Coming Together in Poverty

There are many forms of poverty: economic poverty, physical poverty, emotional poverty, mental poverty, and spiritual poverty. As long as we relate primarily to each other's wealth, health, stability, intelligence, and soul strength, we cannot develop true community. Community is not a talent show in which we dazzle the world with our combined gifts. Community is the place where our poverty is acknowledged and accepted, not as something we have to learn to cope with as best as we can but as a true source of new life.

Living community in whatever form - family, parish, twelve-step program, or intentional community - challenges us to come together at the place of our poverty, believing that there we can reveal our richness.

These reflections are taken from Henri J.M. Nouwen's Bread for the Journey.

I really wrestle with this. 

I wrestle with this because the idea of poverty is lost in the wealth and strength of our country. 

I wrestle with this because I am taught to cope with my poverty as best as I can. 

I wrestle with this because the idea that poverty can be a true source of new life is a foreign concept to my understanding. Is this source of new life born from vulnerable personal authentic relationships? 

Has my lack of tangible wealth and power created a wealth of ego, pride, and emotions that I greedily hoard from those around me? My spiritual life impoverished, the expense of massing wealth of time? 

I look to the man with much and I say, "thank God that I do not have this estate to uphold and protect." Then I look to the beggar, and I say, "Thank God I do not have to beg others for help, and I can sustain myself."

Then I look at my life, and I say, "I have protected my life, not losing it to save it."

I have so much to lose.