MISSION OF THE DISAPPEARED—MISSION OF THE APPEARED

Mary Schaller Blaufuss

INTRODUCTION
From the Seams of History, Bharati Ray entitles her collection of historical essays on recovering the story of Indian women in history.E1  It is an important collection of essays on history and women.  The title is also an evocative image that has made me think about seams.  There are seams in a book where they are glued together.  There are seams in a garment where they are sewn together.  And the better quality a product – book or garment – the deeper and stronger are those seams that join it.  In today’s globalized world we are offered not only the promises of better products with stronger seams, but also a world that is drawn together so closely and intensely that all seams – cultural, economic, even political - are fused and there are no seams at all.  We are promised a seamless world.
On the surface, a truly seamless world where the mosaic of people’s realities all find a place and interact freely, enhancing one another, sounds positive.  Drawing people and creating together in an integral whole is a good thing.  But the key part of this phrase is “on the surface.”   For to fuse seams together so that the surface appears seamless does not in reality allow for the diversity and pluralism that constitutes our world.  In order to appear seamless, stronger cultures, economies and polities have to assimilate and incorporate the weaker (or those who are strong in different ways). Thus, the globalized world actually necessitates more seams.  There have to be better seams, deeper seams, more hidden seams into which are dropped all those people who do not easily fit, who oppose, or who suffer at the hands of the tailors and book binders of seamless globalization.  Those seams are then glued, sewn up and forgotten, resulting in the disappearance of those trapped within.

A.    The Globalized World “Disappears People”
    “The disappeared” is not a new focus for missiology.  Jesus, the missionary, announced his life’s work as being sent “to bring good news to the poor, to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed to free, and to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”(Luke 4: 18-19).  In the 1970s and 1980s, the desaparecidos, “the disappeared,” emerged as a strong influence on the articulation of liberation theology that examined our relation to God in the broad sense of economic political and spiritual life and moved for change and justice.  The term “the disappeared” was used specifically in reference to men, women and children abducted during the military rule of 1976 to 1983 in the South American country of Argentina.  Under this regime, thousands of people, mostly dissidents and innocent civilians unconnected with violence, were arrested.  Many of them vanished without a trace, probably taken to one of the 340 clandestine detention centers set up in the country.E2   It was a deliberate and decisive action to silence people who contradicted those in power.  A National Commission set up in Argentina after democracy was restored in 1983 documented systematic abductions and methodic use of torture and murder, including the torture of young children and elderly people in front of their families in order to force information from them.  The Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo, however, already knew this.  Since 1976 they had been organizing, visiting jails, police offices, military barracks and churches to protest the disappearance of their husbands and children.  Since the 1980s, Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo have sought their grandchildren who were abducted along with their parents or who were born while their parents were in detention and then given away to other families never to know their birth parents or their identities of origin.  These women, once silent and invisible in the society and political arena, became an unlikely but outspoken group in Argentina and in international arenas for the liberation of their families, their communities, and their people.  Through their inspiration, people in other parts of the world articulated the reality of “the disappeared” in their situation and Christian mission was intentionally articulated within people’s real, political, social and economic contexts.  The Mothers and Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo and around the world became a force to make others see and try to find “the disappeared.”  In our own home, we hung a modern icon of Mary, depicted as a Salvadoran woman, “Mother of the Disappeared” to be part of our daily reflection and worship. 
.    Mission today, in the midst of a globalized world, needs to continue to place people in positions to recognize “the disappeared” because people continue to be “disappeared.”  In 2002, Duncan Forrester preached a sermon at the United Theological College in Bangalore that engaged imaginations for mission, pointing to a scene that many people pass every day, the Vasanthanagar Slum on the far side of the railway bridge just down the hill from the college.  He referred to the “squalor, and the smell of poverty and human degradation.”E3  He evoked well-known images of plastic covered huts, people cooking and bathing on the sidewalk, the mess of muddy paths between homes especially during the rains.  But these sights and smells and sounds were not always easy to recognize.  It is not only because people get used to it and numbed to its horror, but also because around the outside of the slum had been constructed huge billboard signs.  And on these signs were displayed the promised riches of Indian society:  “For the Rich and Famous,”  “Eminent Residences for the Privileged Few in Jayamal Extension.” Passing by the place on the street, pedestrians and drivers were enticed to enjoy high-rise living with swimming pools and tennis courts, cars, shampoos, movies, and special toothpaste.   By the time the traffic moved, there was no time to pay attention to the people who lived hidden behind and under the weight of those billboards.  The irony and the contrast were unmistakable.
