Globalization

It's a familiar picture, taken in 1972 from Apollo 17, Mother Earth as seen from 18,000 miles in space. "The Blue Marble", it's called. (For more on this, check out http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Blue_Marble.) This dramatic image totally knocked me out when I first saw it, and got me to begin thinking about the whole concept of globalization as a phenomenon that actually impacted my life, something that personally affected me. The Blue Marble became more than only a symbol of just another cultural crisis, a passing phase to go along with Zero Population Growth and cork filled baseball bats. It was, for me, nearly as dramatic a photo as seeing grandchildren in the womb, and every bit as life changing.

What put flesh on the skeleton of globalization for me was the publication in 2005 of Thomas Friedman's, "The World is Flat", a detailed description of a world I was only beginning to sense. For example, Friedman describes the Dell notebook he's using to write his book as having a microprocessor from the Philippines, a memory card from Korea, a graphics card from China, a cooling fan from Taiwan, a motherboard from Shanghai, and on and on. Today I'm driving a German car made in Mexico from parts shipped from China and Australia to be sold by an American dealer.

And what's even more awesome is that the book, only two years from publication, is already badly out of date, almost obsolete. Friedman himself advises potential readers to get the paperback, revised this year. But it's probably out of date by now, too. The world moves fast.

All these thoughts came to me as a result of three experiences. One was our eight year old granddaughter's brief visit to Disney World, and her comment that so many people were "speaking Mexican". Actually, her daddy told me, they were speaking French and German and Italian and Lord only knows what else, as well as Spanish. Disney World is well named: a microcosm of our shrinking Blue Marble today.

It happened again at a motel in St. Augustine. Ann and I were sitting around the pool, seeking some respite from the heat and enjoying some people-watching (one of our favorite past times) when a Muslim family, Mother, Father, another adult, and two small children arrived. While the males and children wore what we could call appropriate swimming pool attire (bathing suits), the adult females wore the head veil and full length chador, even going down the long water slide and into the pool, fully clothed. Actually I have no idea whether they were from Saudi, Iran, India, or Philadelphia, but the world got a little smaller.

The final experience was a trip Ann and I took to the beach on Labor Day. It was a beautiful afternoon to enjoy the beach and visit with old friends. As we walked up the ramp to the Carolina Yacht Club, a bastion of local tradition and values, a family from India (or perhaps Pakistan or Turkey) passed by us, their lilting but foreign language portending serious changes in our Yacht Club and our world. Another notch on the belt of globalization.

There's still much to learn about this new world of ours, and Friedman's popular book, while opening many windows and doors, still leaves much unsaid about our world neighborhood. What about Africa, for instance? Or the dark side of China? Or what about the potential for having pollution cause the Blue Marble to become dingy gray? What about all that space that's outside our globe? Lots of questions and uncertainties.

And where, in all this, fits the Church and Christianity? We've been called to "go into all the world and preach the Gospel", but how well do we handle it if all the world comes to us? How can the arrogance of institutional faith communities (as they're now called) be channeled to serve the rest of our globe?

Many, of course, approach globalization with the same mindset as they do global warming, whistling past the graveyard as the inevitable continues to be denied. Denial is never a very good strategy for dealing with life, whatever the issue might be.