Our Teachers, The Poor

 

 

 

by Bob Hadley

 

For years, when I talked about how important it is for those of us who have so much more than we need to have  personal relationships with the poor, I usually spoke of how much we can learn from the poor. I even said, almost glibly, how much I had learned from the pitifully few relationships I had had with the poorest of the poor. When I would say this, people would either nod in agreement or else would not understand what I had just said. In any event no one asked me to explain just what it was that they could learn or what I had learned from such relationships. This was fortunate for me because I don't think I could have explained it in any specific way. I just knew I had learned.

 

Now, thanks to some notes I read from an informal meeting a few Ministry of Money board members had several years before with Henri Nouwen, I have my answer. Henri said in that meeting that he had learned at least three things from the poor: gratitude, joy and humility. His words were like a lightning bolt piercing the haze of my years of almost casually saying, "I have learned so much from the poor." In one short sentence he summed it up, and it all fit as I applied it to my own experiences.

 

This is what the refugees in that giant camp in Somalia, the blind lepers in Jamaica, the men at the Homes for the Destitute and dying in Calcutta and in Port-au-Prince, the desperately poor in Cite Soleil and on the island of La Gonave, the man dying of AIDS and the little girl crippled in Ethiopia and oh so many others were teaching me: gratitude, joy and humility.

 

Gratitude not just for the things with which I have been blessed but for the simpler joys all around me that I so often overlook or take for granted. Joy in life itself, in friendships, in family, and in each new day. Humility before God and before each of these people who understands so much better than I what really matters in life and what it means to trust in God for everything.

 

The poorest of the poor have accepted me as I am and have graciously taught me all of these things without judging or condemning me. How can I not be grateful to these wonderful teachers, as well as joyful and humble before the One who told us that He was and is there with these teachers---the least of these, our brothers and sisters, the poor.

 

 

 

Bob Hadley is a Board Member and Volunteer Staff member of Ministry of Money. He resides in Dayton, Ohio.

Reprinted from Ministry of Money newsletter, June 2001. Used by permission.