We\u2019ve been graced with a delightfully candid neighbor boy, and a few years ago he asked us point blank, \u201cAre you poor?\u201d<\/p>\n
No, most certainly not<\/a>. The appalling situation in which some of our children must share a bedroom<\/em> not withstanding, let\u2019s be clear: I live luxuriously.\u00a0 Hot water, indoor plumbing, coffee, books, very many shoes . . . everywhere you look, my home is the very picture of superabundance.\u00a0 Elizabeth Scalia shares a letter from a mom who actually tried the $1.25\/day grocery challenge from Billy Kangas<\/a>. She reports what you may have suspected: Destitution is no fun.<\/p>\n Pope Francis or no Pope Francis, Christians do have a calling to share our wealth with the poor.\u00a0 I know some people who pull that off better than I do; they live frugally and avoid accumulating any excess. The irony: If you visited their homes, you might think they were rich.<\/p>\n The reason? Really rich people have clean houses.\u00a0 They don\u2019t have bunches of junk stuffed into every spare corner.\u00a0 If you take that Christian ideal, and combine it with an eye for durable furniture, good housekeeping habits, and a few pretty objects artfully displayed, it creates the illusion of luxury.<\/p>\n Probably one of the reasons the neighbor kid inquired about our circumstances is that we\u2019ve always got the Sanford & Son<\/em> thing going on in some corner or another \u2014 but that has nothing to do with wealth or a lack of it, and everything to do with a penchant for creating toys out of cardboard boxes.\u00a0 It\u2019s a hobby. A trashy hobby.<\/p>\n Fr. Thomas Dubay\u2019s book Hapy are You Poor<\/em><\/a> lays out the argument for evangelical poverty in considerable and enthusiastic detail, and one of his opening observations is that we aren\u2019t talking destitution.\u00a0 The working principle is that we use what we need, and pass on the rest.\u00a0 The tendency, in rejecting this aspect of Christian spirituality, is to make a list of things we can\u2019t live without, and say, \u201cHow can you expect me to live without ________?!\u201d\u00a0 And the answer is: No one expects that.\u00a0 If you need it, have it.<\/p>\n (My tendency in rejecting this aspect of Christian spirituality is to just hit the \u201csubmit order\u201d button, and put off worrying about it for some other time.\u00a0 I need a rubber bracelet that says TGFP \u2013 Thank God for Purgatory.)<\/p>\n If you want a shorter and easier read, Fr. Dwight Longenecker\u2019s post \u201cBenedictine and Franciscan Poverty\u201d<\/a> hits the key points \u2013 read the whole thing, or you\u2019ll miss my favorite bit:<\/p>\n My Dad was a Christian businessman. Sometimes people would criticize him for making a decent mark up on goods he sold in his store.<\/p>\n His answer was, \u201cI want to make as much money as possible in order to further the Lord\u2019s work!\u201d He did too. He and my mom were wealthy, but lived modestly and gave much money to good Christian causes. This is the way the laypeople are called to detachment: to realize what the money is for: it\u2019s for God\u2019s work. It\u2019s for the good of the gospel. It\u2019s for the kingdom of heaven.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n For a look at what benedictine poverty, architecture-version, looks like, visit Clear Creek Monastery<\/a>. Or Fr. L\u2019s church-building plans page<\/a>.\u00a0 Or Europe.<\/p>\n For an idea about franciscan poverty, here\u2019s the Rule and Constitutions of the Franciscan Friars of the Renewal<\/a>.\u00a0 (The Rule of St. Benedict can be found here<\/a>, and it\u2019s pretty interesting too.\u00a0 And the FFR guys have a nice vocations-discernment page here, take a look<\/a>.)<\/p>\n So I did, after reading Fr. Dubay\u2019s book, spend some time thinking about the whole \u201cWhat do we really need?\u201d problem.\u00a0 And here\u2019s our situation: We try to buy good food at my house.<\/p>\n Good food is not cheap.<\/p>\n In America, the going thing is to eat trashy food.\u00a0 So much so, that Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry recently felt called to write about how Catholics need to eat better<\/a>.\u00a0 Which means that if you read labels, or buy organic, or generally try to eat like a 19th century farmer actually ate<\/a>, only without doing the farming<\/a> . . . your Cheetos-eating compatriots may well accuse you of gluttony<\/a>.\u00a0 You\u2019re eating too daintily, or too luxuriously.<\/p>\n Now let\u2019s review: I do live luxuriously.\u00a0 So much so that I feel the need to warn you that Equal Exchange switches over to its summer shipping policy on May 1st<\/a>, so if the best you can do in your efforts at Christian poverty is to eat fair-trade chocolate, order before melting season sets in.<\/p>\n (I don\u2019t have a particular reason for favoring EE, by the way, it just somehow worked out for me. Catholic Relief Services has a pile of links to other reputable sources for this \u2018n that<\/a>.\u00a0 And they fail to mention Mystic Monk<\/a>, so I will, because I\u2019m not sure you can be a Catholic blogger unless you mention the monks every now and again.)<\/p>\n But if your idea of luxury is to eat bread that contains things like flour and water in it, but not chemicals you\u2019d have to get special clearance to use in high school lab science, that\u2019s the sound of your brain on American groceries.<\/p>\n Buying expensive cheeses imported from another continent?\u00a0 Luxurious.\u00a0 (I do that.)\u00a0 Buying cheese that has only ingredients like \u201cmilk\u201d and nothing that can only be had by prescription?\u00a0 Not luxurious. If the cow \/pig \/chicken now on your plate ate grass and saw the sky at some point in its life, that does not make you a glutton.\u00a0 It makes you humane.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" We\u2019ve been graced with a delightfully candid neighbor boy, and a few years ago he asked us point blank, \u201cAre you poor?\u201d No, most certainly not. The appalling situation in which some of our children must share a bedroom not withstanding, let\u2019s be clear: I live luxuriously.\u00a0 Hot water, indoor plumbing, coffee, books, very many […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1209,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13,21,162,110],"tags":[184,183,179,176,177,178,182,181,180],"class_list":["post-539","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-catholic-qa","category-economics","category-human-rights","category-rant-o-rama","tag-cardboard-boxes","tag-clutter","tag-expensive-cheese","tag-fr-thomas-dubay","tag-happy-are-you-poor","tag-junk-food","tag-pope-francis","tag-st-benedict","tag-st-francis"],"yoast_head":"\nThe Paradox of Uncluttered Living<\/strong><\/h3>\n
Christian Poverty in a Nutshell<\/strong><\/h3>\n
Luxury & Junk Food<\/strong><\/h3>\n