Living poverty: a year without new possessions

[beatitude]

I think I've already mentioned that one of the most valuable things about my effort to live with more simplicity is that I start to see the connections between holy poverty and other areas of Christian life. I was thinking about this at the hospital yesterday. I work in a secure unit for teenagers with severe mental health problems who pose a significant risk to either themselves or others. One of the rules is that staff can't hug or have close physical contact with patients. We give them high fives when they've achieved something good, we might put an arm round them briefly when they're upset or pat them on the back, but nothing further. There are sensible reasons for this. For one thing, it would be harmful for patients with attachment problems (and we have a lot of those!) if we blurred the boundaries between professional and personal relationships by allowing them to be tactile. But yesterday something else occurred to me as I was walking in the hospital grounds during my break.

We have had one girl with serious attachment problems in our ward for a long time now. She has no contact with her birth family, where she was sexually abused. She hasn't even had a long-term foster family. She's just moved from placement to placement, which all broke down in the end because of her violence and emotional volatility, and none of the former foster parents had a good enough relationship with her for them to come and visit now. She doesn't know where she'll be going next. This is a girl who never gets hugs. Never has the experience of someone putting their arms round her and telling her that she's special and loved. No wonder she clings to staff and tries to sit in our laps even though she's in her teens. Obviously we can't let her do that, because allowing a professional relationship to become something more than professional will only cause more problems for her later on. But what other problems does it cause to receive no hugs, no basic signs of physical affection? More than a hospital, this girl needs the experience of a family to love her, and that's one thing we as staff can't give. I was thinking about this yesterday and feeling helpless in my inability to care for this girl in the way that she needs. I saw the poverty in this - her terrible situation and the lack of love in her life, my inability to help - and began to pray for her using the beatitudes: "Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven."

As I prayed, I thought about my decision to withdraw from my clinical therapy training. I've only been in training for two months, but my academic adviser told me on day one that she didn't think someone with my disabilities would ever be able to qualify and practice, and throughout these two months she has done everything she can to make the course difficult for me. I have been feeling bullied and I don't want to spend the next four years fighting her attitude. I'm confident I can qualify, and so are all the therapy professionals who have worked alongside me, but I'm not putting myself through this hazing ritual for the sake of it. My decision is to withdraw, wait a while, and train at a different place. It was only yesterday, during my breaktime prayer, that I began to see how I had been using the thought of this qualification to protect myself from the knowledge of my own poverty and powerlessness in a place like this hospital. I had been thinking that once I was trained, I would be able to do more, help more, be more useful. I had been putting my faith in the acquisition of more skills and knowledge, and this was preventing me from recognising the absences in the children's lives that I can't fill, the sheer pain of what they experience. Now I accept that I'm going to be a care assistant for the foreseeable future - a minimum wage position that requires no formal education at all, and where my chief responsibility is to just 'be there' - I see those absences and that pain vividly, and I realise (a little!) of just how much we all need God.

[beatitude]

This song gave me a lot of comfort during a very difficult time last year, and the lyrics are related to poverty of spirit and seem appropriate for VS, so I'm sharing it here.

[beatitude]

I've just come back from a retreat that the Little Sisters of Jesus organised to mark the centenary of Bl. Charles de Foucauld's death. It was very full-on, but rewarding - the sister who gave the talks is a gifted storyteller and she took us through Brother Charles's whole life. She reminded us that part of Brother Charles's poverty and abjection was the way in which he gave up all his most cherished plans and ideas once it was clear that Christ wasn't asking those of him. He wanted to found a community, but his spiritual director (after seeing the overenthusiastic rule that Charles had drawn up) was to write fervently, "I beg you, do not found anything." He wanted at least one companion, and no one came. The tasks he did end up doing were often those for which he had no gift. One of the Tuareg Muslim tribespeople with whom he lived wrote jokingly about some knitting they were working on together: "I'm a gazelle with this knitting. The marabout [holy man] is a snail." These things struck a chord for me, as I'm still quite saddened that I've had to give up a long-cherished dream to study speech and language therapy. I always felt I'd be so good at it. But it isn't the right thing now. Then there is the way I struggle with basic tasks because of my neurological problems. My disability isn't 'obvious' - while people notice the effects of it, they don't see the cause, so to them I just look slow and lazy. At the hospital the other night I was helping to prepare suppers for the children, and I couldn't get one girl's hot chocolate to come right. Having poor hand control, I tipped in so much chocolate powder that it was like silt. Then I misjudged the quantity of milk so it became freezing cold. Then I slopped it all down the outside of the cup. Another care assistant who was very stressed out with the supper preparation cut in with, "What are you doing?! You've been making that for ten minutes! Get some work done!" I'm used to this sort of commentary, but it still hurt a bit. In this situation I don't normally correct people when they get irritated with me over my brain's funkiness, because it would distract us even more from the task in hand and it's one of the best opportunities I have to practise some poverty. Now it will be easier to cope with cheerfully if I can tell Bl. Charles, "Brother, from one snail to another, help me to get this done!"

