I want Ismael to be my neighbor

Remember middle school and high school fights? In college we used to joke about staging such a fight. Can you imagine leaving a Physics II lecture when some yells out "Fight... FIGHT!!!" and a crowd quickly assembles? The short guys in the back of the crowd are jumping to try to see, but as everyone knows, there is really nothing more than a lot of staring and some goofy trash talk between the two so-called "fighters". Then either someone makes one attack and its over, or the fight gets broken up by Mr. Porter. I don't know why it didn't seem so ridiculous in high school, but if that were to happen in George R. Brown Hall at the Colorado School of Mines... wow.

If you are reading this and you are in college, I think you ought to stage a fight. If you are in grad school, that would be even better. In fact, that could be one of the only regrets I have from my college years... that I didn't fake or at least organize a fake hallway fight in college.

It's different here in Bolivia.

Today I found out the best shoe shiner in La Paz had been beaten this weekend. Apparently a group of guys wanted Dario's backpack, so they hit him in the legs with a club which knocked him to the ground. They then proceeded to beat and kick him in the head. He didn't loose consciousness, nor his backpack, but when I saw him today, 3 days after the attack, his face was still swollen, his wounds infected and he was difficult to recognize.

"Your kingdom come, Your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven."

It gets better than this. Hope. The idea that even though we can't see it, we know that heaven is a good place... better than our wildest dreams, or maybe the best way for us to imagine it is to think of the opposite of our most dreadful nightmares. A place where rob, lie, wound and take are not even words. You see, with Jesus, I believe it gets better. That's the treasure hidden in the field. The pearl that's worth selling everything to buy. Maybe that's why He can say that blessed are those who mourn. They will be comforted. He's come from the place we can only dream about. He knows what it will be like.

Maybe that's a good starting point when talking with Dario. "Wouldn't it be nice to know that there's something better out there than people that want to beat and rob you?" Or maybe I should ask if he'd like to heap burning coals on their heads. Well, we'll see. I'll be shining with Dario tomorrow and taking him to get his wounds cleaned at the hospital for the next week.

My hero of the story is Ismael. He is a good friend. Even to the point that I think about having him as a roommate-- or maybe just moving in with him. It has a lot to do with him teaching me how to shine shoes, reading Narnia together (and laughing together at Lewis' humorous sidenotes), his saying, "Si no duele, no sirve" on our backpacking trips, and the care with which he built from scratch my shoe shining box. But today, experiencing first hand the genuine compassion Ismael had for his friend Dario was like a real life parable. "Who's my neighbor?" I might have asked Jesus. I think he could have answered by saying, "Watch Ismael. See what he does. See who he thinks about. Now you tell me, who was a neighbor to Dario?"