published under that title. As far as I know, Nouwen (1932~96) made no reference to kintsugi, but no doubt there have been many, like Bonner, who see the close connection between his writing about the wounded healer and metaphorical kintsugi.

Toward the end of her article, Bonner writes, “I am a wounded healer, I am a cracked bowl put back together with a gold lacquer. I am strong at my broken places. My scars are beautiful. And yours are too."

And then there is Jim Contopulos’s article “Kintsugi—Beautiful Brokenness” (July 2013). He writes, “Kintsugi is a beautiful and accurate metaphor for our lives, and for the life, in the words of Henri Nouwen, of the ‘wounded Healer’ as well as for those who would follow Him.”

Contopulos calls on his readers to strive to see the kintsugi beauty in the brokenness of others—and in ourselves. He closes his article, and I close, with these words: “Kintsugi, Lord. Kintsugi.”