Focus on Making Poverty History

After writing some unfocused and rambling thoughts about the series going on at my church, I was asked to condense a piece to be included in a summary/evaluation in this Sunday's bulletin. I submitted these three options. As I got them into smaller and smaller word counts, lost a lot of blather, maybe the focus became a bit more clear:

The first attempt:

Broadway UMC is presenting a series of sermons and activities emphasizing the theme, Make Poverty History. There is even a theme song, written by a lay member, Dave Frauman, and the choir master, Chris Schroeder. We dressed in white, made a big circle out on Triangle Park in the rain, and wore white arm bands.

I have a lot of cognitive dissonance about this series. I hope it provokes a lot of conversation -- like this blog that I am writing. I hope others are finding it provocative in the best way, as motivation to act.

The main idea is that we have been conditioned to think of poverty in a certain way, as another social justice issue against which we are at war, or a disease that is chronic and almost impossible to cure. Our pastors have presented us with the notion that poverty is already history (based upon the words of and about Jesus in the Bible), and that those previously understood as poor are full of abundance.

I am groaning inside – my dissonance is unbearable! How can I say now that poverty is history, when so many people are suffering within a stone’s throw of my own door and from our own sanctuary? I turn on the TV to an update on Darfur, and immediately I am frozen in helplessness and futility. How could I possibly extend my hand to the mother of the starving child and reassure her, “God has ended poverty!” And yet – I must extend my hand, somehow. I cannot bring myself to make the proclamation along with Mike and Rachel. Something in me, the way I think, the way I see it, will have to change before I can make the affirmation.

A proverb from Africa in circulation helps me think about what I can do differently: People living in a village beside a river went to the shore to collect water for their laundry and bathing. A man shouted and pointed upstream to a nearly drowned child coming down toward them, fighting the current, struggling to keep her head above water. Someone threw a rope and pulled her in. Soon, many more people – babies, elders, women, men – followed. The villagers ran and brought more ropes to rescue them. One of the elders, attracted by the commotion, came down to the shore to see what was going on. She asked, “How did these people get here? Is someone throwing them in the river? Are they jumping in? What is happening upstream from us? Send a delegation up the river and find out why these people are drowning.”

This proverb richly illustrates the complex responses to poverty. We can wait downstream, throwing ropes and reviving individuals who are drowning in many different ways. Some, as Mari Evans noted, are drowning in insufficiency: of money, of home, of love, of concern, of heat, of cool, of food, and on and on. In terms of addressing insufficiency, how many ropes, how much CPR, how much money, food, water, electricity, caring, concern, etc., etc., will we need to pile up beside the river to meet the needs?

We can join the delegation heading upstream. We might find many sources forcing people into the river: disappearing jobs, a miserable economy, education systems suffering from a lack of funds, broken down pieces of social and civic infrastructure, violence, apathy, dearth of imagination.

Walter Wink wrote a series of books about “the powers,” prompted by Paul’s letter to the Ephesians (6:12). The powers are the spiritual energy or forces (some would say personified in actual people or demonic beings) within systems and institutions of oppression. The trilogy consists of Naming the Powers, Unmasking the Powers, and Engaging the Powers. As I take my liberty with Wink’s work, making a very complex series very simple, I will note only that these books make very clear that we are embedded within and pressed from without by systems, some of which are evil. Sometimes we unknowingly participate in these forces, and sometimes we benefit from them. Some institutions and systems are broken beyond repair, some are fixable.

To work upstream is, in my opinion, to confront the powers. Although it is hard work and sometimes dangerous, it is eventually the only way to bring about change. As Wink says, “History belongs to the intercessors.”

I think my response to the dissonance provoked by our Make Poverty History series is to join the upstream delegation. Somehow, my gifts and abundance can work through confrontation of the powers. I’ll need to catch up with these upstream travelers. Anyone want to join me?

Second attempt:

I have a lot of cognitive dissonance about the Make Poverty History series. When we had a dinner conversation about it at Troy and John’s house, my one-word response was, “perplexing.” My one word joined several others, “concerning,” “revealing,” “energizing,” “hopeful,” and others.

