COMMENTARY: Postcards from the edge

c. 2008 Religion News Service (UNDATED) It’s Spring break. Let’s go tour a slum. A recent New York Times story told of tourist trips through some of the most dangerous shanty-towns on earth. You can go sightseeing in Rochina, the largest of Rio de Janiero’s 750 favelas. Or you can visit Dharavi, the biggest slum […]

c. 2008 Religion News Service

(UNDATED) It’s Spring break. Let’s go tour a slum.

A recent New York Times story told of tourist trips through some of the most dangerous shanty-towns on earth. You can go sightseeing in Rochina, the largest of Rio de Janiero’s 750 favelas. Or you can visit Dharavi, the biggest slum in India.


You get to see the poor people scratching out a living on unclaimed property. You can buy their art, take their pictures, and leave some money with the tour operator, who claims to give some profits to the poor.

Is this crass commercialism? Or is it social action?

No matter which, no one comes away unchanged.

I don’t think many North Americans have any concept of what goes on in other countries, while other countries know full well what goes on here. We may not know their suffering, but they suffer because they know exactly how we live. They all have television.

These days, Christians remember the suffering Jesus, the Christ. To many, his story makes no sense at all. (But neither does the present suffering in the world.)

He entered Jerusalem on what is now called Palm Sunday. (The poor come out to greet him.)

Political clouds gather; the week grows dark. By Thursday, Jesus and his friends are hiding in the Upper Room. They eat one last Passover meal together. (How many people in this world live in persistent fear?)

Next Jesus is alone in the garden at Gethsemane. His friends are all asleep. (Fifteen million children are now orphaned due to HIV/AIDS.)

He meets death at Golgotha. His mother and two friends watch helplessly nearby. (According to UNICEF, as many as 30,000 children die each day due to poverty.)

Christ is so poor they lay him in a borrowed tomb. (Half the world, nearly 3 billion people, lives on less than $2 a day.)


Whatever could this mean? We all suffer. Stuff happens. Our friends desert us in bad times, and show up again when things go well. We hunger, sometimes for what we do not need. We thirst.

But, bump it up a notch. Look into those brown eyes in that Brazilian slum. Hear the laughter of those Indian children running through that dirty alley, and wonder who still has a living parent. Smell the smells, feel the heat. Then ride back in a car, walk in your North American shoes to your air-conditioned hotel, and take a shower. Order up a meal. Pop open a beer.

Think about this ending to the story. They say Christ rose from death to life that Easter Sunday morning. The women saw him. Later, his other friends did, too. He ate some fish with them. He walked along the road to Emmaus with some strangers. Their hearts were burning.

He walks there still, I think, now in a different resurrection. He sees hope in the people of the slums, and helps them dream of starting businesses. He loves and watches motherless children, filled with joy because they have a school. Christ in flesh and blood believes they have a chance, and makes it happen.

Not everyone can do it. But by tour or television, we in richer places can know what goes on in poorer corners of the planet _ if we have the nerve to take a look. We can also try to see that money, talent, goods and knowledge each flow toward the need. The Easter story makes these objectives both necessary and possible. There are people, here and now, who underscore its ending.

The Resurrection? It is real. And it is all around us.

(Phyllis Zagano is senior research associate-in-residence at Hofstra University and author of several books in Catholic Studies.)


KRE/LF END ZAGANO600 words

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