The sister leading the retreat told us something especially moving about Charles's death. He was eager to imitate Jesus as he was at Nazareth, a poor workman, and he stresses the importance of this imitation in all his writings - to his mind, if you love Jesus, then you can't help wanting to live and die like him. He was murdered by Senoussi bandits who ransacked the little hut he called his 'fraternity' looking for valuables. His body was thrown into a shallow grave in the desert. When the robbers opened the tabernacle, perhaps expecting to find materially valuable contents, they threw the pyx to the dirt floor without opening it. The sister paused, then pointed out quietly, "In Br Charles's last moments, thrown into a hole in the dirt, Jesus imitated his disciple - he was thrown into the dirt himself." This story touched me more than anything else in the retreat, and the idea of Jesus imitating Charles at the last reminded me of a traditional Islamic saying about God's proximity that I have heard Muslim friends repeating: "If my servant remembers Me in himself, I too, remember him in Myself; and if he remembers Me in a group of people, I remember him in a group that is better than they; and if he comes one span nearer to Me, I go one cubit nearer to him; and if he comes one cubit nearer to Me, I go a distance of two outstretched arms nearer to him, and if he comes to Me walking, I go to him running."

[beatitude]

Last week I was offered a research fellowship at a university in another city. I will design and lead a comparative study into religious aspects of reconciliation in at least three different conflict-affected countries...with a focus on the role of certain religious sisters, and guess which ones? ;) My favourite words from Br Charles's personal rule, which now form the opening line of the consecration in my institute, are, "For the sake of Jesus and the Gospel..." and as I left the interview room I told him that if this job could accomplish something in the service of that Gospel, to make sure I got it. The interviewers phoned me to offer me the position before I'd even had time to reach the train station.

This is a sudden change. I had resigned myself to staying at the hospital indefinitely, and now God moves me. I think this is a facet of holy poverty, that willingness to "do whatever he tells you." At Cana that obedience to Mary's instruction was only possible because the servants knew that they were all out of wine. If I had clung on to my dream of becoming a therapist instead of letting it go and standing before God empty-handed I could never have been given this opportunity, which means I will be living in the same city as my spiritual director and immersing myself in research that is relevant to the life and spirituality of my secular institute. I had been praying for the chance to receive deeper formation, and now it's come.

I will miss the children. I've had a couple of days off with a sore ankle, and one of my colleagues messaged me tonight: "Is your foot nearly better? K [a patient] is constantly asking for you!" It will be hard to say goodbye to them. I'm feeling a bit tearful as I type this, and I'm thinking that I might continue to accept ad hoc shifts at the hospital at the weekends. It would mean waking up at four a.m. in order to commute, and I couldn't cope with that every single week, but I don't feel ready to leave entirely.

[beatitude]

This is not related to my topic, but I wanted to share the story somewhere. A while ago I was explaining the difference between religious sisters and secular institute members to a curious teenager at my parish. "Sisters are more like God's army. In the secular institutes, you find God's ninjas." Her little brother was playing around the room, and I didn't realise he'd been listening/comprehending until I found myself standing in the queue at the supermarket and there was a sudden excited yell from behind: "Daddy, Daddy, that girl says she's a NINJA!"

That's my cover well and truly blown. So much for the hidden vocation of Nazareth.

[beatitude]

Yesterday I discovered Nicolas Barré, the founder of the Infant Jesus Sisters. He was a Minim Father and there are a lot of similarities between his spirituality and that of my own Br. Charles. Lately I've been getting one of my periodic restless fits, wishing I could be in religious life and thinking I could do "more good" as a sister. Barré has good advice on this:

"The beauty of the world consists of many different kinds of beauty. If a tree wanted to glow with a brilliance of gold and if gold took on the green of the leaves, the flowers or the fruits of the tree, the whole of nature would be in disorder. So it is with the spiritual life; you must not try to follow the path that is right for another or lay claim to the same graces. This would lead to the ruination of everything, including oneself. It can truly be said of every saint: ‘There truly has been no other person like this one.'"

