I was reflecting this morning on my experiences so far on this Journey, the images, the sounds, the smells. My reflections automatically took me to my travels to Morocco, Egypt and the Caribbean. I’ve heard several times on this Journey, as I have on others, that we (meaning those of us from the West, especially from the US) are very “Blessed”. Yes, we are very, very “Blessed”. We are “Blessed” with material possessions and symbols of status and prosperity. That is indeed very true, and I believe that is what people mean when they say “we’re so fortunate” or “we’re lucky” or “we are so blessed”, and so forth.
But on reflection, we are not so blessed as all that. Yes, we have “things”; we have many “things”. Outwardly we are a prosperous and powerful nation. But we have no spirit. Our spirit as a people and as a nation is empty. We have no soul. We’ve lost out essence, our soul.
Sitting in the garden of my hotel, looking over rooftops, there are shacks, shanties, and other fragile structures dotting the hillside in the distance. It is 6:15 in the morning and I know that the women and girls in these little places are probably in their yards, bent over from the waist, a small tradition broom, no more than a bundle of straw tied together with a strip of bamboo string, sweeping away the blessings received and the lives lived in the dusty golden-red dirt yard yesterday, creating a vacuum for God’s grace and goodness to bless their lives today. There is order, there is form and there is substance in these humble lives in contrast to our own more “blessed” lives.
Rolling through the country in our air conditioned luxury coach (as Westerners how could we travel in anything less?), looking out the windows of its protective shell, the mud, tin, concrete and wood structures stream by. Everywhere I look there is order, there is life and there is soul.
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