Buddhist Catholic Contemplative Evangelical General Christian Hindu Jewish Latter-day Saint Muslim New Visions Progressive Christian

Beliefs

Topics

Columnists

Resource Library

Research Tools

Video

Podcasts

Thought Readers

Faith In Media Tracker

Newsletters

Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In Subscription Support

Follow Patheos

Good Letters

Home
Catholic
Thinking About Poverty

Thinking About Poverty

Last updated on: December 18, 2014 at 1:17 am by Peggy Rosenthal

Thinking About Poverty 2014-12-11T15:58:54-07:00 Peggy Rosenthal

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

What better time than Advent to ponder what poverty means? After all, Christ became poor for our sakes, emptying himself of his divinity as he emptied himself into our humanity.

So what does poverty mean? Here are some dictionary definitions:

Poverty (Webster’s New Collegiate Dictionary):

1a: the state of one who lacks a usual or socially acceptable amount of money or material possessions; b: renunciation as a member of a religious order of the right as an individual to own property; 2: scarcity, dearth 3a: debility due to malnutrition; b: lack of fertility (of the soil).

Poverty (Oxford English Dictionary):

from French pauvreté*, pauper. The quality or condition of being poor.*

I. The condition of having little or no wealth or material possessions; indigence, destitution, want. b. fig*. in allusion to Matt. 5:3. ME: c. Personified and applied to a person in whom it is exemplified.*

(I think of St. Francis’s Lady Poverty, though she isn’t mentioned here.)

II. 1. Deficiency, dearth, scarcity; smallness of amount. late ME. 2. Deficiency in the proper or desired quality; inferiority, meanness. late ME. 3. Deficiency in some property, quality or ingredient; (of soil, etc.) unproductiveness, late ME. 4. Poor condition of body; leanness or feebleness resulting from insufficient nourishment, 1523.

From these definitions, poverty seems a bad thing, a poor thing. It’s a lack, a dearth, a scarcity, a deficiency. Who would possibly seek it?

And yet, as the OED reminds us, there’s Matthew 5:3: “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for the kingdom of heaven is theirs.” A friend of mine who’s a pastor once helped me see this puzzling beatitude in a new way: “Blessed are those who know their need of God.”

So is poverty a burden or a blessing?

For me, the most helpful musing on this question is Betsy Sholl’s poem “Making Dinner I Think about Poverty” in the Fall, 2014 issue of Image (#82).

The poem’s speaker is chopping vegetables at a soup kitchen; she could be in my own church basement with the volunteers there. She’s meditating on the poverty that is spiritual with a perfect image:

…the kind saints praise and scripture
calls blessed, the kind that inherits heaven

where maybe what’s left of us will be

more like a clear broth, than the vegetables
and meat we chop here…

Meanwhile, as she chops, the soup kitchen gradually fills with the poor: those who live in a physical poverty (lack of material possessions) that they have not chosen. Yet the poet’s meditation remains with the spiritually poor:

Everything with its secret heart,

Saint Francis says, where it’s better to be
prey than predator…

Poverty*, he says, a word so pure*
it can’t be hyped, it sees into the dark
vessels of the heart, where the blessed know

what they lose…

And the blessed, those who choose spiritual poverty, who choose to be prey rather than predator, what do they lose?

They willingly give up worldly power. They willingly give up trying to control their own lives and that of others. They lose worldly “goods”—but look at this marvelous image that Betsy Sholl offers:

what they lose, what sinks to the bottom
enriches the stock—

So, they don’t really “lose” anything! It sinks to the bottom of the pot, “enriching the stock.” I’m reading “the stock” here as a pun: the soup stock, but also the stock of humankind. That is, while the saints are left as the “clear broth” evoked at the poem’s start, what they lose—all the vegetables that she’s chopping and throwing into the pot, this nourishment which sinks to the bottom—enriches all the rest of us.

enriches the stock—which we will ladle out
to those shuffling in with their empty bowls

The soup kitchen guests are doubly nourished by this soup: their bodies are fed, but also—the poem goes on to imply—their spirits:

as if they follow the saint’s hard recipe,
the one that says: Put everything in the pot
and let fire take over.

This fire is a purifying fire. The fire that purges the heart. The fire that, in Flannery O’Connor’s stories, burns away our sins. It’s a painful fire; that’s why Sholl calls it a “hard” recipe.

Possibly, the soup kitchen guests are more open to following this hard recipe than those of us with materially comfortable lives and apparent security. I don’t want to sentimentalize material poverty, and the poem certainly doesn’t. But the loss of material things, the loss of comforts and security, might possibly give the losers a head start on gaining Matthew 5:3.

What I mean is: if you need everything, then you are perhaps more likely to know your need of God. And this knowledge is the spiritual poverty that Jesus blesses: “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for the kingdom of heaven is theirs.”

Peggy Rosenthal is director of Poetry Retreats and writes widely on poetry as a spiritual resource. Her books include Praying through Poetry: Hope for Violent Times (Franciscan Media), and The Poets’ Jesus (Oxford). See Amazon for full list. She also teaches an online course, “Poetry as a Spiritual Practice,” through Image’s Glen Online program*.*

Previous Post

December 17, 2014

In Defense of Fruitcake

Next Post

December 19, 2014 Over the Rhine: Finding Our Tribe

Browse Our Archives

Select a Category A. G. Harmon Alissa Wilkinson Allison Backous Art Authors Brad Fruhauff Bradford Winters Bryan Bliss Caroline Langston Chad Thomas Johnston Chris Hoke Christiana N. Peterson Culture D.G. Myers D.L. Mayfield Daniel Bowman Jr. David Griffith Elizabeth Duffy Faith Film Greg Wolfe Guest Contributor Interview Jan Vallone Jeffrey Overstreet Jessica Eddings-Roeser Jessica Mesman Griffith Kelly Foster Lindsey Crittenden Morgan Meis music Natalie Vestin Nick Olson Peggy Rosenthal Personal Reflection Poetry Friday Reflection Relationships Review Richard Chess Richard Cole Sara Zarr Shannon Huffman Polson Sonya Bilocerkowycz Tania Runyan Tony Woodlief Topical Categories Uncategorized Vic Sizemore Writing

Select a Month October 2018 September 2018 August 2018 July 2018 June 2018 May 2018 April 2018 March 2018 February 2018 January 2018 December 2017 November 2017 October 2017 September 2017 August 2017 July 2017 June 2017 May 2017 April 2017 March 2017 February 2017 January 2017 December 2016 November 2016 October 2016 September 2016 August 2016 July 2016 June 2016 May 2016 April 2016 March 2016 February 2016 January 2016 December 2015 November 2015 October 2015 September 2015 August 2015 July 2015 June 2015 May 2015 April 2015 March 2015 February 2015 January 2015 December 2014 November 2014 October 2014 September 2014 August 2014 July 2014 June 2014 May 2014 April 2014 March 2014 February 2014 January 2014 December 2013 November 2013 October 2013 September 2013 August 2013 July 2013 June 2013 May 2013 April 2013 March 2013 February 2013 January 2013 December 2012 November 2012 October 2012 September 2012 August 2012 July 2012 June 2012 May 2012 February 2008

TAKE THE

Religious Wisdom Quiz

What does the name "Delilah" likely mean?

Select your answer to see how you score.

Beloved Beautiful Wise Delicate