“There’s nothing like poverty to get you into heaven.” This Patty Griffin lyric seems to have been stuck on repeat in my head this past week. I imagine her tongue pressed softly in cheek as her passes on the guitar betray the gravity–and its rub–on the underside of the statement. I hear Chaim Potok’s fictional character, Asher Lev saying, “I [do] not know. But I [sense] it as truth.”
What did Jesus mean when he said, “Blessed are the poor?”
This ubiquitous question has followed me all around Bayonnais and remains with me here in the United States. I’ve been waiting to attempt a response; it isn’t that I haven’t had much to say but that I don’t know how to say much of it. However, I can say that there is a powerful truth involved, and it very well may lie at the heart of God’s mystery. Blame it on Blaise or the artist in me, but I think the best textual approach to such wonders is via the circumference, talking around it and pointing to it with metaphor.
“‘Straight to the point’
can ricochet,
unconvincing.
Circumlocution, analogy,
parables, ambiguities, provide
context, stepping stones.”
–Denise Levertov, Poetics of Faith
COMMUNICATION
Before Haiti, we need to go to Russia where I spent ten days in July on a mission trip with First Presbyterian Church of Charlotte, NC. Imagine a modest room filled with vegetation whose daily bread passes freely through the windows’ iron bars, a layer of protection for Hope Baptist Church against an aggressive and persecutory society. It is the sabbath, and Pastor Pavol glows from behind a podium-pulpit. The Spirit in his eyes is enough to convert jet-lag to attentiveness. However, I am interested less in the English translation than I am in what he’s saying, what I don’t and do understand. . . those funny, unfamiliar sounds, stereotypically cast a uniform gray in the past, are now as green as the plants, and I’m comfortable in the familiar warmth of his welcoming expressions.
“No eye has seen, no ear has heard, and no mind has imagined the things that God has prepared for those who love him.” (1 Corinthians 2:9)
Pavol loves God, and because he does, you feel God’s love. This is a mystery.
Now to Davidson College in North Carolina where I risked some self-esteem to a public speaking class in the basement of Chambers. Don’t ask me where this figure comes from, but I learned that approximately 20% of communication is verbal, the other 80% nonverbal. (Let’s not consider this electronic blogging medium for the moment.) Think about how much you gather from someone’s eyes and how they look at you. Think about all the information we willingly or unwittingly divulge through a myriad of facial expressions and gestures. Actions, no matter how subtle, can often speak louder than words.
How does God speak to us, and how are we to share what He says with others? Concerning others, many say sow the gospel, using words if necessary, in order to stress the living of Love, the Word of God, noun-truth enfleshed as a verb. Regarding God, if Scripture amounts to a “verbal” 20%, then what of God’s nonverbals? Frederick Buechner is currently one of my favorite authors, not only for the integrity of his spiritual search but for the manner in which he articulates God’s moving in the everydayness of our lives.
“I happen to believe in God because here and there over the years certain things happened. Not one particularly untoward thing happened, just certain things. To be more accurate, the things that happened never really were quite certain and hence, I suppose, their queer power.” (Frederick Buechner, The Alphabet of Grace)
Read the title of my blog, yet God didn’t whisper in my ear, “Hey, Peter. Go to Haiti.” No, God used four days in Bayonnais to tell me, through my experiencing the integration of all my passions and gifts in the community, “Peter, you asked for the abundant life. Come here. You have much to learn.” It is not unlike God’s using Jean Vanier’s words to tell Henri Nouwen to go to L’Arche Daybreak, “Go and live among the poor in spirit, and they will heal you.” (Henri Nouwen, In The Name of Jesus)
“Peter, go and live among the poor of Bayonnais, and they will heal you.”
HEALING
My readers will be familiar with the following question: “How do you receive a full plate of food from a friend (Isaac) whom you know didn’t eat three days the week before?” Your well-fed stomach is not hungry. You understand that this is likely the only substantial meal of the day for the family, and you realize that you have been given a more than equal portion. Polite refusals are met with with the same; reasoned refusals are met with an 80% that says, “You do not understand how important it is for my family and I that you share this meal with us.”
It’s humbling not to speak the language in Russia, and it’s humbling to be chez Isaac, pressured to receive such a radical act of generosity. All I can say is that this gesture pushed a wealthy American into poverty so that he might be healed, and here I approach the current limits of my 20%.
How do I communicate life in Haiti? How do I speak to the blessings of the poor? I am limited. Much you have to feel out for yourself through your own skin, for I don’t know how to talk about the intuitive nonverbals that have placed extraordinary emphasis on Jesus’ benediction. For you see, in admiring the radical dependence the Bayonnnaisiens have on God, one walks a fine line in romanticizing their poverty, a direct or indirect suggestion that in some way it is good they are poor. (A good friend reminds me to beware this value judgement.) The fact is: their poverty is absolutely horrible and even morally reprehensible. A dependence upon God doesn’t justify a family not eating for thee days, let alone one dying, and it doesn’t justify much of the world remaining relatively unmoved by radical suffering on either side of the national fence.
