Understanding what?

MAY 2—I’ve called this blog a pilgrimage to understanding. It’s a simple way of communicating a little bit of what we see and experience each day. But what are we trying to understand?

There is no short answer. We each have our personal agendas to process coupled with a student’s desire to know and understand more. I guess we think more knowledge and more experience may one day add up to more wisdom. May it be so.

I’m not the only one seeking to understand. I hear others talking. “What are you thinking?” one asks. “My thoughts are just kind of floating,” comes the reply. And what most of us are mostly thinking about is that we are very rich and privileged compared with the people we see. And we don’t know what to do about it.

We see a lot of enterprising spirit and many smiles. But we see great sadness too. We see rags and disease, bad shoes and bare feet, heavy loads and skinny cattle, squalid houses, dirty streets — living situations we could never countenance for ourselves. “Why do people shit where they work?”

We know that our small gifts and the best intentions of our kind hearts make scant difference in a place that needs so much more. This understanding thing is elusive, and the path of discovery very hard. Not trying to understand is worse.