A Picture Of Poverty

Take a look at the stock-photo above.

What words and thoughts come to your mind?

A week ago, I probably would have simply concluded that this was a cheesy and unrealistic stock photograph, and quickly moved on. It's just a photo, right? Who cares?

Today I look at this image and about twenty immediate thoughts race through my head. You see, I just took a week-long intensive course on poverty alleviation and accompaniment with the poor. My limited worldview was given a good, healthy kick in the gut, and my perspective is now broader.

Let's revisit the photo above, and maybe use it as a way to talk about poor persons in the United States. Poverty is certainly a problem in every city. We all know that, and wish it weren't so. We do what we can to help...donate some money every year to charity, give to our local church, feel sad for those on the street. What else can we do, really?

When I see the picture above, I see disparity. I see the disparity between the middle-class and the lower-class. I think about the systemic problems that cause that disparity in the first place. I think about serving the poor, and how wrong we often get it. That serving counter between the pretty, middle-class couple and the poor couple might as well be a mile wide. It's sadly illustrative of the economic-class divide that we see in every city. There are the poor parts of town, and there are the wealthier parts of town. Those two don't really mingle. The wealthy parts of town often 'take the risk' and spend an afternoon at a soup kitchen in the poor parts of town. The middle-class serve the lower-class, and everyone supposedly goes home feeling a bit better.

Is it that simple?

Or could it be that our serving of the poor is actually creating more of a divide? Is our serving somehow conveying that we 'have it all together,' and the poor do not?

The Absence Of 'With'
The main problem here might be that the middle-class folks on side A of the serving counter are not working with the lower-class folks on side B. And 'with' is the word I'll focus on next.

Working with those in poverty—as well as looking for ways to alleviate poverty—is complex. There are so many causes of poverty. Some causes are obvious. Addiction. Lack of education. Laziness. Then there are the others. Lack of affordable healthcare. Social injustices. Discrimination. Lack of jobs. Problems with our welfare system. Lack of affordable housing and slum lords. And so we often look at the causes and then look for solutions. But sometimes, 'with' should be the only goal.

We often leave out the 'with.' What I mean is that we serve the poor, we give to the poor, and we do things for the poor. But we rarely work with the poor. We rarely get to know the names and stories of those in the receiving line of the soup kitchen. This lack of 'with' creates a lot of the problems that we see in cities today, mainly the separation of the middle- and lower-class.

Look around in your groups. Your churches. Your office. You'll likely see people that are all the same race and ethnicity as you. Maybe that's okay. And maybe it's not.

Maybe it's okay that the poor all live in certain areas of town, often out of sight and out of mind. Maybe that's just the way it is. Or maybe it's a problem.

Accompaniment—The 'With'
So we start with accompaniment: Working and walking with the poor. If relationships are built with people that look and smell differently than us, who knows what will happen? Friendships might form. Job opportunities might arise. Advocacy. Assistance.

Still, let's not get confused. 'Solving' someone's problems shouldn't be the goal. Relationships should be the goal. I'm probably not going to pull anyone out of poverty. I doubt I can help someone with a mental disorder, especially if they don't want to take their meds. But again, solving someone's problems isn't the goal...

The Soloist
In the movie The Soloist, Robert Downey, Jr., plays Steve Lopez, a Los Angeles Times columnist who thinks he finds his latest story in a man named Nathaniel Ayers, Jr., played by Jamie Foxx. Nathaniel Ayers, Jr., is a mentally-ill, homeless man who once attended the prestigious Juilliard School. Nathaniel is a gifted violinist, and Steve sees a possible story in Nathaniel's uncommon situation. In trying to get his story, Steve begins a unique friendship with Nathaniel that leads to a struggle for understanding and acceptance.

This is a great film that correctly conveys some methods for working with someone in poverty. Steve Lopez meets Nathaniel, who's homeless, and wants to get to know him, in the hopes that the interaction will produce a great story for his column. Steve didn’t immediately offer him money or a place to live. He simply conversed with Nathaniel for several weeks. He tried to learn about Nathaniel, about his background and his story. And, as he did this, he began to find empathy and compassion for Nathaniel.

Steve Lopez showed interest in something that Nathaniel was interested in—classical music. When his column about Nathaniel caught popularity, a reader donated a beautiful cello for Nathaniel’s use. Steve protected his new friend by telling Nathaniel that he would have to keep and play the instrument at the local homeless shelter. In this way, Nathaniel would not get attacked over the instrument. Steve also allowed himself to become a part of Nathaniel’s life. He spent a night with Nathaniel on the street, a filthy area, ridden with violence and drugs in the slums of L.A. Steve also attempted to get Nathaniel into an apartment, which would provide safety and security. Though Nathaniel was schizophrenic and often resisted Steve’s help, Steve’s motives were right. Anytime you try and help a person in deep poverty, the technical details will get messy. There will be resistance. There will be struggles and setbacks.