INTERMISSION
INTERMISSION
(Back when I didn’t speak Creole very well. . . )
INTERMISSION
INTERMISSION
Although I am well-travelled and some may consider me a man of mystery, I am not Austin Powers–thank goodness! Over the past few years, however, I’ve gained a greater appreciation for the mysteries of Jesus’ teachings. As we must die to truly live, we must become poor to inherit true wealth. It seems the poor have less road to travel. We may qualify our poverty, referencing Matthew’s “in spirit” or Luke’s austerity, but don’t spiritual and physical poverty inform one another? Perhaps they are not as different as we often make them out to be.
LESS ROAD TO TRAVEL
At some point in our lives we must all ask a difficult question, silently or otherwise, and our response is critical to the salvation of not only our own lives but also the lives those around us:
What makes me important?
What is it that makes me valuable, worthwhile, and meaningful as Peter Daniel? There seem to be two initial approaches to this question of identity, both of which are tragic if used as the foundation for one’s self. First, peer affirmation declares that my importance as an individual is proportional to what other people think about me. Second, and connected to the first, my accomplishments, accolades, and successes amount to what Nouwen terms as “relevance,” which is why I am meaningful. Both are problematic in that they promise value only conditionally; you are only worthwhile to the extent that you can earn and prove that worth. Unfortunately, this is one of the loudest voices in our culture.
Ours is a culture that shouts you need more than you have, when most of us have more than we need. Our capitalist market bombards us with endless stimuli, all of which are bent on convincing us we’re inadequate. If we buy into it, we ironically change from consumer to commodity. Most of us struggle in some sense with body image, feeling that we would be more important if we could just loose some of that flab, be more fit and attractive; many consider physical attractiveness a currency in relationships. Often those who are most attractive have the highest standards and upkeep, but then there are those for whom it is more natural, secondary, and low-maintenance.
“I have a friend who has a big pancake face and feathery brown hair, with patches of scalp showing. She has peasanty patato features, and she’s too tall, and totally inelegant. But she loves her life. She’s chosen a life of prayer, service, and travel. She’s always in a sort of infuriating state of wonder, of appreciating what is, instead of fretting about what she wishes was. But she’s great-looking–everyone thinks so–because of the expressions on her face and the way she looks at you.
She is radiant with spirituality and humor; she was dealt the same basic cards we all were, but somehow she could see that the cards were marked, so she put them down and refused to play. You can’t win with marked cards.” (Anne Lamott, Grace (Eventually): Thoughts on Faith)
Sex is a loud voice in our culture because it’s an easy sell, and it often leads to harmful addictions that involve objectifying others as a means of sensual gratification. One may also use social status or education as a means of condescension; in fact, there’s all kinds of social capital–the list goes on. In our culture, it’s easier to play the game than it is to step out of it. We succumb quickly to judging others, pitting ourselves against them, and finding ways to treat them as less because we are insecure about our own identities. Constantly collecting and storing, we become scavengers for our own egos and often at the expense of our brothers and sisters. We’ll travel Samsara’s wheel of expectation and disappointment until we ground ourselves elsewhere.
Elsewhere needs to be a place free of conditions in which one’s meaning and worth are not earned but rather given. God sent Jesus to communicate His love. His vulnerability on the cross is an 80% which says, “I love you. You are the beloved.” (Nouwen) We can’t get our minds around the truth that there are many “the beloved”s; neither can we get our minds around the truth that ours is a God with and without names, so let us be careful not to sacrifice Him again to perceived theological correctness. (”Theology is the first step towards secularization.” A friend threw me that bone and I’ve chewed it for a while–spend some time with it.)
Grace is inherently undeserved; there’s nothing you can do to earn it. If you don’t at least initially find this a bit unsettling, then you are likely a saint or haven’t yet grasped its meaning. In grace, God says that you are known deeply, loved deeply, and worth His very life. Grace is the loveliest gift of all. Grace is especially beautiful given its absolute sufficiency. It’s the bittersweet apple that led to pride and the illusive need to be greater than the greatest, greater than the beloved. “Pride gets no pleasure out of having something, only out of having more of it than the next man…It is the comparison that makes you proud: the pleasure of being above the rest. Once the element of comparison has gone, pride has gone.” (C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity) Pride taught us to forsake dependence for independence. Back to the garden. . .
BACK TO THE SUBJECT
If we must own poverty in order to truly ground ourselves in grace and belovedness, in order to settle into unconditional love, perhaps the poor are blessed because they have less to step down from, less to get in the way, less to wade through in claiming their identity as the beloved. “Peter, go and live among the poor of Bayonnais, and they will heal you.” Perhaps being with the poor has helped me to claim my own poverty. By stepping down from a pedestal of peer affirmation, accomplishments, and relevance, I’m learning what it looks like in the context of my life to live out of grace.
