Worry is a waste. If we want to keep our worry in check we ought to spend more time with the worthless and the wasted. We ought to spend the time we waste in worry with the poor and those who suffer. To fall in love with the poor is to risk romanticizing their suffering, but to completely avoid this risk is to avoid loving at all. One thing ought to be clear – the beauty of the poor is found not in their poverty but in their perseverance. Love of the poor ought not to romanticize their humiliation but rather recognize their humanity. Love banishes fear and my fear of scarcity was eased somehow when I discovered again the strange beauty of the marginal, the liminal people, the ones behind our locked doors and fences, the ones we only see out of the corner of our eye. The [..] preferential option for the poor suggests that we should stand with them, reverence them, listen to them, invest in them, learn from them, and act for them. But too often all we are able to see in them is the life we don’t want, the struggles we pretend to avoid, and the vulnerability we are eager to banish. In this willful blindness we suppress and we hoard, we deprive and rob, we smother and trample. We push them down and kick them out. We ignore the bare fact that somehow it is their life, their work, their struggles, and their backs upon which our lives are built. - A friend shared this with me, and it is such a beautiful reminder.
Posted on: Sat, 16 Nov 2013 01:03:45 +0000
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