varying degrees of light

It is four hours and four minutes into Christmas Even 2009. I spent it with Ross and Hani, talking about ourselves by talking about others. I wrote the following several days ago, in attempts to bring some thoughts of the last few weeks to some questioning conclusion. Maybe it has been too long since I last wrote, that it all ran into each other and I left the stove for too long. Maybe still, there are questions worth asking in there somewhere and, with my fingers crossed, that's the best that I can hope for because I don't imagine I'll find any reconciliation anytime soon in poverty, death and beauty and worship. And nor should I -- not anytime soon.

There's a lot of self-serving motives to maintaining a blog, not all of which are despicable or horribly vain. Just one of those is to reaffirm or practice a truth that I am postulating, so I can see this on Christmas Eve in 2009. I want to believe it and, in doing so, I want to embody it.

Everything that we do matters -- regardless of our attempts, and successes, at living Prov. 17, "A friend loves at all times."

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I noticed that the last few posts share a somewhat similar theme. Biting down and blinking back tears; activity and despondency, looming silently aside; clinging instinctively to someone's sleeve, holding your arm within theirs and walking on. When I take deep breaths, I used to be surprised or frightened even to feel my ribcage cracking, my sternum adjusting itself as if it were restless and unable to fall asleep.

The trailer for Invictus includes a looming and carefully cut montage of Morgan Freeman, Matt Damon and the burdened people of South Africa. Danielle leaned over at a certain point to ask, "Why did they show the slums?" and later unloaded that she expected to be crying the entire time. I don't want to say that there are correct responses to every image and reality that we find ourselves encountering; there are no answers to find, as much as decisions to make. Yet, isn't she right?

In about ten days, we'll begin our departure to Nairobi, Kenya. Remember that fleeting thought on rapid urbanization? An unreliable infrastructure, a government rife with corruption, a fragile economy subject to political struggle... at the risk of assuming I can speak confidently on any of these topics, of course. Our job is to acknowledge that these are enormous mountains to scale, complex processes to evaluate and look at our subjects in the eye and, as she said, cry the entire time. For guilt? For a pleading for justice? Mercy? For the lack of access to clean water, enough food, for a child whose parents dismissed themselves from nurture, for growing up in an environment that perpetuates insignificance and dispensability? During one of the briefing/planning meetings we had recently, the last time our team would gather before we meet in Newark, we spoke of a day without cameras (I wonder if that will actually happen) to explore and become accustomed to our surroundings and to the Kenyans.

If we spent that day meeting our subjects, listening to their stories, living their day and crying and crying.

We feel that welling that might lead to an frantic search for a cathartic and closing response. There is no easy fix for any of these things. Initially, we will have no emotional ties to these people and still we find no words of comfort, or concession to the pain that we find.