People who lived in this slum had been settling there for years, even decades. As they tried to escape poverty or oppression in their villages or other places in the city, they found themselves not with opportunities but with dead-ends, and made a life for themselves in this make-shift locale.  Social and economic oppression are not new.  What is new in the globalized world is the intensity and the speed of the changes and the increased ability and motivation to seal off the seams inhabited by those who do not fit, who oppose or who suffer in the face of those changes.  These billboards were not randomly placed nor their content unintentionally chosen, but were deliberate means by which to hide, silence and “disappear” people whose very presence is a contradiction of the claims of prosperity and values of luxury and leisure stated on the billboards themselves.  Their deliberate function became especially apparent after the people in the slum shifted to a different part of the city that is hopefully a better location with new homes and more access to resources and employment.E4  The day they shifted, bulldozers came in to flatten the space and construct a wall.  A month later, the billboards came down, confirming their real purpose all along – to hide the people who had existed behind them and to make them invisible.  And yet, whether or not those on the outside knew of their existence, the oppression of the people existed.  And, in fact, the façade of the billboards not only hid what was behind them, but created deeper seams into which the people were “disappeared.”
    Globalization claims to create a seamless world.  In an article considering the nature of Christian mission in the context of globalization, Robert Schreiter names two axis around which globalization as a phenomenon revolves:  connectedness and space (rather than time as an organizing principle for society). Although each axis promises many good things, they also inherently include negative realities including exclusion from interconnectedness and the deterritorialization of space through its compression combined with the instantaneous nature of communication.E5 Globalization puts people in closer contact with each other.  Therefore, it should mean that we know more about one another, are more aware of each other, and more able to draw everyone together in an interconnected whole of equality and mutuality.  But the reality is that there ARE seams in the society. We now just have more sophisticated ways of excluding the people who do not fit.  We have different ideas that compress the space allotted to people who get in the way and thus tuck them away into the seams of the world’s existence.
    Examples of this are the Adavasis of Plachimada, Kerala.   The video documentary named “Things Go Bitter with Coke” narrates the entry of the Hindustani Coca-Cola Company into the area of Plachimada.  It showed how amounts of water used for the production and bottling of Coca-Cola changed the quantity of water available to people who lived there, as well as the quality of the water that remained.  Whereas jobs were promised when the company came (without consultation of the local Panchayat), local people were not actually employed at the plant.  Environmental restrictions for ground water extraction were not in place and regulations that did exist were not enforced.E6 
    At the same time that the documentary was being viewed by various groups, a Delhi-based NGO, the Centre for Science and Environment (CSE) published a study that showed pesticides in test samples of Coca-Cola and Pepsi products, unleashing a wave of concern about health issues and of manufacturing regulations for multi-national companies. The Indian Parliament immediately suspended the use of colas within the parliament building.  The cola companies ran advertisements in all the major newspapers, countering the information and arguments of those opposing them, as their sales skipped. It looked as though pressure on these multi-national corporations might bring change. With new tests done by different companies and different interpretations of those findings, however, the Times of India newspaper ran the top headline “Government Gives Clean Chit to Colas.”  Outlook Newsmagazine conducted tests in which they also declared the result of a “clean chit for the colas.”E7 And The Hindu observed, “Cola blows hot and cold” in their headline.E8  With the supposed removal of personal health threats, the implication was that these products are fine to use and cola companies were free to increase sales again.  The proposed change based on people’s self-interest of protecting their own health was not enough to produce lasting change when faced with different interpretations of the situation.  The people of the village of Plachimada, however, are still without water and are faced with pollution that threatens to destroy the environment.  They still do not experience the fullness of life God intends as people continue to “disappear” into the deep seems of society.


B.    The “Disappearing” Activity of the Globalized World Necessitates an “Appearing” Mission of Christianity

The “disappearing” activity of globalization prompts an “appearing” mission of Christianity.  A Christian mission of “appearance” is a mission of resurrection. When I wrote my first statement of ministry for an application to serve a congregation as a local church pastor, I wrote in light of the resurrection events in John 20.  It is a missiological understanding of local church ministry to which I still ascribe.  At the crucifixion, Mary Magdalene was present to the end with Jesus.  She had been “disappeared” previously by her society, used and stereotyped.  When she befriended Jesus and he her, she found that she was no longer bound by her invisibility.  Not only had Jesus recognized her and her contributions, thus excising her demons, but now at the cross she too stood with Jesus in his suffering - a suffering that most people either passed by without noticing because it was commonplace or averted their eyes because it was dangerous.  Most did not even make the effort to go outside the city to Golgotha, or left early when they could not bear the intensity of the suffering.  Deep seams existed.  Mary, though, stayed.  Three days later, when she and other women went to the tomb to anoint the body of Jesus and found the stone rolled away, she fell deeper into the seams of the despair of the tomb.  Someone seemingly had stolen the body.  The community of Jesus followers, as feared, must surely be the next targets in the on-going “disappearing” actions of those in positions of power.  Besides, did this mean that all of Jesus’ promises of rising again from the dead, shared with them during his life and giving his earthly ministry meaning, were merely words with no effect now?  But instead of going away with all of her fears and questions, she stays near the open tomb - crying.  A man speaks to her.  She does not recognize the voice at first, assumes it is the gardener and starts to berate him in her loss.  But then she hears him speak her name, “Mary.”  And it is then that she recognizes the risen Christ.   It is when she puts herself in the midst of the suffering, in the very seams of life, that she actually places herself in a location where she will hear her name.  It is here that the risen Christ appears to her.  The mission of “the disappeared” is ultimately to “appear.”  Jesus’ death ultimately turns to life.  Mary runs to tell the others of this appearance of the risen Christ and thus expands the influence of this “appearing” mission, encouraging them to come and put themselves in places to experience the life-giving appearing action of Christ that makes people’s lives whole, visible and active.
     Even though people outside the deep seams of society may not know they exist, others within the seams most certainly do know about one another. They “appear” to one another consistently.  That is where mission happens.  For example, in the Vasanthanagar slum, those on the outside who merely pass by may not have been able or chose not to see the people and their struggles, but the people living there knew one another.  They knew the situation of their neighbors when the slum was burned four years ago and they lost everything, limited as it was.  They knew the stories of one another as they lived together, struggling for survival and livelihood day by day.  It was the leaders within the internal organization of the slum who worked with civil authorities to get the community shifted.   
In Plachimada, Kerala it is the villagers themselves who have been and continue to protest against Hindustani Coca-Cola.  And it is the women, among the most silenced of “the disappeared,” who lead the protest.  As the community leader points out in the video documentary, men can go elsewhere to work but it is the women who relate most to water in their daily life.  Women are, therefore, most affected by the decreasing water supply and quality. And so it is the women who now lead the protests. “The disappeared” are not invisible to one another. “The disappeared” already are working for change within the seams of society.  They are doing work that Christians would recognize as moving toward the fullness of life that God promises and makes real-as resurrection-based mission of “appearance.” 
Christian mission in this globalized world, therefore, means to recognize that people already are engaged in ministry and, for those outside those seams, to accompany them. Gabriele Dietrich exemplifies this approach well.  She has spent a lifetime making connections between people’s movements and Christian theological reflection, seeing “the appeared” among “the disappeared,” and accompanying them. Her theology emerges out of “an existential confrontation with some of the basic issues encountered in the [women’s] movement, looking at them in a faith perspective.”E9  This accompaniment and reflection is a mission of actively “re-appearing” people. That is, once “the disappeared” are recognized, they are no longer invisible or silent.  And the mission of  “the disappeared” becomes the mission of  “the appeared.”  Gayatri Spivak, literary critic and historian, makes this point in reference to the “reappearance” of “the disappeared” when asked about her interview, “Can the Subaltern Speak?”E10  Many groups understood her to mean that the subaltern are not allowed to speak or are not capable of speaking.  Her reply to such accusations is that her intent was just the opposite. To remain subaltern is by definition remaining oppressed and silenced and “disappeared.” But when that subalternity has become a place of privileged listening; when the gifts of subaltern people are recognized on their own terms and utilized; when the subaltern make themselves heard and understood - they cease to be subaltern.  Those who have been “disappeared” are “appeared.”E11

C.    “Appearing Mission” Shapes the Practice of Christian Faith
The resurrection-empowered mission of “the appeared” is integral to the life-giving action of people who have been “disappeared” by globalization.  Their lives are changed.  The lives of those supposedly privileged by the empire are also changed.  Christian mission means asking the hard questions of why people do not see one another and of taking the difficult action that moves people out of those deep seams of life.  Christian mission, perhaps, means joining a boycott of Coca-Cola products, not out of the self-interest of our own health, but from a commitment to and with those who suffer from its very production.  After all, as Latin American liberation theologian, Gustavo Gutierrez said:  “When one is concerned with one’s own stomach, it is materialism, but when one is concerned with other people’s stomachs it is spirituality.” 
