poverty

Why I Love my Wife

One of the reasons, if not the reason, I am continually falling in love with my wife, over and over again, is that my wife shows me the face of the poor.

My wife was born very premature and very small, and only just survived with a lot of care, but she has had a lifelong illness that has been crippling or life-threatening when it’s not in remission. Her mother abandoned the family when my wife was a child. Her father became wealthy but, when he died, the family’s fortune was lost, and my wife and her brother suffered, their hopes for college and a bright future dashed. My wife, when I met her, was an orphan, broke, and sick, though her disposition was so sunny and cheerful, open and expressive, that you’d never know it.

Yama 8 - TibetContinually, when I see the poor of the world, I see her. When anyone is suffering or deprived, the fact that they are Somali or Kenyan or Cambodian or Indian or Palestinian doesn’t intrude – it’s as if, in their faces, I can see her face so clearly; in fact, I see in their faces the same simple hope, the same crushing pain, the same humanity I see whenever I look at my wife. She has shown me the poor, and turned my heart toward them, and so toward her.

I take no great lesson from this; I don’t know what the lesson is. I do know that it seems to be unusual. The people I know, good people, don’t look at others of different colors and features and nationalities the same way. They see a dichotomy between foreigners and their own, and there’s a rift between them and the world, and I don’t know how to communicate through that barrier. It’s a sadness and an alienation that will always be with me, and it seems to be the American attitude.

I go to work, and the Indian contractors call everyone “Sir”, because they are afraid of making a mistake (which could be ruinous for them in our hypersensitive corporate culture), and no one responds “But we’re the same, you and I. I’m John (or Peter or James).” They eat smelly food (which is delicious), and they sit among themselves, and no one intrudes to join them. They are looked upon simply as “they” and, since they are temporary, there’s no real need to identify with them on a daily basis. Instead of being our honored guests, they are our “guestworkers“, and you know what that term has meant, historically.

Jigme 8, Sonam 18 months - IndiaAmong my associates, I watch eyes glaze over when I talk about the poor in other countries, and I watch a nationalism come out that talks of “my own community” (even among conservatives who ordinarily wouldn’t use the word “community” to save their lives). They don’t realize that precisely because the “foreigner” seems distant to you, he is your stranger, your poor. He is Christ the Stranger, Christ the Foreigner, Christ the Alien, the Unknown Christ. But we live in a religious culture that behaves as if, when it doesn’t openly assert, that nothing about Christ in unknown. We have Him fully circumscribed. And in such a culture, Christ does not come to us in the stranger. He is not found in the wounded Jew cared for by the Samaritan. He is not in the suffering beyond the sea. He is Citizen Christ, of the United States. He is only the rich poor, and the rich’s poor.

Rationalizations abound, and I’ve heard them all – so much that they seem a drone of platitudes that each person parrots but presents as his original thoughts. Justifications, without real regard for truth. And I’ve no patience for it. It’s heresy. But give me the heretics who love the poor; they are my brethren. I must be willing to be even a heretic for their sake, though it is a grave thing to be considered so by one’s brethren.

My wife:

I was blind. Years of blindness. And my wife came and saved me. She showed me the outcast Somali woman, shunned by her own family for being sterile and incontinent from a childhood childbirth of a juvenile marriage. Made to live in a shack of sticks added reluctantly onto the back of the house – just enough shelter that the hyenas can’t get to her. That young girl dreams of belonging, of having a family, of being loved and wanted. My wife shows me the Kenyan woman who runs a barren stall under a tattered awning and dreams of getting China - Earthquake victimjust a little ahead, so she can make a life. Just a few extra wares, and she can sell all she can procure. She shows me Cambodian and Indian children, abandoned and with nothing, who are given pretty treats by passing adults (candy is easy to buy), but not enough real nutrition to grow properly, and who have no chance to go to university; it’s just a distant dream. Some of them may end up slaves, and some may wear away their lives in misery with never anything but the clothes that cover them in the fields. They begin to wonder why they are alive, why other peoples lives seem to have meaning. They begin to lose a sense of self. My wife shows me the Palestinian family, trapped in Gaza, the walled city, like the Jews in the ghettos of Germany, but this time the Jews are the jailors; a family any one of whom would work two shifts a day every day for the other, but surrounded by barbed wire and tanks, and not allowed even to seek a chance on the open streets in a fair market, while just beyond the tanks are high-rises and lush parks.

