(pantry at Navarre)When I give food to the poor, they call me a saint. When I ask why the poor have no food, they call me a communist.
~ Dom Helder Camara ~
former Archbishop of Olinda and Recife, Brazil
former Archbishop of Olinda and Recife, Brazil
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5 comments:
Then call me a commie!
Oh, I've been called a Marxist before. Geez. Let's just feed everyone already. It's not impossible.
I've been called worse. I can take it. : )
xo
The sin is that there is enough food, there is enough money, there are enough of us who care and some just want to ignore suffering and discount the generous, compassionate hearts with name-calling to no good purpose whatsoever.
Then I look again at the gorgeous array of canned food, put by loving hands, and I think about the teacher who told China Galland in The Bond Between Women: A Journey to Fierce Compassion that we must love the child abuser as much as the child. Impossible task. So must I somehow love the name caller who would so easily dissuade us from healing one another and supplying sustenance.
Here's what I find interesting...
What's so bad about being called a communist? Or a socialist? Or a liberal? Or a conservative?
All of the different systems and politics and economies in and of themselves are not bad. It is the disdain of the one saying the name that makes it good or bad.
Specifically regarding economic systems: comunism, socialism, capitalism--each of these systems has its merits and they can all work for the good of all. How? It depends upon the people at the top of the food chain. We have never known a system that wasn't class or caste based--even in our experience of communism and socialism and democracy on this planet. Someone is always at the top.
The system goes the way of the heart and mind and soul of the ones driving it--and those be the powers that be...who are usually the wealthy. Yes, even in the communist system.
Any system can be used to hold people down or lift them up. It is the attitude of "not enough" or "if you get some, I won't have enough" that makes the difference.
More than...less than.
Who decides?
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