Teletransport and Really Big Problems

I woke up this morning wishing I were somewhere else. Anywhere else – and preferably by teletransport because I am tired of long car rides. I was sick of India’s stench, exhausted by the constant disorder, and worn down from the enormity of problems that are too big for me to fix.

Yesterday was a hard day. It was emotionally draining and physically uncomfortable. We visited three slums, one of which was home to a young slum pastor, his wife, and their three children. They rented a one-room shack for 300 rupees a month – that is about $6 USD. It was unbelievably cramped – the size of an average office elevator. Five people slept in, lived in, cooked in and stored their belongings in a space the same size as an American closet. Their youngest child was 2 months old and I wondered aloud just how they found the space in this shack to reproduce. Michael, Ted, Ashley, Austin, and I were invited in and left our shoes at the door.

The seven of us were smashed inside this house like a scene from a circus clown car – except it wasn’t funny. Dinner was cooking on the stove and there was no ventilation. My eyes burned as smoke blew directly into my face. Have you ever sat around the wrong side of the campfire with the smoke right at you? You’d just scoot your chair over a few feet - yet none of us could move. We sat still for 20 minutes and listened to this man talk about his wish for a better life for his family; yet he also told us of all the things he was grateful for. He longed for a better job that paid him fairly and allowed him to feed his family. He prayed for a larger home and for good health.

If I wanted to sound like someone with a good heart, I’d tell you that I had a wonderful time of fellowship and that I prayed and loved this man well. But I’d be lying. From the moment I put my bare foot on the dirty, musty floor of his home, I wished it was time to leave. The physical discomfort was easy to identify. I was tired, cramped and my eyes and throat were burning.

I struggle to reconcile my emotional response. My American instinct was to think of this man as a brother – the same as me. All men are created equal, right? Sure, he has the same organs as I do, the same heart. But the differences in our life experiences created a rift that was too big for me to cross.

Too big of a problem for me to make sense of today, anyhow.