March 18, 2009

Coming Together in Poverty

(Please purchase your own copy of Bread for the Journey: A Daybook of Wisdom and Faith.)

There are many forms of poverty: economic poverty, physical poverty, emotional poverty, mental poverty, and spiritual poverty. As long as we relate primarily to one another’s wealth, health, stability, intelligence, and strength, we cannot develop true community. Community is not a talent show in which we dazzle the world with our combined gifts. Community is the place where our poverty is acknowledged and accepted, not as something we have to learn to cope with as best as we can but as a true source of new life.

Living community in whatever form—family, parish, twelve-step program, or intentional community—challenges us to come together at the place of our poverty, believing that there we can reveal our richness.