I am still processing these last couple of months, Gentle Reader. I have decided today that I will try to use the Beatitudes of Jesus as a kind of structure or scaffolding for making sense of everything. I am not really interested in further slagging the church, though it is hard to resist such an easy target. And I still plan to forward this series of posts to the usual Anglican hypocrites. Oh, but who doesn't just love shooting fish in a barrel? But here I digress.
I will select one beatitude per post, and try to relate the words to my experience in Colombia, my perception of the church, and where I might need to go with this.
Beginning then, with the first Beatitude. First in Spanish, because I have the first chapter of the Sermon on the Mount memorized in that language, then, of course, I will translate:
Dichosos los pobres en espíritu, porque el reino de los cielos les pertenece.
Blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Poverty of spirit. What is it? What does it mean to be poor in spirit? I have heard well-heeled middle class Christians chirp that you don't have to be poor financially in order to be poor in spirit. Well, maybe, maybe not. But it sure helps.
I am reminded here of a series of conversations I had with a pastor back when I was homeless. He didn't like me (Christian ministers usually don't like me), and I think he was actually a real poor-basher. Yes, such Christian love. His congregation was mostly well-off upper middle class professionals, and he really wanted to make nice with the folks who were paying his salary. Natch. So, being poor, and homeless at the time, made me problematic.
He was very defensive and cited to me the ex-wife, a woman in his congregation, of a prosperous fashion shoe designer, who suffered from back pain. So, he facetiously commented, why shouldn't she be as deserving as compassion as someone who is poor and homeless. He didn't much like it when I said, well, what if she was both, homeless and poor, and suffering from back pain. As if one source of suffering isn't enough! But this kind of lame false positioning is something that we often do when we are on the defensive. We are not interested in the truth, we only want to shore up our own position, no matter how false. Middle class people are astonishingly good at doing this, but that is the strength of blinding and inborn privilege.
Naturally none of the prosperous burghers in his fancy church would even think of offering me the guest room, or sofa, or basement of their lovely fancy homes. Just like I would not be able to realistically expect such hospitality from the well-off parishioners at St. Faith's Anglican, even if I have attended there for two years. Of course they're selfish. And they get ugly when you call them on it.
And don't even think of quoting to them what Jesus said to those who, on seeing him homeless, took him into their homes. Jesus is really going to be the last person welcome in the homes of middle class Christians, who really want him to stay in church on Sundays where he belongs and to do absolutely nothing else to complicate their lives for them.
Because most people who call themselves Christians, are Christians in name only. And they want absolutely nothing to do with the real challenge of the Gospels. Do I sound judgmental. Aw.....Now get over it!
Oh dear, I broke my promise about not picking on the church several paragraphs ago. ¡Por mi culpa, por mi gran culpa! (what Spanish-speaking Catholics say during confession, for my fault, for my own great fault.
Would I take a stranger into my home? If I had more than one small room in my apartment, yes. When I lived in a one bedroom apartment, I have taken in strangers off the street. Even in a large bachelor, if there was something for them to sleep on. Now it's not possible for lack of space, but if I had a bigger place I would do it again, And I am one of the poor, in spirit and in bank balance.
So then, what is being poor in spirit, and what does being poor in spirit have to do with my experience in Colombia, and here, now that I am back in Vancouver? Poverty of spirit is merely our normal, natural human condition, which is to say when we are being honest with ourselves. When we know and acknowledge that we are small, weak, helpless and vulnerable.
As I sat in that café in Bogotá in February waiting for Alonso to get out of his meeting that would never end. And I had only a little money with me, no phone and basically had to trust in the kindness and reliability of someone I was only just getting to know. Since I was vulnerable, anyway, this also left me really open to others, then suddenly this eighteen year old kid wanted to practice his English with me and so in both English and Spanish we chatted at length about Bogotá, Colombia, Canada, and why my country isn't quite the northern paradise we are purported to be, though we are doing rather better than a lot of other countries. And it felt like we had become brothers.
Then when Alonso finally showed up after I had not successfully contacted him on the phone that another customer had kindly loaned me, and I was just about to leave to see if I could find his car, and suddenly I felt rescued and so grateful to my friend, and I was poor in spirit.
Then, when on two occasions, while stopping in his car for a red light, two different young fathers holding his small child in his arms approached us, on my side, begging. We tried to help them. But suddenly those young fathers and their little children had become me, and by extension they became for me Jesus, and then I became them, and I turned away after so Alonso couldn't see me weep, but he noticed anyway.
And now, home again, and surrounded by the same kind of poverty for we have many homeless people in Vancouver, and not just necessarily economic but spiritual poverty, and feeling called and challenged to extend the same compassion that I have for the poor and homeless to those whom I really cannot stand, which is to say, smug middle class Anglicans.
But if all I am going to see is our class and superficial differences, then I am not going to have the eyes to see that in many cases their hearts are also broken and breaking. Do I dare let even those ones become for me the very human face of my Lord Jesus Christ? While not giving them a pass for their bourgeois arrogance? Perhaps compassion, instead, that they are in many cases so blinded by their privilege. But all of them? How would I know? but we are all poor, whether we know it or not. And those of us who are truly poor in spirit are the ones who already know and feel the depth of our poverty. And our inheritance will be the kingdom of heaven.
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