My life has improved, immeasurably. I am steadily employed in meaningful work (more than twelve years now) and live in a decent, if small, apartment (fourteen years) that is also affordable. I have new, great people, for friends, and I am able to flourish with my gifts. I do not have a lot of money.
My job is simple enough, I am a mental health peer support worker, which means that even if I am one of those few peer support workers who has never internalized mental health stigma, I will still professionally have to carry that label for as long as I am employed in that field. I am sixty years old, which would make difficult finding other work, and employers in other fields would be less than likely to consider me as a candidate if they knew my mental health history, and saying that I am a peer support worker, of course, automatically outs me. The pay is criminally low, just twelve dollars an hour, no benefits. But this is work that accurately reflects and honours my values: I am able to walk with my clients on their path to recovery, not as someone different, not as someone higher, but as someone who identifies fully with their suffering. This is the work of Jesus, who took on our broken and wounded humanity, and for this reason I am deeply honoured to work in this field, in this capacity. I do not have a lot of money.
I pay only thirty percent of my income for rent. I am good at budgeting. I am vegetarian and my needs are very small and very simple. I still do not have, nor want, a car. I am happy to bus and walk everywhere and be out in the open air and breathe freely among my brothers and sisters, humans, birds, mammals and trees and flowers. I do not have a lot of money.
I have become fluent in Spanish, through sixteen years of study, hard work, practice, and the good fortune of connecting with many fine people who speak Spanish as their first language. I also sometimes support Hispanic clients in my work. I do not have a lot of money.
I travel every year, for one month, in Latin America-three times to Costa Rica, five times to Mexico, twice to Colombia, where I have learned immeasurably about the cultures, places, people and histories of these countries as well as making awesome friends and improving my Spanish, which is all that I speak when I am there. I do not have a lot of money.
I have a home library of some five hundred books, more than two hundred in Spanish. I have a savings account. I do not hve a lot of money.
I am happy. I am content. Even though I had a health crisis last year, I still enjoy good health and lots of energy. I sleep well at night. I feel loved by the people in my life. I do not have a lot of money.
I write this blog every day and more and more people are reading it. I often use this blog to promote political and socisl justice issues, doing my small part, if not to change the world, then at least to get people in strategic positions, with power, to think and rethink their positions on homelessness and the environment and peace. I paint almost every day at home with the expectation that soon I will be doing art shows again. I sit quietly in coffee shops every day with my sketchbook, drawing with coloured pencils and pens beautiful tropical birds. I walk five to ten miles a day I often sing when I am out walking. I do not have a lot of money.
If I can be happy, positive, content, and full of the joy of the Holy Spirit and love for others, if I can revel in the moment, the sacred present moment inhabited by the sacred presence of Christ and know that all my small needs are taken care of then I really want for nothing, nor am I tormented by the hunger to have and to gain. For this reason I don't have a lot of money, don't need a lot of money and I don't want a lot of money.
I am already rich.
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