"At Play in the Fields of the Lord," in my mind, is a film based upon a book by the same title, based in the Brazilian Amazonian River Valley revolving around a Niaruna village. In the name of progress (and the always accompanying greed) their lives and culture are threatened, which is a major thread of the story. Also part of the weaving are missionaries who go native, marital infidelities, insanity, death, the worship of nature, evangelicalism vs Catholicism, disease, betrayal, and grief beyond measure. You end up painfully caught between the mess of human relationships and the reality of our sinful nature and the inexorable outcome you just know is coming for the Niaruna people. It is a most uncomfortable film.
I have never forgotten the distress of that film.
To me, none of the missionaries take seriously their work, so I find the title rather apt. Behind everything is this sense of self focus or adventure, almost for some a setting up some sort of playhouse in the forest. Harsh, I know. I did read that the movie should have stayed a book. Given how strongly I responded to the movie all those years ago (just look up the actors!), I cannot fathom how much the book could drag you down the rabbit's hole. Of course, Hollywood wouldn't know the Word of God if it hit a writer on his head. A passel of writers would still be scratching their collective heads about vocation. So, of course a novelist or a playwright would not understand the ineffable value of a field of the Lord.
Oh! For they are precious indeed!
I am so lost that I thought I started watching those videos this last spring. I guess it has been more then a year now, because I went to go looking for a blog title for a date range and there was nothing in the spring. Hello, Myrtle! You were too ill to stream or write in the spring!! I did see a post entitled "I Am An African Man" from October 2019. 2019! Oh, my ... the time.
What I was watching earlier was about change, which is not really the topic I wanted to note now. At the end, he said that what they had learned from the past five years was that you have to respect people:
"If you want to help me, I must feel respected and appreciated."
And that's what we learned in the field of jiggers. You meet this person with jiggers and you try to despise them and they reject your help and they tell you,
"I would rather have my jiggers than have someone shit on me. You come to my home. I know it has jiggers, but it is still my home. You must respect my home."
And that is how we have survived and learned to work with people. We appreciate it and people come to where we are to be helped.
~Jim NDuruchi, Emmanuel (7) HUGE JIGGERS Dug Out of Him (2 of 2), March 16, 2016
It might be hard to fathom, but you need to be able to exchange the word "jiggers" with anything. Alcoholism. Hoarding. Gambling. You HAVE to respect and appreciate the person if you want to help him or her, because you are respecting the life that God has created. There is a future in which you are investing, you are cherishing, you are helping God to save. Even if that future will be spent in a prison. It is still a life that can be lived with honor and value and love and purpose.
I know.
Anyway. I really liked this bit and noted it down in my collections of observations about people that I am collecting from the videos. When you spend years helping people in the condition he and his team do, you cannot help but make observations about human nature. I find it fascinating when he does, especially when he couples them with quotes from the Living Word.
I can tell you from experience, my current GP and the therapist I've had the past nearly three years both were the first who showed me that I was respected and appreciated as they helped me. It is extraordinary. And empowering ... once you gain your courage. I am/was even valued by them for what I can/could offer. Just because someone is broken in one way, doesn't mean that that person might not end up helping you back!
Besides, for me, in helping others myself, I have always been, by the end, far greater blessed myself than they could ever have been.
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