Day 37: The Smallest Kindnesses

A fellow volunteer told me about a moment she had with two undocumented women tonight where they sat and prayed together. She said that the women thanked her and then started crying. 

They were eating with another family, and the mother at the table started crying too. 

"I knew that if I came to a place like this, I wouldn't be sure if I would be able to do anything else again," she told me. "I don't want people to be in that situation where the smallest kindnesses bring them to tears. It breaks my heart."

It doesn't feel healthy to be angry or desperate, but it's hard not to be. 

"They weren't just saying thank you," she said. 

She's right—they're in a type of trouble that we are not and will not ever be in. The inequality is sometimes too much to bear. It's just plain sad. 

"When we're praying, we should be on an equal plane with God, but it doesn't seem like it. It seems like they need in a way that I can't relate to. I feel alienated from them. This is a pain that I'm just witnessing." 

We agreed that it felt like we had been lied to all our lives—that we had been told we were living in a world that was alright, but it is not alright because this is happening and will continue to keep happening. 

It goes back to a sense of urgency and priority: What are we here for if not this? What de we have feelings for? What do we have minds for? What do we have hands for? 

Comments

  1. outdoor59July 1, 2021 at 11:25 AM

    Thanks for this important and emotional post. You and the other volunteers are heroes and heroines. Thank you for caring and helping those in such sad circumstances. Absolutely life is not fair and so many people turn a blind eye to this injustice and inhumanity. Very sad.

    ReplyDelete

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