A Hard Way
Geoffrey says: “Today is a hard day.”
I’m thinking he could mean any of a dozen things — hard because he lives in a Nairobi slum, hard because he supports himself, hard because it’s hot today, hard because we’re raking brush and debris and cut grass from a morning clean-up by hand. So I ask him what he means.
“Because tonight, Manchester United plays Real Madrid.”
In a few hours, these two powerhouse soccer teams play each other in the next round of a tournament called the Champions League that’s second only to the World Cup in popularity. I’m not sure why that makes today hard — and Geoffrey wasn’t able to explain — but his answer was not what I expected him to say.
It’s an example of how we’re struggling at the moment with our life lens, whipping around from privilege to poverty to privilege to poverty and back and back and back again. The poor now have names. They are now friends. So, how do we help? How do we help responsibly? What is the balance between embracing the life we’ve been given and coming alongside these new friends in substantive ways?
In real terms, this life lens challenge is exemplified by a wall fortified by barbed wire. Our current home is on one side of the wall. Geoffrey’s home is in a slum on the other side.
It’s not that we feel that we have to choose either privilege or poverty, embracing one and spurning the other … but we now have friends — COMMUNITY — on both sides of the wall.
And — somehow — I want to live in both places.
Powerful. Beautiful. Thank you, Jim.
I completely echo your sentiments, questions and longings…God cares about this stuff, these divides. He wants us to help, to love, to give, sure, but seems to me He wants us to learn from those unlike us, too. And I love how you learned, with the soccer illustration, that we aren’t always all that different.
Interesting book by Cynthia Bourgeault – The Wisdom Jesus – that speaks to a “new perspective on Christ and His Message” That is seeking to dismantle the lens of dualistic thinking (e.g. good/bad, right/wrong, black/white = judgementleness). It is worth a read as it might address the struggle I sense you have over wanting to be with BOTH communities. And you can.