excerpts from a letter

I'm fine I guess, I'm always struggling with what to do, with trying
to understand how God fits into my life and how my life fits into his
plan. I read a lot, a book right now about immigrants from the
Carribean to Canada in the 70s.It is by Austin Clarke, a
Barbados-born Canadian. It is very interesting, but very disturbing, to see how he portrays black immigrant's ideas about white
immigrants and other canadians.

Today I went to a very interesting church, we had sandwhiches as part
of the service, to get a chance to meet the other people, to try and
develop more of a sense of community. I really enjoyed that. It is a
church that tries to serve poor people so there were lots of hungry
people there, the woman I sat with had come in to escape the rain. I
wondered about some of the conversations I heard, sitting beside this
woman who'd spent the day in the rain and the night huddled in a
doorway, i could hear people talking about gardens and birthday gifts
and the tour de france. I felt like all that stuff excluded her from
the conversation, but on the other hand, if the other people weren't
free to talk about what was on their minds, then they would never be
open, would never be a real part of the community either. So I don't
know. What should you talk about when trying to be friends with
someone who hasn't had the same circumstances as you? And isn't it
prejudiced of me to think that just because she is going through hard
times she has no interest in those things? (It is true that she
didn't join any of those conversations, but she didn't really join in
any others unless she was asked a direct question)

I think this was a problem for me in Haiti too. Certainly I could ask questions about their
lives and about Haiti, but there were few people with whom I could
relax and feel like I had common ground.

I really enjoyed my host mom for that, actually. Even though there was a big
language barrier, when we actually sat and talked I felt like we had
really good talks, about men and politics and religion and psychology
and stuff. Sometimes I felt like we weren't talking about the same
things, or that maybe she was just letting me rant and didn't really
care, but I felt like I could talk to her. And one other girl too, but
that was less surprising because her family is more familiar with whites and North Americans, and we could speak french which was easier.