Today while at Coast Guard Beach, Cape Cod, watching my 2 girls cavorting in the early morning waves I was struck deeply by the following quote from my current favourite writer Michael O'Brien in his sumptuous novel “Strangers & Sojourners” where on page 300 he writes:
“The world is full of hatred because it refuses to be poor.”
How it is that it struck me down at this time and place is a mystery, perhaps. But maybe it is not such a mystery as I stay in a lovely home surrounded by nature preserves, wealth, lovely people just enjoying themselves all day long with no worries worthy of mention, in the country which has been ruling the world for over half a century but has slipped into an early dotage as it not only allows but encourages its richest not to pay taxes and cuts food stamp programs for the poorest of the poor...
Poverty.
My mother fears it even though she has so much money she does not know what to do with it as she saves her pennies buying day old bread at the supermarket. My mother-in-law loathes it as she spends the last extra cash she has from the sale of her condo on fancy curtains and a beautiful leather arm chair that she does not need but fancies even though she has not enough savings to keep her in a retirement home for more than a few months.
Poverty. Which kind? Material? Spiritual? Relationship-wise? Emotional ? There are so many kinds of poverty. For today let us stick to the most obvious poverty of materialism and suppose for the sake of this conversation that without some material poverty the other poverties rear their ugly heads as they seek in their twisted ways to help us see the real poverty in our souls that can only be healed by … what? That I do not yet know.
What I do know from a life time of bitter mistakes and delusions lived out in foolish grandeur for all to see is that material poverty, that is, not hunger, not cold, not want of the basics for living but poverty in the sense of an acknowledgment that you could and should and deserve more is very real and true and puts you in a situation of discomfort in a world where to be purposely poor is to be viewed as a loser or a fool or well meaning but deluded idealist at best. Yet here I am surrounded by wealth and comfort and luxury and realize deep in my bones that all I am surrounded by that seems like the vestiges of the good life have created all the fears that push me to want material wealth as a security in an insecure world but that this desire for wealth to be protected from the nasty world out there is what has and is creating the nasty world out there that I am trying to protect myself and my family from in the first place.
A Catch-22 if there ever was one. One of many Catch-22's that abounds in life for all that is truly life-filled is filled with paradox. Here is an admission: these paradoxes are what attract and confuse me all day long. I strive for wealth to allow me to live the life of a genteel country farmer south of Ottawa replete with expensive cars, solar panels, flowers, chickens, bees and gardens to show the world that I am self sufficient and have the time and money to display beauty and values that show my good taste. Now that is not what I thought I was doing when I developed my version of a wealthy life-style that I now see as poor in spirit because it focused on self-sufficiency instead support by and for others in the world who want and need a helping hand, just like I do if I was brave enough to admit it.
Alone. Afraid. Poor; in spirit.
Perhaps the antidote is self-imposed poverty? Perhaps living with less on purpose will keep the wolf of self-doubt and lies at the door? I will not know until I have tried this path. This path well trodden by Saints of old. The path that most of us seek to avoid like the plague because it seems too difficult and wearisome a choice. So I, like most people, probably like you dear reader, have chosen what seems like the smart and easy path; the path of wealth and self-reliance and strength. Yet where has it gotten us? To a world filled as much as ever with war and disease and famine and rape and drugs and addictions and suicide and depression and anxiety and fear.
Yes, especially now after 9/11 we live in a world dominated by fear. Perhaps because we refuse to choose, on purpose, poverty. For a life without cheap oil and cheap 3rd world slave labour would, after all, mean the end of our gluttonous post WWII party. But the party is over even as we, especially here in America where I am no on vacation, attempt to prolong the orgy with more debt and more war. Yet, many of us, I am sure, feel in our bones that the world is changing, has changed, will change, and we will be poor. But we fear it. As we should – IF we let that choice by made for us.
But if we have the courage to choose poverty it is transformed from a thing of fear to a state of freedom. Because we chose it. Poverty chosen is then not to be feared but to be longed for. Like a lover who is strong and who makes us aware of how vulnerable we truly are. And yet without that love we will only destroy ourselves. As we are doing today.
So I am choosing poverty. To be free. To be happy. To be more truly alive.
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