Remembering

We were standing in the will call line outside the Troubadour last night when it really sunk in. Just a few days ago I was in South America, staying for a week in what is by anyone's definition a rough neighborhood, where the night is "very not safe", where everyone goes home when the sun goes down and locks big metal doors and windows shut behind them. Slam! go the doors. The keys jingle in the pocket.

That's where I spent last week. Last night, the contrast was dramatic. I dropped my wife off at the door before driving off to look for parking without any concern for whether she'd be safe or not. When I got back, we stood on the shadowy street without worry. At home, surrounded by the familiar, I'm finding it hard to know what to do with the memory of last week.

Just because I've come home doesn't mean that the darkness in that Caracas barrio has gone away. The things I experienced/survived/feared/explored for one week remain daily facts of life in that hillside neighborhood. For me to forget seems irresponsible and lacking in compassion. But how can I hold both of these things at the same time? It doesn't come naturally to me. The hardness of the present bangs up against the daydream of the past and the present wins every time.

But it's important that I remember because mostly I forget.

It's important that I remember because if no one remembers nothing will change.

It's important that I remember because I get selfish when I don't.

It's important that I remember because they deserve to be remembered.

Mostly I wake up in the morning and stumble out the door and cuss at the drivers on the freeway and do shoddy work on the job and call it genius. The day flies past and I eat bad food and drink expensive coffee and go home crabby to get up and do it again. That's not how things should be.

And so I pray: Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy.