I was told the other day by my mother that many of my blog entries were rather dark and depressing and I felt that maybe I was giving the wrong impression about my time here in El Salvador. I am having a great time. There is no doubt that many of the things I experience here are hard. The injustice, the lingering effects of the war in the minds of people, the harsh reality of people living with HIV-AIDS. The other day, in fact, I went to visit a woman named Blanca living with HIV-AIDS. And when I looked into her blind, bloody eyes and tried to speak into her deaf ears and listened to her slurred speech coming from her blistered, painful lips, I felt that I was looking at death itself. But not just death like the peaceful type that many old people go through, but the death that results from injustice and from inequality. That woman, as every other women in our HIV program and probably the vast majority of women with HIV in the world, was a loving, faithful wife who was given AIDS by her machista, unfaithful husband. And though AIDS is a controllable disease, because she is poor and dark skinned she is denied right to the drugs that could prolong her life and give her hope to see her three children grow old...
But alas, not all is dreary and sad. Because as I touched her hand, she squeezed it in friendship. And I played with her children and I met her father who is an example of a truly good man who loves his family and cares for them.
What is hope? I don´t like to have some false hope that my vision of what I want the world to be will come true. That type of hope leads to deception and depression because in the end this world is so fucked up that all the dark and hateful things that I want to see ended will never all come true. So, I don´t hope to change the world. Thus, I have two ideas of what hope is for me. One, as a person who believes in Jesus of Nazareth, I believe that he was killed by all the powers of evil who were threatened by his message. But his resurrection signalled the begining of the new Reign of God amongst the people. It is hope for the poor, oppressed, sad, and the rest of the Beatitudes. Thus, without being to ignorant, I do believe that the Reign of God is among us who choose to live it and that should bring us hope because the Reign of God is a future promise and a present reality. Two, I really like the Hindu-Buddhist idea of not being attached to the fruit of one´s actions. What I do, I do not do in order to see results. I am not working with people who have HIV because I believe that one day pharmaceutical companies will get their shit together and see that the lives of people are more important than their profit and make ARVs available to all. Thus, I am not set up for disappointment. And thus what is left is the day to day experiences filled with joys and sadnesses, relationships and struggles. And always, in this I find so much more joy and relationships amongst the poor. So thus, though I write about many dark things perhaps, I do so because it is my way of letting go of those things that I alone cannot change and accepting the little joys of building relationships amongst the poorest of the poor who every day I struggle to see the face of Christ in them.
So yes mother, despite all the struggles, I am happy....