"Beloved young people, about to choose your life's vocation,
ponder how we are all called to goodness and how the older generation- my own, I regret-
is leaving you a heritage of so much selfishness, of so much evil.
Renew, new wheat, newly sown crops, fields still fresh from God's hand,
children, youths: be a better world." Oscar Romero / martyred March 24, 1980
Last spring, I moved to Bangkok, Thailand, in order to work with the ministry Word Made Flesh. Because one of the main goals of the organization is serving the poor, all of the teams live in simplicity.
For each field, simplicity has a different face.
When I arrived in Bangkok, I found a house full of people and empty of furniture. Day by day, I discovered my lifestyle of simplicity growing more difficult as the luxuries my American life had provided me previously disappear. My breaking point came in April after I had caught lice during a short term trip to Cambodia. I discovered not only my hair infested with little bugs that caused my head to painfully itch without relief, but also that I had caught a flu. Because I had no air conditioning and it was during the Thai summer season, I could not tell whether I was sweating profusely from the heat or my fever. Deprived of a wash machine, I had to boil water several times a day in order to clean my sheets and wash my hair. I remember laying in my bed overcome with self pity. I had never been so uncomfortable in my life and wanted nothing more than to return home. It was then that I thought of the children I worked with every week in the notorious Klong Toey slum. For many of these children, lice, heat rashes, and stomach pains, were a daily part of life. I will never pretend to understand the children of the slums, I will never guess at what they think, I will never comprehend how they feel. But after experiencing a glimpse of their everyday lives, I felt a a barrier that separated us fall. For fourth months, I was not only coming closer to the lives of the children I worked with, but closer to how most children in the world live. Also, I surprisingly found that simplicity was a tool that brought me close to both the children I worked with, along with my team members.
Months later, after returning to the States, my vivid memories of Bangkok mainly consist of sitting on an old tattered mat offering refuge from the cold concrete floor eating bowl after bowl of rice with my friends. Without television or computers in our house, we past time sharing not only stories of laughters, but tragedies in our lives that provoked tears, along with the dreams we hoped our futures held. Many nights we sat outside with out Buddhist neighbors as they shared they candies with us. I remember sometimes feeling the world stop; trapped in a realization that my life in the States was not blessed with this level of daily intimacy with others. In this community, I could not control when things happened or which people I would spend my days with; I had to accept everyone at all times.
I think the greatest challenge of my generation is learning that the Gospel is meant for community, and that community is a place of selflessness. Many Christians wonder if they would ever be able to pay the ultimate price of their lives for the Gospel. But sometimes I wonder whether the daily sacrifices we are called to make are just as valuable.
In Thailand and Cambodia, I had the priviledge of meeting missionaries who had dedicated their lives to serving the poor. For many of them, the cost they paid for their faith was not so drastic that they were running for their lives; instead, for them the challenge was dying to the small luxuries they had previous enjoyed. Saying they would give their life for the gospel was not always the biggest challenge. Sometimes the greatest cost for a missionary is eating another bowl of rice, week after week, when they crave a steak. Or perhaps wanting to sit on the back porch swing with their sister who they have not seen in two years. Because the reality is that giving our lives to the Gospel does not always include a moment of intense decision, but an accumulation of small pains that daily remind us of what we are giving up. It is this type of sacrifice I fear I, along with this generation of Christians, will struggle with. How many of us declare that we would give everything for Christ, as we sit excluded from the pains of the world in our secluded houses? Do we really think we will automatically become selfless human beings if we were forced out of our luxurious environments? The reality is that selflessness is the ultimate assertion of independence; paradoxically, we discover that the more we sacrifice, the more freedom we will find. It is in this liberation that we find it bearable, and even enjoyable, to daily struggle with others.
“What is the 'impossible'? It is liberation. To liberate people from the demons of fear, or loneliness, of hatred and of egoism that shackle them. To liberate people so that they also can love, heal, and liberate others. But in order to do that, you must go in poverty and experience the life of God flowing within your own flesh. You will give life but a life that flows from the heart of God. You will bring people to new life, a new hope. The mystery of community lies between the call of Jesus to communion with him, 'Come and be with me,' and the sending off to announce the good news of love, to give life to other people. - Jean Vanier
