ending poverty in our time
so here we are. blog action day. in which we do something about poverty.
now. i could get all cynical here and point out all of the things that are stupid about having any kind of day, or the ridiculousness of some of the bullet points people offer up for “doing something about poverty”.
or i could offer up some sort of action that you could take that would pass the cool test, like a really good group or two to throw your money at. i could even mention that it’s not about the money!
then i remember one of my old jesus quotes, something along the line of “the poor you will always have with you”, and that get’s me to thinking. so now we are all in trouble!
spiritual poverty vs. material poverty
so i guess i’m in agreement with ol’ jc, and want to just add that “the poor” ain’t always the same folks. i’ve been among them from time to time. and while i don’t have a friggin’ clue about the african dichotomy of hope and despair, i do know a little something about spiritual and material poverty in my own life. i know that for me, they are related and yet quite separate, that they are always in flux, and that either one can lead to a bad case of the other.
case in point
in the summer of 2001 i was at a high point both materially and spiritually. i was driving a relatively new car, living in a new to me house, income on the rise, enjoyable work, friends that i loved. then i did something crazy absolutely crazy: i got married and moved to boston (note to self…never make a major move 3 weeks before and 3 weeks away from a major terrorist attack).
long story short the marriage lasted 9.5 weeks in the same house, and then another 18 months dragging through the labyrinthine divorce court hell of the state of massachusetts.
spiritual poverty sets the stage for financial collapse
suddenly i had just about nothing left from the previous summer aside from my car. my house was sold, jobs quit, friends now half a continent away. on a spiritual level i was crushed. i found a job where i loved everyone but the owner (feelings mutual). that didn’t last. i moved into a cheap room with five roomates, each of whom was 15 to 20 years younger than me. Yikes! if only i had a paddle!
so. cigarettes, alcohol, desperation angel was i. my spiritual cache was at an all time low. not to mention my weekend. and that dragged my material game down as well.
so eventually i lost that job and lived on unemployment for a few weeks before i looked in the mirror, remembered the day just 2 years earlier when i bought my house: just five years after a bankruptcy! and i knew that i was either heading down or i was heading up.
material pulls spirit up a slow path to daylight
so i found a new job, worked hard, looked at my vices. cigarettes were the first to go (we’ll talk about that later), excessive drunkenness followed in short order…it’s hard to drink too much when the bars are full of smokers and you are still freshly quit. and slowly, and surely, as i rebuilt my material existence, pulled myself out of that version of poverty, my spirit came along as well.
i began practicing more yoga. a lot more. i started teaching. breathing. meditating. long days in the park taking pictures. journals, morning pages, personal blogging. and then i was out. whew.
partners in crime, partners in success
one thing i’ve learned in my many adventures with spiritual and material poverty is this: spirit and material are partners. if one is in poverty it will try to pull the other down with it. perhaps it is lonely. and if you don’t want to go down either side of the valley of poverty, then it’s best to pay attention to both sides. material advancement requires spiritual advancement. and vice reversed.
and if you want to help someone out of a hole…make sure you are helping their spirit as well. that must be what that guy meant when he said that if you give a man a fish he’ll eat for a day, and if you teach him how to fish he’ll eat forever.
do you have any poverty stories of your own? talk your talk!
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