I went to the mall last week to do a little Christmas shopping and I had to leave. Being in a closed in place with all those clothing stores was like a nightmare come true! Why, you might ask? Well, I run a charity and at this time every year we send out more then 1000 pounds of clothing to destitute children on Indian Reservations. A very worthy cause, and I love doing it. It has had a profound effect on my outlook on life. However, before the clothing leaves here to go to it's final destination, it hangs around my house for a couple of weeks. Used clothing is inspected for stains or damage, then it gets washed, dried and folded as pretty as a present. New clothing is sorted by size, reservation needs, and locations. For about six weeks, boxes and plastic bags are packed and ready to go in every inch of my home. My living room is a horror! My basement impassable!
So as I walked through the mall, I did not see fashion. I did not see anything I just had to have. I saw Laundry! Stores and stores filled with nothing but laundry! I couldn't get out of there fast enough!
Now, this is the first year we do not only send clothing. We are sending furniture, bikes, even the finest linens and flatware. You would be really impressed by the stuff that gets dropped off here. Our donors, who are the most loving and generous people in the world, are deeply concerned with keeping the stuff moving. You would not believe the outpouring of love that is like a tidal wave through here in December! But sometimes we come upon people who have trouble parting with their stuff.
Our radio announcement this years asks, Did you chop your wood today? Did you have to burn your clothing for heat? This is an impossible concept to imagine in a country as rich as ours, even in these hard times. But it's true. On the reservations we serve, the choices between food, electricity and heat must be weighed carefully. Last year, after the drive was done and we were well into spring, I called one of our contacts and asked him, Did the you all get good use from the coats we sent? He answered, “Yes, Christine. They kept us warm. They burned real good.”
This is shocking to imagine, and yet, if we sent the coats out for warmth, they did indeed do their job. With all of the furniture that has been donated this year, I do not see a roomful of valuable antiques, I see firewood. But with the cost of shipping versus purchasing firewood, we are looking for better ways to keep families warm. And after all, people really don't want to spend money on good coats only to have them burned.
While we seriously hope we will not encounter such a situation again, it is interesting to contemplate that in tragedies of this sort, antiques are not really valuable, but keeping people warm is. I remember that someone dropped off a beautiful silver plated gravy boat, and as I packed the boxes, I wondered what the heck anyone would do with that. Food is rare enough, fancy dinner parties requiring such lavish accessories are most likely nil.
A few weeks later, I got a call. “Hey, Christine! What was that thing you sent us that looked like a genie's lamp? Our car overheated miles from anywhere and we used that to pour water in the tank! It worked great!”
The other day one of our donors called and she said, "My kids are grown and I have some really beautiful things that belonged to them, but I don't want to send them if they are going to get burned.” Of course, we all understand that. Those items are perfumed with love and cherished memories. For sure, we will put those goods into hands that will be so happy to receive them. But it does beg the question, Where does our sense of the sacred lie?
Because our country was based on the freedom to develop individually and economically, there has never been any emphasis on loving others as ourselves. In fact, the emphasis is love yourself to the exclusion of all others, buy beautiful clothing and insist there isn't enough left over to help others. What that really translates to is, I can't help others because I want too much stuff myself. I am not saying that we are a completely dispassionate society, because we surely do rally for disasters. But our philosophy of “bringing ourselves up by the bootstraps” leaves too many disadvantaged people unable to even begin to achieve that.
Can you imagine a cold and hungry child, surrounded by the disastrous effects of war still waged upon his people (Oh, yes. This is very true.), finding it easy to succeed in a school that insists his people were annihilated and that Christopher Columbus discovered America? Yes. It IS that hard for some people.
So the next time you find yourself holding on to things that no longer have meaning in your life, ask yourself, What do you hold sacred? That cashmere sweater, so soft against your skin? Or the betterment of the life of a child, who could possibly have heat in his home for a month for the cost of that sweater?
Spiritual living is understanding that Jesus's call to Take Care of Your Neighbor will not only save others, but will save your own soul as well. Poverty is a symptom of the disease of greed. By taking care of others, you can cure that diseases with one not-so-bitter pill. What do you hold sacred? What can you do to save others, and yourself?
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment