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There
is an important reason for this difference between the conversions in the Book
of Acts and the one in Green Eggs and Ham: power dynamics.
The un-named nay-sayer in Green Eggs and Ham has all the characteristics of an adult: he
is taller, he reads the newspaper, he is easily irritated by Sam-I-Am, he is
set in his ways. Sam-I-Am is
clearly a child: smaller, playful, unafraid of rejection. Unlike the Hebrew God, Sam-I-Am cannot
convert his opponent with pyrotechnics and miracles. His only resource is his playful persistence.
It
might be useful to think through the problem spatially. When prophets hear the voice of Yahweh
in the Tanakh, they always have to look up. Paul's
conversion follows the same model:
And
as he journeyed, it came to pass that he drew nigh unto Damascus: and suddenly
there shone round about him a light out of heaven: and he fell upon the earth… [Acts 9:3,
my emphasis]
Yahweh
calls on prophets to support the suffering, the poor, and those who suffer from
injustice (those “below”), but this call comes from “above”. That's the voice we're used to hearing
and obeying, after all: parents, judges, leaders… they all come from above.
Let
me turn back to Marília for a moment.
In the favela, she stands at the top of the hierarchy: she reigns over
the gang as she wishes. In the
stateless zone of the favela, no police officer or politician can tell her what
to do. Unless some God decides to
intervene, there is no figure who can call her to conscience from above. And from below? Why should she listen? Her world is working as it should. Unfortunately, few powerful people –
whether in a small pond like the favela of Arruda, or at the peak of state
power – feel the weight of an ethics that calls us to hear the pained cry of
the other. The powerful and evil
may be the ones most in need of conversion, but it's unlikely they are going to
do it themselves.
Enter
Sam-I-Am. In the face of the
constant “no”, the unwillingness of the un-named interlocutor even to
countenance the possibility of green eggs and ham, Sam-I-Am keeps trying. He refuses to hear the “no” that his
powerful interlocutor always calls back to him. He persists.
Half a dozen years ago, I worked in a
Colombian shantytown controlled by paramilitary gangs, teaching children how to
make movies; the kids were excited to use this new technology to show a bit of
their community. As we filmed in
this very dangerous place in the mountains above Bogotá, a gang member would
often come up, point at where the kids were filming, and say “You can't do
that.”
“Oh,
no, that's not what we're filming,” the kids would say. “We’re shooting there.” They pointed their fingers to something
off to the side of what worried the gangsters, indicating that they were
interested in something else. With
this simple motion, they felt like they could continue to film as they
liked. The gang authorities,
completely unprepared for anyone to disobey their orders, accepted the kids'
explanation with a bemused grunt.
Then, we moved on to the next spot and had to do it again. There's a wonderful obverse here to the
parental lament that “you aren't listening to what I'm saying”: kids persist,
even in the face of words that try to stop them.
It's
interesting, I think, that Sam-I-Am has the name Samuel, based on the Hebrew
verb that means “to hear,” when he, like the kids in the Colombian shantytown,
is most characterized by the remarkable ability not to hear. Sam-I-Am reminds me of the street kids I've worked with for
almost two decades, their cleverness, humor, and their capacity to annoy an
adult until they get what they want.
Without the power or theological fireworks available to God, they have
to use the tools they have on hand to get what they want.
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