Christian mission means the creation of alternative communities, both physically and spiritually, where people experience their interconnection with one another and with God in their own space here and now.  Michael Amaladoss identifies these as “participative democracy and associational community.”E12   He advocates collective decision-making at all levels in order to equalize the status of people.  Collaboration for common goals can then take place.  He advocates associational community across the lines of religion for the purpose of communal harmony.  This community involves networks of mutual interaction based on production and trade-related economic activity in addition to religious identity as a way for communities to be aware that they are intertwined with the interests of the others.  Such networks, from the Christian side, are mission that have to be “actively constructed and carefully maintained.” They do not happen naturally.E13
Mission in the midst of globalization is not just the disconnected existence of Christianity among the intense forces that move the world closer together.  Nor is it the isolated parallel movement of Christianity alongside other global pressures.  Instead, Christian mission is the movement of the self-giving love of Christ within and among these aspects of the world that brings people together and brings people to God in new and life-giving ways.  It does not create a seamless world that actually means deep seams, but a world with different kinds of seams in which people can involve themselves and interact on a mutual level.  When we look for “the disappeared,” we need not look far, because “the disappeared” are among us; and, perhaps, “the disappeared” are us.  Neither do we need to look far to recognize “the appeared,” for the risen Christ who calls us by name is also among us.  It is this resurrection - mission that “appears” the “disappeared.”  It is this resurrection - mission in which we are invited to participateMISSION OF THE DISAPPEARED—MISSION OF THE APPEARED

Mary Schaller Blaufuss

INTRODUCTION
From the Seams of History, Bharati Ray entitles her collection of historical essays on recovering the story of Indian women in history.E1  It is an important collection of essays on history and women.  The title is also an evocative image that has made me think about seams.  There are seams in a book where they are glued together.  There are seams in a garment where they are sewn together.  And the better quality a product – book or garment – the deeper and stronger are those seams that join it.  In today’s globalized world we are offered not only the promises of better products with stronger seams, but also a world that is drawn together so closely and intensely that all seams – cultural, economic, even political - are fused and there are no seams at all.  We are promised a seamless world.
On the surface, a truly seamless world where the mosaic of people’s realities all find a place and interact freely, enhancing one another, sounds positive.  Drawing people and creating together in an integral whole is a good thing.  But the key part of this phrase is “on the surface.”   For to fuse seams together so that the surface appears seamless does not in reality allow for the diversity and pluralism that constitutes our world.  In order to appear seamless, stronger cultures, economies and polities have to assimilate and incorporate the weaker (or those who are strong in different ways). Thus, the globalized world actually necessitates more seams.  There have to be better seams, deeper seams, more hidden seams into which are dropped all those people who do not easily fit, who oppose, or who suffer at the hands of the tailors and book binders of seamless globalization.  Those seams are then glued, sewn up and forgotten, resulting in the disappearance of those trapped within.

