Yesterday a friend asked me "how have you been changed by your experience [in Nicaragua]"...
Part of the answer to that question is easy. I talked about my greater awareness of global issues. I have been changed by the concrete experience of witnessing and living amongst people who live in poverty. The reality of great poverty in our wealthy world has become much more tangible to me. It is no longer only a concept... one that I have always had compassion for - albeit a detached kind of compassion.
I have been changed in that I now feel a deep attachment and connection to the friends I made in Nicaragua who I know are living the struggle every single day. Just this morning I received a phone call from my friend, Alberto, who is without work. He has no money... he has no food... his truck has broken down. Alberto called in despair, and not just for himself and his family but also for his community. He says that he doesn't have work because nobody has money... it's not just he who is suffering. He is in the awful position of needing to make a decision to either leave his community and his family in search of opportunity in the United States or to stay and try to make the best of it. I sat and listened... tried to offer words of encouragement and hope... but mostly just feeling utterly and completely helpless. He called to ask me to pray for him and his family.
I do pray... for Alberto and his family, for all of my friends in Esteli and for people around my city and throughout the world who face similar seemingly impossible situations every single day. Although I do believe in the power of prayer, it doesn't feel like enough. Prayer does not fill an empty stomach. Once again I am faced with the question... "what CAN I do?" My experience in Nicaragua changed me in that this question feels more immediate for me now... more urgent. When I ask this question now, there are faces attached... poverty has become personal for me in a way it hasn't really been before. It is impossible for me to ignore the reality of such a huge percentage of our world's population. When I think poverty now I first see the faces of my friends in Esteli... Alberto, Esmilda, Karla, Joakin... but those images are immediately followed by the images of countless other faces, real and imagined. Faces of those I see in my own city, faces of those I've seen on television news reports or in magazines. In my heart, there is a much greater universal connection now than existed before. For this I feel so grateful... and a little overwhelmed.
The other ways I have been changed are a little more difficult for me to understand and, therefore, articulate. For some reason, when I was in Nicaragua, I allowed my heart to be opened wide. Allowed isn't actually the right word... because it wasn't a conscious choice. If I was in a position of making that choice, I probably would have been defensive... possibly even fled. It just kinda happened. One day I woke up and realized I had fallen in love... with my friends, with the community, with the culture... and it felt so AMAZING. And then it hurt. Falling in love meant experiencing their lives, the good and the not-so-good, in a more intense... a more present... way.
Loving friendships have never been very easy for me. It's hard for me to trust. It's hard for me to connect. I have always kept friends at an arms length... partly as a form of self-protection and partly because I have never really thought of myself as very likeable. Somewhere in the back of my mind I have always believed that if people REALLY got to know me they wouldn't like what they see.
Anyway... whatever the reason for the whole opening of the heart thing... I'm deciding that I kind of like it this way. I'm kind of enjoying(?) feeling the love and grief and joy and pain. Along with the awakening of feeling has come an awakening of presence. As my eyes have become more open to the evil that exists in our world, I am also becoming more open to the beauty and goodness. It's true... there are probably things about me that aren't so likeable BUT they are not the whole of me. FIRST there is goodness and love and beauty. Goodness existed before the trials and tribulations of life caused me to create some defenses that look like defensiveness, moodiness, and control-freak type behaviours.
I am good. Created out of goodness, into a world that is good. My journey is to live that goodness to the best of my ability.
And.. of course... reason would have it that if I am good... created out of goodness... so is everyone else.
My journey is not only to live the goodness that is in me, it is also to search for, call to, encourage and love the goodness that is in you... and you... and you...
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