As time passed, I recently voiced my hurt one Sunday
afternoon, probably in anger, to a friend, “No one wants to tote around poor
folk,” overwhelmed by so many opportunities that were atop a glass ceiling I
felt so tired of explaining. Overwhelmed by how small and outnumbered I feel
almost everywhere I go for endless reasons, and misunderstood for lack of
patience to listen, or simply lack of time or ability, and my own lack of
energy and stamina to tell my whole life story to ask for a hand, I was falling
apart and hid myself behind a fake smile again, as I have done many times
before, to avoid tears that would also need to be explained. Maybe God was
showing me, how the poor always feel they have to be justified, as if not
having a good enough explanation for need makes one less human, and therefore
less lovable. In my anger that utterance which was, shamefully, mostly sarcasm
felt like a lungful of precious oxygen that my body longed to take in.
Maybe it was something I always knew in my heart, when I saw
the words “homeless please help” or “lost job, anything helps” or “single mom,
in need,” or “struggling family ice cold water $1” and the times my friend has
told me she can’t make rent again, and has to go into detail of all the things
she fights throughout the day just to fearfully make it home, in one piece and
feed her son, see her son and yet still cannot put together the bits of her
wages to know her family will have a roof over their head the next day, week,
month… As she tearfully explains how losing her car means losing her job, and
how her job, which feels like a jail or slave labor is never enough in wages,
she tells me how all her life all she’s known are struggles and she dreams of
helping people with less than her, of opening a homeless shelter and giving
others a worry free life very much unlike hers and her mother’s life. Her
nights are of exhaustion, first mental and emotional, then physical simply
because her body is scantily fueled, and spiritually she is holding on to the
bit of hope that a God of love gives, knowing He sees and endures her pain
alongside her. When things like these come to mind, “the least of these” giving
justifications in order to inspire compassion seems wrong, it seems diabolical
and evil to say the least.
I wonder if this is something God planted in my heart years
ago, long before I knew what something like social justice even means, I think
God always showed me how wrong it is to ask those we are helping, “why.” What
if I am not gifted in debate? What if you think I’m too stupid to speak your
language, and barely listen to what I’m saying to you and humiliate me with
your broken two words of my language because you’re somehow more intelligent
than I am, because well you just are? What if I don’t know why, and I just
need? What if I took a wrong turn and need a chance to redeem that mistake? What
if it’s not your left hand’s job to ask what your right hand is doing, and why
it’s doing what it’s doing? What if real compassion seeks out the lesser, has
eyes wide open searching the horizon instead of continuing on their one track
mind, and asks what need exists, not why it’s there and fulfills the need fully
entrusting God to their own needs. I know I don’t do this either, I hate how I
don’t, but maybe it’s because even when I ask I am denied or pointed elsewhere
without even help in getting there, and I’m scared and weak in faith as time
passes.
Even when we’re not asking something for ourselves, the poor
have to deal with the explaining, the shame, the justifying, the mistrust, the
assumption that we are unintelligent because we are poor or rather we are poor
because we are unintelligent. We have to face all the rejection, all the
incommodity, all the sacrifice, all the risk and most of the time alone, and we have even more to lose
than what it would take to help even for a little bit, more than time, more
than convenience, more than comfort, we are losing our human dignity. The poor
are seen as subhuman, just as immigrants or minorities are seen as less than
human or any other people group that is not in privilege. Yet, I don’t have to
explain why I am Latina. I don’t have to explain why I am a woman. I don’t have
to explain why I am an immigrant. Yet, while all these aren’t seen and needing
justification, or explanation no one seems to stop to think that they all have
potential to contribute to the explanation of my financial class. The assumption
is I am irresponsible, frivolous, that I don’t know the value of money, that I
can’t control my spending, that I can’t add two and two and know that it’s more
than the three dollars in my checking account, that I just forgot where I put
that twenty dollar bill, that I am over committing myself, that I have a
substance abuse problem, that I have an addiction, that I can’t decide what
food is best for my family, that I don’t know how to be thrifty, that I waste
money, or that I’m lying to get something for nothing. What hurts me more than
anything is that I am more comfortable, less afraid and most confident to ask
the government or perfect strangers for help through charities than I am to ask
for even a simple prayer about these things from my Christ following community
who (I used to assume) remembers the command of Jesus to love one another as He
loved us. I always wondered why, and it’s because many ask me to justify my
need only when it comes to finances, and yes government programs and charities
do the same, but because they are complete strangers and don’t know who they
can trust, but more so because I EXPECT these people to do so, and I used to EXPECT my body, whose head is Christ, to be different, the light
and salt of the earth, but it’s not. If anything, they have been more ruthless in their asking and
probing of my life and income. So, I remain, in silence, while I would only expect
their yes to be yes, and their no to be no, it’s easier to hear nothing.
This
is part two of a series of three related blogs; please see my next post to read
on…
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