Reflection: The landowner
(Matthew 20:1-16)
In April, 2020, Hassan Mahamat Idriss, writing under the pen name Moustapha Dahleb, had an article published in a French internet daily news magazine, africk.com. The article was titled, “Humanity Shaken and Society Collapsed by a Small Machine”. Idriss, originally from Chad, has been a resident of France for 20 years. As soon as his prose poem was published, it became wildly popular – it was translated into English, Korean and other languages and circulated world-wide through social media. All of the posts about this poem begin this way:
Moustapha Dahleb the most beautiful Chadian pen, wrote: (Note: while Idriss is an amateur writer, his career is in Economics)
A small microscopic thing called coronavirus is upsetting the planet. Something invisible has come to make its law. He questions everything and upsets the established order. Everything is put back in place, otherwise, differently.
What the great Western powers could not get in Syria, Libya, Yemen, … this little thing got it (a cease-fire, truce …).
What this Algerian army could not obtain, this small thing obtained (the Hirak protests ended).
What this political opponent could not obtain, this little thing obtained (postponement of electoral deadlines …).
What companies could not obtain, this little thing obtained (tax rebates, exemptions, zero-interest loans, investment funds, fall in the prices of strategic raw materials. …).
What this yellow vest and the unions could not obtain, this little thing obtained (a price drop at the pump, reinforced social protection …).
Suddenly, we observe in the Western world fuel has dropped, the pollution has dropped, people have started having time, so much time that they don’t even know what to do with it. Parents get to know their children, children learn to stay with their families, work is no longer a priority, travel and leisure are no longer the norm for a successful life.
Suddenly in silence, we are all on the same boat, rich and poor. We realize that we had robbed the store shelves together and together find that the hospitals are full and that money doesn’t matter. That we all have the same human identity in the face of the coronavirus.
We realize that in garages, high-end cars are stopped just because no one can get out.
Only a few days were enough for the universe to establish a social equality which was impossible to imagine.
Fear has invaded everyone. She changed sides. She left the poor to go and live in the rich and powerful. She reminded them of their humanity and revealed their humanism to them.
May this serve to realize the vulnerability of human beings who seek to live on the planet Mars and who believe they are strong to clone human beings in order to hope to live forever.
May this serve to realize the limit of human intelligence in the face of the force of heaven.
It only took a few days for certainty to become uncertainty, for strength to become weakness, for power to become solidarity and concerted action.
It only took a few days for Africa to become a secure continent. Let the dream become a lie.
It only took a few days for humanity to realize that it is nothing but breath and dust.
Who are we? What are we worth? What can we do about this coronavirus? (…)
We love each other alive!
I encountered this poem on the Facebook post of the Korean writer Hyun Kyung Chung, whom I have been following both on social media and in my life, since I read her book Struggle To Be the Sun Again. She taught me by quoting Raicho Hiratsuka: “Originally, woman was the sun. She was an authentic person. But now woman is the moon. She lives by depending on another and she shines by reflecting another’s light. Her face has a sickly pallor. We must regain our hidden sun.” Hyun Kyung Chung is a Korean eco-feminist and a tenured theologian at Union Theological Seminary in NY. When she accepted her teaching position, she was literally outcast from theological institutions in Korea, received death threats, and was condemned as a heretic for her personal, theological and spiritual search of female images of God, goddess traditions in mythologies and religions in the world, the feminine aspect of Christ and the Holy Spirit who enliven the existence of the oppressed, the earth and women by the touch of her hands.
In a recent post in which she introduced Moustapha Dahleb’s poem, Hyun Kyung invited her friends to start a pilgrimage through 108 poems for 108 days. The number 108 symbolizes the 108 agonies through which eventually we hope to find the ways towards liberation in the Buddhist tradition. Moustapha Dahleb’s poem was the fifth in the series. She continued in her post:
“In the pre-Corona time, I was a pilgrim on the earth planet (or, “earth star” in Korean.)
I met, worked with and learned from the scholars, social activists, artists and healers who dreamed to change the world through beauty, travelling more than 80 countries. I felt that I was doing what needed to be done. I learned that the smallness of planet Earth is just like the planet of the Little Prince.
In those days when the University taught in post-modernist classrooms how different we are, I learned how similar (close) we are, travelling and meeting people. We all want love and recognition, pray for our family’s safety and well-being, and want to walk this life doing meaningful work and with compassion.
It was a warm experience, feeling I was connected to all human beings on the earth.
Then, corona came.
Then …
Everything has changed.
