[April 2006 journal entry]
2006 was our East TN Appalachia health center’s thirtieth year as a ‘community health center’. The community health center model for delivering medical care was devised in the 1960s as a tactic for fighting the ‘War On Poverty’ President Johnson on 16 March 1964 challenged the Congress to declare. This non-profit and community-led model for confronting the barriers poor/uninsured individuals face re access to primary medical care is one of three ‘War On Poverty’ initiatives still active. The other two – the Peace Corps and Head Start. I recently circulated among our medical, nursing, and administrative staff members a prayer I wrote many years ago about my awakening to the plight of those injured by poverty.
DISTURBED FROM PEACEFUL SLUMBER
O compassionate One, I shy from calling you ‘father’ now that my eyes and ears have opened to your other children – the abused, the displaced, the disabled, the destitute. I had no idea how many and how near are my sisters and brothers who scavenge garbage cans in search for food, who cannot (or need not) read the list of ingredients on food cans, who steal to survive, who wake each day to a violent ordeal. I had no idea how surely my closets, my refrigerator, my diet, my choices for work, my recreation, my morning shower, my education all settle any question about whether I am ‘rich’. I had no idea how entangled my lifestyle is with an economy that carelessly consumes the earth’s resources, that encourages selfish fantasies, that lures impoverished kids with ads holding out impossible dreams, that offers me an easy conscience by pointing to charitable gifts and taxes.
Why had I not noticed the family resemblance with these sisters and brothers of mine? Was it embarrassment? haste? fear? economic prejudice? ignorance of ancient Israel’s prophets? the ease with which I spiritualized ‘rich’ and ‘poor’?
I am without excuse. Endless blows dull these sisters and brothers of mine. I have added to the wind that has blown out the light in their eyes. I have only now realized that the task is not to make them materially rich, yet another form of slavery. No, the task is to make them free -- free to dream, to hope, to risk, to rest, to love, to choose.
May my conscience be disturbed by the loss of dignity ‘getting rich’ and ‘staying rich’ imposes.
May my self endure the teaching of ‘Jesus’ against self-serving values and habits.
May my lifestyle maximize the diversity of individuals who feel welcome in my home.
May my possessions be rid of any thing I value more than “one of the least of these”.
May my prayers express dis-ease with being materially rich.
May my witness encourage a way of being together in which “there is neither rich nor poor”.
Amen
