Lunch Break

My poverty is not complete: it lacks me. - Voces by Antonio Porchia

Last week or so, a very special and personal event happened that I will remember and cherish for forever. It was my roommate Erin's turn to make dinner. And she made it very well. The dish she made was superb. It was something of a culinary fantasy that reminds you that you have a palette, and a fine one at that. This dish that I had never had before that gave me such joy was grilled cheese. Or as Lemony Snicket's Count Olaf might say, it's the Swedish term for cheese that is grilled. I'm not entirely certain as to why I had never given grilled cheese a try before, but I am not going back to such a life of deprivation. So to Erin, I am eternally grateful.

In any case, a discussion about the price of bread and cheese ensued because of how expensive it is up here, which then got us talking about how much we work for the amount of pay we receive and the perspective that we should keep that we are volunteering. But then an unsettling realization began to cloud over me as I pondered this word that I had written about in my first reflection: volunteer. According to the Oxford English Dictionary a volunteer is defined as, "a person who freely offers to do something" and "a person who works for an organization without being paid". Especially in terms of the second definition, what am I doing here? Or even still to echo Hamlet's resounding question in its agelessness, "to be or not to be" a volunteer... to be or not to be who I thought I was going to be when I signed up for this program.

Why is my work at the Church considered my "position" rather than my job? I get paid to do it, though not much. Yet, what is much? According to Globalissues.org, half of the world accounting for three billion people lives on less than $2 a day; UNICEF reported that 26,500-30,000 children die each day due to poverty; less than one per cent of what the world spent every year on weapons was needed to put every child into school by the year 2000 and yet it didn’t happen; 20% of the population in the developed nations, consume 86% of the world’s goods; and the list goes on and on.

We hear these facts and figures time and time again. We take mission trips, immersion trips, and study the problems and solutions behind modern Gothic architecture walls and 1 1/2 inched grass that you can't walk on. But where is this poverty? Where is this concept that we want to volunteer for, however you define volunteering? Yes it is in those empty bellies, in the facts, in those idealistic papers we write, on the news, out your front door, and maybe even in your home. But I ask you where should this poverty be? In your heart. A poverty so rich in humanness, in reality, that it holds and embraces in place our restless souls just looking for the answer to that question, "to be or not to be" or "why am I here". It calms us in the depths of our heart's floundering to breathe in that breath of clarity so we look at that answer of charity. It is the poverty that is and it is the charity that does.

It is true what they say that money cannot solve poverty, that would be missing the point. I want poverty to be in my heart, and not just around me or in my thoughts. How do I find that poverty that is always hungry to give, always thirsty for truth, and always yearning for the good? Poverty that is a vow to our interconnectedness, to dependency on charity that is to be given and charity that is to be received. Can I find it by working with my education from the top down through governmental organizations or from the bottom up? Can I still have it in my heart if I make a lot of money, but donate some of it and invest in my future children's education? Must I teach them this idea of poverty through monetary poverty additionally and always? It's one thing for me, but would it be another if I ever have a family? ... I digress.

How we are called to live this out I don't know. What I do know, is that Christ told us, "blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of God" (Mt 5:3). And in that sense poverty is not just a way of living, but a way of being.

Is your heart complete? What do you lack?