Dear Friends, Thanksgiving, 2008
Forget about the weather channel. I have got the best forecasters of rain, ever! Each day as we drive out of our camp ground to our work sites we pass a series of red clay lots where adobe brick makers ply their cottage industry. A puddle of water is the mixing basin where bare foot workers mix the red clay with large shovels bent over at the end in the shape of a hoe. They wheelbarrow the smooth clay over to a perfectly flat area where they throw the mud into a shallow wood frame to shape each brick flat out on the ground. After baking in the sun for a day the bricks are stood up on end to air dry. Next, they are stacked loosely in long rows about four feet high to dry some more. This is back breaking work. Later, these dry bricks will be cleverly stacked into a kiln shaped pile about twelve feet square and high that is sealed with pavers and mud. Piles of scrap wood similar to what we use in our camp fires are fed through tunnels in the bottom of the kiln to fire harden the adobe blocks. After cooling, they are stacked onto a flatbed truck for market. Except for the truck there is no overhead for this highly labor intensive business. So, while the weather channel is laboring over computers, overhead satellite images, Doppler radar and blue mat screens to bring you a 30 % forecast of rain, I am glancing over at the piles of raw bricks. When they are covered with plastic tarps I can tell you for sure that it will rain because these guys don't want to watch all their hard work melt down to the ground where it came from.
Speaking of rain and mud, this was an especially thankful thanksgiving week. A wonderful group of over 100 college students from my home, Santa Clara University, showed up to build houses for four very needy families. The families had torn down their shanties and leveled their lots in hopeful anticipation of our arrival. One lady and her little kids had been living outdoors for days. They slept in a car and under a tarp trying to guard the materials and tools that had been delivered for their new house. The students worked feverishly for three days to get the slabs poured and the walls and roofs up and wrapped. It rained on the morning of the fourth day. They barely finished the houses when it was time to leave. The families moved right in even as we were cleaning up our tools. We had over an inch of rain that night. I woke early to the sound of the storm. As I lay awake I was thankful for each family snug and dry in their wonderful new home after suffering so long in wretched poverty. I was also thankful for each student who came to help "the least of these".
If I may, a few reflections during these thankful days for why we do this work. In the Stauros Notebook, autumn 2008, Joel Bergman asks, "Why do we suffer? Is there meaning in suffering? Where is God? How are we to respond to those who suffer and to our own suffering?" He points to Victor Frankl's view of suffering in his amazing book about his survival in the Nazi death camps, Man's Search For Meaning. Frankl says that suffering is inevitable and we as human beings MUST CHOOSE to wring meaning from suffering. In another literary and philosophical classic, Albert Camus' The Plague, a medical doctor CHOOSES to stay in a village quarantined by the bubonic plague. Surrounded by chaos and death, he finds meaning in helping and serving others. In C.S.Lewis' The Problem With Pain, Lewis argues that suffering is unavoidable, necessary and redemptive. What is good in any painful experience is, for the sufferer, his submission to the will of god; and, for the spectators, the compassion aroused and the acts of mercy to which it leads. We do not revel in suffering or glorify it or minimize it as a growth experience. But, since we all suffer, we can allow it to become the connection between us that is redemptive. As Christians we are called by Jesus’ life to love selflessly and unconditionally and non-judgmentally those who are suffering. We must reach out to our fellow travelers in life and try to love them unconditionally. This is what brings meaning to our lives. I hope that these thoughts will help to round out your Thanksgiving and inspire you to continue to support Amor Ministries. Peace, Howie.
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