A.    The Globalized World “Disappears People”
    “The disappeared” is not a new focus for missiology.  Jesus, the missionary, announced his life’s work as being sent “to bring good news to the poor, to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed to free, and to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”(Luke 4: 18-19).  In the 1970s and 1980s, the desaparecidos, “the disappeared,” emerged as a strong influence on the articulation of liberation theology that examined our relation to God in the broad sense of economic political and spiritual life and moved for change and justice.  The term “the disappeared” was used specifically in reference to men, women and children abducted during the military rule of 1976 to 1983 in the South American country of Argentina.  Under this regime, thousands of people, mostly dissidents and innocent civilians unconnected with violence, were arrested.  Many of them vanished without a trace, probably taken to one of the 340 clandestine detention centers set up in the country.E2   It was a deliberate and decisive action to silence people who contradicted those in power.  A National Commission set up in Argentina after democracy was restored in 1983 documented systematic abductions and methodic use of torture and murder, including the torture of young children and elderly people in front of their families in order to force information from them.  The Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo, however, already knew this.  Since 1976 they had been organizing, visiting jails, police offices, military barracks and churches to protest the disappearance of their husbands and children.  Since the 1980s, Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo have sought their grandchildren who were abducted along with their parents or who were born while their parents were in detention and then given away to other families never to know their birth parents or their identities of origin.  These women, once silent and invisible in the society and political arena, became an unlikely but outspoken group in Argentina and in international arenas for the liberation of their families, their communities, and their people.  Through their inspiration, people in other parts of the world articulated the reality of “the disappeared” in their situation and Christian mission was intentionally articulated within people’s real, political, social and economic contexts.  The Mothers and Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo and around the world became a force to make others see and try to find “the disappeared.”  In our own home, we hung a modern icon of Mary, depicted as a Salvadoran woman, “Mother of the Disappeared” to be part of our daily reflection and worship. 
.    Mission today, in the midst of a globalized world, needs to continue to place people in positions to recognize “the disappeared” because people continue to be “disappeared.”  In 2002, Duncan Forrester preached a sermon at the United Theological College in Bangalore that engaged imaginations for mission, pointing to a scene that many people pass every day, the Vasanthanagar Slum on the far side of the railway bridge just down the hill from the college.  He referred to the “squalor, and the smell of poverty and human degradation.”E3  He evoked well-known images of plastic covered huts, people cooking and bathing on the sidewalk, the mess of muddy paths between homes especially during the rains.  But these sights and smells and sounds were not always easy to recognize.  It is not only because people get used to it and numbed to its horror, but also because around the outside of the slum had been constructed huge billboard signs.  And on these signs were displayed the promised riches of Indian society:  “For the Rich and Famous,”  “Eminent Residences for the Privileged Few in Jayamal Extension.” Passing by the place on the street, pedestrians and drivers were enticed to enjoy high-rise living with swimming pools and tennis courts, cars, shampoos, movies, and special toothpaste.   By the time the traffic moved, there was no time to pay attention to the people who lived hidden behind and under the weight of those billboards.  The irony and the contrast were unmistakable.
People who lived in this slum had been settling there for years, even decades. As they tried to escape poverty or oppression in their villages or other places in the city, they found themselves not with opportunities but with dead-ends, and made a life for themselves in this make-shift locale.  Social and economic oppression are not new.  What is new in the globalized world is the intensity and the speed of the changes and the increased ability and motivation to seal off the seams inhabited by those who do not fit, who oppose or who suffer in the face of those changes.  These billboards were not randomly placed nor their content unintentionally chosen, but were deliberate means by which to hide, silence and “disappear” people whose very presence is a contradiction of the claims of prosperity and values of luxury and leisure stated on the billboards themselves.  Their deliberate function became especially apparent after the people in the slum shifted to a different part of the city that is hopefully a better location with new homes and more access to resources and employment.E4  The day they shifted, bulldozers came in to flatten the space and construct a wall.  A month later, the billboards came down, confirming their real purpose all along – to hide the people who had existed behind them and to make them invisible.  And yet, whether or not those on the outside knew of their existence, the oppression of the people existed.  And, in fact, the façade of the billboards not only hid what was behind them, but created deeper seams into which the people were “disappeared.”
    Globalization claims to create a seamless world.  In an article considering the nature of Christian mission in the context of globalization, Robert Schreiter names two axis around which globalization as a phenomenon revolves:  connectedness and space (rather than time as an organizing principle for society). Although each axis promises many good things, they also inherently include negative realities including exclusion from interconnectedness and the deterritorialization of space through its compression combined with the instantaneous nature of communication.E5 Globalization puts people in closer contact with each other.  Therefore, it should mean that we know more about one another, are more aware of each other, and more able to draw everyone together in an interconnected whole of equality and mutuality.  But the reality is that there ARE seams in the society. We now just have more sophisticated ways of excluding the people who do not fit.  We have different ideas that compress the space allotted to people who get in the way and thus tuck them away into the seams of the world’s existence.
