Two
Ways to the Top
by David
Diggs
When
I was a kid, I used to love visiting my cousins. In the
lot next to their house sat a big dirt mound that we used
for playing King of the Hill. My four cousins played pretty
rough. Rex, my oldest cousin, usually ruled the hill unless
we formed an alliance against him. Of course, the instant
he was down our alliance crumbled, and it was every boy
for himself. Those were the rules—only one can be king.
When
I was older I moved to Colorado for college and joined the
school mountaineering club. I had graduated from dirt mounds
to real mountains, but that same boyish excitement took
hold of me each time we loaded the gear into our instructor’s
pick-up and set off for the mountains.
These
memories came to me one evening this past April while I
sat enjoying the breeze and the view on the roof of a retreat
center that was perched on the side of a mountain that overlooked
Port-au-Prince. I had just returned to Haiti for a weeklong
planning meeting that we have each spring. Earlier that
day, in a large room we had rented in this retreat center,
about 30 young Haitian leaders, many from organizations
we work with, had gathered for a discussion. Our topic was
leadership and the question we had set out for ourselves
to reflect upon was this: “What kind of leadership
leads to liberation?”
Maybe
it was my elevation sitting there on that roof that got
me to thinking about playing King of the Hill and climbing
mountains. But as my mind wandered I somehow made a connection
between these two activities of my youth and the discussion
we had just had about leadership.
“Leaders
tend to either play King of the Hill or climb mountains,”
I wrote in the notebook I had with me.
Several
years earlier I had read a history of Haiti. The 1,300 pages
of this book (Written in Blood, Heinl & Heinl) essentially
recounted 500 years of foreign and local rulers using Haiti
to play King of the Hill.
In
1492 Christopher Columbus established Europe’s first
colony on Haiti’s northern coast, claimed the island
for Spain, and began enslaving the native population to
serve in Spain’s plantations. Within a hundred years
the natives were nearly all dead from overwork and European
diseases, and the first African slaves were brought across
the Atlantic to work the plantations. France won control
of Haiti and was even more brutal than Spain. On the backs
of the largest concentration of slaves on Earth, they made
Haiti the most profitable colony in the New World. The slaves
rose up and drove the Europeans from the territory; but
even after slavery was abolished, most of Haiti’s rulers
continued to display the same ruthless hunger for power
that had possessed their European masters.
Five
centuries of this brutal game have destroyed Haiti’s
once-lush environment, devastated her economy, and polarized
the nation into a few haves and a multitude of have-nots.
From
my vantage point on the roof I could see up in the cool
mountain heights behind me the villas and estates of some
of Haiti’s current economic kings. They control much
of the remaining wealth while 80% of the population survives
on nearly nothing, earning less than a dollar a day. Most
of the people in the squalid city below me fell into that
category. From my distance above the city everything seemed
peaceful. But I knew that down in the vast shanty towns
below hungry mothers were trying to comfort their babies
with empty breasts, desperate fathers were returning home
empty handed after a day of begging for work, and abandoned
children were searching the streets for a little food and
a little love. They remained bound by the heavy chains of
poverty.
As
I sat there considering the ugly consequences of centuries
of leaders prizing power and profit over their people, I
took heart in what I had heard these young Haitian leaders
say about leadership earlier in the day. They spoke about
a different model of leadership, a kind of leadership that
lifts people up rather than pushes them down, a kind of
leadership based on cooperation rather than competition.
The function of a good leader, they agreed, was not to dominate,
but to serve, not to divide and conquer, but to unite and
reconcile, not to make more followers, but to make more
leaders.
Their
words led me to think of something my mountaineering instructor
in Colorado often repeated to us: “We climb as a unit,”
he would say. “Either we all make it to the top together,
or no one makes it up at all.”
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Alternative
Leadership in Haiti’s History & Culture
Not
everything in Haiti’s history has been
a game of King of the Hill. The history books
rarely tell us how the weak survive under the
domination of the powerful. In Haiti they have
survived largely through cooperation rather
than competition. They developed a cooperative
work structure called the konbit and a cooperative
living arrangement called the lakou.
Much
of Beyond Borders’ work in Haiti consists
of nurturing these structures and bonds that
already exist among the poor. As Haitian organizations
grow stronger and larger and their leaders become
more powerful and handle more money, they face
pressures to follow the patterns of power and
to begin playing King of the Hill.
Through
The Experiment in
Alternative Leadership, Beyond Borders is
working to help organizations and leaders find
ways to preserve and strengthen their cooperative
structures and habits as they grow. Under the
direction of John Engle, this initiative provides
community leaders with new skills and organizational
tools that make cooperation possible on a larger
scale. One such tool is something called Open
Space Technology. Like the ropes, pitons, and
other special tools climbers use to scale rock
walls, these methods are tools groups can use
to climb higher together than they could on
their own.
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He
was hardest on the strongest members of our crew. He would
say, “Your superior fitness and climbing skills are
useless unless you use them to help the whole group.”
They learned that instead of rushing ahead and leaving the
group behind, they should drop their packs, double back,
and lighten the load of any of us who were straggling behind.
