a house

every day, on my way to work, i ride in small moto-taxi. these european contraptions were designed to hold upwards of 3 people and the driver. i think i have been on one that had 11 people, plus the driver--mind you, some of the people were children, but there were still full grown men hanging off the sides. somewhere during the first 10 minutes of this ride we pass a house under construction on the right side of the road. it is the largest house i have seen in nicaragua. it is around 3 times the size of my parent's house in the states. a mansion. it is slow moving, still concrete, and hasn't changed much in the last 4 months. but there are men there every day working on something. that house encapsulates much of what is wrong with the world. although, i am making some assumptions. i assume the house isn't going to be a hospital, or a commune, or a convent, or exist in some other way to serve the community. given that i am right, and the house is being built as a family's home, this house is just too much to believe. not 10 minutes from the house one could visit people who live in houses smaller than your average american bedroom and here someone has the audacity to build a house some 40 times that size. not to say that the american houses that are so big are any better, but i usually assume that if people see the extreme poverty, maybe they will understand their participation in it and work to a more just society. in reality though, many people think that money and construction, in a word, development, is what the 3rd world needs. but thats not it at all. it wasn't the lack of development that sent many places in the world plummeting into desperate poverty, but rather the development in other parts that required slave labor and stolen wealth and the continued sustaining of this wealth using war, unjust work, and globalization. what has disappeared--and that which is truly killing the people of the world, body and soul--are the communities. people have no sense of 'community' in the sense it would be used to refer to the apostles in the acts where they shared everything in common. or 'community' in the sense i would use it to refer to a small town of 40 families here in nicaragua where all the families have contributed money to send one boy, just one, to cuba to go medical school in hopes that he comes back to serve the community. no, these communities are rarities. rather we think that the problems of the world will be addressed through development and we build giant mansions and we applaud ourselves for giving work to the 20 men that temporarily will be able to feed their families because they are building another wealthy man's home. these men will do all the work and will have no access to the products. and so every day i see this house and see the destruction of communities. people who strive for their own well being and have forgotten what it means to be truly blessed--filled with joy. blessed are the poor... or as gustavo guiterrez says (i paraphrase), in spite of the laws of nature, we must move our center of gravity outside of us so that all of our selves, spirit, heart, mind, body, is drawn to others.

james