The Paradox of Poverty
During
the Christmas season the parties of the rich were very good but the
parties of the poor were just fantastic. At the parties of the rich
people stood around sipping expensive drinks and eating expensive
food and eyeing one another self-consciously. "Am I in the right
company? am I appropriately dressed? do people notice me? how can
I leave without being conspicuous. Do people think this is better/worse
than the party I gave?" Thoughts like these are in many heads.
But at the parties of the poor there are just shrieks of mirth as
they throw themselves wholeheartedly into some parlor game. When the
time for eating comes everyone just guzzles with glee. There is a
totally unselfconscious presence to whatever is going on and one would
think that these people did not have a trouble in the world. Maybe
for this brief spell they do not have. For those who cannot enjoy
good things all the time it is important to have at least peak moments
of joy to remember.
There
is a co-relation between progress, poverty and winter. People who
have a winter have learned through the centuries to store up in the
summer so that they can live through the winter. This discipline establishes
natural habits of foresight and insurance that lead to progress. In
tropical climates, on the other hand, one may be poor but one will
rarely starve or freeze to death. There is always a banana or some
fruit in season that can be picked from your own or your neighbor's
back yard. There is always a relative from whom shelter from the generally
benign climate can be sought when necessary. This leads to the tendency
to live in the present rather than provide for the future.
Some
call this underdevelopment and even dehumanizing, and in a sense it
is. But discipline also has its darker side. It was only a disciplined
race that could exterminate millions of Jews or have a Tiananmen Square
massacre. We did not have massive bloodshed in EDSA in the Philippines
in 1986 because the soldiers would not fire on the people. Thank God
for that lack of discipline!
The
poor seldom commit suicide. They always hope that they will get rich
some day and thus solve their problems. The rich know that money does
not fill the inner emptiness and have much less to hope for. In the
Gospels we generally have a biased balance. We have parables that
urge us to provide for the future, to plant and reap, and to use the
talents that we have been given. However there seem to be a bias in
favor of a sense of joy and exultation in the present moment. Look
at the flowers of the field, the birds of the air; they do not spin,
they do not reap… but the Lord provides for them. Sufficient
for the day is the evil thereof.
This
weekend we are told in the Beatitudes of Matthew "Blessed are
the poor in Spirit, there's is the kingdom of God." Another translation
says, "Blessed are those who know their need for God."
Poverty,
a sense of trust in God's providence, would seem to be an essential
Gospel message and therefore also an essential attitude in prayer.
Unfortunately,
a lot of what we call prayer expresses a desire for riches and unconsciously
a distrust in God. What we ask for may be material riches or spiritual
ones - like being the most humble or holy person around! The latter
type of riches, according to St. John of the Cross, can be as destructive
as the former. We pray, asking God for more things, or power or prestige.
We have already mapped what God should do for us or give us. Obviously,
we think that God must be very stupid to need such explicit instructions.
If we think, as our way of praying tends to show, that God is stupid
then who is really the stupid one?
But
there is another approach to prayer, the approach of poverty. It is
what John Cassian in the 4th century called the "grand poverty"
of the mantra. The Cloud of the Unknowing called it the poverty of
the single verse. John of the Cross called it the seeking of the nada,
nothing. God knows already what we need even if it is not what we
want. God's Spirit is dwelling within us and will tell us what is
right if only we can shut up and let God be God.
Taken
from Sundays
into Silence - A Pathway to Life. Copyright © 1998 by Claretian
Publications
