Poverty, precariousness and livelihoods

Okay, I'm on shaky ground here, but I've been thinking about those three concepts for a while... Some forms of poverty are not at all precarious, while some form of intense precariousness do not (yet) amount to poverty.

So for example a monk or a retiree on a meagre state pension can live in objective "poverty" but their situation does not lack stability or security. If they are prepared to be frugal, they can be fine forever and still be very generous towards others.

Precariousness on the other hand implies that all could be lost at the drop of a hat with little prospects for support. To various extents, precariousness can force individuals into increasingly selfish behaviour patterns. Therefore, I wonder if precariousness is among the great social evils of our time.

There was a bit of thinking done about this in Italy at the end of the last decade. It was a fascinating movement really. Individuals who found themselves living in precariousness availed themselves of a made-up patron saint, San Precario.

San Precario informally became the patron saint of precarious workers, the unemployed, the underemployed, people made redundant, the uninsured, illegal immigrants, the physically and financially dependent and those isolated from formal and informal circuits of solidarity. He is invoked against neoliberalism, evil goverment decisions and the precariousness that ensues. That's a pretty cool idea.

People began to print holy cards (seriously!) and to give them out at demonstrations. They look like this:





I like using the concept of precariousness because I wonder if people need a modicum of security in order to feel empowered to be generous. Or whether security itself is a false god that should be relinquished entirely. Big debate here...

I've seen lots of fairly secure (though by no means wealthy) people launch into great ventures. On the other hand, my generation is often accused of not being very generous. But then they are saddled with student debt, have no job security, no savings, no retirement plan, and no prospect of being able to buy their own homes.

Should Christians aim to design forms of moderate material security that do not depend on the functionning of the capitalist system, like most pension funds do, like the church too often does?

I feel for the people of Greece because I sense that it is precariousness, not necessarily enforced frugality, that is killing them.

I often dream of a green and hilly land where people and households are simply able to have a somewhat ethical livelihood that enables them to feed their family and enjoy creation. Is that a crazy dream to have? To work towards?

Must be time for a Blaise Pascal quote...

"Earnestness is enthusiasm tempered by reason"
Blaise Pascal

What might distract the author of this blog from thinking of nothing except her unborn baby's little kicks

An intervention by Rowan Williams on our government and its "Big Society", that's what!

I must admit that I do enjoy reading the man's thoughts on mostly everything, even if I'm not particularly fond of him sitting on the fence for nearly a decade in the evil fundamentalists vs. cuddly liberals stalemate. In particular, I was massively impressed with his thoughts on 9/11 which are still incredibly relevant today and well worth a read.

So now let's hear the key points from his New Stateman's piece (read the full text by clicking on my first link above):

'An idea whose roots are firmly in a particular strand of associational socialism has been adopted enthusiastically by the Conservatives'.

'Managerial politics [is] attempting with shrinking success to negotiate life in the shadow of big finance.'

'With remarkable speed, we are being committed to radical, long-term policies for which no one voted.'

'While grass-roots initiatives and local mutualism are to be found flourishing in a great many places, they have been weakened by several decades of cultural fragmentation. The old syndicalist and co-operative traditions cannot be reinvented overnight and, in some areas, they have to be invented for the first time.'

'[There is] a quiet resurgence of the seductive language of "deserving" and "undeserving" poor, nor by the steady pressure to increase what look like punitive responses to alleged abuses of the system.'

'There is [a] theological strand to be retrieved that is not about "the poor" as objects of kindness but about the nature of sustainable community, seeing it as one in which what circulates - like the flow of blood - is the mutual creation of capacity, building the ability of the other person or group to become, in turn, a giver of life and responsibility. Perhaps surprisingly, this is what is at the heart of St Paul's ideas about community at its fullest; community, in his terms, as God wants to see it.'

Feminist and Queer theology: here I come!

Over the last few months, if there is one thing that really got me fuming it is stupid pregancy books written by men. I don't care how many pregnant women they've talked to and how many babies they've delivered, I still resent pontifying discourses written by men. Every atom of my body is crying: get the heck out of our field, talk about whatever you want, but growing babies is women's stuff.

And I must admit that this primal womynist anger is spreading quickly to a lot of other fields as well. I find myself longing for a women's bible, that isn't all about "the seed of men" but the "eggs of women" and all that kind of stuff. I'm sure I could find that on Amazon somewhere. I long for entire passages in the bible that would be love letters to women. It annoys me that we know so little about key female characters because men couldn't be bothered to write them in fully.

I'm not alone in this... Every once in a while my female theologian friends end up exclaiming, quite despite themselves "Will there ever be any bounds to the mysogyny of the [catholic] church?" The same is valid for extraordinarily gifted gay theologians such as James Alison who are having, like the rest of us, to reimagine a God that wouldn't treat women and gays as any less interesting than straight men.

So right now, a male-centric bible doesn't talk to me, and a male saviour doesn't talk to me all that much either. I don't know if this is right or wrong, all I know is that I'm feeling it quite intensely and that denying isn't very helpful. It's far more interesting to explore why this is and what insights into the creative genius of the Shekinah this might shed light upon. Making honey from a lot of flowers, you bet!

"The body was put in a plastic bag" by Ian M Fraser

Expecting a child was the best thing to ever happen to me, Christian-wise. While stories like the one I'm citing below used to upset me before, I now positively can't bear them.

