Barefoot in the Snow

Every morning I check Facebook. I do it to see what is going on with friends and to look for the latest updates from some of the writers and thinkers I follow. Yesterday I came across an update from my friend and former student, Andy Baker.

Andy is the Founder and Director of Remember the Children, a ministry that provides assistance to the church and impoverished in Romania. Andy makes several trips to Romania every year and delivers needed supplies to families, children, and ministries. He just returned from delivering Christmas shoe boxes and other supplies last week.

Andy’s update on Facebook included pictures from his journey. I flipped through them to see dilapidated houses that lined the muddy roads as well as some of the children who received gifts from those who sent them via Remember the Children.

Dilapdated houses. Click. Poor children. Click. Mud and snow. Click. Poor children.

Andy’s pictures featured Roma children whose dark features hearken back to their ancestry in northern India. As I flipped through the pictures, I noted the children’s all-but-black eyes, the dingy clothes they wore, and the brightly colored packages they held. Many of the children had no coats.

Some of them wore layers of clothes.

Poor children. Click. Poor children. Click. Poor children.

I wondered whether Andy had included comments with the pictures. I scrolled down a bit so I could see the comments with the pictures and clicked through them again. There were comments.

A group of adults. “The team in Tinca, Romania…”

Click.

Dilapidated houses. “Living conditions are beyond belief.”

Click.

A smiling boy in a pink sweat shirt holding a gift box. “Thank you friends who sent boxes.”

Click.

A boy standing in the snow and holding a gift box. “We need to take shoes next year!”

I glanced down at his feet.

Flip flops!?!

I had not noticed my first time through the pictures.

Poor children. Click. Poor children. Click. Poor children.

Like you I’ve glanced at pictures of poor children for years. Sometimes I have seen them and like the priest and the Levite in the story of the Good Samaritan, I have passed them by. Sometimes, I have looked but have not seen.

“The poor you have with you always” you know.

On my second time through the pictures I saw this boy. I mean I saw him.

I cannot say that my first feeling was one of compassion or of sorrow. My first feeling was one of outrage. I felt outraged by my blindness, outraged by my apathy, outraged by my Christmas ho-ho-humness.

The word “absurd” popped into my mind and I remembered reading Henri Nouwen, who pointed out that the word “absurd” is from a Latin root that means “deaf”.

“Deaf”. Click. “Blind”. Click. That’s me.

Maybe that’s us, priests, and Levites on our way to the mall, to the Christmas Eve service, stopping by to gaze at a crèche at a half-naked child wrapped in swaddling clothes.

I caught Andy online and sent him an Instant Message.

Me: “Flip flops in the snow?”

Andy: “Shoes we gave them last summer.”

Me: “That’s all they have?”

Andy: “I am more bothered by the children who have no shoes at all.”

I swiped the picture of the boy.

Click. Save As. Click.

I am going to print it today and put it above my computer monitor, the porthole through which I gaze out upon the world.

I am also personally committing to sending at least 100 pairs of ordinary, everyday children’s shoes to the Roma next year by way of Remember the Children. I will be shopping after Christmas children’s shoe sales and spring time children’s boot sales in the Spring. And I will be bugging friends and family.

I would love for you to help me, help Andy, help them.

Can you add one more item to your after Christmas sale list?

Drop me a note and let’s make this happen!

It is patently absurd that these children, the least of these,  go barefoot in the snow.