Not giving the poor our junk

  • A cou­ple Sun­days ago, my priest asked all the chil­dren to sit close to the front of the church. After ser­vice, he brought up one of the “Food for Hun­gry Peo­ple” cans we dis­trib­ute dur­ing Lent to col­lect change in. He reminded them that the money we put in there gets brought into church at the end of Lent and goes to needy people.

    I was nod­ding approv­ingly, until he threw in the chal­leng­ing part. (Why do priests always have to do that just when I’m feel­ing smug?) He said, “And remem­ber, we don’t just give the spare change that we won’t miss. We don’t give the poor our junk. We eat less for Lent, and the money we would’ve spent goes in here. We spend the money on them that we would have spent on ourselves.”

    I have heard that before, but I hadn’t really thought about it. Last year, I filled the can up eas­ily dur­ing the six weeks of Lent and was glad to have a place to put all that annoy­ing change that over­flows the change tray by the door.

    But I didn’t really miss it.

    I hadn’t been aware of doing with­out, and I hadn’t thought about it when I got on with the job of shop­ping and cook­ing for Lent. So last week when I went to the store, I tried to keep it in mind. “What if I was poor? What if I had to watch every penny?”

    And the trou­bling follow-up ques­tion: “How long could I get by on what I give to the poor dur­ing Lent?” Not very long.

    I didn’t think it would affect my shop­ping very much, but I was wrong. Every time I was about to reach for the best ingre­di­ents, the name brand items, the fancy spices, even the fresh fruits and veg­eta­bles, I had to ask myself “What if you had to live the way that poor peo­ple live? What if you had to make every cent count?” And every time I passed on the good stuff and set­tled for things more com­mon (or just skip it alto­gether), I tal­lied up the dif­fer­ence so that I could add it into the can at home.

    I ended up putting $25 in the can from that one shop­ping trip. The gro­ceries I had for the week weren’t as fla­vor­ful, not as fresh. The tex­tures were some­times gluey or pasty, and they lacked qual­ity. But they were sus­tain­ing, and every time I looked at them I had to face the fact that I have got­ten spoiled. In Lent after Lent, I’ve tweaked my recipes, shopped to get the most out of my Lenten dishes … and given the poor my junk.

    Two quotes come to mind. The first is from a book I got of col­lected writ­ings of Mother Theresa (link HERE). She told this story:

    Some time ago I made a trip to Ethiopia. Our sis­ters were work­ing there dur­ing that ter­ri­ble drought. Just as I was about to leave for Ethiopia, I found myself sur­rounded by many chil­dren. Each one of them gave some­thing. “Take this to the chil­dren! Take this to the chil­dren!” they would say. They had many gifts that they wanted to give to our poor. Then a small child, who for the first time had a piece of choco­late, came up to me and said, “I do not want it. You take it and give it to the chil­dren.” This lit­tle one gave a great deal, because he gave it all, and he gave some­thing that was pre­cious to him.

    I don’t want peo­ple donat­ing just to get rid of some­thing. There are peo­ple in Cal­cutta who have so much money that they want to get rid of it. They some­times have money to spare, … I don’t like peo­ple to send me some­thing because they want to get rid of it. Giv­ing is some­thing dif­fer­ent. It is shar­ing.

    I also don’t want you to give me what you have left over. I want you to give from your want until you really feel it!

    The next is a story about Abbot Nazarius from “The Lit­tle Russ­ian Philokalia: Vol. II” (Link HERE):

    In the reign of Paul I, the Elder Nazarius was once invited in St. Peters­burg to the house of a cer­tain K., who at that time had fallen into the Tsar’s dis­fa­vor. The statesman’s wife begged the Elder: “Pray, Father Nazarius, that my husband’s case will end well.” “Very well,” replied the Elder, “one must pray to the Lord to give the Tsar enlight­en­ment. But one must ask also those who are close to Him.” The statesman’s wife, think­ing he was refer­ring to her husband’s supe­ri­ors, said: “We’ve already asked all of them, but there is lit­tle hope from them.” “No, not them, and one shouldn’t ask in such a way: Give me some money.” She took out sev­eral gold coins. “No, these are no good. Haven’t you any cop­per coins or small sil­ver ones?” She ordered both kinds to be given him. Father Nazarius took the money and left the house.

