{"id":1157,"date":"2013-10-10T22:15:00","date_gmt":"2013-10-10T22:15:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/rhetoricraceandreligion\/2013\/10\/the-poor-and-the-religious.html"},"modified":"2013-10-10T22:15:00","modified_gmt":"2013-10-10T22:15:00","slug":"the-poor-and-the-religious","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/rhetoricraceandreligion\/2013\/10\/the-poor-and-the-religious.html","title":{"rendered":"The Poor and the Religious"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>
Poverty is the primordial fact of human existence, for we did not earn our existence, we were given it by our dear, darling parents, and all subsequent earning, owning and wealth is contingent upon this being given \u2014 upon receiving existence like a welfare check.<\/span><\/div>\n
But we are poorer still, for even after the gift of existence we lie unfurnished, waiting to be given language, virtue, identity, belonging,\u00a0continued<\/em>\u00a0existence \u2014 donations that make all later owning, earning, and wealth possible. The means of becoming fully human are as given as Christmas presents.<\/span><\/div>\n
If \u201chave\u201d indicates anything amounting to total ownership, we have nothing. Touching the edges of this ontological poverty, feeling its shape and its squeeze, I try and fail to avoid contemplating a possible Giver, a Donor, a Cosmic Sap who presses pennies to the palms of we whose existence is a begging. Yes, my existence was given to me by my parents, and their\u2019s by their parents, and so on and thus forth, but to leave it at this is to wallow in infinite regress, to continuously pass the question of who gives existence back in time. If\u00a0all existence is given<\/a>, who first gave?<\/span><\/div>\n
So language is given to us. Our parents point to the sparrow, give us its name, and we believe them. A child uneducated in speech will not spontaneously develop the capacity for language and linguistic thought \u2014 he waits for education. But if we haven\u2019t evolved to simply \u201cbecome symbol-users ourselves,\u201d if\u00a0language is given to us by our parents and our community, and to them by others, and to them by others, we arrive at the need for a genesis, a primordial moment in which language \u2014 or arguably, rationality itself \u2014 was first given, to be ever-after passed down. This idea, the miracle of language\u2019s origins, was part of the immense intrigue that brought Dr. Walker Percy to the Catholic faith.<\/span><\/div>\n
Read the rest here<\/a><\/span><\/div>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Poverty is the primordial fact of human existence, for we did not earn our existence, we were given it by our dear, darling parents, and all subsequent earning, owning and wealth is contingent upon this being given \u2014 upon receiving existence like a welfare check. But we are poorer still, for even after the gift […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2251,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1157","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nThe Poor and the Religious<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Poverty is the primordial fact of human existence, for we did not earn our existence, we were given it by our dear, darling parents, and all subsequent\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/rhetoricraceandreligion\/2013\/10\/the-poor-and-the-religious.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The Poor and the Religious\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Poverty is the primordial fact of human existence, for we did not earn our existence, we were given it by our dear, darling parents, and all subsequent\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/rhetoricraceandreligion\/2013\/10\/the-poor-and-the-religious.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Rhetoric Race and Religion\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2013-10-10T22:15:00+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Andre E. 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