World Affairs

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I thought I knew poverty. We lived it before my parents separated - for good, when I was in fifth grade. We lived it afterward - when my mom raised my siblings and me on welfare. We dreamed for sunnier days and lived in poverty.

We moved a dozen times trying to escape it. But, we couldn't make it go away. It followed us everywhere. During elementary and junior high, "poor" seemed like a scarlet word I wore on my chest to school each day. I felt quarantined by peers and classmates as if poverty was a plague.

Still, I rarely went hungry. I had clothes to wear and the rented shacks we called home kept us sheltered. We never slept under a cardboard box. In retrospect, I didn't know poverty as intimately as millions of others across the globe. I merely knew a community who scorned the poor for being poor.

I can only guess what impoverished moms would give for an opportunity to place food - prepared by their hands - on a table before children they love as much as I love mine. I know how it feels to serve meaty succulent dishes garnished with buttery green vegetables and decadent side desserts. I know how it feels to set an inviting table with fine linen napkins and juice-filled goblets - see faces light up around a bountiful spread. I don't know how it feels to put a child to bed hungry.

Poverty is an ugly word - like cancer. I would almost prefer to ignore it. Several months ago, as I talked in the front lawn with my neighbor, a young mother greeted us. She walked with her daughter, a bald blue-eyed toddler. I pretended not to notice the words "Cancer Sucks" on the mother's t-shirt. I didn't ask any questions. We chatted and played with the precious child.

Nor did I ask the mother her name or the name of her daughter. I don't know why. Perhaps it was easier. I didn't want to know what the t-shirt meant. But, ignoring cancer wouldn't make it go away. Not any more than ignoring the impoverished will make them less hungry, less sheltered, less ill - less clothed.

I wonder if I ignore the cancers in a community am I as unrighteous as the community that scorned the poor for being poor? At least they acknowledged I existed.

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