These days mercy cuts so deep. If the world was as it should be, maybe I could get some sleep.

This last week I began my employment at The Mennonite Village (an old folks home for those not in the loop). I'm working from 10pm to 6am, which isn't all that challenging really. In fact it's a little easier since most of the residents are asleep. I decided to take the NOC shift so I could get a handle on both my practical and patient skills before delving into the rushed craziness of the morning and evening shifts. Plus, when all is quiet I get paid to sit down and read. Being a CNA has treated me well, and I enjoy the work, I enjoy the people.

About a year ago this month I first picked up "Mountains Beyond Mountains", a biography of sorts documenting the life of Dr. Paul Farmer. It actually first sparked my interest in Justice, later supplemented by Shane Claiborne, Scott Bessenecker and other leading figures of the emergent youth movement. Today I picked up what might be considered his opus: Pathologies of Power -Health, Human Rights, And The New War On The Poor. Farmer, both a infectious disease specialist and anthropologist has some wonderfully pragmatic views on the world's poor and the systems that cause their poverty. Not to mention, he and this NGO Partners In Health changed the World Health Organization's method of combating global tuberculosis (which was effectively creating new multi-drug resistant strains of the horrid disease).

It's easy for me to get excited about someone so progressive. But often I find myself in situations where mercy should pour from my mouth, and all I really want to do is be left alone. It's sobering to realized that all this good intention must be founded in love of Christ or it inoculates to the greatest need of the heart - or worse becomes the Worldview or Idol we cherish without eternal effect or reliance on the Father.

Reading this book I remember the Guatemalan refugees of Kutachumatan (who I visited last year), indigenous people, the Maya who's ancestors once owned and empire now aliens and wanderers, despised by many and persecuted for their ethnicity. What a divide between us there was, and yet how kind they were feeding us with their very own precious food. This poem found in Farmers book reminded me of those people's struggle.

Fleas dream of buying themselves a dog, and nobodies dream of escaping poverty: that, one magical day, good luck will suddenly rain down on them - will rain down in buckets. But good luck doesn't rain down, yesterday, today, tomorrow or ever. Good luck doesn't even fall in a fine drizzle, no matter how hard the nobodies summon it, even if their left hand is tickling, or if they begin the new day on their right foot, or start the new year with a change of brooms.

The nobodies: nobody's children, owners of nothing. The nobodies: the no-ones, the nobodied, running like rabbits, dying through life, screwed every which way.

Who are not, but could be.
Who don't speak languages, but dialects.
Who don't have religions, but superstitions.
Who don't create art, but handicrafts.
Who don't have culture, but folklore.
Who are not human beings, but human resources.
Who do not have faces, but arms.
Who do not have names, but numbers.
Who do not appear in the history of the world, but in the crime reports of the local paper.
The nobodies, who are not worth the bullet that kills them.

The Nobodies by Eduardo Galeano