Is There Room In Our Hearts for the Whole Story?

Rome Violinist and Family, March 2001

Photo Credit: Mark Grace

One of the most frequent questions I hear people being asked around Christmas time is, "What is your favorite Christmas memory?"  

I love that question.  It inevitably invites us into the worshipful rooms of our lives, often connected to our sense of childhood wonder and personal experiences of having been loved deeply.

That is why it is striking to me that every Christmas season seems so filled with a kind of desperate frenzy to escape anything unpleasant and to eat and drink ourselves into a kind of forgetful stupor from which we only wake sometime after New Year's day.  I don't mean this as a judgment on others because I seem to be as easily caught up in the sickness as anyone else on the planet.

THE CHRISTMAS STORY IS ABOUT ABUNDANCE CHEEK-BY-JOWL WITH SCARCITY

The sometimes disruptive reality of this season is that the family in the picture above have lived closer to the real story of Christmas than many of us will ever imagine. 

Indeed, that story is being lived out every single Christmas all over again.  It shouldn't take a Sandy Hook elementary to call our attention to it.  The fact is that more people die in the U.S. on Christmas and New Year's Day than at any other time of year, and not just from auto crashes, drug overdoses or family violence.  More people succumb to nearly every kind of illness on those two days of the year than at any other time.  

There is nothing new to the reality that death and deprivation attend us at every step, even into the heart of our most holy of celebrations.

THANKS FOR BUMMING ME OUT, MR. COMFORT AND JOY . . .

As a matter of fact, I have been known to display my fair share of angst-ridden moodiness, and not just on Christmas.  I'm a year-round equal opportunity depressive.

But wait just a bit before you turn away toward your second helping of turkey and tamales.  Don't grab that third bottle of beer just yet.  Give me a minute to make my last point.

You see, if anything at all should give us comfort AND joy this year it is just this fact.  What we are celebrating is the birth of God Almighty INTO the worst possible circumstances to deliver us to peace.  

Jesus wasn't born to create this confusing, stress inducing festival of turkey and cranberry sauce or to make possible a big giant tree with mounds of presents under them.  

Christ came into the world to be with us at the most difficult time.  To assure us that NOTHING can separate us from the love of God.

Somehow that seems to me to be the most important part of this story- more hopeful than new possessions, more reliable than even good fortune and the absence of pain. So many people on this planet right now are living in need, facing despair, crossing the threshold of death.  I believe they belong in our Christmas as much as Santa or tinsel or a new iPad.  In fact, our ability to see them as part of this story is what makes this holiday a holy day.

Christmas Blessings,

Mark

Why I Believe Class Warfare Is Real

She is seventeen years old.  She and her older sister, who is going college, both work nearly full time jobs in addition to their school work.  Their mother has been unable to find work since she separated from a their father on account of his drinking and violence.  

In between updates on her father's efforts to stop drinking and her efforts to hang onto a job with a boss from hell, she stops to ask us to recommend a good restaurant where she might take her mom for her birthday.  "She's been really down lately because she can't find work and because of the problems my dad gives her.  I want to take her someplace nice, to give her a good time."

A LACK OF WILLINGNESS TO TAKE PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY

I winced as I heard her question.  It reminded me of one of the more recent Facebook rants I'd read about how "those people," meaning poor people, should exercise more personal responsibility.  "They've got to have their cell phones and eat out all the time," was the criticism.  

I tremble with rage when I read such lazy, irresponsible, baseless accusations of people like the young woman I just described.  I want to fight somebody when I hear poor people being blamed as the cause of our problems in this country.

The  thing about that 17 year old who is keeping a roof over her jobless mother's head, feeding and caring for her 14 year-old brother and 5 year old sister is not that she is so exceptional.  

Look at the collage at above.  Do you think I am attempting to tug at your heart strings?  You bet.  Because I can tell you a story about every single person in the collage above that would make you envious of them, of their courage and discipline and self-sacrifice for their fellow human beings.  

I want your heart to be stirred because it is the only sure antidote I know to the callous, unthinking labels that are heaped upon human beings every time someone talks about poor people as though they were all irresponsible, undisciplined and unprincipled freeloaders on society.

If you come to my church, if you dare to walk around my neighborhood, I can show you dozens if not hundreds of people who are living exemplars of personal responsibility.  You and I could never hope to measure up to the discipline and determination that most of the poor people I know demonstrate in their daily lives.

Credit card debt in this country averages $15,965 per credit card holder.  609 million credit cards are owned and used by Americans.  The total revolving debt as of December of 2011 was $801 billion and the total U.S. consumer debt was $2.5 trillion.

Yeah. Our country's problems are caused by poor people. Illegal immigrants.  People who can't speak English.  Those are the people who've racked up $2.5 trillion in consumer debt.

IS IT REALLY US OR THEM?

Look, I am a Caucasian U.S. citizen who qualifies to be in the top 3% of people in this country in terms of my household income.  I grew up around other Southern and Southwestern whites and I have navigated all of my adult wage earning life in affluent economic circles.

And I can tell you that what I have heard come out of the mouths of untold numbers of affluent white Southern and Southwestern Caucasian U.S. citizens over my adult life would convince anyone that there is a real class warfare in this country.  That there really is a war between "us" and "them."

I've heard affluent people who are drowning in debt because of their own personal irresponsibility go on a ten minute rant about "those people" who are costing us jobs, who have "fancy cars parked in front of their shacks," "can't stay out of jail," "don't need to be leaching off the government," "do nothing but lay around all day."

And I see the same people try to hide their bigotry when face to face with the people they just got through condemning. Or worse still, be completely unaware that the person they are dealing with fits into the class of people they have just been condemning.


And if you are bristling right about now because you think I am being unfair to a class of people, then you have a tiny inkling of what it feels like to be labeled because of your class.  The difference  is that there is no real consequence for your identification with affluent white people.  We all get to keep our jobs and our privileges and our phony righteous indignation.  When poor people are labeled as undeserving of help the consequences are real and the impact can cripple a person's future.

TAKE TWO WEEKS TO LISTEN

Believe me when I tell you that I don't want class warfare. I'm not running on any political platform.  There is no money in this for me.  

I'm not trying to convince you to vote for an economic or political liberal. I completely agree with the idea that reducing the deficit should be a top priority for our government.

I sure don't want you to accept what I am saying at face value when I recount my personal experience to you.

I do want to encourage you to do one thing.  Take two weeks and listen.  Bring up the question of what responsibility if any we might have to poor people in difficult economic times.  Don't prompt people or argue when they start going on about the sins of "those people."  Just listen.  

Then I want to begin a conversation here about who or what we really need to be at war with in this country.

Photo Credit: www.crosscards.com