It might be linked to the low blood sugar in the morning. It makes me wake up every day with a ravenous hunger which I am fortunate to be able to alleviate by walking down to the kitchen. Before, I never even felt hunger except as a mild annoyance which I could ignore for half a day if I wanted. I once did a good job of keeping Ramadan with a friend for a little while and found it quite easy. Now it often feels like I'm going to pass out if I don't eat some carbs quickly. I am so pathetically thankful for a sweetened cup of tea, especially because, as an added bonus, it makes the baby kick!

Also, it's incredible how protective I feel towards the little creature in my belly. I can't imagine what it must be like to be unable to feed your child or to provide them with essential medicines. Just the thought of it evokes a raw, incredibly powerful anger. So I'm fully in line with all the feminist theologians who conceive of the Wrath of God as something akin to the rage of a mother bear whose cubs are being threatened (by reference to Hosea 13:8). It is scary as all f*** and you don't want to be in its path.

So on with the account by Ian Fraser. It dates back to 1982 and in a way I hope to God that this sort of thing isn't going on so much anymore as a result of international scrutiny, but I wouldn't put it past public authorities even now.

"In 1982, Margaret accompanied me to the Philipines. It was her first visit. We saw one of the effects of holding the South East Asian Games in that country at that time. We were in an area which was deemed to be an eyesore by the authorities. It would disgrace the country if competitors from many nations saw it. So although the tenants had a legal right to their property and could not be faulted on payments of dues, bulldozers were sent in and their shacks demolished.

Residents were dumped on the outskirts of Manila, including a husband, wife and five children. They had no resources, no work was to be found. They drifted back. The husband, worn out by malnutrition and worry coughed up his lifeblood. There was no money to bury him. The body was put in a plastic bag and lay around for two weeks. Neighours at last sacrificially raised enough to secure his burial.

The neighbours then built a lean-to against a wall and covered the framework with plastic (from the bag used for the body) to provide minimal accommodation for the widow and children. Its total extent was about 10' by 4'. A low platform kept the family off the mud and had to serve for beds. Five plastic bags acted as wardrobes for the chidren clothes. That had to be home."

Extract out of This Isthe Day. Readings and meditations from the Iona Community. Month 2, day 2.

Voices from the past

From as far as I can remember, I was out trying to invent new devices and new solutions to the problems I saw around me. I'd spend a weekend thinking my stuff through and then I'd expound it to my parents. I only ever got one answer: "if it was that easy, everybody would be doing it". I must have heard that sentence more than a thousand times.

On another occasion, I was happily butchering a Tracy Chapman song on a cheap guitar I'd bought at a car boot sale. I actually quite liked the sound I was making and was quite proud of myself. Until my father told to stop because it didn't sound good and I was just annoying everybody.

I resisted that one after a while, and a few years later I would lock myslelf somewhere really remote and sing Mozart's Arie der Koenigin der Nacht and Haendel's I know that my redeemer liveth to my heart's content, thinking that the important thing was that I enjoyed it, and it didn't matter if it sounded bad. Once somebody walked by, stopped and told me that it sounded really good.

To this day, I abort most of my ideas, thinking that there must be a catch somewhere and that "if it was that easy, everybody would be doing it". I also very rarely take pleasure in singing or making music any more. Indeed my singing has gotten a lot worse over the past ten years. The Germans are on to something with their concept of Erfolgerlebnis (meaning: a structuring experience of success). I wonder how cool it would be, just to create whatever I feel like creating and to sing whatever I feel like singing without these voices from the past?

Around me, people go on creating things that I'm convinced I could have created. One of our acquaintances decided that the water in village he visited in Tanzania wasn't safe to drink. He raised funds among his friends and contracted a company to build a deep well that goes right into the phreatic table.

Along these lines, I think I'd really like to create links of solidarity between a church where I live and a church in the developing world because the later have got a hell of a lot of work trying to alleviate the plight of those people whom capitalism forgets.

I keep thinking: in this day and age how hard can this be? We need two bank accounts, a reliable supply of funds on our side and a reliable team of people to administer them on the other side. It really isn't rocket science and it sure doesn't take a Geography Ph.D. to set it up.

I can't belive I still feel disempowered and this is begginning to really anger me. A good kind of anger. A good bellowing of the Arie der Koenigin der Nacht is fully in order.

Let me not forget by Rabindranath Tagore

This poem is a bit at odds with the liturgical season, but it is oh-so-beautiful it would fit in any season:

If it is not my portion to meet thee in this life
then let me ever feel that I have missed thy sight
---let me not forget for a moment,
let me carry the pangs of this sorrow in my dreams
and in my wakeful hours.

As my days pass in the crowded market of this world
and my hands grow full with the daily profits,
let me ever feel that I have gained nothing
---let me not forget for a moment,
let me carry the pangs of this sorrow in my dreams
and in my wakeful hours.

When I sit by the roadside, tired and panting,
when I spread my bed low in the dust,
let me ever feel that the long journey is still before me
---let me not forget a moment,
let me carry the pangs of this sorrow in my dreams
and in my wakeful hours.

When my rooms have been decked out and the flutes sound
and the laughter there is loud,
let me ever feel that I have not invited thee to my house
---let me not forget for a moment,
let me carry the pangs of this sorrow in my dreams
and in my wakeful hours

Read the full of Tagore's Gitanjali (meaning: 'Song Offerings') here.