“Lord, as we prepare to eat this meal, we remember that many in this country do not have food and will go to sleep hungry tonight.”
These words from our host send a shiver down my spine as we stand in a half circle, praying over the food laid out on the counter in front of us. I felt the same discomfort as we drove from the airport to our guesthouse, through crowded streets made of dust and trash. This discomfort, however, is quickly forgotten as we settle onto benches around an expansive table and begin the warm chatter of getting to know new faces.
Discomfort returns once again this morning as I being reading “The Uses of Haiti” by Paul Farmer, a collection of all the ways in which the United States, my country, has laid waste to the country of Haiti. In fact, the whole reading list for our trip makes me sit in a perpetually cringing posture. Looking at our country from the outside is uncomfortable.
We will be in Haiti for two weeks. With this in mind, I remember being told that any trip that is under a year in length is more for the benefit of the person going than it is for the people they are going to. Yes, our trip is different. Our group brings specialized skills and needed supplies. But I think there is another value to this journey.
Living in one of the richest countries in the world, it is all too easy to fall comfortably into a bubble of blissful ignorance and instant gratification. We forget the impact our government has on the world, we forget how our spending dictates the livelihoods of other people, we forget that we are inevitably tied into a community much bigger than any border could encompass.
This trip is important because it reminds us to be uncomfortable.
It reminds us that not everyone has full bellies. It reminds us that a child surviving past age five is not a given for some parents. It reminds us that the “land of the free” has at many times suppressed freedom.
Whether it is a book, or a trip, or a conversation with someone who walks on a different path, we must search for these ways to get out of our bubble of comfort. Not only this, but we must allow ourselves to feel the discomfort so deeply that it drives us to act.
Changing the way our world looks in the future requires being disturbed by how it looks right now. May we embrace the discomfort.
-Mariah