Now many people will conveniently misunderstand, package, and displace some of these ideas, for it’s easier to see things in black and white, good and bad. I’m not suggesting by any means that peer affirmation and accomplishments are bad. They are juicy fruits that often accompany living a good life. I’m suggesting we treat them as manna and collect only for today. Resist the temptation to stuff your pockets. Depending on God is risky, and risk is scary because you are not in control, but it is the only way I know of living an abundant and truly meaningful life.
“[Living with mentally handicapped people] was and, in many ways, is still the most important experience of my new life, because it forced me to discover my true identity. These broken, wounded, and completely unpretentious people forced me to let go of my relevant self–the self that can do things, show things, prove things, build things–and forced me to reclaim that unadorned self in which I am completely vulnerable, open to receive and give love regardless of any accomplishments.
I am telling you this because I am deeply convinced that the Christian leader of the future is called to be completely irrelevant and to stand in this world with nothing to offer but his or her own vulnerable self. That is the way Jesus came to reveal God’s love. The greatest message that we have to carry, as ministers of God’s Word and followers of Jesus, is that God loves us not because of what we do or accomplish, but because God has created and redeemed us in love and has chosen us to proclaim that love as the true source of human life.” (Henri Nouwen, In The Name of Jesus)
“ONE PLUS ONE”
A summation of my 7 months in Haiti this past academic year may be found between the following words:
“A miracle is when the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. A miracle is where one plus one equals a thousand.” (Buechner, Alphabet of Grace)
At the end of my first blog post in September of 2007, you’ll find the following quotation from Buechner’s Now and Then:
“When you find something in a human face that calls out to you, not just for help but in some sense for yourself, how far do you go in answering that call, how far can you go, seeing that you have your own life to get on with as much as he has his?”
I still do not know the answer to this question.
MEDICAL SCHOOL
The human body is a miracle whose whole is certainly greater than the sum of its parts. I’m looking forward to studying both in the near future. I’ve committed to post-bac premedical classes in order to take the MCAT and apply to medical school in the fall of 2009. Unfortunately, I’ve had to restrict my anticipated 2 months in Haiti this fall to 4 days in order to accommodate physics and chemistry courses; this decision was very difficult to make because I’d been looking forward to returning to the rhythms of life in Bayonnais. Fortunately, I should have plenty of time between acceptance to medical school and the start of classes in 2010 to return to Haiti for significant period of time.
I’ve chosen to be pursue medicine because it is relevant to the needs of Bayonnais and the world at large, and I would like to combine physical healing with the spiritual and emotional healing that tend to come more naturally to me. Anyone who knows me well knows I’ve thought this through and have sought the words of many peers and mentors in this process of discernment and deliberation. (Thank you to all who offered listening ears and honest words.) While I may have to place my artwork to the side during medical school, my long-term priority is time and a flexible schedule that will enable me not only to travel to Haiti but to make artistic creation a very significant part of my life. My vocation as an artist remains fixed as the wisdom of a friend’s mother comes to mind, “You may have it all, just maybe not at the same time.”
EPILOGUE
(. . . of this book-post, not the blog; Peter will go back to Haiti.)
The first day of art class I asked my students what they wanted to learn. Their response: to draw things as they look. Why, that’s simple, though it may take a lifetime to master. All you must do is learn to see light, but in order to do so you’re going to have to let go of some baggage, let go of your conventional ways of seeing things. (For example, if you draw both of my eyes the same, you didn’t see how the line above my right hangs lower than that of my left.) This is not an easy thing to do, as we mistakingly think these possessions make life easier, but they really just get in the way of seeing the subject; it’s not easy because it’s risky and you’re not sure how the drawing will turn out. Monet once said he wished he could become blind and learn to see again in order to rid himself of associations, to see light truly and how it touches form. You don’t have to dispose of these possessions, as you may come back to the conventions later in order to say something, but your art will be severely limited if you never let go and learn to see without them.
Christ says, “I am the light of the world.” If we are to see this light truly, to see that it touches all forms including others and ourselves, we must also let go of some baggage and claim our poverty. “It seems that the prodigal had to lose everything to come into touch with the ground of his being;” consider also that the elder son may have just as far to travel in staying home. (Nouwen, The Return of the Prodigal Son)
Jesus asked Peter, as He asks each of us, “Do you love me?” If we wish to live abundantly, we must say more than 20%. He calls us to risk more than words, for if we do, we’ll glow like Pavol, our foliage green as the plants at Hope Baptist.
(A little ridiculous and cheesy, yes, but switch God’s role and listen again.)
“Knowing the heart of Jesus and loving him are the same thing. . . The desire to be relevant and successful will gradually disappear, and our only desire will be to say with our whole being to our brothers and sisters of the human race, ‘You are loved. There is no reason to be afraid. . . ‘“ (Nouwen, In The Name of Jesus)
Blessed are the poor who know the heart of Jesus.
Amen.