I am groaning inside – my dissonance is unbearable! How can I say now that poverty is history, when so many people are suffering and dying in poverty within a stone’s throw of my own door and from our own sanctuary? I turn on the TV to an update on Darfur, and immediately I am frozen in helplessness and futility. How could I possibly extend my hand to the mother of the starving child and reassure her, “God has ended poverty!” And yet – I must extend my hand, somehow.

An African proverb helps me think about what I can do differently: People living in a village beside a river went to the shore to collect water for their laundry and bathing. A man shouted and pointed upstream to a nearly drowned child coming down toward them, fighting the current, struggling to keep her head above water. Someone threw a rope and pulled her in. Soon, many more people – babies, elders, women, men – followed. The villagers ran and brought more ropes to rescue them. One of the elders, attracted by the commotion, came down to the shore to see what was going on. She asked, “How did these people get here? Send a delegation up the river and find out why these people are drowning.”

This proverb richly illustrates the complex responses to poverty. We can wait downstream, throwing ropes and reviving individuals who are drowning in poverty. many different ways. Some, as Mari Evans noted, are drowning in insufficiency. How much money, food, water, electricity, caring, concern, etc., etc., will we need to pile up beside the river to meet the needs?

We can join the delegation heading upstream. We might find many sources forcing people into the river: disappearing jobs, a miserable economy, education systems suffering from a lack of funds, corruption in government, broken down pieces of social and civic infrastructure, violence, apathy, dearth of imagination.

I think my response to the dissonance provoked by our Make Poverty History series is to join the upstream delegation. Somehow, my gifts and abundance can work through confrontation of the systems and institutions that make poverty possible, even necessary in some frankly evil ways. I’ll need to catch up with these upstream travelers. Anyone want to join me?

Third attempt:

I am groaning inside – my dissonance is unbearable! How can I say now that poverty is history, when so many people are suffering within a stone’s throw of my own door and from our own sanctuary? I turn on the TV to an update on Darfur, and immediately I am frozen in helplessness and futility. How could I possibly extend my hand to the mother of the starving child and reassure her, “God has ended poverty!” And yet – I must extend my hand, somehow.

An African proverb in circulation helps me think about what I can do differently: People living in a village beside a river went to the shore to collect water for their laundry and bathing. A man shouted and pointed upstream to a nearly drowned child coming down toward them, fighting the current, struggling to keep her head above water. Someone threw a rope and pulled her in. Soon, many more people – babies, elders, women, men – followed. The villagers ran and brought more ropes to rescue them. One of the elders, attracted by the commotion, came down to the shore to see what was going on. She asked, “How did these people get here? Is someone throwing them in the river? Are they jumping in? What is happening upstream from us? Send a delegation up the river and find out why these people are drowning.”

This proverb richly illustrates the complex responses to poverty. We can wait downstream, throwing ropes and reviving individuals who are drowning in poverty. I think some will join the delegation heading upstream, to confront the institutions and systems that make poverty possible. Both are necessary, both are worth doing.

Walter Wink wrote a series of books about “the powers,” prompted by Paul’s letter to the Ephesians (6:12). The powers are the spiritual energy or forces (some would say personified in actual people or demonic beings) within systems and institutions of oppression. To work upstream is to confront the powers. Although it is hard work and sometimes dangerous, it is eventually the only way to bring about enduring change. As Wink says, “History belongs to the intercessors.”


"Oh, the suffering of a writer," she lamented, in her upstairs burrow, fussing over the loss of words
-- and the loss of time she should be spending out on the Airstream, which needs to be ready on Friday!

One of My Dreams

Here's a dream of mine: I would like to make a living rehabbing vintage Airstream travel trailers. I could buy one to start, besides the one I have now, rent space to do the restorations, hire some people to help me. Eventually, I could fix and sell a couple, and keep a couple to rent out for some income, for people who want to take a weekend or a week here and there, but don't have the money to buy them, or don't have room to store them.

