I don’t know how to write about El Salvador.  So I guess I’ll begin there: why I can’t write about it.

There’s too much to write.  Too many critical things that I’ve already forgotten.  Things that can only be felt in the midst of the mountains, in the air of poverty, in the decisions of disparity.  There’s a line between the those who don’t think twice about surviving and those who have live everyday wondering if they’ll survive to see tomorrow.  That kind of framework, that kind of mentality melted once my return flight crossed the US border.  Poverty does that.  It wakes you up.  Comfort and privilege puts you back to sleep.

I can’t write about it because I don’t have the answers, still.  How many visits to central america can there be before I come up with some kind of description for what I witness and see?  All I keep seeing are lines.  Lines between people who have never had their picture taken and those with digital SLR cameras.  There are lines between people who would take leftover food wrapped in plastic from my hands without knowing my name and those in my life who would tell the waiter to discard the leftovers because they don’t want to deal with the styrofoam box.  Lines.  They’re everywhere.

And as much as I would love to say that the usual serenity that fills my soul from central america returned to me, this trip was different.  It wasn’t serenity that filled me.  it was yearning.  yearning for justice,  yearning for enough, yearning for education and basic necessities.  yearning for clean water, medicine, band aids and music instruments.  I was filled with yearning.  Not to be confused with need – since I am under no threat of having those things taken away from me – my yearning is a longing to see not just equal distribution among people and nation, but a yearning for those of us in economically hording countries to WANT to share what we have.

I yearn to see US, the people of the most privileged and resource-eating country in the history of the world, step out of ourselves and realize: there IS enough for all of us.

There is enough for all of us.

There is enough for ALL of us.

How can one concept be so damned difficult to grasp?  To legislate?  To teach?

How can catholics and christians enter the most holy week of the year and not bid one nod to the glaring injustice of all: poverty?  It’s violence is bleeding into the next generation of people without access to the most simple medicines, the most basic literacy skills, and the one resource we all need to survive: clean water.

How can we enter holy week without remembering those simple things?

I don’t know how to write about that.  I don’t know how to move forward with that knowledge that those wonderful people I met – the crocheting women, the praying families, the young choir members, the men carrying unfathomably amounts of firewood on their bare backs – live in conditions that I cannot describe over email, blog, or pen.  hell, it’s something I can’t even really describe to myself.

I can’t write about it.  I don’t even know how to even begin praying for that.

What do you pray for at that point?  HOW do you pray at that point?  Once you witness the violence of poverty – and the indifference that the majority of first world citizens have – the prayer for divine intervention seems ridiculous because the problems could truly be solved by human hands.  there’s nothing spiritually impossible to overcome.  there’s no political impossibilitiy to alleviate poverty.  There’s no trickery or illusions to poverty.  It’s actually quite simple: those with need to transform their hearts.

Maybe that’s where the divine intervention is needed.  Not to save people from dirt floors and malnutrition — all preventable and treatable problems — but the human heart.  Perhaps that’s where I should start with my writing.  And my prayers.

The human heart.  That’s where I’ll begin this week.

So, I’ll begin with yours: what are you doing to alleviate the darkness of the poor?