The Revolution
I'm currently attending a conference on International Development. All the big NGO's are here: World Vision, Food for the Hungry, CRWRC, and on and on. The campus at Calvin is rather nice. The Prince Conference center where I am staying is pretty nice as well.
Yet I can't help feeling the ongoing tension of writing about the poor on my new work laptop; thinking about the poor in my warm, large, hotel room; and speaking about the poor in coffee shops that are somehow supposed to ease my conscious by the fact that the coffee was "fair-trade."
I question at times whether the poor, and poverty all together, is merely a means of intellectual assent. Do I truly know that the poor exist? Have I encountered the poor? Do I feel the needs of the poor? Am I ever consumed by poverty?
Its hard to say. I think often of things like revolution, when I'm now realizing that I'm the one who needs to be overthrown.
posted by Daniel Leonard @ 12:40 PM
4 Comments:
I don't know who the poor are anymore. I mean, there are obviously people who have less, but you can't call them poor without sounding paternalistic...And maybe the entire enterprise of thinking and talking about the poor is just a medium for intellectual conversation. Loving people, poor or not, never feels dramatic, grandiose, or revolutionary. It's nice to know I've helped people, but since I've contemplated it for years, the actually instance is much less romantic. "Love in words is beautiful, love in action is a harsh and dreadful thing"
The paternalism of poverty is certainly a big issue. But refusing to recognize and name the fact that some people are actually poor and dying is far better than achieving an intellectually apporpriate semantic.
Apologies for the mistake. What I mean to say is that recognizing that some people in the world actually are poor, and dying, is far better than achieving some politically correct semantic.
The problem you raise is one of identifying the poor and with the poor.I think is why groups like Ministry of Money take folks on "reverse mission" trips, so we who are rich can learn from the poor. Poverty is not only a socioeconomic condition, it is a state ofmind and a view of the world. I am always challenge by the faith of poor folks because they know a level of God-dependence I can't touch. I think if we think of ourselves joining with the poor, rather than helping or serving the poor that helps. Paulo Freire called it having an "Easter experience."
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