The Same Old Hang-ups, The Same Powerful God

Every time I try something new, go somewhere new, I am convinced that I will be different. I won't be scared or shy. I won't find myself burrowing into a book in terror or feigning invisible in social situations. Miraculously, I will love meeting new people and suddenly I will become an outgoing, hospitable, social butterfly.

Yet again, this is not the case. Here in Guatemala, in this new place where I want to invest and plant roots and share life, I find myself stuck on the same old hang ups, the same old fears. In this quest for hope, this challenge to find the bright spots, I've found the greatest obstacle is not cynicism or doubt, but my own desire to withdraw, to be comfortable, to remain untouched, unchallenged, and unchanged.

I say I want to know their story, but more often than not, I haven't even asked them how they're doing, much less invited them to share their story. 

Six years ago when I studied abroad in Costa Rica, I wrote the thoughts below, and today I echo this desire to connect with others despite my battle with fear and complacency.

I say I want to know your story, but I haven't even asked. 

When I look into your eyes, I can see your story.

But that's as far as I get.

What is love?

What is kindness?

Where does my story stop and your story begin?

I've spent my whole life writing my own story.

I haven't had time to listen to yours.

Why am I paralyzed in fear?

Why is it so hard to look past my story for one minute?

What is it that I'm scared of?

Am I scared that your story will be different, or do I fear that it will be the same?

I say I want to know your story,

but I haven't even asked.

I can live with you for a semester and not even know you.

I can live with you for a lifetime and never even know your dreams.

I want to know you, I really do.

What story do I believe in?

That this is it, this is all?

Is there a heaven or a God?

Why haven't I learned that your story is my story?

That when I ignore you, I discount myself.

When I'm scared of you, it's really me that I'm afraid of.

If I really knew His love, would I be scared?

His love is supposed to drive out fear.

Today, I resonate with this ache to see past myself, with this thirst to witness the power of God. But, unlike six years ago, I am now confident that Love will drive out fear.  I have seen Him do it. In my life and in the lives of those around me. I have experienced freedom from fear, from self-loathing, from bondage to rules. I have experienced Love and Joy and Peace and the wondrous re-creation of the Holy Spirit on my behalf.

I have learned and am still learning to see past fear. To push past my normal limits. I am learning that I am loved and that I can turn to Him when I am scared. I am learning to trust Him. I am learning to love Him.

Today I ask this God of Love, the God who is Love, to allow His love to be my story so that my heart may be opened to others' stories. 

Hope Tour #1: Where Kids Can Just Be Kids

Workers wait to dig through trash dropped off in the Guatemala City garbage dump Photo Credit: Safe Passage

Visiting a garbage dump in Managua, Nicaragua in spring 2006 changed my life. (You can read about it here.) When I returned to school and life in Southern California, I vowed to do something to help the children and families who lived and worked and breathed the toxic life of digging through trash. 

I eventually found an organization in my own city that empowers rural farmers in developing countries to restore their land and improve their incomes beforethey’re forced to go looking for work in the city, often in the slums and garbage dumps.

Last Thursday, I had the privilege of visiting a non-profit in Guatemala City called Safe Passage, or Camino Seguro in Spanish. Safe Passage works with the children and families who have already emigrated from small, rural towns, to the Red Zones of Guatemala City. Red Zones are areas where the government has recognized a high incidence of gang violence and organized crime. Safe Passage joins with the mostly single-parent families who live near the Guatemala City garbage dump. These families supplement their income by working in the dump, digging through trash to collect metals, glass, aluminum, and other scraps that can be reworked and recycled for a small profit, including food that can be resold in the streets. 

Children under age 14 are no longer allowed to work in the dump, but parents often bring home their finds for children to sort through and separate to contribute to family income. Many families live in the makeshift houses of squatter cities that lack running water and siphon off electricity from neighboring streets with a tangle of live wires.

On the tour with Safe Passage, I learned that the violence rate in Guatemala today is higher than during the conflict. The physical violence, that is. I’ve been told there is nowhere near as much psychological violence or terror as there was during the war, but the injustice, extreme poverty, and social problems that existed before the war, that caused the guerrillas to pick up their arms and fight for a revolution, still exist today.

Vultures perch outside the Guatemala City garbage dump Photo Credit: Safe Passage

Perched on the edge of a cemetery that overlooks the expansive dump, I could see how such living conditions could lead to violence, insecurity, and organized crime. Vultures circled above the sea of debris, and I had flashbacks of my visit to the dump in Managua. Only this time we weren’t cruelly rushed off to the mall to indulgently eat ice cream and feel awful about ourselves. Instead of focusing on the overwhelming horror of it all (and it was horrible), we were taken instead to see the good that is being done, the hope that has become manifest.

After viewing the dump, we drove just a few blocks to the new Safe Passage preschool, or escuelita, the part of the Safe Passage’s educational reinforcement program that targets the youngest, most vulnerable children, ages 2 to 6. The contrast was staggering. In the very same neighborhood as the garbage dump, the preschool is a haven of safety and fun.

The Escuelita looks like any other preschool. Kids were jumping and squealing and rattling off a million questions a minute. Tiny chairs surrounded knee high tables adorned with primary color construction paper. We even caught a bit of the day’s English lesson and break dancing session, and man did those five-year-olds have some dope hip hop moves. 

Part of the Safe Passage preschool playground.  The blue wall separates the school from the rough neighborhood.

