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| Quito and Cayambe |
It’s always difficult to start these things. It’s always been a little overwhelming. Not that I live an overwhelming life, it’s just that relating one’s life can be difficult. I conjure up ideas of scenes to portray, or, sometimes, just a memorable picture. Like a student sitting on a bed with his eyes half closed. When I look at him, my headlamp illuminates his body and the raggedy bed on which he sits. When I look away he’s in darkness. Around such pictures one can construct a scene which portrays a fragment of what one’s lived, and with such a scene one can reach out to others and say “This is what I’ve lived. Perhaps it hints at who I’m becoming. Maybe you know me better now.” And that last part, I’ve found, is the heart of the issue. The reason for writing. To be known over vast distances. This way, when I come home and apparently have nothing to talk about, when I sit like a mute man across from you, when you ask me how Ecuador was and I mumble words inscrutable, at least you’ll have these bits, these selected images to know.
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| Illiniza Norte with a group |
I’ve worked with three different groups of North Americans so far and I believe I have seen God at work—not in obvious ways like physical healings, but in subtle ways easily mistaken for the normal flow of life. When the steady, wide flow is slowly etching the banks of humanity into a more beautiful form, more kind and empathetic and others-centered, that’s when I assume God is in the water. Take, for instance, a big-time farmer from Idaho who changes his opinion of his Latin-American community. Or consider the 15 year old with the tear-streaked face, who says the highlight from her time in Ecuador was visiting some of the poorest homes in Quito. Or take, for example, a woman with renewed hope for a Christian community based on love and respect. Or think of the woman recovering from an eating disorder who was able to healthily exercise for the first time in months. It’s difficult to describe the contagious happiness that emanated from her in the mountains. My point is I think there is a point to all of this. The mountains are beautiful and fun and scary. The city is interesting and intricate and different. But people are changing for the better. And that’s the biggest thing to celebrate.
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| A participant enjoying taking in the mountains over Quito |
Each of these abstract examples happened on the first course, but before I move on, let me tell you about that part of the course which will stick with me for a long time, maybe until I die. I walked with a social worker from a local church visiting various homes in a poor barrio. I looked past the group in front of me, through a damp corridor of plywood, to a man scrambling around his home. He was rapidly plucking papers, debris and sharp tools off his floor. When he looked up at us, bent over with his hands full, I noticed his upturned, anxious eyebrows. I also noticed his left eye was looking in a wildly different direction than his right. His face was kind, nonetheless, and his unruly hair waved in the air as he nodded his head at what the social worker was saying. She was asking him why his home was so dirty and unkempt; I understood that much. When he looked at me, I sensed a submissiveness which made me uncomfortable. I sensed it in his tone, when he asked if I spoke Spanish. There was vomit on the front of his shirt, but, all in all, he looked much cleaner than his wife and two boys.
I’ve got to be honest, I’m tempted to continue describing this face of poverty with all of it hideous expressions, with its scabs and urine, mud and cardboard, cinderblocks and metal, but I’m not sure that pages of adjectives and analogies and personifications will be of any help in understanding all of this. The only thing I claim to understand about that situation is that it is not supposed to exist. People, immortal beings, are not supposed to live like that. So I’m going to move on. I’m moving into the abstract, into that which is less entertaining. The story’s over, the moral is beginning. I apologize in advance for my philosophizing, but I’ve been considering different perspectives on poverty and want to share these thoughts.
A muddy home, scabs, urine, cardboard—so begins the struggle between sympathy and empathy for one privileged white man. I’ve come to believe that sympathy is man inflated. It’s you or me injected with air until we are forty-five foot giants looking down on equals. With sympathy, we smile and pledge to think of the poor often out of the benevolence that overflows our blown up, holy hearts, or we cry and highlight the suffering of others, but in sympathy we very seldom commit—not in a real way. Sympathy helps us ignore the poor by feeling badly, but it requires little action. It patches our spirits by giving the false sense of helping others.
