Bolivia Reflections: Final post

It has been a month since I left for Bolivia. I have had moments where I simply was stunned. They may seem like odd moments to you.

• The ability to drink water from the tap. After not drinking tap water for a week, it seemed so humbling to realize that I took that for granted. I started to cry because of so many people that I met were unable to have a basic necessity of life: water. 

• How about the ability to eat raw vegetables? If you know me, this seems odd, but I really missed eating foods without the threat of an illness. 

• Speaking of illness, I did catch some sort of virus. I went to the doctor (kicking and screaming by the way) and then headed off to the pharmacy. I had a) money to pay for my medication and b) access to medical care. I started to cry in the pharmacy. Believe me, I am well aware of some of the choices people have to make as a result of healthcare in this country. And when I think of some of the cases I had back in Washington, DC it still breaks my heart. 

I really can't figure out the world we live in. A lot of terrible things happen on a daily basis. None of it makes sense. I don't know...I just have a sense that this really isn't the way things are supposed to be. Yet as humanity tries to rectify it, we seem to do somethings better and then some other things get warped in the process. We have tried a variety of economic systems and nothing seems to "fix" the societal inequality that is deeply ingrained within the human condition. I'm not sure if I'm capable of arguing about it. I have a feeling that the economic inequality would be fixed if the spiritual poverty/inequality would be addressed first. And it doesn't mean distancing myself from the problems of today by simply saying "it's a spiritual problem" and washing my hands from it. Rather, it does, in fact mean, that I'm called to act drawn by grace, through faith, to be part of His body until, as my sage friend Swati says, "my time has expired."