#15 - Matthew and the Starfish

#15- If there isn't enough for all, it is best that my people have nothing!

Church this morning. And I find myself in a blur of colour and sound as the choir of island voices blended with the hypnotic beat of the island drums offered praises and glorification to God.  Taking communion in someone else's church is a wonderful experience that unifies as all as His sons and daughters.

I've had a relaxing day watching chick-flicks and romantic comedies, but after seeing the multitude of ways that boy can win the girl, the last movie was an old Patrick Swayzee (? spelling) movie called City of Joy.  It journals an American doctor who goes to the slums of Calcutta India.  A corrupt godfather type figure opposed to the charity work of the medico utters these provocative words "if there isn't enough for all, it is best that my people have nothing."  Aid money pours into PNG but seems not to filter down to the villages on the fringe.  I was sitting on the shore here on Saibai last night looking towards the western point of our island with it's Telstra tower, TV aerials, lighting, the doofdoof music from houses dotted along the shore.  Saibai by night is very pretty.  Then I gazed over to the villages of Mabudawan and Sigabaduru on PNG. No electricity, no lights, no techno or hip hop. Just a faint glow of a fire on the beach there, and in the fresh breeze whispering through the coconut palms here, I could hear singing. I could hear laughter.  They have nothing, yet everything that matters.

The sense that the grass could be greener is one that plagues all of us that have seen it.  But in the simple cool of the evening breeze here, I realized that happiness is not the things you have.  I'm pretty sure that is is the influence that you have on people. It is the difference that you attempt to make rather than the success at making it.

In Matthew 25, verse 31 on, it talks to us about feeding the hungry, taking in a stranger, visiting the sick and persecuted. v40 Because you have done these things to the least of my brothers, you have done them to me.

City of joy, is all about that. It is what I am seeing here on Saibai daily. Not as intense, I'm not that grandiose, but service that exceeds simple nursing.  And I love it.

A colleague said there are only three types of nurses that work in places like this. Mercenaries here for the money (and it can be huge), runaways- those nurses that are escaping something or someone; and missionaries- nurses who want to save the world.

Well after two weeks seeing what I've seen and experiencing what I've experienced, I'd like to suggest a fourth category.  Nurses that just come for an experience that will offer some perspective... And that is me.  I have just 5 more shifts here in this amazing place. I will leave thankful for what I have, and blessed for what I have achieved, and devastated for what I couldn't do.  But far richer in spirit than the nurse that left Toowoomba just 13 days ago.

These blogs are for me to reflect. I tell my nursing students to journal, because penning your thoughts is cathartic and reading them back is altruistic. When I go from here to my next assignment, life will go on and the starfish will still be on that beach just 3 km away. But I'll know that I did what I did with right intentions, and that some will swim again.