This has truly felt like my longest week in India. Long days wandering from room to room and mob to mob in an overcrowded hospital trying to help my pregnant neighbor get an ultrasound, basic blood tests, and badly-needed vitamins and nutritional supplements. Finding out that she needs more tests and more medicine and not knowing how many more battleground hospital days stretch ahead of us.
Bewildering hours spent with a teenage friend whose family is in crisis, whose mother is chronically ill with a mysterious, wasting disease that fills her body with pain.
Endless arguments through the wall, and in the alley; abused wives abusing their children in an endless cycle of unresolved hurt.
This week—and often, over the past several months here in India—I have raged against inflexible, ineffective systems that prevent the poor from accessing basic healthcare, or even worse, exploit their vulnerability by overcharging for unnecessary or fake care. I have grieved the suffering around me and despaired at my own inability to solve any of the problems I see around me. What am I compared with thousands of years of social convention, or family dysfunction, or structural injustice?
This week, in the midst of that despairing feeling, came a light:
“We can do no great things; only small things with great love.”
I realized then that I need to recover that spirituality Mother Theresa first inspired in me: doing small things with great love instead driving to achieve, to see visible, quantifiable, large-scale, structural change. I would love to see those things happen (and God knows they need to happen), but I am not a failure if they don’t happen—and I can’t measure my effectiveness here in terms of those things. I’m a very limited human being and I can only have a limited impact on a limited number of people. This has been a new revelation to me unfolding over the past year, but of course it was already known to Jesus when he compared the Kingdom to yeast subtly and slowly working through the dough. Notice he mentioned nothing about fireworks, mass revolution, or impressive charts and statistics.
I am finding that often what is most important for my neighbors here is that I have been with them: unable to solve their problems, but at least able to be a witness for them, an advocate for them, a friend and a presence who suffers the powerlessness, frustration and grief with them in the midst of their struggles. I can carry their sacred stories, and help them to recognize that sacredness for themselves. This ministry of presence mirrors God’s own presence with us. Some days I think, “Sure, you were with me today Father, but what good did it do?” But most days, I’m just glad for the consolation of His presence and the peace of experiencing His ongoing love and acceptance of me even on the days when I have disappointed myself and felt useless, or—worse—destructive.
So I may sometimes feed someone or help them to get medical care or get their kids into school or persuade them to stop using violence on the people around them. Heck, I may sometimes be part of overturning unjust laws or actually fixing some of the broken structures that make life so difficult for the people around me. Those things are important, and I hope that over time I will get the chance to do a lot more of that. But ultimately, I am here to be with people rather than to fix them or to change their lives, and I want to have the perseverance to continue being with them and taking joy in being with them regardless of whether or not they or their circumstances ever change. I’m learning that that’s the way God is present with me—not to fix me or even merely to help me, but because He loves me and takes delight in being together.
Bewildering hours spent with a teenage friend whose family is in crisis, whose mother is chronically ill with a mysterious, wasting disease that fills her body with pain.
Endless arguments through the wall, and in the alley; abused wives abusing their children in an endless cycle of unresolved hurt.
This week—and often, over the past several months here in India—I have raged against inflexible, ineffective systems that prevent the poor from accessing basic healthcare, or even worse, exploit their vulnerability by overcharging for unnecessary or fake care. I have grieved the suffering around me and despaired at my own inability to solve any of the problems I see around me. What am I compared with thousands of years of social convention, or family dysfunction, or structural injustice?
This week, in the midst of that despairing feeling, came a light:
“We can do no great things; only small things with great love.”
I realized then that I need to recover that spirituality Mother Theresa first inspired in me: doing small things with great love instead driving to achieve, to see visible, quantifiable, large-scale, structural change. I would love to see those things happen (and God knows they need to happen), but I am not a failure if they don’t happen—and I can’t measure my effectiveness here in terms of those things. I’m a very limited human being and I can only have a limited impact on a limited number of people. This has been a new revelation to me unfolding over the past year, but of course it was already known to Jesus when he compared the Kingdom to yeast subtly and slowly working through the dough. Notice he mentioned nothing about fireworks, mass revolution, or impressive charts and statistics.
I am finding that often what is most important for my neighbors here is that I have been with them: unable to solve their problems, but at least able to be a witness for them, an advocate for them, a friend and a presence who suffers the powerlessness, frustration and grief with them in the midst of their struggles. I can carry their sacred stories, and help them to recognize that sacredness for themselves. This ministry of presence mirrors God’s own presence with us. Some days I think, “Sure, you were with me today Father, but what good did it do?” But most days, I’m just glad for the consolation of His presence and the peace of experiencing His ongoing love and acceptance of me even on the days when I have disappointed myself and felt useless, or—worse—destructive.
So I may sometimes feed someone or help them to get medical care or get their kids into school or persuade them to stop using violence on the people around them. Heck, I may sometimes be part of overturning unjust laws or actually fixing some of the broken structures that make life so difficult for the people around me. Those things are important, and I hope that over time I will get the chance to do a lot more of that. But ultimately, I am here to be with people rather than to fix them or to change their lives, and I want to have the perseverance to continue being with them and taking joy in being with them regardless of whether or not they or their circumstances ever change. I’m learning that that’s the way God is present with me—not to fix me or even merely to help me, but because He loves me and takes delight in being together.
Source: New feed