He also speaks to my recurrent worries about becoming soft and selfish as a single woman, not really doing the will of God, and my tendency to second-guess myself at every turn:

"Have you ever watched a feather drifting in the wind? Imagine if you were being carried by the wind like that feather! Be faithful in allowing yourself be led by God. Like a feather drifting in the wind, be receptive to the inspiration of the Spirit and obedient to what draws you."

I can see that my constant urge to be doing "more good" and being "more useful" is an obstacle to poverty of spirit (my favourite beatitude...), as it means putting more faith in my capacities than in God's and it causes me to focus far too much on practicalities such as what career I should be doing rather than on who I am before the Lord. As one of the nuns from In This House of Brede asks a junior sister who has started to feel that their life is easy and wasteful, "Is it easier to be than to do?" We don't need to be in a monastery to know the power of simple prayer and presence, but I don't yet have enough faith in it.

[NadaTeTurbe]

How did you discovered Nicolas Barré ? I'm curious, he's not very well known, even though he influenced greatly St John Baptist de la Salle. 

[beatitude]

From the website of the Sisters of the Infant Jesus. As I said, I was having one of my "I should reconsider religious life!" moments, and I ended up looking at the directory of religious communities in the UK, visiting websites I hadn't previously looked at. Then Nicolas Barré appears and tells me to stop trying to follow other people's paths.

[beatitude]

Today's Gospel was one of the texts I love the very most, and that influenced my vocation without me even knowing it. It's a story that still brings me to tears every time I hear it - Jesus is on his way to heal the daughter of the synagogue official Jairus, who is gravely ill; and on his way there, surrounded by crowds, he is glimpsed by a woman who has been haemorrhaging for twelve years. "If I can touch even his clothes, I shall be well again." She does it, and he stops to ask what he already knew. "Who touched me?"

I've often thought of how scared she must have been at this moment. Menstrual blood rendered her spiritually unclean under the law; she wasn't supposed to touch people. She's just touched a rabbi who is surrounded by friends and admiring followers. In the ancient world it was a common belief that people developed chronic sicknesses and disabilities because of something they'd done. ("Rabbi, was it for this man's sins or the sins of his parents that he was born blind?") Sometimes I've wondered how lonely that woman must have been in those twelve years, when she was not only in physical pain and financial hardship after she'd spent all she had on doctors, but socially excluded and most probably blamed for her condition. Jesus could have just healed her physically and hurried on his way without saying a word - she knew she was better the second she touched him, he didn't have to tell her so, and he had a life to save. But he wanted to heal her from a deeper hurt, so he let the whole crowd know she'd broken a purity rule and touched him, and then in front of them all he called her "my daughter." He gave that woman her dignity back that day, and taught the disciples ("You see how the crowd is pressing round you and yet you say, 'Who touched me?") that even in the middle of a great crowd it is important to give loving attention to each person who needs it. He also issued a silent rebuke to the crowd and taught them a thing or two about compassion. But often I've wondered if any of Jairus's relatives and friends were angry when they saw that, Jesus stopping to waste time talking to this dirty impure woman when their own little girl, child of a respectable family, lay dying. "She is dead. Don't bother the teacher any more." Was there any bitterness in the way they said it?

It's an important text for me because it reminds me not to overlook anyone, not to let big priorities (no matter how worthwhile they might be) stop me from doing the little things that might not be physically life-saving, but could be what a struggling person needs to make them feel appreciated, human even. This is central to the idea of Nazareth as imagined by Brother Charles. It also encourages me to think about the people I view as 'impure' in some way, the ones I don't want to help because I'm not convinced they deserve it, the ones I tend to think about as a category of people rather than seeing as individuals. It's very easy to imagine myself standing alongside Jesus while he turns to show his love to a person our society dehumanises or considers as not fully whole - people with intellectual disabilities, for example, or a refugee, or an unborn child. It is harder to comprehend that sometimes I'm a member of the crowd receiving his rebuke for ostracising where I could have helped.

I always think of the beatitude "Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven" when I read this Gospel. It's my favourite beatitude, closely followed by, "Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God." That woman is one of my favourite saints, and I think of her as the embodiment of what it means to be poor in spirit and pure in heart - she saw Him for who he was, she was given the kingdom. It reminds me of my own poverty and failures, but it doesn't make me feel guilty over them or defensive - I read this story and I feel like I'd do anything to change, so I never leave someone standing in a crowd feeling unwanted and in despair, just because I'm not pure-hearted enough to see them for who they really are. This is another thing I mean when I say this text drives my vocation. It forces me to confront my worst self and gently pushes me to be better.

