Sanatized

The Motherland, India, is not always a hygienic place.  By many accounts, the world's dirtiest city sits within its borders (Guwahati).  There are large cities overwhelmed by disease, poverty, and a lack of water.  When I think of young children, I am not sure this is the kind of place I would want then to grow up, at least when it comes to health.  Yet it is the land of my childhood. 
When I think being in my home country, it is the first image that comes to mind.  There is, in the images that flow from this reflection, a unique gift that few from the West have been given from his or her youngest days.  The images of India are always raw, unadulterated, and untouched.  They are what they are.  Nothing is dressed in its finest even when they are.  Nothing can mask the authenticity of the emotions, passion, and reality of what it means to be completely and utterly human right down to the most basic of functions.
As a result of this perspective, I find myself seeking to see things the way they are.  I do not always succeed, sometimes the very thought of what I might see overwhelms.  I just cannot take it!  Yet the idea fills me with a renewed sense of energy that comes from being in the potential presence of truth.  This is, I find, a really good thing.  It seems that you and I often find it difficult to accept God's reality of where we are in relationship to each other and Divinity.  Candidly, bluntly, truthfully, the message to a brother of old applies equally to me today.  “Your hands are drenched in blood, your fingers dripping with guilt, your lips smeared with lies, your tongue swollen from muttering obscenities.”  (Isaiah 59.3)
This might seem gross, unsightly, and even ugly, yet it is reality.  God knows it and loves us.  We can know it and have the opportunity to accept a truth filled starting point where everything, anything is possible.  Raw is good!  Today is a fresh beginning.