    For a whole day, Fr. Nazarius walked the streets and places where he sup­posed poor peo­ple and pau­pers were to be found and dis­trib­uted the coins to them. Towards evening, he appeared at K.’s house and con­fi­dently said, “Glory be to God, all those close to the Tsar have promised to inter­cede for you.” The wife went and with joy informed her hus­band, who had become ill out of sor­row, and K. him­self sum­moned Fr. Nazarius and thanked him for his inter­ces­sions with the high officials.

    Father Nazarius had not even left the sick man’s bed when news came of the suc­cess­ful end of K.’s case. Imme­di­ately K. in his joy felt already stronger, and he asked Fr. Nazarius which of the Tsar’s offi­cials had shown the more favor to him. Here he found out that these offi­cials” were pau­pers — those close to the Lord Him­self, in the words of Fr. Nazarius.

    So what is it worth to give away more and make do with less? It might turn out to be worth a lot. A cou­ple years ago a church I was with had the chil­dren make boxes of non-perishable food that could be given to peo­ple beg­ging for money. They had crayon draw­ings and bless­ings on them and con­tained lit­tle pack­ages of crack­ers, juice and snacks.

    I was hes­i­tant to take my three boxes. I thought the recip­i­ents would throw me a dirty look or some­thing worse. I was wrong. In all three cases, it was as if their frozen look thawed out for a minute. They looked at the box — really looked at it — and then looked at me. And they all said “Thank you! God bless you!” as if this was some­thing won­der­ful, some­thing they’d been wait­ing for.
    It wasn’t much, of course. But it was more than I usu­ally gave them, because there was thought behind it and care and love. And appar­ently, that was more than they were used to getting.

    Two weeks of Lent left. I’m won­der­ing how much I can get into that money can.


    Related posts:

    1. Giv­ing the nanny state a new uniform
    2. Good Chris­t­ian tree-huggers
    3. Are hur­ri­canes racist?
    4. Change and the Church
    5. No room at the inn. Or the megachurch.

    March 18th, 2007 | Grace | 4 Comments |

4 Responses and Counting...

  • s-p 03.18.2007

    Awe­some post. We just spent a cou­ple days in San Fran­cisco where home­less and pan­han­dlers abound. We’re there spend­ing 1000.00 on hotel, seafood and car. How much do we give to the liars and scam­mers among the truly needy? And who are we to judge? Tough stuff, alms is.

  • Grace

    I know exactly what you mean. I re-visited Chicago recently, and I had just for­got­ten how many pan­han­dlers there are. I feel ter­ri­ble walk­ing past so many of them, but I don’t carry much cash around. Greg and I fig­ured out that the next time we went, we’d try to remem­ber to get a bunch of lit­tle money so you can give something.

    (BTW, I know there are some that argue against doing that. It’s for cer­tain that if you can find some way to give them some­thing they can’t spend on drugs or booze you’ve done a bet­ter thing. It’s just harder to do that. And just walk­ing past them every sin­gle time just seemed wrong. So I try to give some­thing and know that that’s an imper­fect solution.)

  • EYTYXOΣ

    Seat­tle has taken this approach:

    <a href=“http://www.givesmartseattle.org/” target=“_blank”>http://www.givesmartseattle.org/

    We saw this on a bus sign when we vis­ited there ear­lier this month.

  • Grace

    It’s a com­plex prob­lem. I can’t help it, I still don’t feel right about just say­ing no or walk­ing past as if I don’t see them.

    The boxes that I talked about gave me a solu­tion: some­thing to give that I knew wouldn’t feed an addic­tion (unless they’re addicted to fruit jel­lies). I’ve heard of food shel­ters that give away “coupons” that you can give, but nat­u­rally you’d need to find one close to where they are in order for it to mean any­thing. Plus, I don’t know of any places locally that do that.

    And even this isn’t a per­fect solu­tion. I remem­ber a pan­han­dler in Santa Cruz who wanted me to buy food stamps from him so he could buy “cat food”. Um, yeah.

    Bot­tom line: there isn’t any sys­tem so per­fect that some­one can’t get around it if they want. It cer­tainly is a mat­ter of per­sonal choice whether to ignore/refuse pan­han­dlers. But lack­ing info and a per­fect solu­tion, I’ve decided I’ll go with my imper­fect solu­tion and give.

    Get back to me in a cou­ple months though. I might change my mind.

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