November 27, 2011 Advent I

Epistle Reading Adapted from the Message 1Corinthians 1:3-9

Paul writes: May all the gifts and benefits that come from God and Jesus Christ, be yours. Every time I think of you - and I think of you often!- I thank God for your lives of free and open access to God, given by Jesus. There's no end to what has happened in us-it's beyond speech, beyond knowledge. The evidence of Christ has been clearly verified in our lives. Just think-you don't need a thing, you've got it all! All God's gifts are right in front of you.
And not only that, but God is right alongside to keep us steady. God, who got you started in this spiritual adventure, shares with us the life of Jesus.
God will never give up on us. We will never forget that.

If you can, check out TED.com on the Internet. It stands for Technology, Entertainment and Design.
TED is where the world's leading thinkers and doers gather to share Ideas Worth Spreading. Each video-cast is about 20 minutes long and one caught my imagination for today. It embodies our epistle reading and was given in Edinburgh, Scotland last July. The actual web address for this segment is:
http://www.wimp.com/barefootmovement/
Bunker Roy, an upper class, elite educated, former 3 time Indian national squash champion tells of his 45 year old love story: The Barefoot Movement.

Upon graduation in 1965 with, in his words, the world at his feet and yet out of curiosity he went to a village to see what it was like. There was a famine in rural India and Bunker Roy saw starvation and death. He saw people dying of hunger for the first time and it changed his life forever. He went back home and told his mother that he wanted to live and work in a village. He wanted to give something back from his privileged position, dig wells for five years or something. Bunker says his mother went into a coma and didn't talk to him for a very long time. She thought he let his family down.

Well anyway, he went to live in a village. The people there asked him why are you here? Are you running from the police? Did you fail your exams? Obviously he was travelling in the wrong direction for no understandable reason. But there in the village he was exposed to the most extraordinary knowledge and skill that very poor people have. Knowledge and skill that are not brought into the mainstream and so never identified, respected and applied on a large scale. He wanted to establish a college only for the poor. What they think is important, would be reflected in the college curriculum. This bare foot college the locals insisted could not have anyone with a degree or qualifications teach in it or enrol in it. All you needed was a skill to offer, a willingness to work with your hand, have a dignity of labour and be a service to the community.

The Barefoot College quickly redefined professionalism as a combination of confidence, competence and belief. It is about knowledge and skills that are universal and relevant today. The college works following lifestyle and work style of Mahatma Gandhi. You get $100 a month, you eat on the floor, work on the floor and sleep on the floor. At the Barefoot College the teachers are the learners and the learners are the teachers. No certificate is given by the college. The community certifies you as you serve.

In 1986 the first campus for the Barefoot College was constructed. It is fully solar electrified. This technology was improvised and installed by a Hindu priest with only elementary school education. But as Bunker Roy says, "He knows more about solar than anyone on earth."

The women have fabricated solar cookers, hands off cooking, to feed the hundred or so people every day. A grandmother is a dentist and cares for the teeth of over 7,000 children. It goes without saying that she happens to be illiterate.

In their area, 60% of the children didn't go to school because they had to work herding sheep or goats or doing other family tasks. So they started a night school for children. 75,000 children have now gone through this solar-lit night school. They are taught democracy, citizenship, life skills, how to measure your land, what to do if arrested, how to deal with a sick animal and other daily needs.

Every five years the children's school has elections. 6-14 year olds are elected to be prime minister or have positions in a cabinet. The prime minister in the video is a 12 year old who tends 20 goats in the morning.
In the evening she is prime minister and leads a cabinet that oversees 150 schools with 7,000 children in attendance. Again, this particular child received the World Children's Prize. She received it from Queen of Sweden. When the Queen asked Bunker where she got her confidence, and why nothing fazed this young girl, who had never before left her village, the 12 year old turned to Bunker and said, "Tell her I am the Prime Minister." Remember, confidence, competence and belief.

Through the Barefoot College system, there are now solar electrified villages all over India. There are solar electrified villages now in Afghanistan and 9 countries in Africa.

Now, because the men want a certificate so they can leave the village and go to the city to get a job, and since Barefoot college is about staying in the village and sharing skills and technology with other villages around the world, the college turned to grandmothers to train. Grandmothers stay put, stay with the program. The college brings a few grandmothers to India for six months training and then send them back to their village. 3 grandmothers taught 27 more grandmothers and now 100 villages have been solar electrified in Afghanistan.

In Sierra Leone, a new Barefoot Centre was built by the government, which has trained 150 grandmothers to bring solar electricity to the far-flung villages in that country. In Gambia, they selected one grandmother to bring back to India for training. Bunker says she went like a grandmother and returned like a tiger!

The story goes on and on of the transformative power of a combination of confidence, competence and belief.
Bunker Roy concludes, "You don't have to look for solutions outside. Look for solutions within. And listen to people they have the solutions in front of you. Listen to the people on the ground they have all the solutions in the world."

The Application for Today:

Signs of Hope: Bunker Roy tells us an example of it today.
Signs of Hope: The apostle Paul told us long ago.
"We have everything we need right in front of us to live a spiritual life." In other word, a combination of confidence, competence and belief.
Spiritually speaking, "Lets light up the world, starting right where we are."
Amen.