Jitterbugging for Jesus

This is the sixth in a series of seven scriptural reflections on poverty and the poor, not intended make any Christians feel guilty or shame them into taking up a radical life of serving the poor like a Dorothy Day or a Mother Theresa–serving might be as simple as being a barber and giving free shaves and haircuts to the homeless . . . with payments in hugs. More on the intent of this series in the final wrap-up posting on the poor coming soon.

(For Sister Lora, “Nun on a Chicken Bus,” con amor.)

SCRIPTURE: Isaiah 58: 1-9

KEY VERSES: (6, 7) “Is not this the fast that I choose . . . Is it not to share your bread with the hungry, and bring the homeless poor into your house; when you see the naked, to cover them, and not to hide yourself from your own kin?”

The other side of Paradise: The one-room home of a Belizean friend at San Pedro, the popular tourist island and home or extra home of many of the rich and famous expats. As a priest friend of mine said of this house, “It’s like so many of them in Belize–one big tropical storm or hurricane away from non-existence.”

To start out this posting I want to refer you back, dear reader, to the prior posting in this series.

It included a quote I’d like to unpack from a Baptist Standard interview with Dr. Scott Wang, a physician who brings his considerable powers of medical and spiritual healing to the poor and working poor in Garland, Texas.

And mind you, I aim to tease out the good doctor’s statement from my own theological and personal point of view, not Dr. Wang’s, whatever his may be.

Dr. Wang said the following of the poor and working poor patients that he serves (with my italics for emphasis): “They don’t have as much materially to cover up their pain.”

As I see it, acquiring more possessions, shopping till dropping, “movin’ on up” and arriving at some sprawling dream house–perhaps on the island of false security that something like life in a supposedly safe and but insular gated community brings . . . . well, possessing and acquiring ever more riches and possessions can cover up and bury all kinds unresolved stuff within a wounded soul.

Dr. Wang went on to say in the interview that because the poor lack material things to “cover up their pain,” a lot of pain and raw emotion will pour out out of them if you build a trusting rapport with them and really hear what they have to say about their hardships and struggles.

Longtime readers at this blog know that I’ve condensed my theology into this tagline:

We’re all broken people, doing the best we can, or the best we know how to do, in a broken and violent world, with all of us standing in need of God’s healing power of endless love, endless grace and tender mercies.

To expand on that I’d say that our brokenness, and that of the world; our nagging “dis-ease” in and with life; our “baggage” packed with unhealthy habits and patterns that keep us stuck in the same unhealthy or self-destructive ruts; all of our pain, anxiety, fear and insecurity we harbor and try to bury deeper within ourselves; all of our craving for someone’s unconditional love on this earth; all of the psychological “stuff” that we cover up with everything from over-drinking, over-eating and over-sexing to over-shopping and hyper consumerism–it’s all enough to keep us feeling vaguely alienated and ever-more vaguely, if not outright, dissatisfied.

So we want and need more in our pursuit of happiness and peace of mind, or think we do, thinking that one more, higher paying job that we might hate will put us on easy street and relieve all our problems–or at least a house with a pool and jacuzzi will finally help us cope with problems if they do arise.

But of course, as the salesman, retail companies and their advertisers know, we get what we want, only to want more.

A character in a short story by the wonderful Kentucky writer Bobbie Ann Mason tells another character,

“You got so many wants, you don’t know what you want!”

All too often, the harder we work to succeed and have more, the more stuff we want, the more callous our hearts grow toward the poor. It can make us willfully blind to the many ways that the fixes are in against the poor simply “pulling themselves up by the bootstraps.”

MLK Jr. said it’s a cruel thing to tell a man to pull himself up by the bootstraps when he has no boots.

If there’s one thing I’ve learned in relationships with the poor and working poor in the U.S. and other countries, it’s that they want to earn money and have the same basic possessions that we take for granted. I’ve found that they just want to work and have enough good, healthy food, clean water and some sewage, decent clothes, decent housing, reliable and comfortable and affordable transportation, and good schooling for their children.

Most of the poor I’ve gotten to know want nothing more than enough to keep their young off of mean streets and away from the temptations of escapism from poverty through drugs and alcohol and the lure of “easy” money in drug dealing, prostitution and casual, unloving and potentially destructive sex.

Like anybody else the poor, who are caught up in the many vicious cycles of poverty that are hard for the “haves” to know or comprehend, above all want their children to have lives more comfortable and convenient than their own, without the crushing, relentless, desperate struggles it takes just to survive another day, week or month.

The vast majority of the poor want to live and raise children and enjoy their lives and families in neighborhoods, communities and nations in peace, with peace on earth and good will toward all.

And that’s where Christians, the peacemakers, with all their Christian love of God and equal love all of their neighbors of the world–our “own kin,” as Isaiah mentions in the scripture reading–come in.

Or is that so much Christian talk.