More and more, I am convinced that we cannot rightly and effectively oust this stinging reality that plagues us until we who are untouched by poverty actually choose to draw close, even to touch, those in poverty. I'm convinced: standing behind a counter to serve food to the poor (which is a wonderful thing) will never heal the wound so long as the counter is there. Lobbying and legislating welfare policies from clean and isolated decision-making arenas will always prove to miss the mark as long as the poor themselves are systemically barred from being known and heard for the reality of their experiences and stories.
I have so long talked about "the poor" as if they are that simple to identify, "poverty" as if it's an easily defined phenomenon. But Stephen Pimpare suggests a new thought:
"There is danger even in writing of 'the poor,' for it suggests, at the very least, that poor people have more in common than not, that they share interests, beliefs, wants, complaints, or a common culture. ... But there is much variation in that experience, too, which we lose sight of if we treat poor and welfare-reliant Americans as an undifferentiated mass."What else have I, with my middle class academic approach to this issue, been missing? I don't want to spend any more self-righteous energy talking about something this real like it's a theory I can conjure up, write an academic paper on, and talk about in a classroom for a grade. I don't want to rob these men, women, children, and their whole experiences of their reality or integrity. And I don't want, any more, to make noteworthy caricatures of the homeless people I talk to on the streets of Oakland or the Mission in San Francisco to satisfy my own self-righteous sense of stepping outside my comfort zone. I don't want to go through motions of serving these people in hopes of serving Jesus (Matthew 25:45) like a fool, or to fill my personal quota of having-done-justice. I want to know what it's like, what it is to be poor in spirit.
This parallel journey exploring poverty, both systemically physical, to personally spiritual, has revealed to me this: we cannot try to separate ourselves from the dirty, undignified, and nasty in our lives. I must press into my brokenness to see it for what it really is, and be healed of them. Likewise, if we really are a global family, a humanity, then we cannot stand isolated behind a counter and expect things to change on the other side. We as a people must press into, touch, and humbly understand the reality of the poorest in our communities, to see their experiences for what they really are, and advocate for one another until freedom from poverty comes.
It may sound like a far-fetched dream, but it's a dream at least. And my confidence in the very end, is that we who have seen Life come from a man who embraced poverty and even death on a cross, will stand up and give ourselves to a dream such as this.
