SharedBliss: Poverty of Body, Mind, & Spirit

Walking toward the new state park,
you first go through corn fields.

Listening to: One of the greatest protest songs, I think, ever written, and it's timeless, being about the core issue.

Bliss: I am thankful for the life I have -- a life in which my mind, my body, and my spirit daily receive the sustenance they each need.

Poverty is the worst form of violence.
--Gandhi

Being unwanted, unloved, uncared for, forgotten by everybody,
I think that is a much greater hunger, a much greater poverty
than the person who has nothing to eat.
--Mother Teresa

There is more than one way to starve, and this country, this current culture, is monumental proof of that.

We often shower our sympathies on countries far away, when right down the block, right across the street perhaps, there is a child suffering from a poverty of love and affection, who will inevitably grow up to be unhappy and angry.

Or we focus so much on numbers about food and hunger that we miss the people behind the numbers; we miss the needs beyond the food.

This is not to say, in any way, that we should not literally be feeding the hungry. A human cannot progress to higher growth and development if they are worried about where their next meal will come from.

No -- bread not bombs, please.

What I am talking about is looking at our own internal poverty.

Because, really, there are enough "spiritual" and "liberal" types out there, don't you think, that we should be able to deal with this hunger thing on a community level, but we haven't, so what is going on?

What is going on is that there is a hunger that keeps people trapped in complacency, a hunger that makes even wealthy people see themselves as not having enough to share with anyone else, a hunger that makes us grip and gather and grasp but rarely ever extend and hand over and reach out.

Our hearts have become so impoverished that they are withering and shrinking, barely working.

We are all too often the Grinch, walking around with a stone in our chest where our beating, bleeding heart should be.

We have become so afraid that we have handed over our bright and vibrant souls in exchange for coats of armor and promises of protection.

But protection from what? What is it that we are fearing so much that we are collectively refusing to live?

Who is this giant monster that can be kept away with larger and larger bank accounts and bigger and bigger houses?

What is going on in this world where children are allowed to starve even in "civilized" and "advanced" countries?

I am not going to tell you to give money to a food bank. No, that is too easy. You can write a check and go back to things that are more comfortable.

Here are some other ideas:

Go to a homeless shelter and volunteer to babysit for homeless mothers while they do what they have to do to get their lives back on track.

Do you have a skill area that you could share? Find people who need your skills and give them away.

Bake your butt off and hand it out to neighbors you don't know. That elderly couple across the street? You never know how much they might just need it.

When you walk out of Starbucks, don't you dare ignore that homeless man begging for your change.

Are you an artist or a writer or a dancer? Share that. Go to a women's shelter and offer a class. Self-expression is just as necessary as food.

Remember that this is not a political issue (at least not the way our government "functions" now). There were hungry people when Clinton was President too. This is a person to person issue.

Most of all, look into your own heart and ask yourself some serious questions about need and desire. Try to really challenge old, embedded concepts:

Is there room in your life to cut back on luxury so that you might share what you have with others? How do you define luxury? How would you re-define it if you were being asked by someone like...Gandhi or Mother Teresa or MLK or Buddha?

How big of a retirement account do you really need? Are your ideas about retirement keeping you from living fully and from helping others to do the same?

How much of all that extra that you get for your children is necessary? What would make them feel more deprived: no skating lessons or barely seeing you? (And more deeply still: are you trying to make up for lack you felt as a child?)

If you attend church, mosque, temple, or other religious institutions regularly, are you living the principles espoused there or are you ignoring the principles when it's convenient?

Is gathering material goods the reason for living? This is the question it all comes down to. I doubt your answer is yes if you are still reading, but if your answer is no, do your actions match this?

There is certainly a greater poverty than food-hunger, yes.

There is the poverty of hungering for purpose and meaning. Oh, so many of us are anorexics.

But above all there is the poverty of hungering for love. Are we starving our children or friends or ourselves in this way?

Our hungering for love has led to lives of fear and now we have a chokehold on the rest of the world.

For if we loved, let in love, expressed love, and then let go of fear, we could, quite easily, feed everyone...everywhere.