Moscow's Autobahn-style subway, the Metro, is a crammed ballroom of somber travelers all swaying and tilting to the cadence of the streaking train. Shuffle. Lean. Shuffle. Lean. No one smiles. Few speak.

Nonchalantly shifting my eyes from passenger to passenger, I notice several Muscovites sheepishly glancing at my feet. A Westerner's leather shoes scream of democracy and dollars. Russians' shoes are plastic, broken, dirty. Most have one pair, or at most, two. No pumps and loafers to match every outfit. No shoe polish.

What is it like to walk miles in a babushka's shoes every day? In slushy snow, over frozen lumpy fields? Through junk-strewn alleys? What is it like to stand shivering for two hours in the 3 a.m. mist just to buy a liter of milk? What is it like to shuffle around town in the same dress Monday through Friday?

If you took away my leather boots, my closet full of sweaters and skirts, my car, my bank account, and my conveniences, and put me on a subway in plastic shoes, what would I feel?

I wonder.

Staying Alive

The streets of Tirana, Albania, like hot-pepper ice cream, are a flavorful concoction of contrasts. It is an obscure world of urban decay and country flowers, children and elderly, government sophisticates and scraggy beggars.

Squatting, napping, or meandering along Tirana's uneven cobblestones, lean, dark-haired men squander away the afternoon sun flinging pebbles at scrawny street dogs. Some of these unemployed (many are college graduates) pass around faded photos of brothers or friends who fled the country to find work and freedom. It's the mailed-home money that keeps many malnourished Albanians out of early graves.

But for most families, supplemental income from abroad is not an option. Some succumb to the horrors of maiming their children and placing them on the streets as a begging tool. A child sans hand or foot elicits more attention and thus more money. Other parents drug their toddlers into a comatose state, sprawl them on squalid, tattered blankets along sidewalks, and wait for a crumpled bill or a few well-worn coins to drop their way.

Stepping around these disfigured and doped children, I squirm with pity and anger. How could someone saw off her child's foot as a means to earn a living? Wondering about this, I walk to a convocation of educators who will be discussing classroom ethics. On the way, some of Tirana's brown-eyed little ones invite themselves into my life. Kids with pretzel-stick legs pat my back. With dirt-crusted hands they point to my purse, and in spurts of broken English, plead, "Dolla, madam, dolla, please."

I dare not look into their eyes. Perhaps I fear tears escaping from mine. Perhaps I simply fear giving to one and being mobbed by all. Throughout my week in Albania I hear the same question asked by mothers, students and engineers: "Why does our country suffer for so long?"

What can I say? Would it minimize their pain to inform them that all over the world, even in America, people suffer?

"True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar," Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. once said. So if I withhold coins from beggars, what would true compassion look like?

I wonder.

Desensitized

The U.S. Census 2000 reported 31.1 million Americans live in poverty. Slammed by stock market crashes, terrorist threats and wartime repercussions, our nation's economy sighs and slumps. The number of unemployed adults rises. From my living room, I've witnessed racial beatings, flooding farmsteads, the court-room dramas of abusive parents, and imploding skyscrapers. Yet each disaster, each death, each new statistic menacingly creates another layer of numbness, desensitizing my soul.

In my home town, I seldom pass a haggard street person. I seldom hear the pleas of a destitute child. How easy it's grown to detach myself from the demise of teens caught in classroom crossfire, let alone the horrific deaths of people halfway across the country or halfway around the world. When will the sobering statistics ruffle my middle-class lifestyle? How will these numbers challenge the callousness of my indifference? Will they ultimately change me?

I wonder.

Different Shoes

I have a widowed friend who can barely survive on her Social Security checks. My neighbor is struggling with breast and bone cancer. A friend is recovering from childhood sexual abuse. A co-worker is stumbling in her marriage. Are these familiar people really that different from the weary babushkas of Moscow or the hungry children in Tirana? These women all wear different shoes. But at heart they wrestle with the same question: "Why do we suffer for so long?"

Their agonized cries are similar to those of ancient peoples, even people of wealth and status like Israel's King David, who lamented, "My soul is in anguish. How long, O Lord, how long?"

I wonder.

Turbulent Life

Some people think that when God came to earth, he came to be a sandal-clad sugar daddy or a genteel prophet promoting pacifism. Others believe Jesus was an idealistic zealot attempting to bring political freedom, or to establish a wealthy and powerful religious following. But look at Jesus' own stern words: "It is hard for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven." And, "Woe to you who are rich," he said, "for you have already received your comfort. Woe to you who are well fed now, for you will go hungry."

"Woe"? That is God sounding more like a counter-culture punk activist than a straitlaced do-gooder. Jesus took off his glory and power to come live in our mess. He overthrew power paradigms. He challenged the status quo. He confronted the systems that kept people marginalized. He gave up everything to face the pain -- our pain -- and make it his.

In his 33 years on earth, Jesus looked into more emaciated faces and eyes scarred by hurt than I'll ever see. He embraced the agony of more wounded spirits than I'll ever know. He touched more crippled, decaying limbs than I'll ever witness. He listened to cries of hunger, loneliness and despair more poignant than I'll ever hear.

What if he had closed his eyes to the leper, the widow, the prostitute -- or even to me? Where would I be today if that Galilean had holed up in his carpentry workshop instead of mingling with our tainted world?

I wonder.

And what response might this gutsy Jesus expect of me when I bump up against needs in my neighborhood or around the world? He gave up everything. What will living in this turbulent world cost me? At what point will a dose of pain become lethal to my indifference? How long before I'm propelled across the do-something-now threshold?

These kinds of questions only seem to generate more. Now that I'm thinking about it, I wonder: Was that God on the Moscow train? And in Tirana, were those his hands tapping my purse? Is that him trapped in the wheelchair next door? Could that be him challenging me right now, "where your treasure is, there will your heart be also"?

I hope.