When I look at my wife, I see the simplicity, sincerity, the most basic desires that indicate a human spirit, and I look back and forth between her and the world, and she is everywhere. And we are the rich, the privileged, who complain because our 8hr jobs are too tiring, but she has taught me to see wealth differently. My wife has taught me to love the poor, and the poor have taught me to love my wife.

This is all I know about it. I am nothing special for being given this vision. It’s a grace. An unmerited gift. It has filled my life with such joy, such agony for others, and such sadness that I don’t know how to give it away. My wife has saved my life, saved me, a closed-minded, selfish, person who did not see the world and the poor for what they were. That’s all.

Resenting having to give

The presence of the passion of avarice reveals itself when a person enjoys receiving but resents having to give. — St. Maximos the Confessor

Love scatters money

The lover of money sneers at the Gospel, and is a willful transgressor. He who has attained to love scatters his money. But he who says that he lives for love and for money has deceived himself. — St. John Climacus

Comment: the overturning of the moneychangers tables is a sign of this.

pretext of almsgiving, hatred of the poor

The beginning of love of money is the pretext of almsgiving, and the end of it is hatred of the poor. So long as he is collecting he is charitable, but when the money is in hand he tightens his grip. — St. John Climacus

Lent, Poverty, and Alms

Money! Money! Power! Honor! These are the temptations which, unfortunately, many people are unable to resist.

This is the source of all the disputes, disagreements and divisions among Christians.

This is the root of people’s forgetting the “one thing needed” which is proposed to us by the true Christian faith and which consists of prayer, acts of repentance, and sincere, unhypocritical charity to our neighbors. The Holy Church always calls us to this, but especially now, during the Great Lent! What is required of us Christians is not some kind of “exalted politics,” not lofty phrases and hazy philosophy, but the most humble prayer of the Publican: “God, be merciful to me, a sinner!”, acts of repentance, and doing good to our neighbors, which proceeds from a pure heart.

And it is for the practice of all of this that the Church has established the Great Lent! How powerfully, colorfully, graphically, and convincingly, with what ardent inspiration is all of this spoken of in the divine services of Great Lent!

No one anywhere has such a wealth of edification in this regard as do we Orthodox in our incomparable Lenten services, which, to their shame, the majority of Orthodox in our times do not know at all.

— Archbishop Averky of Syracuse (of Blessed Memory)

So much depends on this.

Armenian OrphansThis broke my heart today: “You who sit there in utter misery, look up and show your friend your face. There is no darkness bears a cloak so black as could conceal your suffering. Why wave your hand to warn me of the taint of blood? For fear your words pollute me? I am not afraid to share your deep affliction with you…” – Euripides (quoted here). Break my heart, Lord.

As we begin Great Lent, giving alms to the poor from what we do not eat, be not afraid with me, friend.

From the same site, this excerpt from The Visionary by Rilke.

How little are the things with which we wrestle.
What with us wrestles, how much greater is!

If only we would let ourselves be conquered
as things are overcome by a great storm,
we would expand in space and need no names.

When we victorious are, it is over the small things,
and though we won, it leaves us feeling small.

Gluttony of Delicacy

The Great LitanyThis is an entry in the comments of another article. It seems like it might also make a good article.

Each Winter stray cats starve and freeze to death in agonizing pain, whether in the country or in ordinary residential neighborhoods, right outside of abundant shelter and food. I always wanted to help, but I couldn’t think of the right way to do it, the correct way, the best way. So I did nothing. And that was more about my needs than the cats. I had it in the power of my hands with things lying around the garage or the house to deliver God’s creatures from torment, and I didn’t, and I am supposedly a Christian.

Feral Cat HouseThis year, I was talking about it with my friend, and she said simply, “Don’t let obsession w. doing it perfectly keep you from doing anything. Do something.” First, I made one from a box and a towel – which is a very BAD cat house – even harmful. But then I decided that however long it took, this year, I’d do something, and do it well. I missed the first freeze from my absence of concern and attention, and I’ve no doubt some cats lost their lives. Then I researched feral cat houses online, and found that towels wick away body heat and get damp and cause hypothermia. And that there’s a right way to build inexpensive cat houses for strays and a whole community of people doing it. I built two of this kind. I got righteous, to use a surfer term. And the cats are using them.

