Im sittin in my bed here at the Gateway, and I’m thinking of the concept of poverty. Being poor to one country is rich to another. Someone once told me that if you have a dollar, you are richer than the majority of the world’s population. And in the United States, telling someone your poor could mean you just don’t have the money at the time to buy exactly what you want. As I look around at the places people live here in Mexico, I am reminded of the true meaning of what being poor is. Being poor is not having enough food to survive day to day. Being poor is not caring about anything else except for the now- not having a hope for the future, just being resigned to the fact that you have to live this life for the rest of your life. Phil Collins (ha yes I know I did bring Phil Collins into this) wrote a song about being homeless and what a lot of us do when we see a poor person who needs help.
She calls out to the man on the street
“Sir, can you help me?
It’s cold and I’ve nowhere to sleep,
Is there somewhere you can tell me?”
He walks on, doesn’t look back
He pretends he can’t hear her
Starts to whistle as he crosses the street
Seems embarrassed to be there
Because we don’t see the effects of poverty every day, we don’t naturally bring it to the forefronts of our minds all the time. Seeing it around me everyday makes me realize how much I have just ignored the poverty around me in Columbus, Ohio, where I live.
We are reading a book called “Crabgrass and Oak Trees” by Jonathon Almanzar and Aaron Havens which expresses this thought about charity:
“There is a definite tendency in mankind to fight for itself. To store up for itself. To look out for number one. We have a very difficult time relying on someone else to provide for us, from the most simplistic of needs to the most dramatic… The self-made man who overcomes trials and tribulations though no one believes in him… Independence has become a virtue… No one should look out for my future but me; no one should be concerned for my well-being but me… We have come to a place where it is easy to close our eyes to the needs around us. Where we have made charity as simple a transaction as taking out the garbage, and view it much the same way. We give to the needy by filling a box with clothes we will never wear, driving down the alley to the back of Goodwill, and leaving the box at the back door. The entire time not meeting the less fortunate we say we are caring for.”
Here at the base, we all think that we are poor, because we don’t have the money to go to Nena’s every day to get hamburgers, or we don’t have the money to buy clothes when we go to the United States on our free days. But really… are we really poor. We have food, we have clothes; we have expensive sleeping bags and air conditioning. We have people who love us enough to help us if we needed it. We are rich. But what about the millions of people who have no one to help them rise out of their hole that they are in. That is poverty. Do we think about them? Or do we just “drive to Goodwill and drop off our old clothes” and drive away? We need to have the compassion to do something for these people. And we need to love those who have nothing, more than we love the chicken that we eat for dinner here at the base. It all comes down to love. Love others with a supernatural love. It changes things.
