“The poor are poor because they do not want to work and are lazy, what you are doing here is good and all, but it is sort of well, useless”. I hear this phrase said with all the certainty in the world, a fact in the mind of a upper middle class woman I speak with here. I remain quiet the rest of my time with her trying to think of a response to a phrase that speaks against everything I hold true. I dissect the phrase and find story upon story to try to change this woman’s incredibly distorted view.
I think of a mother breaking down in tears telling me how ugly a life it is without an education. Her parents never cared enough or were too busy to encourage her to study, so she never did. She tells me the only jobs she can get, are cleaning the floors and toilets of the rich. She has dedicated her life now to stop that cycle from consuming her children’s life. She is studying now along side her children in order to be able to help and push them to study. She does this on top of working two jobs a day, volunteering in the comedor passing out milk and bread, and having a six, nine, ten, and twelve year old to bring to and from school, do laundry for, cook and being a wife. How could this be called lazy?
I think of my supervisor Ofelia spending all day working with a boy to write the story of his life. After learning to use a computer and typing the story up, he brought it to his parents who didn’t give him the light of day, not a word of encouragement. What is that boy’s motivation to continue with school if no one ever tells him that what he is doing is good?
A pair of brothers has just started school again because of the positive influence that Ofelia has on their lives. They could only start participating in the workshops if they started up with school again. After a month of reminding them everyday to enroll, and telling them they were too smart to waste there time without going to school, they themselves started up again. The incredibly influential power a positive force has in someone’s life. Where I work is a positive force in the barrio. It is a place where children feel loved and special, where they are encouraged to dream the big dreams and where they are challenged to treat others with respect. It is a place where we focus on matching our words with our conduct. Our lips speak the world love while we show it with our actions.
It is a frustrating reality because small change in individual lives is not noticeable by a passerby, or someone who lives a kilometer away from the barrio. Instead of seeing a woman who works every minute of her life struggling to be able to provide her children with a better future than the one she inherited, they will see a tipped over dumpster in the middle of the street with men along side dogs picking through the waste. Instead of seeing a child that just dedicated his day to help clean and fix the inside of a church they will be bothered by that same child asking them for change on the street at night. It is a frustrating but necessary struggle to work toward change that affects people one by one. It is the gospel. The son of the creator of the universe wandered around and listened to people’s problems and ate in people’s homes to talk about them. While Jesus was the savior of all of creation he still healed people one by one.
The poor are not poor because they are lazy. There is poverty because we have forgotten that every man, woman, and child on this earth, we are to love as our family. We can not talk about poverty as if it is a separate entity from the world of the rich and privileged. There is exists incredible wealth in the world because there exists systems of oppression and injustice that provide wealth for a select few while dealing out pain, hunger and disease to the majority of the globe. The gospel defies this reality. It teaches us to love and to care, and struggle one with one for a tomorrow that is better and more just than today.
-james
I think of a mother breaking down in tears telling me how ugly a life it is without an education. Her parents never cared enough or were too busy to encourage her to study, so she never did. She tells me the only jobs she can get, are cleaning the floors and toilets of the rich. She has dedicated her life now to stop that cycle from consuming her children’s life. She is studying now along side her children in order to be able to help and push them to study. She does this on top of working two jobs a day, volunteering in the comedor passing out milk and bread, and having a six, nine, ten, and twelve year old to bring to and from school, do laundry for, cook and being a wife. How could this be called lazy?
I think of my supervisor Ofelia spending all day working with a boy to write the story of his life. After learning to use a computer and typing the story up, he brought it to his parents who didn’t give him the light of day, not a word of encouragement. What is that boy’s motivation to continue with school if no one ever tells him that what he is doing is good?
A pair of brothers has just started school again because of the positive influence that Ofelia has on their lives. They could only start participating in the workshops if they started up with school again. After a month of reminding them everyday to enroll, and telling them they were too smart to waste there time without going to school, they themselves started up again. The incredibly influential power a positive force has in someone’s life. Where I work is a positive force in the barrio. It is a place where children feel loved and special, where they are encouraged to dream the big dreams and where they are challenged to treat others with respect. It is a place where we focus on matching our words with our conduct. Our lips speak the world love while we show it with our actions.
It is a frustrating reality because small change in individual lives is not noticeable by a passerby, or someone who lives a kilometer away from the barrio. Instead of seeing a woman who works every minute of her life struggling to be able to provide her children with a better future than the one she inherited, they will see a tipped over dumpster in the middle of the street with men along side dogs picking through the waste. Instead of seeing a child that just dedicated his day to help clean and fix the inside of a church they will be bothered by that same child asking them for change on the street at night. It is a frustrating but necessary struggle to work toward change that affects people one by one. It is the gospel. The son of the creator of the universe wandered around and listened to people’s problems and ate in people’s homes to talk about them. While Jesus was the savior of all of creation he still healed people one by one.
The poor are not poor because they are lazy. There is poverty because we have forgotten that every man, woman, and child on this earth, we are to love as our family. We can not talk about poverty as if it is a separate entity from the world of the rich and privileged. There is exists incredible wealth in the world because there exists systems of oppression and injustice that provide wealth for a select few while dealing out pain, hunger and disease to the majority of the globe. The gospel defies this reality. It teaches us to love and to care, and struggle one with one for a tomorrow that is better and more just than today.
-james
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