PerfectionismThere’s a sin the fathers warn us of: “Gluttony of delicacy.” It is the sin of choosing not to pray or approach the holy things because of the dept of my sin, when in fact praying and returning to God is what would save me. It’s a form of despair. Overmuch (gluttony) of delicacy (the need to have it all just right – perfect – before I will act or do anything). It is a grievous sin.

Writ against the world of loving others, how grievous and most grievous. That I would fail to give to the poor because I couldn’t be 100% certain they wouldn’t buy some booze, or because some of it might go to administrative costs, or what have you: I am guilty of that sin. I spent years not giving, because I couldn’t find the ‘right’ charity, and I was afraid of throwing my money down the toilet. …

The Treasure of the Church

Shanty TownSt. Lawrence was summoned to the Emperor, who demanded he turn over to him the treasure of the Church. St. Lawrence ‘s response was to beg for time, which he received.

He then went and redistributed the material wealth of the Church to those who needed it (legend says that it was Lawrence who sent the Holy Grail to Spain for safekeeping), and afterward he gathered up a great number of the homeless, the blind, the lame, the maimed, the lepers, orphans and widows. He brought all these before the Emperor, and declared, “Here before you. These you see are the treasure of the Church.”

Martyrdom of St. LawrenceAngered at his audacity, the enraged prefect ordered that St. Lawrence be grilled alive on a gridiron. At one point during his torture, St. Lawrence joked with his executioners, “You may turn me over now, I’m done on this side.” And a little later, he added, “I believe I am quite done. You may now eat.” In Rome there is a shrine commemorating Lawrence that includes the gridiron used in his death. Perhaps in keeping with his humor, St. Lawrence is the patron of cooks.

One writer says, “As Lawrence reminds us, the treasures of the church are the sick, the poor, the least of these and those who have been thrown outside the camp by those who pretend to be the ones in power.” and “On the street-corner, holding a cup and asking for change, is the wealth and treasure of the church.”

The Eye of a Needle

EdieI once had a spiritual advisor, Edie, and among the things that she helped me with was this: I was starting to lose heart, because I was poor. The people around me had been saying that it’s a sign of God’s judgment on me, and that I should be ashamed because I couldn’t pay my bills, and was in debt, and had to pay late fees all the time. It’s so easy for the poor to become demoralized about being poor, but especially when the people of God are against you. But Edie gave the scriptures back to me. She read the Gospel to me and asked me, “Who are the poor?” Then she answered, “They are those who cannot pay their bills, who are in debt, and who have to pay interest and penalties all the time. It was this way even when Christ walked among the poor.” She added, “you cannot despise yourself for being poor, because then you would be despising the very thing that Christ does not despise. And as for judgment, it is those who despise the poor that Christ said he would judge. So love the poor, and be poor, and don’t despise anyone, and be saved.”

Anthony CampoloOver the years, I began to hear another luminary, Tony Campolo. He showed me how I live in the wealthiest nation in the world, or at least the most gluttonous, even if it is really on borrowed loot. “You know and I know that most of what we spend in any given year is spent on stuff that we don’t need.” Campolo showed me my poverty as riches compared to the truly poor of the world. I have always been able to eat, but there are mothers watching their children wither in their arms and their whole families die, because they cannot even find water. Here, it would be hard to find a poor dwelling without cable TV. Others in the world can’t even imagine owning something so valuable as a TV; an inexpensive one here would feed a family there for a year.