[Swami Mommy]

What a lovely contemplation, Beatitude!  And how interesting that our two focuses are so different.  For me, this story prompts me to compare my level of faith and trust in God with that woman's complete faith and acknowledge how often I hedge my bets, not fully believing that God really has my back. I often extend my hand, waiting and praying for blessings, then snatch it away at the very last second, denying myself the grace so abundantly offered.  I truly believe that learning to trust in God's love for me on a personal level is one of my primary life lessons.

[beatitude]

My new job is a challenge. Unlike in the hospital, where I followed a strict timetable, I have a lot of freedom. I'm the principal investigator for my own project, so unlike other postdoc researchers who are part of a team, I can plan out my own day. If I want to work from my living room I can, and if I want to do all my serious work in the middle of the night surrounded by biscuit debris, that's fine, providing it gets done. When colleagues want to meet me, they ask for a mutually convenient time, they don't just tell me. This freedom lets me go to daily Mass and regular Adoration, and to resume hobbies that I couldn't keep up when I worked in the hospital - shift work meant that I never had fixed days off, so it was impossible to sign up for a regular music lesson or ballet class. While I'm grateful for all this, it does mean that I have lost my mortification opportunities.  Bl. Charles de Foucauld recommended that we should try to take the most difficult or unpleasant work on ourselves, and in the hospital, there were always opportunities even if I wasn't quite holy enough to seize them, like clearing up after a distressed patient had defecated on the floor. But working in a university doesn't present me with the same chances. It's a very comfortable environment compared to a teenagers' psychiatric ward. 

I'm also in different company. Most of the teenagers I was looking after in the hospital came from deprived backgrounds, a majority had been in foster care, and some arrived homeless, with no idea where they would be going after their inpatient stay. Recently I read some research that suggested only 1% of teenagers who have been in the care system will make it to university. That knocked the wind out of me. I thought of how I had got off on a bad footing with one sixteen-year-old patient, because seeing how carefully she was colouring in, I complimented her on her precision, told her I expected she'd be good at calligraphy, and asked if she'd tried it. Stony silence, followed by a muttered, "What's calligraphy?" I'd made her feel humiliated and I hadn't meant to. I just assumed she'd know it. At first I was also startled by the level at which the hospital teacher pitched her classes - the work seemed more in keeping with a primary school. Now I understand more about the backgrounds these kids have had, and it isn't surprising any more. It bothers me to think that statistically speaking I'm extremely unlikely to meet a person like them in my new workplace.

I don't doubt that I'm in the right place (I made so many mistakes with my application and frustrated the recruiters so much that the mere fact I was offered this job told me that God must have set it aside for me  ), but since I was a teenager, I have felt a persistent and deep-rooted care for people with mental health problems and/or intellectual disabilities, and every job I've ever held has involved them. Except now. I need to pray about how I can remain in solidarity with people who face these obstacles in life, and stay vigilant about being sucked away from the margins and into a comfortable existence in the soft centre. The question is how.

[Swami Mommy]

Because your schedule has become so flexible, there are probably plenty of opportunities to offer your services as a volunteer once or twice a week in a mental health day program, a soup kitchen, a nursing home, or an after school program in an impoverished area of your city.  Go through the yellow pages of your phone book under social services organizations for ideas.

[beatitude]

I'm looking into volunteering and I've e-mailed a few places to ask if they'll take me, but I know this on its own won't answer my deeper question. It's easy enough to give a few hours each week to people living with hardship. That's not necessarily the same as being in solidarity with them, and having charity in its fullest Christian sense. I remember one suicidal 13-year-old girl in the hospital who told me that no one actually cares about her, including staff, "because you're only here because it's your job and they pay you." I told her very frankly that while we do need to earn our living, there is a shortage of care staff everywhere and we could have had our pick of places, including places that are much easier than a secure unit. "No one is here with you unless they want to be." She could not believe me from those words alone, but because she saw me day in and day out, and I was still saying the same things no matter what she did (and she tested my sincerity in every way she knew - I don't easily forget the lovely occasion when she urinated on me!), she eventually did start to believe it. For her I was made credible by the fact that I was there without fail - she wasn't some optional extra to my week.

That job also shaped my prayer life. Because the shifts were so long and I could rarely get to Mass, and I was coming home too tired out to pray much, I had to weave some prayer unobtrusively into my day: in the early morning, before the teens were awake, we would be stationed at the doors of those who were on 1:1 supervision and I would begin by praying the rosary for the child I was monitoring. Throughout the day I would pray, often asking for the right words to say to this patient or that patient, eyes to see what I needed to see, strength to not be so selfish and to stop ducking out of tough jobs, patience to respond kindly to a staff member who was curt. It was a real school for prayer and there I felt that my prayer and work were growing closer together. I could recognise the Nazareth described by Brother Charles in this place. No matter how much volunteer work I do, it's going to be more difficult to live out this spirituality when I am in an officially 'prestigious' job. It must be possible, but I will have to find the way into it over time, I think.

