I'm posting tonight's entry from my personal blog. I don't know if anyone reads this anymore, but as Christmas approaches, I am hoping to write a few reminders back here at ye olde "Occupy Me" about what values we carry into the holidays, a season that is meant to remind us of goodness, but mostly just asks us to live in our discontent.This episode seems like a good starting point:
Today the kids and I stopped at our snack spot for some smoothie and banana bread. I paged through the local daily and the boy asked what I was reading about. As it turned out, the teaser was "The Vanishing Middle Class" and the article was summarizing a recent study that shows that since 1970, poverty and affluence have each and both deepened and moved, with poverty suburbanizing and affluence taking over city centres and of course, all the nice parts.
Once I explained what the word "vanishing" means, I then had to reassure the boy that we weren't going to disappear: no matter what, we're still visible, our little family.
Next was giving the preschool version of class divisions: the rich are the people who have more than they need and the poor are the people who don't have what they need and the middle class are the people who are just right. And then I did my quick sermon about how the world works best when the people who more than they need can share with the people who don't have what they need.
And then my girl said, "We're rich, right mom?"
Right.
So I feel kind of nauseous now, because it seems a bit awful to go around saying "we're rich" all the time because I know there are people for whom this equates to an assertion of awesomeness and success.
ReplyDeleteSo a caveat: the assertion that we're rich is a discipline, a reminder to remember our true place in this world. Probably this demands an entire post altogether. Maybe tomorrow. For tonight, please just note that remembering I'm rich is remembering my responsibility, and is a rejection of the world's loud shout that we need more and that we don't have enough.