    Examples of this are the Adavasis of Plachimada, Kerala.   The video documentary named “Things Go Bitter with Coke” narrates the entry of the Hindustani Coca-Cola Company into the area of Plachimada.  It showed how amounts of water used for the production and bottling of Coca-Cola changed the quantity of water available to people who lived there, as well as the quality of the water that remained.  Whereas jobs were promised when the company came (without consultation of the local Panchayat), local people were not actually employed at the plant.  Environmental restrictions for ground water extraction were not in place and regulations that did exist were not enforced.E6 
    At the same time that the documentary was being viewed by various groups, a Delhi-based NGO, the Centre for Science and Environment (CSE) published a study that showed pesticides in test samples of Coca-Cola and Pepsi products, unleashing a wave of concern about health issues and of manufacturing regulations for multi-national companies. The Indian Parliament immediately suspended the use of colas within the parliament building.  The cola companies ran advertisements in all the major newspapers, countering the information and arguments of those opposing them, as their sales skipped. It looked as though pressure on these multi-national corporations might bring change. With new tests done by different companies and different interpretations of those findings, however, the Times of India newspaper ran the top headline “Government Gives Clean Chit to Colas.”  Outlook Newsmagazine conducted tests in which they also declared the result of a “clean chit for the colas.”E7 And The Hindu observed, “Cola blows hot and cold” in their headline.E8  With the supposed removal of personal health threats, the implication was that these products are fine to use and cola companies were free to increase sales again.  The proposed change based on people’s self-interest of protecting their own health was not enough to produce lasting change when faced with different interpretations of the situation.  The people of the village of Plachimada, however, are still without water and are faced with pollution that threatens to destroy the environment.  They still do not experience the fullness of life God intends as people continue to “disappear” into the deep seems of society.


B.    The “Disappearing” Activity of the Globalized World Necessitates an “Appearing” Mission of Christianity

The “disappearing” activity of globalization prompts an “appearing” mission of Christianity.  A Christian mission of “appearance” is a mission of resurrection. When I wrote my first statement of ministry for an application to serve a congregation as a local church pastor, I wrote in light of the resurrection events in John 20.  It is a missiological understanding of local church ministry to which I still ascribe.  At the crucifixion, Mary Magdalene was present to the end with Jesus.  She had been “disappeared” previously by her society, used and stereotyped.  When she befriended Jesus and he her, she found that she was no longer bound by her invisibility.  Not only had Jesus recognized her and her contributions, thus excising her demons, but now at the cross she too stood with Jesus in his suffering - a suffering that most people either passed by without noticing because it was commonplace or averted their eyes because it was dangerous.  Most did not even make the effort to go outside the city to Golgotha, or left early when they could not bear the intensity of the suffering.  Deep seams existed.  Mary, though, stayed.  Three days later, when she and other women went to the tomb to anoint the body of Jesus and found the stone rolled away, she fell deeper into the seams of the despair of the tomb.  Someone seemingly had stolen the body.  The community of Jesus followers, as feared, must surely be the next targets in the on-going “disappearing” actions of those in positions of power.  Besides, did this mean that all of Jesus’ promises of rising again from the dead, shared with them during his life and giving his earthly ministry meaning, were merely words with no effect now?  But instead of going away with all of her fears and questions, she stays near the open tomb - crying.  A man speaks to her.  She does not recognize the voice at first, assumes it is the gardener and starts to berate him in her loss.  But then she hears him speak her name, “Mary.”  And it is then that she recognizes the risen Christ.   It is when she puts herself in the midst of the suffering, in the very seams of life, that she actually places herself in a location where she will hear her name.  It is here that the risen Christ appears to her.  The mission of “the disappeared” is ultimately to “appear.”  Jesus’ death ultimately turns to life.  Mary runs to tell the others of this appearance of the risen Christ and thus expands the influence of this “appearing” mission, encouraging them to come and put themselves in places to experience the life-giving appearing action of Christ that makes people’s lives whole, visible and active.