At the end of the film, Steve said that he wasn’t sure if he had really helped Nathaniel at all. Nathaniel did have a roof over his head, but his mental state was no better than the day they met. Finally, Steve says, “I can’t speak for Mr. Ayers in that regard. Maybe our friendship has helped him. But maybe not. I can, however, speak for myself. I can tell you that by witnessing Mr. Ayers’s courage, his humility, his faith in the power of his art, I’ve learned the dignity of being loyal to something you believe in. Of holding onto it, above all else. Of believing, without question, that it will carry you home.”

The power in this quote is the way it relates to the work of poverty alleviation. A person who works with the poor should not expect to ‘change’ a poor person. The only expectation should be friendship and the way that friendship will change and positively affect you.

Is that picture above bad? No. Anytime a person helps another in need is a good thing. Still, there is so much more to working with the poor than a cliché image can convey. My hope is to keep prayerfully pondering how I can work with the poor, and the unexpected ways it might change me.

And It Was Beautiful

Today I worshiped at The Church 4 All People in inner-city Columbus, Ohio. It was a requirement for a January-term class I'm taking called "Being With The Poor." I ate breakfast with people who smelled differently than me. I shared conversation with people that have nothing at all in common with me. And I saw a unique faith today that was profound and moving.

After the service, small groups were held. One for the women, one for the men, and one for youth. I attended the men's group and was surprised to see an overflowing crowd. It was a simple format: 1) Go around the circle and tell how your week's been; and 2) Talk about something you took away from the worship service. While I've been in experiences similar to this before, I have to say it was still astonishing to see how segregated most Christians are on Sunday mornings. It wasn't this way at The Church 4 All People, but that only magnified how segregated most churches are.

This men's group was diverse. Middle-class. Deep poverty. Obese. Pallid. Frail. White. Black. Educated. Uneducated. It was beautiful.

The thing is, usually in a Sunday-school class or a small group, there are always caucasian, middle-class suburbanites like me. And that wasn't what I was seeing today. For some reason, Americans love to separate ourselves from everything that makes us uncomfortable. We don't make eye contact with people that are like us, much less someone who appears homeless. We don't drive through 'certain parts of town.' We isolate and insulate ourselves, and the results are visible and harsh: differing levels of economic class that often dictate a person's fate.

But today was different at The Church 4 All People. There was diversity. We shared our humanness and a common faith. There was empathy and love. Food and hugs. The Gospel. Friendship.

And it was beautiful.

The Art Of Post-Christmas Stuff Shedding

As I put away all of the gifts from under the Christmas tree, I—like most of you—find myself a little bewildered by the amount of stuff that I own.

I've moved twice in the past 13 months. In addition to those moves, I also rented a storage unit, then filled it, unfilled it, moved a small U-Haul truck to my mom's house in Virginia, and had a friend store a couch for me (which required him to take a door of its hinges just to fit the couch through). I've also helped several other families move over this past year. So I'm acutely aware of how difficult it is to move one's 'stuff.'

A friend once told me that she thought everyone should move every five years, "just to keep their amount of clutter cleaned out."

I agree.

So as I begin to put away my Christmas crap, I also begin that beautiful art of shedding some stuff. I fill up a bag of movies I no longer want, books that I've read, and music I no longer listen to, and I head to the store to sell it off. After this past year of moving, I'm surprised I keep any books or movies at all. We have the Internet to look up almost any article known to humankind. There's Spotify or YouTube to listen to any song we like. There's the local library—or Netflix—for all of your TV shows and movies. So why do we hang on to all this stuff?

Of course, I still have a lot of stuff because it's fun to go out and buy stuff. I'm like everyone else...addicted to stuff. Stuffaholic? Stuff addict? Stuffie? I don't know, but whatever you want to call it, I'm it.

Shedding stuff feels so good, though. It's almost a holy exercise. I mean, Jesus calls his followers to leave everything and follow him, right? Even for those of us who are devout-minded, it's so hard to really sell it all off and walk away from all that stuff.

But I'm writing because of paragraph 2 above. I've moved so much stuff this past year that I'm ready to confront my addiction and say 'the hell with it all.' One of the great things about my family's two moves is that we've downsized our living space. We threw out and sold off a lot of stuff. And it felt good. But live in a place for a few months, and the stuff starts to pile back up. And as the stuff piles up, I feel like a mini Amazon warehouse. I get another book, or DVD, and I have to find the shelf-space to store it. When that shelf-space fills up, I have a decision to make: Get rid of stuff, or buy another 'stuff' holder. I usually get rid of the stuff, thankfully. But another year passes, and I'm back to square one. It's a funny, ironic cycle.

My eventual goal is to whittle down my amassment until I can fit it all into about two boxes. Until then, the cycle continues. Thank God for Half-Price Books and the wonderful system of recycling my stuff to other suckers just like me.