Please do me a favor. Imagine yourself on a run in the park.
On this particular day, you're feeling fast. The body is working the way you want it to. After some stretching and a mile of warm up you round the bend and spot that cocky muscle-bound runner you always see out there. He's the kind with the divided calf; ya know, two clearly divided lobes of muscle wrapped tightly with tan athletic skin. You note that he's a hundred yards out and, feeling a bit ballsy, decide to mount your attack. Secretly you hope against hope that today will be the day where the tables turn and this time you'll be the one dominating. Despite the fact that the other guy's running at a great pace, you up the tempo again and in mere minutes you find yourself approaching for the pass. Nearly 6 months of training culminate in this very moment. Just out of earshot you rip out a few deep exhalations in preparation for five seconds of limited breath. As you pull around to his left, you make sure to close your mouth and breathe almost reluctantly through the nose as if to say, "yea I guess I could use a little oxygen right now." While at the same time you know exactly what that meat-head runner is thinking: "Holy shit, I've been holding him off for a while now and this guy is hardly even winded." The psychological warfare having been executed perfectly, you look back a minute later to see he has slowed to a weak jog and his face reflects that of being completely demoralized. You pull motivation from your victory and muscle on to fly through the next corner in a full tilt. Having just lived out one of the rarest most athletically epic moments of your life, your delusions of grandeur take over. "No Lance, I couldn't...please just keep it........no I could never accept your yellow jersey...no your the best....not me." You let out a little chuckle under your breath and continue on.
And then, it happens.
As you fly around the corner, straining to pick out any obstacles, your eyes fall on that guy from grade school who got sent off to Iraq. He's wheeling himself around the lake, clearly still adjusting to his newly legless state and there is no ignoring the eye contact. Or maybe its Peggy, the sweetheart from down the street, who despite exhausting every medical means under the sun and eating only salad for years has not yet found a way to quicken the pace of her thyroid. There she is, all 300lbs of her, speed walking past and out of breath. Or maybe its Brandon, the 33 year old guy with down syndrome still holding his mom's hand as you pass.
The sight of which is ripping you apart. In a moment such as this you cant help but feel like your entire existence is just one big pursuit in vanity.
So this is the question I'm trying to talk about; what do we do with that awful feeling... what is a decent response....what path do we take in the complexity of such inequality?
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A few weeks ago, just as in my imaginary scenario, I woke up feeling strong. I grabbed my shoes and decided to go for a run before it got too hot.
'Ah, ill just check my email real quick' I thought.
I pulled one shoe on.
The MSN home page came up. There were all those ridiculous "news" headlines. "Britney's New Surgery" and "How to dump your girlfriend the right way" etc. I rolled my eyes. The next headline popped up.
"The World's 50 Most Failed States". This one hooked my attention.
The web page opened to reveal a desperate scene. I don't remember the exact picture, but most likely the page framed in the hands of a simple farmer struggling in the dry red soil of Africa. Looking on behind him and slightly out of focus, his children stood with swollen hunger-stricken bellys. The title read: "Postcards from Hell". The subtitle: "Somalia". In fewer than 10 sentences the piece explained their government less state, mentioned a few different warlords grabbing for power and touched on the average annual income of a Somali pirate.
I felt that old subtle guilt begin to choke off the momentum of my morning.
I clicked the "next" button and went on to read about the other nations on the list and their corresponding images of desolation. Sierra Leone, The Democratic Republic of Congo, Haiti, Malawi, and so on.....It was all very heavy.
I never made it out for the run. What can I say? I was dealling with way too much head noise. I mean, when you hold in your hands the very photos of the crime scene its kind of hard to get back to regular life. The imagination runs wild....It could very well be that as I go out for a jaunt in the park to be a better athlete, in some other place a man is saving his own urine to survive one more day. It's a paralyzing thought. I think Bono said it well, "Today we eat and drink while tomorrow they die." The concept haunts me.
And yet, on some level I have to get back to regular life. I have to keep taking care of myself. What good is it if I give up the hard learned healthy rhythms of life if no one benefits from the sacrifice? Sacrifice alone(not to be confused with Mercy/Grace) gets us nowhere. It seems to me that if, in response to evil, I lie down and die thinking myself a silly and wretched man for my own drive to rise above, than hasn't evil prevailed? Has not the Somalians poverty become my own?
After having lived a year in the Dominican Republic (many years ago) Ive spent some time wallowing in this confusion. I've missed a lot more than a run here and there. That year on the island I made friends with some of the most beautifully alive and caring people that ive ever met. Facing my first in depth exposure to poverty, suffering, and overwhelming love (mainly from my host family, the Bellos) I began to change. So When I got back, regular life got hard. The questions would not stop. I wondered "why was I born here?" and " if life is comparably easier for me why am I still unable to rise above?.......How am I ever gunna give a man a hand up if I can't get past my own needs?....... Being a white American male with loving middle class parents, am I not among the privileged few? And if so, just how much is expected of me?"
Well I haven't come to any real resolution on these questions. I can't ease the tension. Sure, along the way I've probably picked up a few justifications to help me function, but truthfully, I am unable to deliver the sappy ending that I crave. As it stands, the great space between poor and rich, weak and strong, able and unable is still present and still not okay.
But inwardly there is the sound of another voice. The voice always pleads with me to find some hope and keep believing that its possible to bridge those gaps.
Enter: The Hoyt's. Team Hoyt is hands down my favorite modern story and even after years following their progress I'm still inspired. The following video tells the story of a father and son who have worked to bridge a few of those gaps. They feed my hope that while I haven't given much back yet, the opportunity will come.
This is why I believe that in some wild way, weakness and deformity are just as much a gift as strong legs and an above average lung capacity.
Whether they know it intellectually or not, here are two men who tuned into what God was whispering into their hearts and lived it out.
