Surfacing thoughts

I have dreamed of being an instrument of healing.  I have had grandiose thoughts of being the change I'd like to see in the world.  I have traveled to Guatemala first to learn and recently to serve.  I found in my first trip that poverty is a harsh perspective for me to look at.  It is difficult for me to witness.  It is a way of life for millions.  It is a lifestyle that I find painful and discouraging.  For the people of Guatemala it is home.

The second trip has allowed me to get a better understanding for the lifestyle.  There are numerous ways of living in this region.  There are economies that facilitate prosperity, religion, and poverty.  The colonial legacy that once thrived in Central America still holds an advantage.  There are entitled land owners.  There are entitled politicians who are masters of networking and ensuring the status quo.  There are those who simply wake each morning to hold a job and make a living.  There are those who are advocating for the ongoing injustices that might be black and white.  There are those who wake up to each day ignorant and foolish.  There are those who have little comfort but thrive in community.  Guatemala is stepping into the 21 century having a specialized skill set of policing, peasantry, farming, and exporting.

Poverty is alive and strong in Guatemala.  It lives in the form of greed, stubbornness, violence, and obedience.  There is a hunger in Guatemala for learning, creativity, and integrity.  For 30 years this country learned to live by the rules of the military and to unlearn this obedient and mundane culture will take freedom to dream.  There is a poverty of money and health for the peasant class, but worst of all there is a poverty of hope.  There is a beaten and obedient people who have learned to never leave the yard and do what has always been done.  There is not a freedom to dream and shake the cage of "shoulds".  There is a fear of sharing.

There is a slow leak in the concrete heart of Guatemala.  Americans, who come from the same country that empowered the machine that steam rolled their dreams of communal policies, are now saturating the crusted and calloused skin protecting the creativity that lives in the land, softening it, and seeping in confidence and encouragement.  Guatemala is not 3rd world, it is recovering, it is mangled, and it is healing.