outside the gate
Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever…
[He] suffered outside the city gate to make the people holy through his own blood. Let us, then, go to him outside the camp, bearing the disgrace he bore. For here we do not have an enduring city, but we are looking for the city that is to come.
Hebrews 13: 8, 12-14
They’re digging up the road outside the gate of my apartment complex. Silty mud dries to a fine rusty dust that coats everything. A snake lies squished near the ditch. Of all the balding dogs that laze and wander, one in particular stuns my heart: such impossibly tiny perfect bones, such wretched, nonchalant eyes. He is lame in one hind leg and limps indifferently through the constant traffic.
The women, too, are indifferent. Swathed against the sun in dark layered clothing and wide-brimmed hats, they squat to rest their backs awhile. Meet my eyes but don’t smile. They are construction labourers, who, along with their husbands, haul the many loads of bricks needed to build high-rise condos like mine. Slap up tin-roofed shanties for their children to sleep in until they move on to a new job-site.
Someone still remembers to water the clutch of orange poppies growing lopsided out of a rubbish heap, and if I follow a rutted path off the road, through a tangle of tall grass and reeds, I will find a swamp profuse with wind-blown water lilies. A tough-skinned palm tree streaming ragged fronds in the sunlight. It’s here I can trace the flight-paths of birds from below.
The window back at my apartment is often even higher than the birds’-eye view. Plumeria trees, bougainvillea shrubs, coconut palms are all religiously manicured, and the only dog I see is a wrinkled pug yapping at me from behind the tinted window of his owner’s air-conditioned SUV. Outside, this SUV shares the same road as a mother pushing her kids to work in a hand-cart.
Some of the dust out here settles into the embroidery of my embarrassingly white brand-name peasant blouse. I step back through the gate, sweating and heavy with the burden of cheap ice cream I’ve bought to share with the other missionaries who live on the inside.
[He] suffered outside the city gate to make the people holy through his own blood. Let us, then, go to him outside the camp, bearing the disgrace he bore. For here we do not have an enduring city, but we are looking for the city that is to come.
Hebrews 13: 8, 12-14
They’re digging up the road outside the gate of my apartment complex. Silty mud dries to a fine rusty dust that coats everything. A snake lies squished near the ditch. Of all the balding dogs that laze and wander, one in particular stuns my heart: such impossibly tiny perfect bones, such wretched, nonchalant eyes. He is lame in one hind leg and limps indifferently through the constant traffic.
The women, too, are indifferent. Swathed against the sun in dark layered clothing and wide-brimmed hats, they squat to rest their backs awhile. Meet my eyes but don’t smile. They are construction labourers, who, along with their husbands, haul the many loads of bricks needed to build high-rise condos like mine. Slap up tin-roofed shanties for their children to sleep in until they move on to a new job-site.
Someone still remembers to water the clutch of orange poppies growing lopsided out of a rubbish heap, and if I follow a rutted path off the road, through a tangle of tall grass and reeds, I will find a swamp profuse with wind-blown water lilies. A tough-skinned palm tree streaming ragged fronds in the sunlight. It’s here I can trace the flight-paths of birds from below.
The window back at my apartment is often even higher than the birds’-eye view. Plumeria trees, bougainvillea shrubs, coconut palms are all religiously manicured, and the only dog I see is a wrinkled pug yapping at me from behind the tinted window of his owner’s air-conditioned SUV. Outside, this SUV shares the same road as a mother pushing her kids to work in a hand-cart.
Some of the dust out here settles into the embroidery of my embarrassingly white brand-name peasant blouse. I step back through the gate, sweating and heavy with the burden of cheap ice cream I’ve bought to share with the other missionaries who live on the inside.
posted by sparrow anne at
9:10 p.m.
2 Comments:
oh wow this is powerful. it makes me squirm too because isn't it true? how we preach to the squalor in daytime then curl up on our feather pillows to sleep. thank you for painting in such acute detail such conviction for me... i love you!
yup. yesterday i visited some of thailand's throwaways, starving weeping dying, i didn't know what to do, i wept, i don't know what to write...
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