Joining the Repair Movement
Learning to darn a sock might feel exciting, but learning to fix systems of oppression can feel crushing and overwhelming. What can we learn about reparations from the repair movement?
Where I live there is a growing movement among folks under 30 to learn and teach others how to repair things, be they bikes, or holes in socks, or broken appliances. I like this movement because I share a passion for the potential of broken things, items in need of repair. I have been known to collect broken vacuumes and broken exercise equipment in the hope either of repairing them to working order, or making something new from the parts and pieces. I can take great delight in a pile of junk. It holds so much potential!!
What if the church came to be known as people who got super excited about repairing stuff? What if, once we finished one repair project we got energized by the idea of finding the next repair project we could throw our energy, our hearts and hands and prayers behind?
So, I have been reading and researching a lot about reparations. That word makes a lot of people (especially white people) super nervous. It feels to many like being held responsible for paying an unpayable debt. No one likes debt collectors and no one likes to struggle under a crushing debt. When we frame reparations as debt collection for accumulated debt over multiple generations it is no wonder that those of us who have landed up on the benefit side of that ledger sheet get a little twitchy. Interestingly enough, I think one of our best guides on this journey was a dude who also landed on the beneficiary side of the systemic oppression ledger and decided he wanted to switch the script and to commit himself to this business of repair.
Who am I talking about? Zacchaeus, the tax collector in the Bible (Luke 19:1-10). I am surprised by the people who don’t know a lot about Zacchaeus. It seems that we only teach his story to young children even though young children lack the authority over their own lives or finances to adequately understand the power dynamics at play in this story.
I am going to leave Zacchaeus here for now and will write more about him later. For now, I want to return to this idea of recovering a more exciting understanding of reparations.
Repair and reparation are related words, but the illicit very different feelings in me, at least. Repair smells like grease and gasoline. It smells like my dad’s garage. It is dirty and messy and sometimes you end up with extra parts and have to start all over again. It is trial and error, it is deepening understanding along the way. It is not about being an expert, but about attending to the broken thing, learning what works and what doesn’t, what can be salvaged and what must be replaced. Repair is about leaning in and looking close. Reparation on the other hand can feel cold and technical. It is language for international courts, and scholars, and people in power. I don’t think this is inherent in the word. I think it is because we have relegated it to those places. We have abandoned a theology of repair relegating this work to judicial systems that determine the financial value of damages done, but don’t actually repair or restore what was damaged.
To be honest, the church in North America right now is limping along. What if we were willing to make a mess, to lean in and get close up on some really broken stuff and got excited about repair, restoration, recovery?