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Ladataan... Assimilate or Go Home: Notes from a Failed Missionary on Rediscovering Faith (vuoden 2016 painos)Tekijä: D. L. Mayfield (Tekijä)
TeostiedotAssimilate or Go Home: Notes from a Failed Missionary on Rediscovering Faith (tekijä: D. L. Mayfield)
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Kirjaudu LibraryThingiin nähdäksesi, pidätkö tästä kirjasta vai et. Ei tämänhetkisiä Keskustelu-viestiketjuja tästä kirjasta. We live in a divided America: Republican and Democrat; haves and have-nots; Caucasians and minority communities; Christians and Muslims (or really anyone else), educated elites and the illiterate. We are divided by politics, religion, race, economics, and culture. And you don't have to look too far for evidence of how deep the divide. We've witnessed the public debate over who's lives matter whenever someone gets killed and have heard the startling statistic that three-quarters of white Americans are without any minority friends. What Makes D.L. Mayfield's memoir Assimilate or Go Home: Notes from a Failed Missionary on Rediscovering Faith so good is the way she opens up about the challenges of living in the divide. Raised on a steady diet of missionary biographies and dreams of heroic self-sacrifice she began living and working with Somali-Bantu refugees with hopes of winning converts and gaining significance from her missional efforts. Instead she found her Somali friends eyed her with suspicion and treated her presence with benign neglect. Committed to friendship with her Somali friends, her attitude gradually shifts to one which is more reciprocal and mutual than that of mere missionary. Her mission field transforms as she learns to give and share the love of God with her Somali neighbors. When Mayfield begins her mission, she is full of privileged assumptions and believed-expertise. She confronts her own privilege, her need for recognition, and she makes the shift from expert/sage to that of listener. Here are a couple notable quotes I underlined as I read (chapter titles in parentheses, the electronic copy I read didn't allow me to specify location) : I am not poor. I drink lattes during droughts, eat hamburgers during famines. I profit off the world I was born into, an economic system that crushes and oppresses. The problem was that I was born at the top, and so all of those troubles at the bottom used to seem so hazy to me. This is the real problem of being rich and happy and healthy and popular: it becomes easy, oh so easy, to forget about the rest. (Wade in the Water) I liked Mayfield's book a lot. In part because I could relate to it. I spent two years in 'urban mission,' prior to going to seminary, with organizations that required me to raise personal support. In the early days of my mission I found it easy to write 'support letters' telling friends back home about what good work I was doing in the inner-city. However these letters became harder to write farther into my tenure as missionary. It became harder for me to 'pimp the poor' and as I was confronted daily with the cycles of poverty, addiction and racial inequities, I wondered what good we were doing. Prayer became difficult for me as I watched neighbors and homeless friends gain one small victory only to hit with an insurmountable roadblock (or get sucked back into an addiction). Mayfield names a similar sense of disillusionment as the missionary romance wears off for her, but she comes out the other end, hopeful, if chastened. Books like this are necessary because they image for us what it looks like to learn to lay down our privilege, rights, and delusions of grandeur in order to join in relationship with the other. In a divided nation like ours, this is sorely needed. I give this book five stars and recommend it to anyone, especially those of us on the privileged side of the divide. Note: I received this book from BookLookBloggers in exchange for my honest review. näyttää 2/2 ei arvosteluja | lisää arvostelu
From childhood, D.L. Mayfield longed to be a missionary, so she was thrilled when the opportunity arose to work with a group of Somali Bantu refugees in her hometown of Portland, OR. As the days, months, and years went by, her hopeful enthusiasm began to wear off, her faith became challenged, and the real work of learning to love and serve her neighbors grew harder, deeper, and more complex. She writes: "The more I failed to communicate the love of God to my refugee friends, the more I experienced it for myself. The more overwhelmed I felt as I became involved in the myriads of problems facing my friends who experience poverty in America, the less pressure I felt to attain success or wealth or prestige. And the more my world started to expand at the edges of my periphery, the more it became clear that life was more beautiful and more terrible than I had been told." In this collection of stunning and surprising essays, Mayfield invites readers to reconsider their concepts of justice, love, and reimagine being a citizen of this world and the upside-down kingdom of God. Kirjastojen kuvailuja ei löytynyt. |
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Google Books — Ladataan... LajityypitMelvil Decimal System (DDC)266.0092Religions Christian church and church work Missions; Home and Foreign Missions; Home and Foreign Missions; Home and Foreign History, geographic treatment, biographyKongressin kirjaston luokitusArvio (tähdet)Keskiarvo:
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Assimilate or Go Home is a collection of essays written over a four year period - some of which were previously published online. Rather than (re)summarize the book, let me say just say that I really, really appreciate Danielle speaking out about her experiences and viewpoints in this book and in other mediums. I had preconceived, compartmentalized views of what "home missions" and "foreign missions" looked like, but the work that Danielle and Krispin do blurs the lines between the two. Listening to Danielle speak and reading this book has made me more sympathetic to the plight of refugees in America and to what the response of Christ followers should be to these people. I was convicted and humbled as I recognized prejudice that I had harbored toward refugee (and non-refugee) immigrants. Also, I think I have been blessed with a better understanding of the love of God and a greater love for the poor for having read this.
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