I entered a 100-day winter retreat in a mountain temple for purification and meditation before I went abroad to meet wise female teachers in the world; I had planned to write a book about them. I bought flight tickets and found a feminist photographer. When I emerged after the winter retreat, it was into a world which was entering the new era of coronavirus. I started painting, rediscovering my old dream to be a painter, which “disappeared” when my dad was jailed for bankruptcy in my youth. This is the first picture I painted, the blue painting here. Coincidentally it was when I found Moustapha Dahleb’s poem. The picture is titled: Corona Goddess. I began to see corona as a “goddess”. Why? Gradually and slowly I would like to share with my friends the reason.”
Now, this is back to myself, Ha Na. I was stunned by Hyun Kyung’s fearless reflection: Corona as a goddess, but I think I can understand her reasoning. In many mythologies and religious traditions, a goddess destroys and at the same time builds; she journeys into the dark and goes underground. She comes back in the metaphor and image of the first new shoot of green grass in the early spring. She resurges and starts to heal others. (To listen to Hyun Kyung's fuller view on Coronavirus as a goddess, please click here. It is recorded in Korean. No English caption available.)
It was late March when Moustapha Dahleb wrote the poem: as the “small machine”, the “small microscopic thing called coronavirus”, made its law. He questioned everything, witnessing the upset of the established order: the high-end cars stopped in garages; airplanes parked on the runway as if it were a parking lot. This invisible law-maker was a great Equalizer, forcing cease-fires which the great Western powers could not obtain in war-torn lands. “She changed sides. She left the poor to go and live in the rich and powerful. She reminded them of their humanity and revealed their humanism to them.” She empowered the voices for “Universal Guaranteed Income” and fostered compassion in the Capitalist West. While fear invaded everyone, corona as a goddess taught us that we are all subject to the human condition, regardless of wealth or poverty - - we are breath and dust.
And now, it is already September.
5 months since the poem was written, as we realize and painfully witness that even this small invisible tyrant, law-maker, this great Equalizer will not automatically change the world by itself.
An epidemiologist says in the Huffington Post, “Covid-19 is settling into the cracks of Inequality.” As soon as a disease goes from being a biological problem to a human problem, that’s when we start to see the disparities. For example, in the United States, “If you put a map of the HIV epidemic over a map of the worst coronavirus hotspots, they look almost identical.”
I am thinking about racial minorities, children in poor housing, seniors who lack the access to better care… The children, families and communities whose lives and livelihood lie in the grey areas and blind spots of society and health care suffer the most.
Coronavirus has still more to teach us, to make us see: It calls for greater enlightenment, so that we may use this time, our time, to become more aware of the deep human condition - not just breath and dust, but the root causes and disparities that perpetuate inequality. Also, to be aware that across differences and distinctions of individuality, how close we are: We all want love and recognition, pray for our family’s safety and well-being, and want to walk this life doing meaningful work and with compassion.
In today’s reading, we hear about the landowner who pays the full daily wage to all who arrived to work in her vineyard, regardless what time they came, 10 am, 1 pm, 3 pm, 5 pm. The landowner is a great Equalizer. While Corona is the equalizer that discloses, plainly and painfully, the universal human condition of breath and dust, the Creator is the equalizer of giving life to all creation, erasing conditions: the four-legged, the two-legged, the winged and the swimmers. This is why I support Universal Guaranteed Income or other equality projects. We can always do more in our faith and hope to participate in and co-create with God — the dream and promise to change the world through beauty, justice, compassion and equity, which is God’s covenant with us all.
God will exercise the ultimate and unconditional generosity and inclusivity in love to all, every day. Our part is to act in faith regardless, whatever we regard our capacities to be, because “We cannot, without God; God will not, without us.”
I started this reflection with a poem. Let me close it with one more poem too, which is from the Tao-Te Ching, a scripture which the hearts of many, including the country where I came from, revere and meditate. I believe that there is a mulitcoloured bridge that connects today’s reading on the landowner and the archer in this poem.
The way of Heaven,
is it not like stretching a bow?
What is high up is pressed down,
What is low down is lifted up;
What has surplus is reduced,
What is deficient is supplemented.
The way of Heaven,
it reduces those who have surpluses,
to supplement those who are deficient.
The way of humans is just not so;It reduces those who are deficient,
to offer to those who have surpluses.
Who can offer their surpluses to the world?
Only a person of the Way.
Reflective Music: Ribbon In the Sky - Cover by Dawn Pemberton
Hymn: MV 174 Soil of God
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