My Missing Piece.

You know the feeling when you're looking desperately for a jigsaw piece and you finally find it, and see that it fits? That's how I felt this morning, after agonising over Somaly's plight.

I had bought a book lately, the first of its kind, a precious compilation of the stories and experiences of lovely Singaporean medical missionaries who valiantly took off to Africa and many poor parts of Asia to help the needy. When I opened the book randomly and started reading a short chapter written by a missionary doctor in the Philippines, it was as if I had found my Missing piece. It was a lovely coincidence.

So this is what the right thing is.

Dr Chau Chwen Hwe, a lady missionary, who together with her family founded a livelihood programme to help the poor in the Philippines help themselves, writes in Carry the Spices:

French ethnologist Marcel Mauss had this to say, "One kind of giving leaves a man in another's debt, disgracing and humiliating him like a bond-slave, while another kind of giving raises him to the dignity of a genuine personhood."

...

"Whenever generosity of giving and helping is of unconditional character, the recipient must be able to return the gift or some equivalent in order to remain his own respectable self. Otherwise he will begin to see himself as inferior to the giver; his personal sense of worth is downgraded, and instead of being grateful, he will be bitter."

-Dr John Janzen, a Christian anthropologist

...

"Empowerment of the poor is the kind of aid that helps them to help themselves. It is the empowerment when they can take pride in producing results with their own efforts. This is our journey with the poor- the kind of holistic help that lifts a person from dependency to dignified personhood."


So perhaps my best gift to Somaly would be our friendship, us keeping in touch, me writing to her and encouraging her in her faith in life, studies and God. Perhaps that is the best gift I can offer, a gift that both restores her dignity and moulds her character, a gift that sits in fairly well with me- my Missing piece. There will always be a part of me that turns and tosses, wondering how she is doing, how her mother is, what I can do for her, but for now, there is some sort of closure, for her next year of university education at least.

So this is what giving is, what Peace is.

I think I've found my Missing Peace.

Let us not be satisfied with just giving money.

Money is not enough, money can be got, but they need your hearts to love them.

So, spread your love everywhere you go.

-Mother Teresa