     Even though people outside the deep seams of society may not know they exist, others within the seams most certainly do know about one another. They “appear” to one another consistently.  That is where mission happens.  For example, in the Vasanthanagar slum, those on the outside who merely pass by may not have been able or chose not to see the people and their struggles, but the people living there knew one another.  They knew the situation of their neighbors when the slum was burned four years ago and they lost everything, limited as it was.  They knew the stories of one another as they lived together, struggling for survival and livelihood day by day.  It was the leaders within the internal organization of the slum who worked with civil authorities to get the community shifted.   
In Plachimada, Kerala it is the villagers themselves who have been and continue to protest against Hindustani Coca-Cola.  And it is the women, among the most silenced of “the disappeared,” who lead the protest.  As the community leader points out in the video documentary, men can go elsewhere to work but it is the women who relate most to water in their daily life.  Women are, therefore, most affected by the decreasing water supply and quality. And so it is the women who now lead the protests. “The disappeared” are not invisible to one another. “The disappeared” already are working for change within the seams of society.  They are doing work that Christians would recognize as moving toward the fullness of life that God promises and makes real-as resurrection-based mission of “appearance.” 
Christian mission in this globalized world, therefore, means to recognize that people already are engaged in ministry and, for those outside those seams, to accompany them. Gabriele Dietrich exemplifies this approach well.  She has spent a lifetime making connections between people’s movements and Christian theological reflection, seeing “the appeared” among “the disappeared,” and accompanying them. Her theology emerges out of “an existential confrontation with some of the basic issues encountered in the [women’s] movement, looking at them in a faith perspective.”E9  This accompaniment and reflection is a mission of actively “re-appearing” people. That is, once “the disappeared” are recognized, they are no longer invisible or silent.  And the mission of  “the disappeared” becomes the mission of  “the appeared.”  Gayatri Spivak, literary critic and historian, makes this point in reference to the “reappearance” of “the disappeared” when asked about her interview, “Can the Subaltern Speak?”E10  Many groups understood her to mean that the subaltern are not allowed to speak or are not capable of speaking.  Her reply to such accusations is that her intent was just the opposite. To remain subaltern is by definition remaining oppressed and silenced and “disappeared.” But when that subalternity has become a place of privileged listening; when the gifts of subaltern people are recognized on their own terms and utilized; when the subaltern make themselves heard and understood - they cease to be subaltern.  Those who have been “disappeared” are “appeared.”E11

C.    “Appearing Mission” Shapes the Practice of Christian Faith
The resurrection-empowered mission of “the appeared” is integral to the life-giving action of people who have been “disappeared” by globalization.  Their lives are changed.  The lives of those supposedly privileged by the empire are also changed.  Christian mission means asking the hard questions of why people do not see one another and of taking the difficult action that moves people out of those deep seams of life.  Christian mission, perhaps, means joining a boycott of Coca-Cola products, not out of the self-interest of our own health, but from a commitment to and with those who suffer from its very production.  After all, as Latin American liberation theologian, Gustavo Gutierrez said:  “When one is concerned with one’s own stomach, it is materialism, but when one is concerned with other people’s stomachs it is spirituality.” 
Christian mission means the creation of alternative communities, both physically and spiritually, where people experience their interconnection with one another and with God in their own space here and now.  Michael Amaladoss identifies these as “participative democracy and associational community.”E12   He advocates collective decision-making at all levels in order to equalize the status of people.  Collaboration for common goals can then take place.  He advocates associational community across the lines of religion for the purpose of communal harmony.  This community involves networks of mutual interaction based on production and trade-related economic activity in addition to religious identity as a way for communities to be aware that they are intertwined with the interests of the others.  Such networks, from the Christian side, are mission that have to be “actively constructed and carefully maintained.” They do not happen naturally.E13
Mission in the midst of globalization is not just the disconnected existence of Christianity among the intense forces that move the world closer together.  Nor is it the isolated parallel movement of Christianity alongside other global pressures.  Instead, Christian mission is the movement of the self-giving love of Christ within and among these aspects of the world that brings people together and brings people to God in new and life-giving ways.  It does not create a seamless world that actually means deep seams, but a world with different kinds of seams in which people can involve themselves and interact on a mutual level.  When we look for “the disappeared,” we need not look far, because “the disappeared” are among us; and, perhaps, “the disappeared” are us.  Neither do we need to look far to recognize “the appeared,” for the risen Christ who calls us by name is also among us.  It is this resurrection - mission that “appears” the “disappeared.”  It is this resurrection - mission in which we are invited to participate.