POVERTY, COMMUNITY, AND DOLPHINS [T, 11-2-21]

CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith & Life for the Years of Winter

 

In our stewardship season at church, different folks speak for a few minutes each Sunday about some ministry of St. Mark’s. A lot of them involve our building, for we let anyone with a good cause use our building. We supply the bricks and electricity and janitor for free.

Last week one of our members explained why our parking lot is always full, even on Saturday morning. That’s one of the main times that AA and NA and AL Anon and such groups meet.

So many good-cause people use our building that it is hard to get a church activity onto the schedule. Except that they are all church activities.

James and Amy Thomas spoke last Sunday. They are allies to a boat captain in the Thriving Connections program. It’s a program to help folks get out of poverty. Poverty is an ocean of problems, so a boat is a good symbol. 

In Thriving Connections, the impoverished folks are called captains. They are the ones who have to steer and navigate the boat and make the decisions. 

The allies are along for the ride. They never give money, regardless of how tempting that is. They give suggestions and advice, but they never tell people what to do. They are companions and emotional supporters. They provide a connection to the larger community.

Staying with the boat metaphor, though, “ally” has nothing nautical about it. I think allies should be called dolphins. Granted, dolphins don’t get into the boat, except by accident, but they swim along beside and do tricks and make the trip more enjoyable. They are good community.

That is the main point—community. People deal better with poverty and get out of it more easily—if “easy” is ever a word to use about poverty—if they are part of the community. Thriving Connections, and its dolphins, provide community.

From my own childhood experience of poverty, I am sure that is true. My parents had so much trouble with poverty-- not only because Daddy was blind, with an 8^th grade education, and Mother was just unsuited for living in a difficult world--because they resisted community. They stayed on our hardscrabble five acres, three miles out of town. We had no car, so staying home was pretty much necessary, anyway. We had no money, so we had no decent clothes for being seen out in public, and could not pay for tickets or admissions or sodas. We lived in the area where they had grown up, and they did not want old friends to see them in their poverty. They lived in isolation, poverty of people as well as possessions.

I did not know anybody there, though. I was ten years old when we moved from the bustling inner-city of Indianapolis to the farm. I would walk any number of miles, in any weather, to find a pick-up game of baseball or basketball. I joined any school group that didn’t have dues. I was fortunate to go to a school that provided classes and bands and teams and books and even drivers education to every kid free of any charge. The neighbors took me to a church that thought I was special just because I was there. I got out of poverty because I wasn’t in poverty, I was in community.

Yes, the best thing we can do for folks in poverty is to help them know they are part of the community, by being their allies. But… ally for the Thriving Connections program?

Okay, Ally is a nice idea, but it has nothing to do with a boat, and it sounds too much like a bank. Maybe not Dolphins. But… Deckhands? Swabbies? Bosuns? Warrant Officers? …     Humans?

John Robert McFarland