Lepers, numbness and our own Calcuttas?

Mother Theresa always said, “Calcuttas are everywhere – if only we have the eyes to see. Find your Calcutta.” I was ready to come home. I knew that my Calcutta was the United States. For I knew we could not end poverty until we took a careful look at wealth. ... I learned from the lepers that leprosy is a disease of numbness. The contagion numbs the skin, and the nerves can no longer feel as the body wastes away. In fact, the way it was detected was by rubbing a feather across the skin and if the person could not feel it, they were diagnosed with the illness. To treat it, we would dig out or dissect the scarred tissue until the person could feel again. As I left Calcutta, it occurred to me that I was returning to a land of lepers, a land of people who had forgotten how to feel, to laugh, to cry, a land haunted by numbness. Could we learn to feel again?

Shane Claiborn, The Irresistable Revolution. (after a stint of serving in a leper colony in Calcutta.)
Posted by Linda Martindale