I have always known that I have competence in working with mechanical things. I think it is in my genes, which is kind of a pun, because my Mom's name is Gene, Imogene really, but she always was called Gene. All my life, I watched her fix things around our house, and watched her uncles fix cars and farm equipment, using all kinds of neat tools and welding equipment. Now that I am learning welding, I remember a lot about those visits to those great-uncles. My Dad would not let her have power tools. I gave her a sabre saw once for Christmas, and he gave it away. Guess what? I have all kinds of dangerous tools! My mom also told me that great-great-how many greats ancestors, husband and wife immigrants from Ireland were behind a lot of my interest in working with my hands. He was a blacksmith, she carved gravestones. In this current age of slower living, I think it feels very good to recover something of quality, bring it back into a beautiful state, and use it for slower pleasures of getting out into nature. OK, enough of the romance of hard work and restoring trailers.

I wonder if there is a warehouse near Mapleton-Fall Creek, where I can rent the space I need? I wonder if there are any skilled laborers in the neighborhood who can help me with the things I don't know yet, like electrical systems, advanced mechanics of brakes, trailer frames, axles, and wheels?

I'll need people to help me restore the warehouse, first. Roofers, HVAC to make the place humane for summer and winter extremes. I'll need security workers because the tools and trailers will have to stay in the warehouse.

I'll need a lawyer to help me with the business legalities, and an accountant to help with the business plan. I'll need a loan to buy the warehouse and fix it up, hire and pay the people, buy some health insurance for everyone.

Eventually, I would like to work my way out of the job, sell it to someone in the neighborhood who can keep it going. It could also become something else, someone else's dream.

While I own this business, the standards would conform to and exceed those of the original Airstream dream. I will bring in experts and DIY enthusiasts as consultants for updating our practices. We could generalize some training to various skills like welding, electrical systems, HVAC, small space design, engineering for trailer frames, brake systems, and the monocoque shells unique to Indy cars, Airstreams, and Avion trailers. People who take our training don't have to work for me. They can work anywhere. That's the beauty of the idea. People can train, and I can connect them with employers.

So, when can I begin? I wonder if I can get a grant for this dream?

Make Poverty History Manifesto

I read the Make Poverty History manifesto this morning. I should be thinking about how to get the Airstream ready for the family camping trip coming up in a couple of weeks, but I'm puzzling over this statement.

I don't know what our pastors are proposing, if it is not more confrontation of the powers with regard to poverty, while also finding the "appropriate" path out of poverty for our particular community.

What are my gifts and dreams? What power and influence can I leverage in my social location as a relatively wealthy and intelligent agent of change? What do those formerly known as poor have to leverage in their social location?

What do I make of Jesus' identification of the poor as blessed; of the poor as the least? What do I make of the Jesus of the Gospels, when he confronts the rich and warns them that their wealth is dangerous? Is Jesus using the poor as a prop for his political message of overturning powers? Isn't this where a lot of the guilt I have comes from, anyway? Woe to the rich, blessing to the poor? Don't we need the poor around to remind "us" of our spiritual poverty? This is cynical, I know, and I don't believe it, but something about this logic is troubling to me.

While we are changing our thinking about who the poor really are, what do we do about the rich? Where does this conversation about gifts and dreams go for the ones who are more economically comfortable? Complacency is a dangerous thing, isn't it?

Liberation theology teaches that God has a preferential option for the poor. It's easy to recognize this preference. Liberation theology teaches that the rich need to beware, that poor far outnumber the rich, and once they figure out how to organize and gain a voice, they will overpower the rich and set the accounts right and balance the economy -- by force if necessary. Liberation theology says a lot more than this, but for my thinking this morning, that's as far as I am going.

I suppose the balance of another kind is coming into focus for me today. The thinking change about what's upstream and what's downstream is percolating in my little brain today. This has to be about more than semantics and psychological reframing. Language games and mind games will get us/me nowhere.

By the way, upstream thinking comes from my time spent with the UCC. Their entire social justice process begins with thinking upstream. I found an article (p. 3-4 Scott Anderson, Exec. Dir., Wisconsin Council of Churches) that explains pretty well the approach.

