Acceptance

I was at the Kenyan border on my way into Uganda from Nairobi. The border is literally padlocked until you bribe your way through, or take hours to go through without that extra help of a little something. I saw an older man hobbling up to my Toyota 4 by 4. He was partially blind. He had no hands, only stubs, he wore rags. He was reaching out toward me when a stark naked realization hit me, leprosy.

"Mzungu, give me money....Mzungu help me"...He pointed his stub toward me, my hand reached out, I touched him. He startled and moved  back...Mzungu...you touched me...

I looked at him, thoughts flashed through my mind, like all of us his deepest need was to be appreciated, to be accepted...Every human being wants to be valued I thought.  He like all of us wanted to be loved. Love a simple word and yet so much is involved.  In English we are so limited when it comes to the word love...You can love hamburgers, flowers, people, friends, lover, children and always use the same word.

The Greeks can say it in more ways than us...I storge you...family love, philia, brotherly love, eros...intimate love...agape...unconditional love....

He wanted to be loved, to be accepted for what and who he was and yet he was frightened by it. I knew from my own life-story that nothing in life has such a lasting and fatal effect as the experience of not being completely accepted.

When I am not accepted, then something is broken in me. A baby who is not welcomed is ruined at the roots of its existence. A child who does not feel accepted by its teacher will not learn. A life without acceptance is a life in which a most basic human need goes unfulfilled.

Acceptance to me means that I am welcomed to be myself. Acceptance means that though there be a need for growth, I am not forced. I do not have to be the person that I am not. Neither am I locked in by my present or past...Rather there is room for me to unfold, to outgrow the mistakes of my past. In my own personal life I would call it an unveiling...An unveiling of who I can be, who I can become, and who I was meant to be...

When I am not accepted, I am a nobody...To accept a person does not mean that I look over the defects, or try to explain them away. Nor do I act like everything is rosy or fine. When I deny the defects of another person, then I do not accept them. I have not touched them at the core of their being and will be a participant in their unveiling.

The man stood in front of me...."give me a lift,  Mzungu,  to Jinja"...I looked at him, I could smell him...My insides went through a quick war with themselves...Come, lets go...

The stench of his humanity filled the truck....I turned to the window for a breath of fresh air, even though the heat was unbearable and the humidity was high.

Soon we rolled on through the gates and on to Uganda and his destination of Jinja which was 50 kilometers away.

He began to talk and told me his story...I began to listen with my heart...I heard his ache, his joys, his need to be someone...more than a leper, but a person with a name. I asked his name and he told me...He was al Luo, he grew up in a wealthy family and yet came down with leprosy...He had no one...he lived off what he was able to beg....

We stopped at a roadside chicken vendor and took some bbq'd chicken on a stick. He had not read Emily Post on table manners, he simply devoured the meat...he thanked me.

We drove on in silence and I reflected on some things I had learned in my youth...the time when Jesus reached out and touched a leper, going against the code of his day making  him whole.

The pain of rejection...I felt it before myself and remember going to  a therapeutic massage place filling out the forms and she asked me why I wanted treatment and I replied..."I simply want human touch"...

The man next to me craved that same thing...To be touched, to be accepted...I reached over and took his stub...I said,  "I know how you feel"...He started to cry softly...We drove on...jon.

Last updated: 02 September 2008

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