Who is really poor?

I often have clients that don't know where their next meal is going to come from. Mothers who aren't sure that their children will have clothes to wear to school or a coat to put on when it is cold. Clients that call and cancel their session because they can't pay their $2.50 fee. I have found myself on more than one occasion walking out to my nice car at night with a friend and talking about how privledged, spoiled, and unappreciative we; well no I am. I think about my Compassion child I sponsor (see earlier post) and how she took a birthday gift and bought milk and eggs for her family; things that often sit in my refrigerator so long they go bad.

I have never known NEED although I worry plenty enough for all of us about retirement funds and paychecks and how I will pay my student loans off. I'm too proud to take jobs that some of my clients would be thrilled to even be able to submit an application for. I talk about how my heart goes out to these people a lot but then I start my car, go to my nice house with heat, cook me a nice meal, open a Diet Dr. Pepper (also known to some of my colleagues as Texas Coke), turn on my TV and get absorbed in The Office or American Idol and my middle class comfortable life and forget the oppression that my clients face everyday.

Last fall in gender and ethnicty class we watched a video on Mother Teresa. There are no words to explain or describe my feelings as we watched this compassionate saint pour her heart out to people. In my class on Monday we watched this video again. I forgot the raw emotion I felt from this, the humbleness, the feelings of how naive and how much lack of awarness I have. The questions keep nagging me what can I do? What am I supposed to do? I'm not no Mother Teresa. One of her quotes in the video has stuck with me (hopefully this is close to what the quote was) "to understand poverty we must become poverty".

What does this mean? That I go and sell everything and live on the streets. I think that each of us have to answer that question in our own means but it has really consumed my thoughts this week. I try to force my clients that have little to nothing into my mold of middle class. If they don't have a job I come up with all the simple ways it is for me to get a job and push my goals for them upon them. I am beginning to understand this more and to find a balance here but it is so hard to understand a lifestyle, a way of life that we have never had to live. A way of life with stresses that aren't about writing papers, reading for class, getting our oil changed, or where we are going to eat our next meal; but a lifestyle with one goal: survival.

So I asked one of my the people I know that has lived multiple times on the streets, that often doesn't know if they will be able to see me because they doesn't have bus fare to get to where I am, that doesn't know if they are going to eat tonight much less tomorrow; I saw this person this week and asked them what they would do if I gave them a $100? Not much money to us in the grand scheme of things, a fortune for them. What they said brought me to tears. They said they would take it and give it to this lady that lives on the corner that has a three year old. It brings me to tears again to think about this. This person has NOTHING. It is freezing outside today and they are here in torn sweats and a t-shirt with a light jacket and are living on the streets and in shelters when they are available which is far from every night. Yet they would give a fortune away. They did not hesitate in this answer either. No thoughts of well I would buy myself a meal, and my friend a meal, and maybe some clothes but simple expression of love I would give to those even less fortunate than me (someone that I see as less fortunate). Ok maybe not everybody would do this; crap I wouldn't do it; I would pocket that $100 and think of what I would buy that I probably wouldn't have bought otherwise.

This person went on to say something else that made me full out cry in their pressense, "you have given me much more than $100 because you have sat here and listened to me and loved me for who I am and for all the stupid sh** I have done ......" What I didn't tell you is this is one of my most frustrating people and I absolutely dread it when I see them. Talk about being humbled. I'm still realing. What if I really showed them compassion and empathy out of love instead of obligation?

Now don't get me wrong I am in no way minimizing lower class or promoting upper class or minimizing the struggles of physical poverty but think about these quotes from Mother Teresa:

"Being unwanted, unloved, uncared for, forgotten by everybody, I think that is a much greater hunger, a much greater poverty than the person who has nothing to eat. "
"The most terrible poverty is loneliness and the feeling of being unloved."

This pretty much describes all of my clients. Often describes me. Describes the ISP kids I see at the Y. Describes some of my friends. Desribes probably a huge percentage of the American upper class. So what am I supposed to do? I so often am so concentrated on seeing poverty as simply not having what I have from a material stance that I don't even consider the emotional poverty that is rampant in our lives, in our nation, in our friends, the poverty that is not spoken about, the poverty that is ignored and even often inflicted upon others by myself; it is this poverty that tears us down. My person I was talking about above tonight said that they would live on the streets the rest of their lives and be happy if they knew they had someone that cared about them and then they asked if I had to graduate and leave Abilene. That doesn't give me the credit; it is what any human should do but I also know those thoughts of not wanting to meet with them are now very distant from my mind. I think I will stop pushing my goals for middle class lifestyles on them and start listening to their life stories and learning from them.

No wander Jesus says we will always have the poor among us. I think I better understand my mission in life so much clearer. I hope I can remember this lesson I learned tonight the next time I think: man I have to go up to the clinic again, or here goes another Sunday night to Celebrate Recovery, or man I am tired of this friend calling me with the same problem all the time, or these kids at the Y are driving me crazy, or I don't like that person, they annoy the crap out of me. I hope that I take away that "most terrible poverty" every single day for someone who is steeped there. After all this is all I want in my life is to be rid of emotional poverty. What a calling!!