Women at the Well

Below is an exerpt from an article in Catholic Relief Services Magazine.

Life in Guyana always involved being conscious of water. If I wanted to make it through the day without severe dehydration I needed to bring clean water with me. Washing my clothes meant I had to wait for the dirt in the water to settle so that I wasn’t washing my clothes in dirty water. Washing my hands was considered a luxury if there was both a way to dry them that wasn’t on my skirt and soap. Going to work sometimes meant I had to track through big puddles of water with my long boots on. Guyana may have been called the land of many waters because of its geography but I call it the land of many waters because my life seemed to revolve around thinking about water in one way or the other. My life constantly reminded me of the importance of water and God used that physical lack to show me a spiritual lesson.

One night I had taken some of the boys from the orphanage on a walk by the sea wall which was only about ten feet from the ocean and was littered with garbage. Right next to the garbage-filled beach was the brown ocean. The boys ended up joining another group of young kids who were playing cricket between the sea wall and the ocean. I sat on the sea wall and watched the boys. I remember thinking how when I had first came to Guyana I would have only seen the dirty ocean and the garbage next to it. I would have been focused on all the negatives that surrounded me. Eighteen months later all I saw was the boys I love dearly and the beautiful sunset. God showed me that he had changed my heart, he taught me that it doesn’t matter how dirty the water is He still dwells in everything.

I was given the opportunity to work at an HIV clinic in Guyana. After working in the clinic I often wonder how many times before I went to Guyana I looked at a statistic about HIV and didn't think twice about it. HIV's toll on the world was so easy to overlook when I only saw numbers. My life in Guyana has forever made me look at these numbers not simply as numbers but as faces, as tears, as stories that are unheard by so many people.  Tears of my patients became the water I was to see too often. I thought of Jesus in the garden of Gethsemane and how he cried with those patients. God taught me more from the tears of those I worked with than from any tears I have ever cried myself.

I taught computers at a vocational school and I was always frustrated on days where it would rain because less than half of my class would show up. As my time in Guyana went on I began to realize the struggle that came with leaving the house in the rain. Not everyone can afford an umbrella or has a second pair of shoes to wear when one gets wet. In Guyana that vast majority of people use public transportation which means walking in the rain sometimes great distances. God asked me to be merciful bye showing me the struggles that I did not have to face. God gently led me from a perspective of judgment to a perspective of understanding and love.

I once heard someone say: “Mercy is putting your hands in dirty water”. I felt like God taught me how to pray through the image of dirty water. On mission I felt like I messed up over and over again and I began to view myself as dirty water. The Guyanese has a song in which takes the perspective of God speaking to us and the chorus goes: "I forgive you, I love you, you are mine, take my hand, go in peace, sin no more, beloved one". God was always speaking to me in Guyana saying: I am the one who will make you clean, I am the one guiding you, call my name and no matter how black your water is I will make it clean again. It was by becoming dirty water and reaching out for mercy that I learned God loves me.

Ashley Harris

Thank you for supporting Women at the Well. We hope you feel inspired, encouraged, informed and uplifted in your Catholic faith month after month! Our 2018 meetings are:

October 16
November 20
December 18

Email Chris Spinler for more information or call 651-253-2947.