Then eventually, I began again to listen to the Gospel itself, with ears unstuck, and I could hear Christ. I don’t mean any kind of ecstatic vision. I mean I could hear the simple words and see them in the present. And that’s when I realized that the poor are not only the hungry. They are those deprived of friendship or status (the stranger), of peace and comfort (the afflicted), of refuge (the naked and homeless). They are all those everywhere who want of grace, of the grace it has been given us to give them. The poor are covered with sores. They are the man of the tombs. They are the born blind and held in institutions. They are the abandoned spouse – the widow. The unwanted child – the orphan. The immigrant. They are those with a demon, the mentally ill, antisocial, illegal, hunted, turned against themselves and all men. And it is ever to the poor that Christ goes, ever with them that he concerns himself. I can hear Campolo say, “And you can’t be a Christian, unless you do likewise.” I can hear Edie say, “woe to those who despise the poor.” I can hear Christ, “inasmuch as ye have done it to the very least of all these – these my brethren…”

I look now on the emptiness of my years, the meaninglessness of what I have spent so much of myself upon, since that is the currency for which even the ‘poor’ man can give account. I have been given the riches of my life, the abundance of my temporal existence. On what have I spent such wealth? And isn’t it that, my very existence, I threaten to forfeit in the Judgment?

That’s when I hear Campolo again, saying, “He condemns people like me with words like these, for I hear him echoing down through the corridors of time: ‘it is harder for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven than for a camel to go through the eye of a needle.”

Judgment Hastens

PoliceA few years ago, in a nearby college town, I saw police hassling a homeless person who was also probably a little emotionally sick. He’d been sitting on a bench with his gear outside some businesses in the campus area. Apparently someone had decided he was talking to himself too loudly and called 911.”I didn’t do anything,” he said. One of the officers replied, “Do you want us to find something to arrest you for?” Yes, they offered to just make something up – to falsely accuse the man, something I’ve seen more than once.
PoliceTonight on our local city channel is a piece about a new ordinance aimed at panhandlers. The police spokesman said it’s only aimed at “aggressive panhandling” not at the free speech protections accorded panhandlers. It became clear quickly that the opposite was true, when he described twelve definitions of “aggressive pandhandling”. These include asking for charity too close to a phone booth, or too close to sundown, or to anyone waiting in line for a show or any other kind of line, or asking more than once, or ‘following’ a person so you can ask them for charity. Between the twelve ways to mess it up, there’s really no place to stand and no way to ask. What’s worse, it’s designed so the accuser is presumed truthful. We’re told, we “have the right to write out a citation, and have the individual arrested.” In short, they’ve made it impossible for the poor (and these are the poor among us) to survive.

Looking on these things, I am reminded that the only people who will not go into everlasting fire – not Hell, mind you, but the eternal torment – are those who care for the poor:

by Aidan Hart - iconographer“Then shall he say also unto them on the left hand, Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels: For I was hungry, and ye gave me no meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me no drink: I was a stranger, and ye took me not in: naked, and ye clothed me not: sick, and in prison, and ye visited me not.”

The rod of iron cometh. “Do we not now reck his rod?” Each knee begins to bow, and each tongue confess. Despite the pride. Despite the greed and self-worship. Can you feel the Judgment coming soon? And the answer that must be given?

“And out of his mouth goeth a sharp sword, that with it he should smite the nations: and he shall rule them with a rod of iron: and he treadeth the winepress of the fierceness and wrath of Almighty God.”

Lord have mercy. And beyond this, it is difficult to say anything. We each know what we have done or have not done. We know where our treasure is, or where it has not been. Who can really answer for anyone but himself? I only know this; the Judgment is coming. It hastens. It is closer now, and closer, every day. And I am an unrighteous man.

Dazzling StoneAt the Dazzling Stone Orphanage in India, little children send up their prayers for people who bring them soap or toothpaste, or rice, or nutrient drinks. Can you imagine this? Those little voices, going forth to God… “Have mercy on Mr. Smith, who gave us a meal. On Mrs. Jones, who gave us some clean towels. On … ” Who will cry out for me, I wonder? Will any voice be heard?

How much I crave now the prayers of those ones, those few small voices, so very few, for whom I have given so much less than a tithe, so much less than alms, less even than I spend on cups of coffee. How I want the riches of their prayers for my salvation, so that someone will bear witness on my behalf in the Judgment. And I can barely imagine the voices of those who will cry out that I could have helped them and did not. I haven’t learned their voices, and I haven’t asked their prayers. They are unknown to me, and cry from the ground.

Click photos for source. Fair use.