Our instructor never needed to say much to motivate us weaker
members. With his emphasis on group solidarity, we knew
that if we slowed down, we slowed the whole group down.
As
we all got stronger together, our instructor took us up
higher mountains and more difficult routes. Together we
scaled sheer rock walls that none of us would ever have
dared climb alone. The more challenging the climb, the more
it tested our ability to cooperate and work as a team. In
the most difficult and dangerous spots we were linked together
by the ropes we used for climbing. Sharing was at the heart
of our instructor’s approach. We shared responsibility,
we shared leadership, we shared the risks, and as we crested
each summit, with our instructor always bringing up the
rear, we all shared the glory.
As
I sat there on the roof thinking, the only thing that obstructed
my view was a 20-foot tall cross that was bolted to a pedestal
beside me. Seeing this cross reminded me that people were
always trying to get Jesus to play King of the Hill. His
people had been expecting the return of a champion like
David who would liberate them from the pagan rule of Rome
and become their king. Jesus’ followers were just waiting
for him to make his big move. But the logic of his leadership
was the exact opposite of all they knew. He had told them
that “whoever wants to be first must become servant
of all.” (Mark 10:44) But they had no way of understanding
him. He had to show them what he meant.
The
political and religious powers of the day felt threatened
enough by Jesus’ growing popularity that they conspired
against him. Like a lamb being led to the slaughter, he
walked right into their trap and offered no resistance.
His
crime was sedition. So to taunt this would-be king, they
arranged a mock coronation, crowning him with thorns, hailing
him king with each blow, parading him naked and bleeding
through the city in a perverse regal procession, and raising
him high, not on a throne, but on a cross atop Golgotha
hill. And there above his sacred head they posted his royal
title, Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews.
Of
course, they got it wrong. He was indeed an agitator against
the establishment. But his aim was not to free Jerusalem
from Rome, but to liberate all creation from the power of
death. What everyone saw as his defeat, was just Jesus doubling
back for the weaker ones. As Ephesians 4 says it, he was
“descending into the lower parts of the earth”
to “lead forth a host of captives” so that he
could then ascend with them to the right hand of the Father.
(Ephesians 4)
And
now it is our turn. We are called also to be leaders and
liberators. And on the Last Day when Christ sits on his
throne and nations stand before him, he will care not about
how many degrees we had, how fashionable our clothes were,
how orthodox our theology was, or the value of our stock
portfolio. According to what he tells us in Matthew 25,
his only concern is whether we dropped our load and doubled
back for him when he was a straggler. When he was hungry,
did we feed him? When he was sick, did we care for him?
When he was a homeless stranger, did we take him in? When
he was in prison, did we visit him? These questions make
no sense until He reminds us that he is always present among
the stragglers of this world, and that on God’s mountain,
no one makes it to the top alone. We only get to the top
in the company of stragglers. Jesus made it clear; in God’s
kingdom the love of power has no place. There is only room
for the power of love.
I’m
back here in the US now, sitting in the attic of my house
in Washington, DC, where I have my office. Reflecting now
on those thoughts I had on the rooftop in Haiti, I hear
a call to renew my solidarity with the poor, the stragglers
of this world. In renewing my solidarity with them, I am
renewing my solidarity with Christ.
In
our world today the stragglers are falling further behind.
The wealth being produced by the current economic boom is
not trickling down to the poorest in this country and in
the world. The distance that separates the rich and poor
is growing. Today nearly 2 billion people survive on incomes
of less than a dollar a day. The crime rate is down, but
our prisons are fuller than ever. Welfare has been reformed,
but there are more children living in poverty than ever.
We, the rich, have more stuff than ever, but we are no happier.
Our bellies are bigger, but our hearts are no fuller.
The
call I hear to return and join Jesus and his band of stragglers
requires that I first lay down my load, to step away from
everything that looks like playing King of the Hill—from
the competition, the aggression, the drive to be first,
the accumulation of wealth. I know deep down that the pursuit
of power and pleasure can’t promise much, maybe an
instant of glory as king of some worldly dirt mound. But
I still fear leaving my privileged position. Believing that
the last shall be first is contrary to all my instincts
and everything the world is telling me. But Jesus promises
his Spirit
Secondly,
this call I hear from Jesus requires that I double back
and go join the stragglers below. This doesn’t seem
very appealing to me at first. I’ve learned over the
years that there is nothing particularly appealing about
poor people.
But
then, as I glance back down, past the destitute slum dwellers
and landless peasants and homeless street children, there
out of the corner of my eye of faith, I catch a glimpse
of someone I think I know. Behind the pack of stragglers—leading
them from the rear, like a good shepherd leads his flock—is
Jesus. And in the instant I recognize him, I see who I really
am—that I am the straggler—and that his call to
double back is a call for me to return to where I belong,
to the safety of his flock.
It
is in His flock of poor stragglers like me that my life
has meaning. It is in His flock of poor people that I find
my true identity and can have the courage to leave behind
the crazy competition, the anxiety, the violence and fear
of playing king of the hill. It is as a member of his flock
that I can scale great mountains and celebrate in glory
with the true King.
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