Blog Action Day: Poverty of the Heart

Today is Blog Action Day and the theme is poverty. There are so many thousands of blogs talking about poverty today, urging us to take action against it, to help feed the poor. It’s quite inspiring.

For me today I want to quote from a book I’ve been re-reading, the incredibly inspirational biography of Mother Teresa by Kathryn Spink. If you don’t know, Mother Teresa was the Balkan born woman who became a Catholic nun and then the founder of the Missionaries of Charity. Mother Teresa is someone I studied when I became tired of studying business leaders. I wanted to understand how a spiritually-grounded person could set out to do some very simply service, and end up changing the world in an incredibly effective manner.

There are many lessons in the book, but let’s keep the focus on poverty. It is without a doubt a tremendous crime how many people we allow to starve and to scrape by because we do not share our wealth. And, Brother Andrew, who was chosen by Mother Teresa to help start the men’s branch of the Missionaries of Charity (the Catholic Church separates monastic religious orders by gender), who himself served in humble devotion thousands of the poorest of the poor, had this to say about the more affluent countries:

Sometimes people wonder why we go to more prosperous places like Los Angeles, Tokyo, Hong Kong, when there is such a desperate poverty in India and on such a large scale. I believe there is much more terrible poverty than that found in India. Hong Kong illustrates this for me.

When I was in Calcutta recently during the floods which devastated so much it struck me one day that the people of Calcutta are somehow much more humanly rich than people in Hong Kong. It is a strange paradox that may be saying something to us. It is true of much of the more affluent world.

In Hong Kong we have a small home for severely mentally disabled men. We get public funds — and much interference. The men in the home are severely retarded. They have been in various institutions where they did not respond much to training or treatment. They lived with their families in impossibly small rooms of Hong Kong housing conditions. Since joining us, all have responded well — and the big thing, it seems to me, is that they are happy. but that is not enough, we are told. They must be doing something, they must be programmed.

There can be few places as rushed in the world as production-centred Hong Kong. The stress and pressures here are great. it seems we are not allowed to be satisfied that these disabled men are happy. They have to be got into the rush, into the rat-race that is driving everybody else mad. There are basic questions involved in this about where the dignity and value of a man lies, whether it is in his being or in his performance.

And so India, with its grater material poverty, has a quality of life that is often lost when the gods are materialistic and must be got down in a report. It is a question of the human and spiritual enjoyment of life. I feel, in places like Hong Kong, we are meant to be a little witness to this as “Animal Farm” bears down on all sides.

Spiritual poverty is the other side of the coin. I sometimes wonder if we were to remedy the spiritual poverty of our materialistic-driven life, in this non-life-affirming economy that we survive in, whether the abundance we have would just naturally and in inspired ways be shared with those who don’t have enough to eat, who don’t have a roof over their head, or clothes to cover themselves.

I grieve in my heart for the ways I become unconscious of my own affluence. As a company, we’ve been discussing what way we want to actively engage in service to our community, and I pledge that we will resolve it, and get a program in place early this coming year.

Now, as a point of inspiration, I want to share words from my Sufi sheikh, Sidi al-Jamal, from his book Music of the Soul, a chapter entitled Brothers in God. I will say that I have not altered the gender used in his writing, that it is translated from his native Arabic, and that I’ve heard him on many occasions speak of the need not to make separation or judgement between men and women.

Be the earth and let everyone who needs this earth walk upon it. If you are not the earth for your brothers and sisters, who will carry them? Can someone lives outside carry another? No, only you can carry him, and only he can carry you. Be polite with him because everything is from the polite…

… When you do not keep your brothers and sisters in your heart, you lose this face. this is what i mean. Keep your brothers and sisters special in your heart, and give them love and peace and help and mercy. This is the meaning of brothers in God. This is what every student needs in the way. If you did not have a brother or sister to help you in the way, you would not reach and you would lose your time. God asks you, “Why did you lose My time by losing your brothers and sisters?”

I want you to be walk like me. To be inside this earth, not on the outside. Everyone can live inside this earth. Go inside the earth and grow to be a holy tree so you can give holy fruit. First the tree gives flowers. From these flowers come beautiful fragrances for everyone to smell. Anyone can take what they want from this tree. Be a holy tree. This tree is the tree of brotherhood. And from this tree comes all light. Everyone needs this light. Don’t forbid anyone to sit near you. Give him light! Give him mercy! Give him peace! Be a holy tree. This is what I want from you. To be the teacher from this way. Be a rose so that everyone can see this rose. This is the rose of the truth. This rose is your brother and this rose is your sister, when you know what I mean by your brothers and sisters…

I want to encourage each of us to reconnect with Source deep in our heart, and as we do so, notice what do we really need? What attachments can we let go of? And of that which we let go, what can be shared, given to those who have less than you do?

Can our giving come not from a sense of superiority and desire to “help,” but from a deep humility? That position of serving that Mother Teresa describes as the living Christ, where you give to God, and that the poorest who are in need are the face of God, and that we gain no superiority in our having more material items- we simply gain more responsibility to wake up and share them.

Peace upon each of us, and may our hearts and our hands together heal the impoverished of heart and the impoverished of hand.