O Come O Come Emmanuel, and ransom captive Israel

When I first came to JUCONI, Travis (the director) and I had a conversation about the difference between "inspiring poverty" and "depressing poverty." The inspiring kind is represented by the innocent victims of circumstance who present some kind of aesthetic or emotional appeal; some charm or sweetness that makes us yearn to help them. Those are the "worthy poor," the Fantines of the world whose tumble into tragedy is virtuous and poignant. The world feels good about giving to them, because they "deserve" it. The depressing kind of poverty is the kind that makes the darker angels of our nature secretly wrinkle their noses in disgust; it's the drug-addicted mother who is dropping her baby on the floor, the people who neither speak nor smell pleasantly, the ones who won't take good advice and who make poor choices over and over and over again. Does God differentiate like we do?

I feel so troubled when I find biases within myself; it's like discovering a tumor. This is what felt so heavy for me today: I entered homes in conditions that sickened me; not because I thought ill of the people there, but because it burned me, distressed me that children would have to live like that, grow up like that. I have learned and tried very hard to be understanding, compassionate, and merciful about poverty--I have tried to understand the context, lack of education and resources, how it must feel to be constantly downtrodden, to have your face ground by those who believe themselves superior, to feel so deeply less-than that it crystallizes into apathy--all the time knowing that I don't really understand at all. I really don't know a thing about economics, capitalism, wealth distribution. I don't know which theories are valid. I need to read more, but when I read sometimes I'm not sure who to believe.

I was disturbed today because I couldn't think of any compassionate (i.e politically correct) synonyms for the words I have refused to use and those I have criticized others for using to describe human beings and their environment--filthy, dirty, trash, dump. But I can't deny that these words had a factual application in what I was seeing! I've written a little before about the pueblecitos, the dirt roads and broken-down buildings streaked with graffiti, but this was different. The house of Luis is half concrete blocks stacked together and half canvas tent stretching to the ground. The kitchen so overloaded with junk, dust, filth that there was barely a clear path to the table. The stench of rotting food. The children shoving blackened hands into a bowl of chips. Outside, a pot of leftover soup on top of the hens' cage. Toys stuck in the tin roof, no space to walk for the boxes, broken bicycles, wrappers and bottles, moldy tortillas. No place to wash your hands. My words are weak, but it is one thing to see a dirt floor and think, Oh, this family doesn't have money...and another to see little human beings living and playing in a home absolutely teeming with trash. It hurts to see that. The next house was almost worse because it was nestled on the mountainside and could have been peaceful and serene, but it looked like someone had cleared a small space for the one room house, shoved in the beds and the stove in the middle of a garbage dump. The house was drowning in moldering trash, when I asked one of the boys if the neighbors put it there, he cheerfully replied, "No, it's all ours!" I started to think maybe I was just having some kind of elitist cultural reaction, but the children, again, were incredibly filthy (I hate the way that sounds, but what other world would be better?), their hair was matted with dirt, their fingernails were black, their hands an even darker shade of brown up to their shirtsleeves. Mud on their clothes. The snottiest words kept coming to my mind, explanations for scenes that have never belonged to me. Maybe "these people" don't know much about hygiene? What do I know? The sight of this, the little home buried in garbage and the beautiful dark-eyed children who ran out to greet us, was overwhelming to me. It felt so wrong and so hopeless.

I was pierced by the irony of the little boy from this home who came with me to work on the camera project; he took picture after picture close-up of flowers. There is no beauty near his home, but he tugged my hand and said, "Maestra, my neighbor has a garden.." He took gorgeous pictures of the hearts of roses. I kept thinking, "I know our filthy hands can wash one another's/and not one speck will remain."

I thought of families I know who have a horror of anything below their sparkling towers. How would they explain these things? Am I just like them? I don't know how to make it fit. Manuel asked me once what it's like for the poor in my country and I wasn't sure what to say. I thought of the women's shelter, trailer parks in Houston, the much-maligned "below Harrison" world in Ogden, Jorge siphoning his neighbor's electricity, Hno. Rosales giving me and Steele half the tamales in the otherwise empty fridge, 3 kids who used to stuff themselves during lunch at the daycare I worked at because it was the only meal they had during the day. And all of them had "more" than what I saw today. What is really necessary to sustain life and how much is indulgence? How revolting must entitlement be to our Father in Heaven when things like this exist and we are so rotten and demanding about what we don't have? What does poverty have to do with dirt, and is the dirt really what is painful about all this? Why does the idea of children filthy in their own home disturb me so much? There are so many complexities tied up with this, I'm not smart enough to even ask the right questions, to piece together what I may already know, but I do want to be here with them and try to understand, try to help even though I know I will just be bringing in dandelions.

I think almost anyone could have thought this out and written it better than I, but when it feels "too heavy for Superman to lift" the only thing that helps me feel peace is to remember the Captain of the poor. There is so much about "the first shall be last and the last shall be first" that we can't fathom. There will be healing and rejoicing and restoring of sight to all of us who are so blind. I can't wait for that day, there are so many little ones I want Him to come to. There is so much hurt and neglect that I want Him to heal. I really believe He sees into homes and lives and hearts. Maybe I come back to this every time because I'm not clever enough to have any theories of my own, but if "everything that is wrong in this world can be made right through the Atonement of Jesus Christ," everything else is just dust in the wind. He is my only hope and the hope of those children who are growing up in what everyone has thrown away. We are captive our sin and pain and our circumstances, but we have God with us. And because I know that, I want to feel what He feels for these people. I want to overcome whatever bleak judgment lurks in my heart and just be an advocate and an hermana to anyone who has fallen by the wayside of the world. I do see light in every face I see, despite the marks of weakness, marks of woe.

I felt better being in the sunshine with Jose Luis and seeing him take his careful pictures, mostly of flowers, and I felt joy seeing how excited he got when I praised him. I wanted to give him every kind word I had. Here are some of his best shots. He knows how to find beauty in his life. He helped me see it too.