{Originally Published on Ali’s African Adventures}

To “The Poor” : An apology, for I have been blind.

I have always come to you with my heart full of your suffering. I came with my guilt, all so carefully amassed over the years as I sat at my table and despised the abundance in front of me, knowing that you were going hungry. The eyes of your children, liquid black windows to souls I thought were haunted, haunted my dreams when I saw them from my sleep.

I thought it was right to come with my arms full of things, shirts and stickers and little plastic cups with handles. When I saw your need from across the ocean, my soul was stirred to bring you something to fill the void in your lives. I brought shoes to cover feet accustomed to feeling the warmth of the earth beneath their soles, cartoon character band-aids to cover wounds as deep as time.

I have always seen myself through what I thought were your eyes. I was a ministering angel, there to bless the masses, and your faces and stories swirled and mixed in my mind as I moved among you, touching and greeting and unseeing. If you asked me now to share your stories, I wouldn’t meet your eyes as I searched to call out your names.

What must you have thought? Each of you with your history, your life as real to you as the breath catching in my own throat. I came with my whiteness and I held your hands as you spent your time with me, and then you walked away and I couldn’t remember your mother’s name. I worked beside you to hand out medicines in villages filled with your own people, stood shoulder to shoulder with you as we prayed against the passing of your sisters and brothers. But you have never seen the inside of my house and I have never asked to see yours. We have shared life and death but not our tables.

I have been so blind. I saw you as one. You were “the poor” to me, a myriad of people neatly packaged between a set of quotation marks, bundled together and taken as a whole. Instead of Kukenga and Gift and Greg and Isaac and Nyakamwengo, I saw you all as a shifting crowd of humanity, as one vast story of heartbreak and pain. I have been so blind.

{Originally published on Pensieve}

She will haunt me, this I know.

“I am happy,” she says, and she means it. Even if she did not speak those words, her countenance belies this simple truth: She is happy.

Kiran invited us to her home today, a 4′ x 6′ shoebox in the heart of Kolkata’s slums, blocks away from the glow and lure of proverbial red lights and painted women. Girls, actually, some even younger than Kiran. Simple math tells me 175 of her houses could fit into mine.

She is the only Compassion International sponsored child we visited this week who didn’t have a parent home with her.

A little over a month ago, one of our most beloved editors suffered the greatest loss any parent can imagine: Her daughter, Maddie, passed away. The hearts of the blogosphere went out to Maddie Spohr’s family in a way that our bodies could not, separated by miles but not compassion.

In just a matter of weeks, tens of thousands of dollars were donated in Maddie’s name to the Spohr family’s charity of choice, the March of Dimes. Bits of support were drummed up here and there to help support the family directly, as well, through not only financial support for funeral costs, but deliveries of food (including gift certificates for delivery from those too far away to deliver it themselves) to warm the family’s bellies and help take their minds off responsibilities for just a moment longer.

All accomplished through the compassion and, more importantly, passion of bloggers. And this wasn’t the first time bloggers have rallied together, nor will it be the last time.

As Blog Nosh Magazine transitions back into our regular publishing schedule after a month of our front page dedicated to Maddie, we would like to take one more opportunity to highlight the efforts and successes of blogger outreach. Benefiting charities, movements, families, and causes across the board, the power of bloggers is immeasurable. As a magazine championing bloggers’ skills and value, we ask that you take a moment to consider some of the more tangible good that bloggers are capable of setting into motion.

This week is dedicated to those bloggers using their thoughtful influence and their passion to make a difference. One of our own, Robin from Pensieve and Channel Editor of Religion and Philosophy, has been knocking us out with stories of her recent trip to Kolkata, India (pictured right), as a member of a team of bloggers for Compassion International. As you will see, not all compassion is lived out from behind the comfort of our computers.