Make Poverty History

The church I attend is presenting a series of sermons and activities emphasizing the theme, Make Poverty History. There is even a theme song, written by a member, Dave Frauman, and the choir master, Chris Schroeder. We dressed in white, made a big circle out on Triangle Park in the rain, and wore white arm bands.

A lot of conversation is going around about this theme, not just here, but world-wide. The theme seems to have begun in the UK, with that great celebrity social justice champion, Bono, in the lead, joined by Nelson Mandela, and since 2005, the addition of a coalition of thousands of global organizations.

The main idea is that we have been conditioned to think of poverty in a certain way, as another social justice issue against which we are at war. Actually, we've been at war against poverty for most of my life, politically speaking. Rather than stay bogged down in the history of war against poverty, we must see the poor as individuals with gifts and dreams, who live in a world of abundance.

Here, where I live and worship, the theme is acutely in focus, given that the church sits in the middle of a poverty-stricken area of the city. I hear the pathology in that previous sentence. The World Health Organization has identified poverty as a public health crisis. To be poverty-stricken is like having a case of the measles, maybe, or like having a chronic but incurable condition, like diabetes. You learn to live with it, within its boundaries. How do you see disease as a gift?

What our ministers want us to think about is the notion that poverty is already history, because we will be looking upon those previously understood as poor as being full of abundance. This is part of an asset-based community development philosophy. Rather than focusing on the needs, that are endless, chronic, and incurable, we focus on the strengths, abilities, gifts, and dreams coexisting with the needs. I have a lot of cognitive dissonance about this series. I hope it provokes a lot of conversation -- like this blog that I am writing. I hope others are finding it provocative in the best way, as motivation to act.

Having worked in the church for a long time, I wonder what the staff would rather have -- people complaining about who has a key and who doesn't, about using drums in the sanctuary, about playing certain kinds of music by certain kinds of trained or untrained musicians; OR, would they rather have people disturbed by a sermon series on poverty, thinking and puzzling over the meaning of a concept, wondering, indeed, what is the Gospel in this series? Where is the good news? What am I going to have to change about my thinking in order to embrace this concept of poverty?

I've heard that when someone comes to the church to ask for financial help with a power bill, or for food from the pantry, staff and volunteers first ask them to sit down and talk. They ask them about who they are, their story, their dreams, and their gifts. I have heard that some amazing connections have been made in these conversations. Someone found a job by having one of these conversations. Sometimes people go away empty-handed, and staff and volunteers go to their homes to visit them and bring them things they need. Sometimes, they bring a phone number or contact about a job.

I have used the paradoxical thinking about despair and the ultimate overcoming good news. I have written to friends and coalition partners about the proleptic apocalyptic hope that the world is changing toward full rights and recognition of the right to marry for same-sex couples. I have actually written that love has already won. We're just waiting for the world to catch up so we can move on to significant struggles -- like poverty! And universal single-provider health care. I can write about this hope with a certain degree of confidence concerning the freedom to marry because the coalitions working on solving this problem are powerful, wealthy, and persistent. It could also be true that the numbers of people who are wanting to marry are far fewer than the numbers who are caught in poverty. I can write with a certain degree of confidence that the world will change. Even if we have to wait for the Jesse Helmses of the world to die, and a new generation comes along with freedom from this particular bigotry. The same kinds of upstream dynamics are involved -- get the attention and win the concern of those in power and influence, and you can solve a lot of problems. Not many believe poverty can be solved the old-fashioned way.

Dave and Chris wrote, 850,000,000 live in poverty. Unknown millions are uninsured -- and I am now among those now that I am unemployed.

Is poverty already history? The poor are beloved children of God whose gifts and dreams are waiting to be known and expressed. Is this a romantic notion, to say that all we need to do is reframe our thinking about what it means to be rich, so that no one is actually poor? What about people who can't buy groceries, who cannot buy medicine, who cannot pay rent, who cannot air condition their babies and elders in the summer or provide them with heat in the winter? Sure, the poor, or those formerly known as "the poor" can grow gardens and sell the produce. Is that what we mean?

I am always thinking "upstream," especially about poverty and health. I blame our free market economy for most of these problems. If we can fix the system, we can feed everyone, employ everyone, and take care of the health care needs of everyone. Throwing money at the downstream symptoms of a broken system, upstream, will be a never-ending process.

