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The last paragraph is so true. Borrowed from the reference https://henrinouwen.org/meditations/poverty-is-a-quality-of-the-heart/ https://henrinouwen.org/medita
by aiNohY6g 3y ago
The last paragraph is so true. Borrowed from the reference https://henrinouwen.org/meditations/poverty-is-a-quality-of-the-heart/ https://henrinouwen.org/meditations/poverty-is-a-quality-of-... :
“Poverty is the quality of the heart that makes us relate to life, not as a property to be defended but as a gift to be shared. Poverty is the constant willingness to say good-bye to yesterday and move forward to new, unknown experiences. Poverty is the inner understanding that the hours, days, weeks, and years do not belong to us but are the gentle reminders of our call to give, not only love and work, but life itself, to those who follow us and will take our place. He or she who cares is invited to be poor, to strip himself or herself from the illusions of ownership, and to create some room for the person looking for a place to rest. The paradox of care is that poverty makes a good host. When our hands, heads, and hearts are filled with worries, concerns, and preoccupations, there can hardly be any place left for the stranger to feel at home.”
- boxed 3y agoThat... goes just totally counter to my (admittedly limited) experience with the most impoverished people in Sweden: the Romanian Romani. They are not at all "[willing] to say good-bye to yesterday and move forward to new, unknown experiences", in fact the exact opposite. Part of what keeps them in extreme poverty is their cultural ideas of what it means to be Romani at at all. I would state the exact opposite: poverty is when you CANNOT "say good-bye to yesterday" because you are desperately trying to fix the problems/debt of yesterday even if it creates new problems/debt for tomorrow, because the alternative is starvation.
- OfSanguineFire 3y ago> the most impoverished people in Sweden: the Romanian Romani They might not necessarily be from Romania. At least from my experience next door in Finland, it has been very common for the media to write about “beggars from Romania”, but if you actually chat with the Roma beggars on the street or the bottle-returners in front of you in the queue, often they come from Bulgaria instead. Yet for some reason Bulgaria never seems to get mentioned, perhaps due to the popular confusion of “Roma/Romani” and “Romania” even though the words are not actually historically related.
- aiNohY6g 3y ago> "[willing] to say good-bye to yesterday and move forward > poverty is when you CANNOT "say good-bye to yesterday" Both are not exclusive. You're willing to yet you can't, and possibly feel trapped in a miserable existence that's not yours.
- avgcorrection 3y agoI’m getting strong Mother Theresa vibes.
- graemep 3y agoThat refers to voluntarily chosen poverty. There is a huge difference between that and poverty that is no deliberately chosen.
- 2devnull 3y agoI think “chosen poverty” is a fraught notion. Cultural poverty perhaps, but poverty is, according to most useful definitions, an undesirable state.