How can we embrace poverty as a way to God when everyone around us wants to become rich? Poverty has many forms. We have to ask ourselves: "What is my poverty?" Is it lack of money, lack of emotional stability, lack of a loving partner, lack of security, lack of safety, lack of self-confidence? Each human being has a place of poverty. That's the place where God wants to dwell! "How blessed are the poor," Jesus says (Matthew 5:3). This means that our blessing is hidden in our poverty.
We are so inclined to cover up our poverty and ignore it that we often miss the opportunity to discover God, who dwells in it. Let's dare to see our poverty as the land where our treasure is hidden.
Henri Nouwen Bread for the Journey
St. Francis' words of love for Lady Poverty, whom he considered his "betrothed", remind us that as Franciscans we are called precisely to "embrace poverty" as our companion and lover.
The Principles of the Third Order state (10): "The first Christians surrendered completely to our Lord and recklessly gave all that they had, offering the world a new vision of a society in which a fresh attitude was taken towards material possessions. This vision was renewed by Saint Francis when he chose Lady Poverty as his bride, desiring that all barriers set up by privilege based on wealth should be overcome by love. This is the inspiration for the third aim of the Society, to live simply." They go on to say (12), "We as Tertiaries are concerned more for the generosity that gives all, rather than the value of poverty in itself..."
I have always felt that there was more to this poverty thing than generosity and simplicity, and Nouwen puts his finger on it here. There are more poverties than the material kind: the NRSV translates Matthew 5.3 as, "Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven." Our poverty is the emptiness we must embrace if we are to be filled with all that God has to give us, filled with his very, Holy, Spirit...
12 comments:
Your posts never fail to inspire me or make me ponder, Mike.
"We as Tertiaries are concerned more for the generosity that gives all, rather than the value of poverty in itself..."
Yes. Otherwise this way of living could come out of egoic things - self-flagellation or self-hatred, rather than out of the fullness of God.
Which leads me to my further ponderings and a question for you: if it's all about living in the fullness of God rather than being explicitly about poverty for poverty's sake, do you think therefore that it means a rich man can also live in poverty?
I guess I am trying to reconcile two ideas I have in my head, one about living as described here, and another about not closing the door on healing. Living grandly within the slums of your wounds, and yet what about if Jesus asks, "Do you want to be well?" Not sure if I'm getting across what I'm thinking of here or not. Do you have any thoughts on this?
Thank you for bringing Nouwen's insight on poverty to our attention. The next time I catch myself wallowing in self-pity over some lack in my life, I hope I remember to challenge myself with the question: how can I reveal the treasure hidden in this poverty?
Dear Sue, what a question!
The easy answer would be that I don't know - that I've never been rich enough materially to have a serious problem. Yet at times I have had serious problems with a lack of spiritual poverty, and they've coincided with times when I've been closest to what the world calls success.
On the other hand, I do know a couple of people personally who are rich (one very rich) materially, and yet who manage to live lives of great humility and grace as Christians. I guess in their own way they do have poverty, if only in the very honest recognition each of them has of the spiritual and experiential limitations that come from being rich.
"Living grandly in the slums of your wounds"? Astonishing phrase... and yes, I guess there are those who do just that. People who make a lifestyle out of sexual wounds would be a good example, I suppose. And that is about as far from poverty as you can get, however poor you may be materially.
I think that what I was trying to get at, and what I believe Nouwen was too - unless I've hijacked him! - is that true poverty isn't merely a clear-cut material issue, especially in a world with welfare benefits and health services, but that it involves many wonderful pathways to God through our own emptiness... tracks in an essentially trackless desert of the heart, perhaps.
Thank you! I'll have to think some more about this...
And yes, Barbara, you're right - the real trick is to spot the treasures when the panic and loss are right there with you. Wish I trust myself to do that ;-)
Actually, I meant "living grandly in the slums of your wounds" as a good thing - I meant it in the way of living wounded, living in your poverty, but living grandly because God is there. I just haven't quite worked out how to do it yet :)
Yes you and Nouwen both very clearly put across the point that poverty is not primarily a financial issue but a heart one. I've been pondering this all day, which is always a good thing, right :)
I guess what I'm trying to get at, in typical convoluted fashion, is this:
when God dwells in our poverty, does it not transform it into something else, so it's not poverty anymore?
:)
I'm pretty speechless. A wonderful post followed by very thought provoking comments. Thank you.
Thank you, Missy!
Sue, I'm sorry - I took your marvellous phrase 180 deg wrong! You're quite right, of course: the place of our woundedness is in a sense the grandest place of all, as it's where we find God, and in him all that is truly worth having...
I missed your real point, about what we say to Jesus if he asks us if we want to be well. I think that answer has to be, "Oh, yes, please!" But I don't think his kind of wellness necessarily involves the removal of wounds, just the healing of them, if that makes any sense at all. I can only think of our risen Lord himself - he was healed, and more than healed, from death, dehydration, and all the horrors of crucifixion; yet his hands and his feet and his side remained wounded, so that he could say to Thomas, "Come, reach out you hand..." I think we may always be wounded, in that sense, even in the life to come... and I'm not sure I'd have it any other way, if that's not too odd a thing to say...
Okay then :) What do you think a healed wound looks like?
Because I've got wounds, right, and they're still all open and gaping, and they keep me hidden away from people.
A healed wound I imagine would still be there in some way maybe? Still hurt sometimes. But out of it would come great wells of compassion. What do you think?
Papa, I want to be well, and I want it last week.
Oh, Sue!
I don't want to get too literalistic about all this, but if Jesus' wounds were anything to go by, they seem to have been quite recognisable, and still open (cf. Thomas again) but they didn't hinder him from doing anything he needed to do. So...?
Great wells of compassion? Yes! And empathy. And grace, I guess. We can't be judgemental, or snooty, about others' wounds when we still have open wounds ourselves - or so it seems to me - but we'll be longing to help, to comfort, to bring healing or acceptance or whatever the Spirit is trying to do in us.
At least, I think that's what I understand from all this...
Love & blessings!
Mike
You never fail to reach my heart where it needs to be reached. I love how God has put you here to do His work, Mike.
A life of simplicity is what we are called to do... and most of us spend our lifetime trying to do that, with varying degrees of success.
Even the term success is counterintuitive in this regard.
Oh to just be.
Greetings Mike,
What I take from this embrace of poverty (a la St. Francis)is that we are filled with the Spirit in the place(s) where we are emptied of ourselves. In this sense Poverty and Humility are near identical twins. For Francis poverty was not a wretchedness or even a wound, but a beautiful Lady filled with delight.
Where we are empty of our self sufficiency we are fully dependant on God and in communion with God (spiritually and materially). Not even a single breath of air is ours to own for it is given freely by God.
"Love of poverty" sometimes stirs confusion because poverty WITHOUT full trust in God is unnerving and the basis for anxiety. So as loving union with God grows (and perfect love casts out fear), so too does an immense desire to trust and become fully dependant on Him (poverty). We actually begin to suspect and loath our own self-sufficiency which is sterile and foolish (humility).
I suspect that those holy men and women who reach this state actually find their material possessions a huge burden. And yet they carry it nonetheless if God wills it. Some Kings and Queens (very wealthy are they not?)have embraced the Franciscan way --carried the burden or wealth and responsibility and become glorious Saints.
Exactly, Tausign - thank you!
Mike
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