[Sister Leticia]

Reading what you've written it occurs to me you're living a different kind of poverty. It's the poverty of feeling you're not doing enough, or that life has become too cushy - and the poverty of knowing that you can't just go out and make all sorts of changes to this. You have a contract to work in this nice environment, with people who don't need your prayers and your patience in the same way. And this - especially for someone who admires Charles de Foucauld as much as you do, and who strives to be generous and radical - is a much harder poverty than cleaning up after distressed patients!

I don't know if I'm making sense - but in an upside-down sort of way, God has led you into a different sort of desert - a different sort of mortification. Because I feel that for you, a desert isn't a place filled with menial work and challenging people - hard and exhausting though it was, that's also been a source of joy, because it's enabled you to live in very concrete, practical ways, the spirituality of Br Charles. But if you truly believe this is where God wants you to be, then know that he has brought you here for a very good reason: and in God's time and way, he will speak to your heart, and this can be a time of great grace.

(And in the meantime, enjoy all those opportunities for Mass and adoration and hobbies - you won't have them forever!)

It's very late, and I should be going to bed, but I wanted to respond to this now because I won't be back here for more than 12 hours. I hope I'm making some sort of sense. (I know what I'm grasping at trying to say, but I don't feel I've conveyed it) I'll end by saying that I've also been reminded of a homily by Pope Francis, in which he spoke of the courage and blessedness of a restless heart. So, Beatitude... Blessed are the restless of heart...

http://www.news.va/en/news/pope-at-santa-marta-the-courage-of-a-restless-hear?fb_ref=Default

 

[beatitude]

1 hour ago, Sister Leticia said:

Reading what you've written it occurs to me you're living a different kind of poverty. It's the poverty of feeling you're not doing enough, or that life has become too cushy - and the poverty of knowing that you can't just go out and make all sorts of changes to this. You have a contract to work in this nice environment, with people who don't need your prayers and your patience in the same way. And this - especially for someone who admires Charles de Foucauld as much as you do, and who strives to be generous and radical - is a much harder poverty than cleaning up after distressed patients!

I don't know if I'm making sense - but in an upside-down sort of way, God has led you into a different sort of desert - a different sort of mortification. Because I feel that for you, a desert isn't a place filled with menial work and challenging people - hard and exhausting though it was, that's also been a source of joy, because it's enabled you to live in very concrete, practical ways, the spirituality of Br Charles. But if you truly believe this is where God wants you to be, then know that he has brought you here for a very good reason: and in God's time and way, he will speak to your heart, and this can be a time of great grace.

This perspective actually hadn't occurred to me. I have always felt quite vulnerable in menial jobs because my own disability is exposed, and sometimes I attract impatient comments from people who can't see why I'm so slow and who put it down to laziness or thoughtlessness. But there is a joy in that vulnerability, you are right, because I see it in Jesus and in Br. Charles and in so many other people I love. The real mortifying struggle has always been never to rush to defend myself, just to keep calm and to keep on doing my best without launching into a speech about my neurological problems to everyone who gets snappy or impatient. I was very good at certain aspects of my job, or I couldn't have retained it, but I knew that in every week there would be these little barbs. I can't say I wanted them but I did realise they would help me with humility if I let them. By contrast, I now have a job where everyone focuses on my achievements. My difficulties are camouflaged here - you can get away with clumsiness and scatty behaviour if you're an academic, people will just smile and say what an eccentric you are. I hadn't considered that the sense of things being too cosy and cushy could also be a desert.

I have been thinking about St Paul's comment that he "became all things to all men", a statement that I've never really understood and that I have often thought about quite critically, as it seemed to suggest insincerity. How can anyone be all things? Reading your post, I was reminded of Little Sister Magdeleine's remark to her sisters in colonial Algeria - "We are here for the poorest, but we mustn't forget to love the French!" - and I start to see what Paul meant. Working in these vastly different situations could help me to learn to relate better to others and to testify to the Gospel in a more complete way, and it doesn't necessarily mean giving up on that preferential option for the poor.

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(And in the meantime, enjoy all those opportunities for Mass and adoration and hobbies - you won't have them forever!)

This is sound advice.  I like the story of how St Teresa of Avila responded to someone who criticised her enjoyment of a delicious dinner: "There is a time for penance and a time for partridges." I will eat my partridges.