While I was listening to music with my twelve year old son I noticed that he was lost in the song and had tears in his eyes. The CD was still new to me and I had not understood all the words of that particular song yet. My son had the lyrics  memorized, and told me: – “Mom, she is singing about our base in Porto Velho”. The song was called The Village and talked about a little place where everyone belonged. The village is Palestine, the promised land, Shangri-La, the lost paradise, land of heroes, homes of mothers, with fruits trees, a place where time holds still, a place where all doors and windows are always open, there is bread on all tables, flowers along the roads, along the destinies…

The YWAM community in Porto Velho where my son grow up resembles to him the idyllic village of the song. In that place he received love way beyond our nuclear family. He was almost literally raised by a village, like in the old African proverb.[1]

I remember that my favorite song at my son’s age was one that described the ideal place as being a white fenced wooden house isolated in the countryside, inside, my books, my music, nothing else. I see now that the post-modern mentality is not expecting happiness in the loneliness of a hippie existence on grassy hills. Prozac was not enough to give colors to the white-fenced house and the loneliness of the countryside. Smarter than my generation young people of today realize that without a Shangri-La village there is no happiness. I don’t want bread only on my table, I want bread on the neighbors table, mirrors are not enough, I want touch, I want people, I want community.

The American sitcom Friends translates the thirst at the end of the XX century and the beginning of this century and recreates the family. Now, unconditional love and grace along with an always filled fridge, are found in a community of friends, instead of in the traditional family. Family as we know it is no more. The culture of this century knows it and desperately recreates it. The show carried the clear message that I don’t need only adulthood, financial independence, and sexual freedom to be happy. I need grace, I need a shoulder to cry on, a love that will be there for me at any time, at no cost, demanding nothing from me, de-sexualized, honest and real. Genitals are not enough, I want hearts. And in the context of the church we could say, I don’t want napes of necks, I want whole human beings. I want community, I want a village.

It’s in the Gospel that we in the western culture discovered the notion of real individuality. It is only in the societies of northern Europe and North America with clear protestant roots that we find the notion of the individual being as a functional notion in society.[2]Outside this context there is not the concept of the individual as a wielder of intrinsic value, the opportunity of a destiny of his own that is not given by the group to which he belongs. This is probably the best legacy of the Bible to western civilization, and especially to the protestant world. I = Imago Dei, therefore I have value, the value that depends only on life itself and nothing else, and the fact that I exist and only this, makes me important and unique. Thanks to this notion we have Human Rights, intrinsic rights to life, justice, freedom, beliefs. [3]

However, it is also in this Gospel that we recover our social significance. I can’t experience the meaning of love without the other. I can’t have faith without the other, I can’t love God that I don’t see, without being the Good Samaritan to the ones I see.

In the context of the Gospel the same individual being that recovers his identity in God, rescued by the love that God imparts to him, looses his value, denies himself, turns the other cheek, enslaves himself for the love of the other, dies. The very individual that I am, that God allowed me to discover and value, looses its meaning before the value of the other.

It is only in the context of real Christianity that we discover that beyond being ourselves, we are also the other. Not just the other who is in front of us, but we are the very house of God. We understand that our bodies once we receive Him become His home, His temple. The God that loves all humanity, that knows the DNA of every individual on earth, lives in us, and in doing this brings with himself every other human being existent on the face of the earth. We become spiritually the house of humanity.

As a song of another Brazilian singer says, and I am amazed by the depth of the revelation he has:

 

 Como começo de caminho, quero a unimuliplicidade, onde cada homem é sozinho, a casa da humanidade…

“Translation: To begin my journey, I want the uni-multiplicity where every person is by himself the house of humanity.”[4]

We are his temple, and therefore the house of the pain, the house of the individual stories, of the hopes and faith that make humanity.

Another philosopher also helps to make sense of this. Edgar Morin[5] proposes a concept of tri-dimensionality to human beings that has a parallel on Christian thinking. He says we are species, individual and society. What a beautiful way to describe a tri-dimensional human. As Christians we use the words: body, soul and spirit, many times not even realizing the meaning of it. Morin’s words added a new flavor to this concept for me.

For body we have species, we are all from the same genetic material no matter our phenotype. Races do not exist in the biological sense, only species. We are all one. 

For soul we have the word individual, everything that relates to our own self emotions and concerns. This will make most of the gospel we preach and sing in our churches about the things of the soul and not really spiritual.

And finally spirit, maybe the most misunderstood dimension of them all. The most distant, the transcendent, ethereal concept perhaps. Nevertheless, I want to say, it’s the easiest one to grasp if we know who God is. It’s God in us that makes us not only ourselves, but the others. Him in me makes me the whole society. By faith He will reconstruct in us and through our individuality a meaning for the others, and a society according to his love. 

Back to the village we now realize that it does not refer only to the neighborhood I live in, the village I have to visit, or the city around me. Community is the ultimate realization of my experience with God. My faith being real rebuilds the village to express His love, beautifies the slums, paves the roads, humanizes the city, finds the lonely and gives them a family.

No wonder post-modern XXI century kids cry when they think about the village. They are expecting God to show up.

 

The village

There is a village over there

Where a nice breeze passes by

On the porch whoever rests

Sees the horizon lay down

Bringing calm to the heart

There the world has a reason

It is the land of heroes,

Homes of mothers

Paradise has moved there

Over the roofs the white lime

Fruit trees in every yard

Abundant breasts

Strong children

Dreams sowing a real world

Everyone fits there

It is Shangri-La It is Palestine,

Come to walk and to fly

Over there time stands still

Over there is always spring

Doors and windows are always open

So good luck comes in,

There is bread on every table

There are flowers

Along the destinies

Along the roads,

Along the dresses

And in this song.

Have a real love

When you finally go.

 

Marisa Monte 

 

 

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/It_Takes_a_Village

[2]“É só nesta civilização que a idéia do indivíduo foi apropriada ideologicamente, sendo construída a ideologia do indivíduo como centro e foco do universo social”,  Carnavais, Malandros e Heróis – Roberto Damatta, Edit. Rocco

[3] It was a Lebanese Christian man Dr. Habib Malik the main author of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. No other ideology besides Christianity could have generated the same concept, derived directly from the idea of human worth- Imago Dei.

[4] The song is Brazil Corrupção written by TomZé

[5] Edgar Morin, The seven complex lessons of Education for the future 2002, Unesco