Saturday, May 28, 2011

On the Ignorance and Poverty of my Wealth

By the grace of God I am very blessed to live in a wonderful 2 bedroom apartment with my pregnant wife in Springfield, MO. We're celebrating our 6 year anniversary this year with a "stay-cation." We're not going anywhere or doing anything, really. I took today off of work and we sat around watching season 6 of Lost on hulu using our free trial of hulu plus, which we absolutely have to cancel at the end of this week, and enjoyed each other's company. I went garage-saling this morning. It was nice. I'm a very blessed man.

But I just took the trash out. And while this week I might find it a little easier to count my many blessings, especially in light of the devastation of Joplin, MO that is getting national attention, at the garbage bin I was suddenly struck with the ruinous ignorance and poverty I'm subject to by being a normal, American citizen.

In the garbage bin I opened, I see that someone has emptied out their refrigerator, presumably because many leases are up this weekend. I always hate to see food go to waste, but something about it struck me as particularly tragic. There was a loaf of sliced wheat bread, only a few pieces missing, not moldy. A box of unopened, slightly thawed (can you tell I dug through this a little bit?) frozen taquitos. A reusable-disposable container of some kind of leftover casserole, a few half-full bottles of hard liquour, a jug of milk, now about half spoiled, I'd guess it's been there for about 2 hours, it was still cool to the touch. The most notable, and potentially salvageable thing--the item that made me dig around and look at all this--a 24-pack of Rock-star Energy Cola, one or two cans missing, still cool to the touch. I thought seriously about grabbing it, but I don't know that I like Rock-star Energy Cola because I've never tried it, and I know enough about nutrition and I'm an old man enough to know that I know that I don't want to like it. So I just let it sit there.

100 miles away, just an hour's drive down I-44, hundreds of people are suddenly homeless without food and shelter, and here is a refrigerator's worth of edible food, just spoiling in the trash can. And I'm not really scrambling to try to save it because it's been in the trash can.

We have our fair share of homeless people that wander our neighborhood here too. With our proximity to the 2 large Christian charities, Victory Mission and the Kitchen, we get a lot of homeless traffic, and even the occasional knock on the door asking for money.

Something within me is tempted to launch into a tirade about how wasteful this faceless, nameless enemy (& neighbor) is, but it's the plain truth that I am just as bad. I don't want to eat the perfectly good food or even try to salvage it for some other cause because it's "dirty." In many places around the world people would kill for these scraps, and there are even many without shelter and struggling to get their basic needs met less than an hour away.

I do not mean to complain about my station in life, on this week of all weeks, at this time when we recognize the sacrifices others have made so that we can enjoy the wealthy standard of living we all take for granted--indeed--that we even apparently discard before use for the sake of convenience. But I do think that it is appropriate to note simply the truth that in many ways our wealth, the opulent abundance that is "common" to millions, this ease and convenience of living disables us. We know very little about how to make it without the many conveniences we take for granted. And the smallest inconvenience of walking--or even driving 2 blocks to make a food donation to a local charity, or to get our hands a little dirty in order to save something wasted--this inconvenience is apparently too daunting or too expensive or too risky. We are, by and large, hopelessly dependent upon convenience and comfort.

Except for the survivors of Joplin, MO.

A particularly inspiring case is that of my friend Arin Gilbert's dad. He is a truck-driver from Joplin who (miraculously?) survived the tornado in the shelter of his sofa. His response to the case of the tragedy is particularly inspiring, and gives me hope for humanity and our nation.Link
If a tornado suddenly swept away my home and all my possessions, I would have no idea how to survive. I would have no idea how to hunt or gather food, or to build a shelter. In a very real way, my wealth makes me vulnerable, and weak, and stupid. I've never been forced to come up with a solution to these problems and so I am more or less helpless to solve them at 28 years old. If I were in the place of many people in Joplin, I would be utterly dependent on the mercy of others. I could not help myself. And praise God for that, because it means I have been very blessed with riches that would be unimaginable to most of the millions of people who have ever lived.

It is important to count our blessings and to share them, particularly at this time and place in southwestern Missouri. And I also believe that it is healthy to recon how fragile our apparently secure existence is on this earth, and to recon our very survival a blessing to be cherished. Take a note from Quincy Gilbert, who lives.