Everyday from 9am to 3pm these kids who live in the roughest area of an already crime riddled city, get to just be kids. They’re given breakfast, snacks, and lunches. They get a head start on an education that will prepare them for better jobs and will open them up to a world of economic opportunity beyond work in the garbage dump. Instead of sorting through trash or begging on the streets, they are treated as kids: they get to run and squirm and pick their noses.

I understand it can be easy to be swayed by squealing preschoolers, but Safe Passage gets high marks for also addressing root causes and following best practices in development: their programs are run by local Guatemalans, they work closely with the entire family, not just children, collaborate with and reinforce the efforts of local public schools, and even offer adult literacy and social entrepreneurship programs to help the parents of these children work their way out of the dump.

I think you can see that I was clearly impressed. I’d encourage you to check out their blog and website and look for ways to get involved, I know I will.

In addition to learning about a really cool organization that I may be able to partner with this year, I am grateful for the compassion, care, and patience the staff extended to us visitors as we grappled to absorb such weighty issues. And I am excited to share more bright spots and encouraging stories from Guatemala in the coming weeks and months.

Thanks for reading. 

T.S. Tuesday: What a Difference Hope Can Make

“You do not know what hope is, until you have lost it. You only know what it is not to hope.”  T.S. Eliot, Family Reunion

I know what it is not to hope. 

The Guatemala City garbage dump, where hundreds work  each day to support their families.

Six years ago I came to Guatemala at the end of my semester abroad in Central America. After three months of visiting garbage dumps, hearing rants on U.S. involvement in dictatorial coups throughout Central America, and basically having my entire Christian belief system come crashing down, I was numb and tired. Tired of hearing of injustice. Tired of trying to care.

From the airport in Guatemala City we drove to Seteca, the theological seminary where we would be staying until we separated out again into different groups for a week long work project.  We’d barely had time so to set our bags down and sit down before our professor began yet another belligerent, and yet no longer shocking, tirade about U.S. involvement in Guatemala.  

In a rare act of encouragement, one of our leaders played a song in which the singer confidently declared that in God’s hands her “pain and hurt looked less like scars and more like character.”  We’d been through a lot that semester, but we were developing character, my study abroad program implied.  Character shmaracter, I thought.  What if you no longer believe that God has hands for you to be in?  Or feet?  Or a heart?  Anything?  Had I gone Nietzche on myself?  Could I really believe that God was dead?  

Yep, dead as a doornail.  Or a least in a coma.  

Our professor, Don Mike, continued to rant and rave, we heard from different people involved in myriad types of government positions, toured the city, went to the dump, talked about justice and Jesus and liberation theology. 

Is it so awful to say that after awhile all third world countries start to look the same?  The littered highways, the graffiti-covered concrete buildings, the bars and spikes and security guards with guns.  I wish I could say that I instantly connected with Guatemalans, that it mattered to me that they had been in a civil war for decades.  But I didn’t care about the indigenous, specifically Mayan, influence on the culture or that hundreds of thousands of women had mysteriously lost their husbands and sons, fathers and brothers to midnight kidnappings and mass murders during the war.  I feared there was nothing in me that cared anymore.

I had lost my hope.

Throughout the last six years, I have experienced a Love that saves, a Joy that saves, a Hope that saves. My friends and family and church and coworkers have shown me that my anger doesn’t help the suffering, my hopelessness does not prove my compassion. They have shown me, and God continues to teach me, that Hope brings change, that Joy alleviates suffering, that Love drives out fear.

This time around in Guatemala, although I’ve already heard countless stories of war and violence and injustice, although I’ve already visited the wasteland of the Guatemala City garbage dump, although there are plenty of reasons to shut down and tune out, I will cling to hope. I will look for the bright spots.

I will remember the words of AnnVoskamp in One Thousand Gifts,

“Why would the world need more anger, more outrage? How does it save the world to reject unabashed joy when it is joy that saves us? Rejecting joy to stand in solidarity with the suffering doesn't rescue the suffering. The converse does. The brave who focus on all things good and all things beautiful and all things true, even in the small, who give thanks for it and discover joy even in the here and now, they are the change agents who bring fullest Light to all the world."

This time around I will not be paralyzed. I will not reject joy. I will listen and I will move and I will act. I will engage.

I will not disregard the suffering. I will not turn a complacent eye to their pain. But amidst the pain and horror, I will look for hope. I pray I will be brave enough to “focus on all things good and all things beautiful and all things true.”

So far I’ve seen some incredibly hopeful, transformative work being done in Guatemala. There are so many ways for me to get involved in bringing Hope and Life and Joy to the people around me. But I don’t know quite where to spend my time yet. Despite my commitment to move, I feel a call to be patient, to wait on God’s timing and leading. I pray for wisdom in how to spend my time here. I ask for an open heart to accompany my open schedule.

Kids playing with bubbles in the park in Antigua

As I wait and look for ways to engage, I will share the bright spots that I have seen. Throughout the week, and I imagine beyond this week as well, I will share the stories of hope and redemption and transformation that I have glimpsed. I will write of the miracle of kids being able to be kids in the midst of gang violence and extreme poverty, of women speaking out against injustice and sharing their stories of pain for the first time, of brave individuals seeking alternatives to violence, of people daring to hope and try and move in a place where the problems seem copiously complex and insurmountable.

I know what it is not to hope; this time around I will fix my eyes on the Hope that saves.