¿Solidaridad?

[This post could just have easily been titled “On How to Alienate Friends and Family after an Intense and Prolonged Cross-Cultural Poverty Experience.” Enjoy. ] 

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The first time I opened my closet, I almost threw up. 

 The first time I purchased items at Target, I only made it to the parking lot before reversing and returning my bounty, sheepishly avoiding the salesclerk who had rung me up no more than three minutes prior. 

My parent's adorable house.

The first time my mom attempted to hang an American Flag in front of her white picket fence, I screamed about the injustices those white, spotless stars concealed, I alluded to the blood of Guatemalans, Sandinistas, and why-we’re-at-it Iraqis stacked red on top of white on top of red until both of our eyes spilled raw, blue tears. 

Reverse culture shock is not a new phenomenon for our hot, flat, crowded world, but when I returned from a semester abroad that I only-somewhat-tongue-in-cheek refer to as the Poverty Tour of Central America, it was new for me. 

Between the feather thin pages of my travel Bible, I recently rediscovered a note I’d written to myself during my first days stateside. 

Not harsh at all...

“If I really lived in solidarity with the poor, I wouldn’t be able to stand my lifestyle.” 

It’s a word we deliberated over constantly in my four months abroad: Solidarity.

How do we live and act in solidarity with the poor?

When I returned, this was the question festering on my heart. 

It was a classic case, really. Strictly by the book. I was disgusted at the vast quantity of clothes that had been hanging idle and useless, unused in my closet for the last four months. Sneakers I’d had since 8th grade, my prom dress from high school, a smattering of brightly colored tank tops, workout clothes, old t-shirts, a collection of shorts ranging from cutoffs to the infamous “short shorts.” It didn’t help that shorts weren’t even socially acceptable in Costa Rica. In the 90° California summer heat, I still could not bring myself to wear shorts. I vowed I wouldn’t buy clothes for at least a year.

I cringed at my friends’ discarded Starbucks cups, their iPods, laptops, and multiple pairs of Sevens jeans.

My first day back at school, we went to the mall. And, yes, I should have seen it coming. As I sat on the velvet covered bench in the GAP fitting room watching my friend model jean skirt after jean skirt, she transformed from my bouncy, enthusiastic, well-meaning friend into a materialistic, selfish princess that I could barely even stand to look at. I’d rant about the church’s hypocrisy and judgment, then judge my friends and family with evident disgust, harsher than any Bible-thumper I’d ever seen. I was a new kind of judgmental Christian, tolerant of anyone and anything except for white, middle class American Christians.

My immediate answer to the solidarity question was this: to reduce my injustice footprint and judge everyone else who didn’t. 

I had come back with so many goals: stay informed, meet Spanish speakers, use public transportation, avoid buying clothes, shop organic, buy local, befriend people of a lower socio-economic standing. But I didn’t exactly return to the ghetto, and I found it pretty difficult to find poor people in my hometown in Northern California; although I can’t say that I looked very hard. I never took the bus or found a Spanish speaking church. I was forced to buy new clothes because I couldn’t squeeze my newly acquired love handles into any of my old pants. Damn rice and beans.

I was angry, but that was all that was different. I bought clothes, angrily. I went to church, angrily. I drove my car, angrily. I used my iPod and laptop, angrily.

I thought solidarity with the poor meant that I wasn’t allowed to be happy. That I wasn’t allowed to feel blessed or thankful. That I wasn’t allowed to acknowledge the gifts so freely given to me. I thought my happiness negated their pain. I thought guilt was the only appropriate and all-consuming response to poverty.

But it wasn’t just malls and Mochachinos and materialism that I was rejecting; I was rejecting joy. I was rejecting relationship. I was rejecting God and growth and a whole world of opportunity and connection and possibility.

And I judged everyone who wasn’t angry with me.

Today, nearly six years later, I’m pained by how I acted. It’s not the anger that I grieve. I am grateful for a heart that is discontent with the status quo and rages against injustice. What I am sorry for are the times I raged against my parents, my friends, and my classmates in my attempts at “solidarity with the poor.”

I am sorry for the times the anger turned hurtful, attacking, accusing, malicious.

I am sorry to the people I judged. I am sorry to the friends I alienated. I am sorry to the parents I lashed out at. (And mom, I am sorry for ever bringing up Cuba.)

There is a better answer to this question of solidarity that for me turned so bitter. Check back tomorrow to find out what I discovered about living and acting in solidarity with the poor. (How’s that for suspense?)

T.S. Tuesday: Journey of the Magi: Part 2

Today’s T.S. Tuesday is Part 2—after Part 1--of a three part series on Eliot’s poem, The Journey of the Magi.

My attempted nuggets of wisdom will come from the second stanza, which describes the three Magi’s journey to see the newborn Messiah of the Jews: 

“Then at dawn we came down to a temperate valley,

Wet, below the snow line, smelling of vegetation;

With a running stream and a water-mill beating the darkness,

And three trees on the low sky,

And an old white horse galloped away in the meadow.

Then we came to a tavern with vine-leaves over the lintel,

Six hands at an open door dicing for pieces of silver,

And feet kicking the empty wine-skins.

But there was no information, and so we continued

And arrived at evening, not a moment too soon

Finding the place; it was (you may say) satisfactory.” 

I’m struck by the line “But there was no information, and so we continued.” Not “and yet” or “but” we continued. No, “and so.” There was no information, AND SO we continued.


That is not my usual response. On all my metaphorical camel clad pilgrimages, the darkness and the silence and the lack of clues and INFORMATION is a sign of failure, of defeat. A signal to turn back. To search harder. To turn the running streams and water-mills and old white horses into a divine code that gestures to my success or my defeat.

I don’t often think to just keep going. To walk anyway. To trust anyway. To trust the Magnificent Star that first drew me out of my comfortable quarters so many distant miles back.

And so the Magi continue. And guess what, they arrive--“not a moment too soon.”

They arrive. We will arrive. I will arrive.

The darkness will end. The search for information will be satisfied with relationship, with a meeting of the Messiah.

I ask today for the courage to walk anyway. To trust anyway. To not be discouraged by the lack of information, but to rejoice in the hope of Who I will find.

And so I continue.

Cee Lo for the Spiritual Battle

You know those days when the negative voices tell you you're not smart enough, sexy enough, productive enough, [fill in the blank] enough?

Well, just insert these new lyrics into--as my friends refer to it--, "The happiest f* you song ever" (aka Cee Lo Green’s Forget You) with Satan as the ‘you.’ Then play on repeat. For best results accompany with fist pumps. 

"I hear you taunting in my head with words that ain’t love... and I'm like, FORGET* YOU!"

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bKxodgpyGec]

Now I’d like to keep this blog at least mildly PG-13, so I have chosen to share the edited version. While I do not normally condone or encourage foul language, I think if any situation warrants it, the battle for your very soul and identity as God’s fully loved, fully known, and fully accepted child merits a respectable exception. If you so choose to engage in The Spiritual Battle: Uncut and Unashamed, you will not find judging eyes here.

Happy singing and happy fighting.

What other renditions can you come up with?