!@#$%^*@!!#%!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Guatemala is SO beautiful.

And it is all at once, so, SO UGLY.

I’ll tell you more about the projects and communities I’ve been a part of here, later. It would be more constructive. Sometimes raw emotion is good too.  But mine at the moment might need to be tempered just a bit so I can actually put things a little more constructively.

Work has never been a 9-5 job for me. And that’s both a good thing and a good thing. [that wasn’t a typo]. And sometimes, work gets [extra] personal. And I think that’s about where it should always be.

A quote (from The Hole in our Gospel, by Richard Stearns):

- Sometimes I just want to ask God why He allows all the injustice and poverty in the world when he could DO something about it.

- Well, why don’t you?

- I’m afraid He’d ask me the same question.

I was re-introduced to the injustice and UGLINESS that is the reality of Guatemala today, which probably sunk in deep being quite familiar with Guatemala’s heinously ugly violent colonial genocidal history, and its not just lingering but reining legacy. It had “nothing” but EVERYTHING to do with an emergency relief project that HOPE had just begun for a community here in Quiche, Guatemala. 

A conversation that ended the day today as we hopped back into the truck to head home – or, at least, ended my end of it, after our project visit... my mind was spinning and I didn’t have much more to say and tuned out of the conversation the rest of the ride back. 

Me: What’s the opposite of “nice” in Spanish?

Jorge (the director of our local partner here): Feo (ugly)?

Me: WHY are the land-owners SO... UGLY????

Jorge and the rest of the team that is working with this community: [laughs] 

Me: And for WHAT?? They have nothing to gain or lose!!!

Jorge: Because they have power.

Me: Why are they so BAD... and so.... INHUMANE??? ....  Wait, are the land-owners indigenous (Mayan)?

Jorge: Of course not!

Me: I . am. SO. ANGRY.

Everyone laughs, understandingly, as I try to express my exploding frustrations in Spanish.
Jorge: “It’s our reality.”

I said yesterday, I don’t take the “privilege” to have been here lightly, or the responsibilities it comes with on the road ahead. I said it with a smile. Today, I say the same, but with fumes. Also with question marks. But in any case, that will necessarily be turned into something constructive.

If we are going to bring about the end of poverty, we are going to have to bring the creation of poverty to its knees. And tolerance of. Or indifference of. Anything short of hatred that sustains it.

A song, which often runs through my head: 

Let us see Your Kingdom come

To the poor and broken ones

Let us see a mighty flood

Of mercy, and justice, O Jesus

And not just to the poor and broken ones. To the rich and the powerful and the exploitative and the selfish and the apathetic and the UGLY.

And not just the wealthy Spanish land-owners in Guatemala, lest we think ourselves exempt.

To EACH OF OUR UGLY SELVES.