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| A participant helping a blind man go for a walk at an "Old Folks Home" for the poor in Quito |
I don’t have a good word for the opposite of this sympathy, found sometimes in the poor. I guess one could call it “hyper-admiration”, basically, a deflated image of one’s self or an over-admiration of one’s equals. It is shrinking one’s self down into a miniature mouse-person looking up to equals as superiors, not believing that one’s value has nothing to do with possessions or position or your child’s learning disability. I view this “hyper-admiration” and sympathy as equally distant from what I believe to be the truth that all men are equal in one, important way. God rejoices over all of us. None should look either up or down to equals.
For me, the desire to scoop up the poor in inflated arms can be emotionally appealing; but when I look at my arms, they look just like those of the man with vomit on his shirt. I want to bend down and pluck families out of the muck (probably in a way that requires little sacrifice on my part), but I find myself instead staring eye to eye with them, standing in the muck also, not knowing what to do. Such realizations bring one closer to empathy. Empathy is the perspective I’m choosing to aim for. Empathy knows that God prizes the urchin and the philanthropist equally. Empathy empowers. It sees eye-to-eye. It speaks the truth of who we are as humans. It may cry, but it does not pity. It may celebrate, but it knows the struggle will not be finished in this lifetime. Empathy educates. It doesn’t give hand outs. It recognizes potential and tries to grow that potential.
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| Wendy |
In applying these thoughts to my situation, I find that sympathy is tempting for a privileged white boy like myself, more tempting even, than guilt. I find myself asking questions and making assumptions. I wonder how they continue each day, if they are planning escape, how any of this could possibly end well, and I picture their frustration piling with each day, with each child, so that the tiniest straw of complications could crush the fragile hope they hold. And then what? Where can they go? I have wondered how these people, with their physical needs barely met, continue. But who am I to comment on the resilience of man, the resilience of the blotchy-faced woman with no bathroom and no job? I know precious little of resilience, mainly stories, and it’s yet to be seen whether these stories are seeds planted in a fertile heart, ready to grow into a life that produces more stories and more seeds, or whether they are hollow echoes in a stony canyon. Furthermore, who am I to doubt the existence of hope? It may be hard to see, but I have to believe that hope exists for everyone, in all circumstances. People will still die, the poor will persist, but so will hope, sometimes in the form of you and me and the sharing of our gifts.
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| John and Lisa, form Idaho, who decided to help Miguel (center) go to school at Remanso de Amor. Miguel's parents live in the Amazon. They put him on a bus for Quito one day where he lived on the streets until teachers at Remanso de Amor took him in. Until John and Lisa came, he was going to have to leave Remanso due to a lack of funds. |
So, as always, I come round to the conclusion that I must trust in God for my own sake and for the sake of the poor. I don’t believe there is hope for myself or the family in the mud apart from him. He knows of physical needs and commands us to address these needs in the world. He knows we’re not acting like the people we were made to be and he knows that he is our only chance of changing. But for all our dependence, he demands action. He wants us to be his fingers and his feet. He wants to cultivate us into loving beings, but he demands that we step out. He places calls on us, calls without an audible voice or a strange emotion, calls that don’t seem like calls at all. He equips us to serve by giving us tools, for me these are a loving family, a good brain, the opportunity to travel, gainful employment, and with these tools I am obligated to act. With our given tools, we are all obligated to act. Perhaps proper action with these tools is the fertilizer God is waiting for. So act we must, or at least try, with whatever we have, however meager, and in whatever location we find ourselves. For me, my current location happens to be close to a family who lives in the mud, but even closer to white people just like me, inflated, confused, and needing help in different ways.
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| Chilling with some Old Folks in Quito during the holidays |
Well, I intended to write about wind, snow, and adventure, of which there have been plenty, but I’m not sure what happened except that I was lured in by the bait called “why?” I don’t know if there is anything to be learned from any of the above writing, but if there is, I hope you find it.
I’m looking forward to coming home on March 20th. Thanks for reading.
Ben
