A Season of Rest and a Brush with Poverty

I'm trying not to chaff under the gentle friction of a Divinely appointed season of rest.

This is a phrase from an email I recently wrote to a friend, and I think it accurately describes where I'm at right now; trying not to chaff...

I'm waiting. Classes and graduation have faded, blurred and distorted behind memories of the holidays and the months since. Ecuador looms big in my future. But in between I'm floating in the shallow waters of a Season of Rest. I like remembering that it's a season. It somehow makes me better able to appreciate it, rather than resenting it.

Soon enough I'll be busy again. Soon enough I'll cringe as I set my alarm, and fall exhausted into my bed more often than not. Soon enough reading a good book will be a treat, rather than a daily occurrence. Soon enough. No need to rush.

Today I got a glimpse of poverty in America. I've seen lots of poverty in my travels. Sprawling slums of falling-down shacks in the Dominican Republic. Malnourished and under-attended orphans in Russia. Street kids running almost-naked through the dirt-packed side streets of the ghetto in China. But except for a few homeless men on the streets of big cities, the bigger part of poverty in my own country hasn't made my acquaintance.

We dress our poverty nicer here, but it's still around, under all the trying-hard-but-never-really-succeeding government programs. The poverties of crime and violence often overshadow the lack of food or shelter. We still hear reports of people dying during cold spells and heat waves, but here in Chicago, poverty most often looks like grim, gray government housing complexes, gang violence, rampant teen pregnancy, and appalling public schools.

I felt it surround me today, as I waited for my name to ring through the dull roar of a community health clinic waiting room. I sat next to a pregnant girl- she couldn't have been more than 15. On her other side was another high schooler. This second teen was working on a word search for school. She asked if the girl next to me knew a particular word on her paper. I looked up from my book as I heard my young neighbor reply that no, she didn't know the word either. It was "prerequisite". Seeing my glance, the question was repeated for me.

I defined it for her and returned to my book, but I couldn't focus on it. Our brief interaction had set my mind in motion. The storyline in print before me faded as I looked about the waiting room. Do most teenagers know "prerequisite" by high school? I can't remember. But they should.

The room was a mass of humanity. Little kids. Adults. Elderly people and teenagers. What were the experiences of these people? What was life like from their perspectives- growing up black or hispanic (and presumably poor, given their presence in the clinic) on Chicago's south side? Were they, by now, immune to the long waits and extensive paperwork that inevitably accompany anything funded by the government? What did they think of me, the only white person in the room? Or did it even cross any mind other than my own that I was a pale, lonely minority?

I've been a minority before, am that every day in my ESL classes. But not being in a position of authority or respect changes all the dynamics. It occurs to me that few people downshift like that if they feel they have a choice. We'll go where we blend in. We'll even venture to go where we don't blend in, if our nationality or wealth or education still keep us high up on the totem pole. But rarely will we choose to be a minority, without honor, without privilege. I suppose it's natural, but the thought is still new to me, and worthy of contemplation. How different would my life had been, if...

So many undeserved blessings.