Reflections In the Tension of Two Realities

It's 8:30 in the evening, and it is still about 80 degrees out. My ceiling fan is on and the windows, as always, are opened. It's hard to believe that at the same time many people back in the States are huddled under blankets or sitting beside heaters as snow blows around outside.

But it's not only climate that separates these two realities. It's political structures, economic struggles, infrastructures, and a history of prosperity or poverty. While I'm in the States, showering in hot, drinkable water, I often think of the Haitians bathing at the public fountains or privately in their homes using a gallon jug of cold, untreated water. Or when I hop in the car and head down the highway to the grocery store, I think of the unpaved rocky paths in parts of Port Au Prince, packed with cars creeping up the road within inches of each other.

How is it that the realities of a five dollar a day cup of coffee and a nine dollar a day pay check can exist simultaneously? How can I walk down a trash covered ally past beggars and barefooted kids in tattered t-shirts one day and the very next day climb into a $30,000 dollar car and speed past multi-million dollar shopping centers or church campuses where any given person can be wearing an outfit easily worth over 100 dollars?

And yet I do. One day I am here in Haiti, handing out a bag of rice or an extra pair of shoes, and the next day I drop 60 bucks at Wal-Mart and tell the cashier no, I don't want to donate my change to the children's hospital. What do I do with that?

On other days I decide not to give the man in the 4-sizes-too-big corduroys money for medicine for fear I'm enabling an unhealthy dependency and instead send my money to an American church trusting they'll choose to use it better than I will.

One day I feel like the richest woman in town because I live with electricity, a refrigerator, and a flushable toilet, and the next day I’m laughing with my friends about being poor because I’ve never owned a car and can’t afford good health care. I don’t know how to respond to this reality or interact with these realities.

Obviously I can’t only care about the poor when I’m living among the poor and then deny their need with a simple perspective shift that places me in the position of poverty rather than power. But how can I maintain a sense of responsibility for the well being of my brothers and sisters who have been oppressed and in need since before my birth, while I have been born into an abundance that was established and bestowed upon me based on nothing other than my birth into privilege?