Thoughts about Jamaica and Home

I just spent a week in Harmons, Jamaica building houses, hauling piles of rock up hills, getting to know Jamaicans and the American who were with me. T. S. Eliot was right when he said, "...the end of all our exploring, will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time." I have felt that effect a bit since coming home. It's ironic to learn about America by learning about Jamaica, but that's the way it goes. So I wanted to put some thoughts down about Jamaica, America, and an incredible week.

• On the flight down I sat next to a man named Ken who told me that he is away from his family traveling 40 weeks out of the year. I looked out the window and was astounded at the beauty of the earth from above and I asked him if in flying so much seeing that beauty ever got old. He leaned over me and looked out the window and said, "Yeah, I've seen more beautiful things than that," then he paused and added, "but it's all beautiful if you can learn to see it right." If there was a theme of my time in Jamaica it was this. We were surrounded by Jamaica's tropical beauty staring at us out of every window. I saw beauty in the Jamaicans, in the hospitality they extended to us, in the work we did together, in the wonderful sense of community they share. I saw beauty in an infirmary we traveled to one day. This place was described to us as "the worst nursing home in the states multiplied by 1,000". When we arrived people were half-clothed, laying about in their own mess, barely able to pull themselves upright, see, move, or speak. We 24 Americans began to wander around the Infirmary and people would call us aside and pull us near them and asked to be read to. I could not help thinking that beyond the mess my eyes can see on the outside of this person is a human being and then I tried to offer them the simple grace of human touch, or a smile, or a listening ear.

• One road runs through the valley of Harmons. All the houses are strung up the hillside with paths leading back to the road. Walking down the road you see Jamaicans standing on the side of the road or walking down along it. Driving down the road you hear all the drivers honking at each other, not because they are angry, but to say hello because they know each others names. If you have extra seats, pick someone up and give them a ride a bit further down the road. I couldn't help compare the topography of the culture of the village with our culture. Harmons is literally a valley, but it is also a valley culturally, with all the people tending downhill towards one another, sharing common space and common lives. Whereas walking around campus you see half the people with little white wires sticking out of their ears or cell phones in front of their faces and their own private smiles on. I wonder if we are losing our common world in ways that are not good for our souls. If Harmons is a valley, American culture is a sphere, with every individual facing the danger of sliding away from every other individual if they are not careful. A large degree of shared life is a common starting place for culture in Harmons, but here we have to fight for it. When we come into a circle of people or a place where this is not the case, where people have made some change and are living life along different lines than the sphere it is an oases and an exception. But surely the gospel calls us to live a different way than the trend of our culture. The gospel leans us toward one another, binds us together and makes us a people radically for one another. Yet it is so easy to simply pick up our feet and let the current carry us somewhere else, and this should make us wary.

• Happiness is about being filled, but joy involves emptiness. There were moments of joy in Jamaica, but it was mixed in with some small pinch of sorrow. Sometimes it came in the form of a longing for home, for food, or for rest after a long, tiring day. Whatever it was the joy came in the context of weariness, loneliness, or pain and in those moments the small, simple graces the God gives were big enough to be enough. This is different from the happiness I pursue at home. At home I have enough control over my life to chase down and eliminate pain and loneliness and boredom and longing at the first sign of them. The cup stays full, but I think I might be missing something in it never being empty. Perhaps this is what St. Francis of Assisi meant when he said, "God is always trying to give us good things, only our hands are too full to receive them." I met a man named Peter who was barely able to raise himself from his bed. His arms and legs don't work. He sat out side and someone had put a tarp up in front of him to block the sun from the little spot he sat all day long. Other than that, there were few of the comforts that inundate my life. When he saw me walking toward him he started to laugh and smile and make small sounds of happiness, showing all the joy that his body would let him show. I sat down next to him and he stretched out his hand. It meant so much to him to have me simply touch him. He motioned to the Bible in my hand and worked to get the words Psalms 23 out of his broken mouth. As I flipped through the Bible and read it to him the promises asleep on its pages woke up and chimed. I shall dwell in the house of the Lord forever. Come to me all you who are weary and heavy laden and I will give you rest. In my Fathers house there are many rooms, I go to prepare a place for you. None who wait on the Lord will be put to shame. His sounds of joy punctuated every verse...