Wednesday, August 18, 2010

Entering Community with the Poor

My new neighborhood is a place where most people avoid even walking past lest someone find out they were in this part of town. This is because I share this section of the city with over 10,000 women "standing in line" who are entangled in the sex-trade. Most of which are self-less mothers who would rather sell their bodies than watch their children go hungry or uneducated.

My new home is a 15"x8" too-short-to-stand-up-in room and consists mainly of a bed, a kerosene stove, a fan, a TV, and a drain where we do our bathing, cooking, dish-washing, and (occasionally when it is urgent or too late to leave our room) it is for our peeing as well. I have found myself living life alongside the most incredible, warm-hearted woman named Shikha and her far-too-beautiful-to-be-living-in-a-red-light-district 11 year old daughter named Papya. I am happy to say these are my new room mates.

I am discovering there are many beautiful treasures in relationship with the poor.

For instance, as I packed my stuff for the big move, consolidated "my-life" into a back pack, I was required to think critically about my wants verses my needs. Suddenly as I looked over my heaps of belongings scattered on the floor there was a shift in thought. The things that had once brought me feelings of security or self-worth, suddenly seemed quite unnecessary and even shameful as I realized these things were not only excessive, they were too expensive and and large to fit into my new home.

It was at this moment I realized how much of my identity has belonged to those things on the floor called "my belongings" and somehow at one time I had been so convinced I needed. But why?

My new neighbors had lived their whole lives without such things. I looked down at my designer clothes that had once given me so much confidence in America, realizing now they would be hurtful to my neighbors self-worth, as they could never afford such things. I counted my 15 sets of clothes that had once given me a sense of security in their numbers, only now the more I counted the more it seemed like a waste knowing the cost of just one those pants could pay our rent for the next 2 months. And all my gadgets for "well-traveling" now seemed like roadblocks for well-living.

It was in that moment I found I had been owned by the things I owned; possessed by my own possessions.

And for the first time, my rock solid "ideal of simplicity" was shattered. Now I see simplicity is so much more than a principle, it is actually the natural overflow of love when our neighbors are those who are poor. I'm believing more each day that the inequality of wealth in the world is not because the rich do not care about the poor, but we simple do not know them. It has been in relationship with the poor that I'm discovering my own poverty; greed, materialism, and hoarding to name a few.

It brings to mind "Blessed are the poor for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven".


Friends and neighbors enjoying Shikha force-feed me yet another dessert

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