Take no Life, for any cause

“Above all things: forget not the poor, but support them to the extent of your means. Give to the orphan, protect the widow, and permit the mighty to destroy no man. Take not the life of the just or the unjust, nor permit him to be killed. Destroy no Christian soul, even though he be guilty of murder.” – Saint Prince Vladimir, Equal-to-the-Apostles, in his Testament to his children, The Primary Chronicle, written by St. Nestor of the Kiev Caves, 1096 AD

What ascesis means for alms

“The bodies of fellow human beings must be treated with greater care than our own. Christian love teaches us to give our brethren not only spiritual gifts, but material gifts as well. Even our last shirt, our last piece of bread must be given to them. Personal almsgiving and the most wide-ranging social work are equally justifiable and necessary. The way to God lies through love of other people and there is no other way. At the Last Judgment I shall not be asked if I was successful in my ascetic exercises or how many prostrations I made in the course of my prayers. I shall be asked, did I feed the hungry, clothe the naked, visit the sick and the prisoners: that is all I shall be asked.” – Saint Maria Skobtsova of Paris [source]

Let there be no dichotomy

“Do you wish to honor the Body of the Savior? Do not despise it when it is naked. Do not honor it in church with silk vestments while outside it is naked and numb with cold. He who said, “This is my body,” and made it so by his word, is the same that said, “You saw me hungry and you gave me no food. As you did it not to the least of these, you did it not to me.” Honor him then by sharing your property with the poor. For what God needs is not golden chalices but golden souls.”

–St. John Chrysostom / “On the Gospel of St. Matthew”, 50, iii (PG 58, 508) [source]

The Sermon that Recapitulates the Entire Gospel

“Then shall the King say unto them on his right hand, Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world: For I was an hungred, and ye gave me meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink: I was a stranger, and ye took me in: Naked, and ye clothed me: I was sick, and ye visited me: I was in prison, and ye came unto me.” – Christ, The Olivet Discourse (Another Sermon on the Mount)

Comment: Who is the hungry? It is all those who want for anything, tangible or intangible. Christ is the hungry, who persevered in fasts for 40 days. Who is the thirsty? It is all those whose bodies are deprived of water, impeding their salvation, and who are deprived of the Spirit, keeping them in slavery, and who are deprived of baptism, keeping them in darkness concerning the Holy Trinity. Christ is the thirsty, who was given bitter gall. Who is the stranger? The stranger is the immigrant, the alien, the foreigner, the ethnic, the non-ethnic, the newcomer, the illegal alien, the person of another culture, even a hostile culture, the deviant, the dissident, the outsider, the antisocial, and the person whom we feel we will never understand. Enemies are strangers. These are days in which it is frequently forgotten that the stranger is Christ, who comes to us as a stranger. He comes to those who are really his own, and we do not know him, even denying him in the world when the cock crows. Who is the naked? The naked are all vulnerable people in the world, and the vulnerable among us. The naked is Christ, for whose clothes we drew lots. Who are the sick? The sick are all of us, because we are all sick with the affliction of Death, the source of all sickness. Christ became sickness for us, became sin, taking our infirmity that we might be healed. Who is the prisoner? The prisoner is the person kept in physical bondage, kidnapped, traded as a slave, captured as enemies and imprisoned for interrogation, tortured, jailed for crimes – the prisoner is the guilty as well as the innocent. The prisoner is all those kept in emotional or physical bondage by the wielders of power, control, and wealth. The prisoner is the one deprived of the means of freedom. The prisoner is the one who lifts up his eyes in Hell or Hellish existence. The prisoner is every one of us who in any way yields to the passions; we are the wrongly imprisoned, on a self-imposed sentence, and we too are in need of mercy. The prisoner is Christ, taken in chains to Golgotha, tortured, mistreated, unjustly convicted, and sentenced to death at the hands of civil and religious authorities. All these, the hungry, thirsty, stranger, naked, sick, prisoner, and us, and Christ, are “the poor”. But “blessed are the poor in spirit,” those who “consider themselves inferior to all.” As the fathers say, “there is only one sin, that of despising anyone.” or as Christ put it, “Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.” Christ’s sermon then shows us the Passion, and also the gifts of the Spirit, telling the whole gospel. And it is actually a full explication of the answer to that pressing question: ‘How should we then live?’ – DD

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