This kind of upstream thinking reaches back to bite me all the time, puts distance between me and the poor. I struggle all the time with liberal white guilt. What do I have to offer the neighbors? Who am I but just another upper class white woman, with my privileged education and background? I want to do good, but I am not OF the people, never have been, never will be. This kind of distance is not helping anyone.

Does this mean I have to move into the neighborhood into a house left derelict by absentee landlords, to legitimize my concern for the people who live there? If I want to bridge the chasm between Broadway UMC and Mapleton-Fall Creek, do I need to sell everything I own and give it to the neighbors? What is the answer to this distance that I not only feel, but that exists in every manifestation of my own life -- where I live, where I sleep, where I shop, what I wear, what I think about most of the time, whom I entertain in my home, how I spend my free time ... There is no end to need and giving in respond to need. In some ways, giving is easy. Out of my abundance, I can give generously, even when I am unemployed.

In my present state of sabbatical, I am miles ahead of someone else who has never had an education, never had the comfort and care of health insurance; I suffer no debilitating conditions. I don't have children to care for (not biologically, not solely mine to raise). The times I injured my back (who knows how?) I have been able to have surgery, no questions asked. I managed to recover from the bills in my deductible period and the 20% co-pay. I can take medicine when I need it. I have a healthy savings account. I own property. Is all of that true for those who live close to the church? How much more difficult would it be for a fifty-year-old woman who is my opposite in disadvantages to recover from life's insults and surprises?

I hope this proposal to make poverty history is not just about reframing our thinking. Rather, I hope this is about creating a different kind of economy, with a different kind of currency. I hope we are talking about the abolition of poverty by the creation of communities that value different ways of being in the world. I'd love to see maybe a six-block radius around our church begin to live into a new way of thinking about economy, community, and value. We certainly can't wait for the city to respond. The neighbors can't wait for the church to provide the answer to what is lacking, although they do have a food pantry and a growing sense of neighbors helping neighbors.

Poverty is already over? Abundance is all around? This will take new eyes to see, new ears to hear. What will become the new currency, the new economy? Is this happening anywhere else besides Mapleton-Fall Creek in Indianapolis?

Right now, I am still struggling with my white privileged guilt, still thinking upstream, unable to put these pieces together yet. Right now, this all still feels like a liberal thought experiment. I cannot imagine telling someone who cannot put food on the table that her poverty is an illusion, that it is over, that life is abundant, that her dreams are more important than anything I could give right now, in the present moment.

Love Pink?

Do you love pink? Do you love guns, especially semi-automatic handguns? In the hunting section of a popular store, featured on sale this month in Outdoor Recreation is this lovely weapon.

Definition of semi-automatic: (Wikipedia) A semi-automatic pistol is a type of handgun that can be fired in semi-automatic mode, firing one cartridge for each pull of the trigger. This type of firearm uses a single chamber and a single barrel, which remain in a fixed linear orientation relative to each other while being fired and reloaded semi-automatically. Some terms that have been, or still are, used as synonyms for semi-automatic pistol are automatic pistol, autopistol, self-loading pistol, and selfloader. ... Standard modern semi-automatic pistols are usually double action (DA), also sometimes known as double-action/single-action (DA/SA.) In this design, the hammer or striker may be either thumb-cocked or activated by pulling the trigger when firing the first shot. The hammer or striker is re-cocked automatically during each firing cycle.

Cheryl Wheeler has a song that would make a good sound track for this ad and all the images it conjures up for me.

By the way, was browsing the sale ads to find some stuff for our family camping trip coming up, looking for a shade canopy and one of those complicated but oh-so-handy cooking centers for the outdoor kitchen. And, I was hoping to take the kids fishing at the lake, so I began to browse for fishing licenses. At the State of Indiana site, I ran across this article from Purdue U. about water quality. It seems our streams and rivers, and, thus, our lakes, are full of septic system overflow.

(Heavy sigh) Time to test our immune systems in the great outdoors. I hope we don't need any pink sidearms along with our giardia filters.