The Skinny

I feel very tired these days. My health is fine but my stomach just never feels right. I can no longer count the zits on my face. And I am almost entirely sick of beans. Wanting to get out of the house, I can’t go very far solo as a woman. And after returning from community retreat on Sunday, where we reflected for 4 days by a rainy beach side, I received a blessed bulky load of news from home. I found myself writing back to everyone “I really wish I could be there with you for this!” And I think that of all the occasions on which I’ve written that in the past 11 mos, I now feel it more than ever. I do wish I could be there with you for this.

But I am here. Here with you through prayer. Here receiving ALL of your love and prayers, letters, care packages GALORE which never ceases to inspire me! Here in Nicaragua with God. And with my new favorite, saving-grace book, Daniel Berrigan´s, Uncommon Prayer. With my community that I know loves and supports me. With hilarious neighbors. (Walking with Doña Maxima in the morning, I can´t stop laughing inside. Friends comment to her on the street, “Hey Maxima! So great that you are walking!” and she responds straight face, no shame, “225lbs! Here we go!” I am re-laughing to myself just recalling that moment!) …And with a job placement that is so challenging sometimes, simply because of the effect that poverty has had on my co-workers. Unwarranted attitudes. Distrust. Harsh tones of voices. My two other team members aren’t speaking. Pointing fingers and chucking blame left and right. Really ugly sights, day after day.

And the ugliest sights I have recognized this week are the skinny.

Please, take a look at your legs. Yes right now, just look down. Check out those thighs. See how they expand outward as it moves upward? “Knocking me out with those American thighs!” See the knee? And the meat south of the knee? I observe almost daily how below my knee emerges an enormous calf, which must be so much grander than I can imagine; because no matter how I contort myself, I can never see around the whole thing! And just barely do my thumbs and index fingers meet when I circle them around the largest diameter. Great legs. Strong legs! Meaty legs. Lacking sufficient appreciation.

Lacking sufficient nutrition: hundreds of children in the neighborhood of El Recreo where I work everyday. And the many women in the banks that are not grossly overweight. They are so unbelievably skinny. The kids that play on the swings waiting for the Soup Kitchen to open: one can only recognize that they even have a knee when they pump their legs trying to swing higher. Otherwise, they sometimes appear as really well-drawn, stick figures from a distance. Skin and bones with a head plopped on. ANYone of them would turn heads in the U.S. and cause one to diagnose the eating disorder. “Did you see how skinny she is?”

The disorder here is that there is no order. They don’t eat three meals a day. Balanced diet means nothing. They simply do not have enough food to eat – enough money to buy food. Word on the street is that “things are so bad these days!” “because of the rain, the bean season failed and now the beans are too expense to buy!” “if things don’t change, we will not have anything to eat!” “the economists are crying because Christmas will be so bad this year!” And I’m crying because for whatever reason, these “have-nots” have gone hungry and malnourished for too long. My co-worker’s 3 ½ year-old granddaughter is sick in the hospital this week: a problem with her molars that pains her too much to eat, exacerbated by rain and poor living conditions, now sick, vomiting, diarrhea, parasites. The specialists have to fix the molars because she has to start to eat again. Who in El Recreo has money for specialists? And if they did have the money, they can’t put her under anesthesia because they are afraid for her small size— 3 ½ years old, she weighs 25lbs. Anemic. She’s not a rare case.

On our retreat we explored in depth Matthew 25: The Final Judgment. Feed the hungry, huh, Jesus?! It is so hard. What does that really even mean? That I should go out and buy cheeseburgers for each suffering kid I see? Donating to World Hunger Organization? Doing a fast to be “in solidarity” with the starving? I don’t know what hunger of body is. Hunger of soul, maybe? Is that what I am experiencing right now? Is it even comparable? Hungry, can I feed you through my prayers? Only if I act on my prayers. Lord may the prayers feed and nourish like food does. May those who starve have a meal. Have lots of meals. May those who have a meal, know the gift it is. And may we all act to make sure everyone has what is necessary to live, “this day our daily bread.”