Enter Loneliness

After only four days am I really feeling lonely?  How can I be surrounded by so many loving people and feel so lonely?  Have I already failed?

These questions have been burning inside of me all day, even after I spent the morning hanging out with students in a remote village outside of Comalapa.  So far I have come up with two reasons for why loneliness has set in.  The first is obvious so I will spend my time on the second:

Reason #2

I was so excited to return to Guatemala after being enlightened for a year in Graduate School.  “Surely everything I learned in a classroom would carry over to my field research,” I thought.  The truth is I have never felt so disconnected to Guatemala.  Over the past year, Latin America has only existed in print and no matter how hard authors have tried to get it right, they always seem to come up short.  While it would be ridiculous for me to try and get it right here, I will say that the United States has never seemed so distant and that God has never seemed so close. 

Enter loneliness: 

I have spent the past year secularizing an environment that is anything but secular.  Without God in a place where so many people depend on him to get through the day, one cannot help but feel lonely.  I began analyzing the people I love in Guatemala through the books I have read and not through the God I worship.  I’m sorry.  I will try my hardest to never again be so petty. 

Reason #1

My wife is not with me.