Reflecting on the Role of Religion in the Movement to End Poverty
We began the third day of the Poverty Initiative's week-long immersion course with a textual reflection on a biblical passage dealing with the subject of interruptions. No matter what background, faith-based (and all the differences therein) or not, it was a chance to hear from one another about the ways we’ve all been affected by interruptions at some point or another, and to grapple with the role of interruptions in our lives and in our work together.
The biblical text we read is an interruption in and of itself, abruptly inserted into a text otherwise filled with raging battles over land and people. The story is about a widow, deep in debt, faced with having her children taken for failure to pay her husband's creditors. She is a poor woman who defies shame by recognizing and calling out the injustice that she faces. She uses the small amount of oil at her disposal, a boundless supply of courage and faith, and a powerful voice to cry out against the injustice and rally support from her community to amend her situation.
After reading about this story and reflecting on how a present day version of this situation would look, we discussed the nature of interruptions that we face in our own lives. For many of us, it turns out, it was during an interruption that we came to see ourselves clearly reflected in this movement. Many of us have experienced interruptions, like the ones we’ve been experiencing during this trip together, that have deeply and profoundly brought us closer to one another, giving us the chance to recognize our common struggles, and take up the fight to end poverty.
We also spoke together about the kinds of interruptions, whether they be illness, eviction, foreclosure or natural disaster, that have disrupted us in deeply personal ways, causing tremendous grief and pain. These kinds of interruptions, too, make it clear why we must build this movement from a broad-based foundation of leaders, united across our different fronts of struggle, to combat poverty. It is the strength of this foundation that will sustain and steady our vision and task, through times of both internal and external crisis. Building this kind of foundation necessitates the ability to communicate in all the many different ways required to grow and develop one another’s clarity, commitment, competency and connection as leaders. And that means we must take on the sometimes uncomfortable and tremendously difficult practice of learning to communicate through and across all divisions and barriers, all experiences and beliefs.
All of MMPs Feeds
