St Lucy's day and poverty

Even though we have a Lucy in the family, this was the first year we have really celebrated this feast day. I've never felt a strong bond to St Lucy, but by accident she is my confirmation saint (I was up first and didn't realise I was supposed to tell the Bishop my chosen saint's name and gave my own name instead - whoops!) and well, it is nice to have day with a starring role for our girl immediately on the heels of her big brother's birthday.

 

 

 I think my challenge was to think more about St Lucy and what her life and death mean for us as Christians and less about what sort of leaves I should put on the crown and whether I should force Kitten to dress in white with a red sash and how I could motivate myself to bake first thing in the morning. So much of St Lucy's story is obviously about chastity, but the element that really stood out to me was her generosity to the poor - when she pledged herself to remain a virgin, she gave away what would have been her dowry to the poor of Sicily where she lived and died.  I suppose this part stood out to me because I have been thinking a lot about poverty after reading a blog where the blogger, Abigail,  talked about how poverty is "really great". 

 

The thing is I don't think, from reading her blog, that she is living in poverty.  She has made choices that impose limits on her family's financial resources (as we have in our family) but I don't think opting out of soccer and only doing scouts, swim team and skate boarding means her son is growing up in poverty.  I don't think Abigail and her husband taking up cello and violin on rented instruments is something that people in poverty typically do.  I know what it is like to live in a home where food security is an issue, but I've never really seen myself as poor, either as a child or as a working class adult.

You know why?  Because I'm not poor and neither is Abigail.  What we experience, threadbare shirts included? That's wealth.  Living on one modest wage in the UK, as we in my family do, is not poverty.  We are so abundantly blessed - being able to home educate our children, have one parent at home full-time, to be warm in our homes, to make good choices about what activities work for our families, to have plenty of food and beds and clothes and shoes, phones, internet, and clean water gushing from our taps: those things make people like Abigail and me in the top 5% of the world population.  I often say to my kids that we live better than kings did in the past, and it is true. 

 

I know I need to turn my own thinking around.  I've been very worried and fearful about money lately.  And I've been around a child whose family has money worries of their own and seen how it is colouring his thinking as he talks about only wanting money and how money solves all problems.  Seeing myself as a fabulously wealthy person actually brings me to me knees in shame - I am so undeserving: it could be me needing to give my Kitten filthy river water to drink, it could be me abandoning my children at the side of the road because I can't feed them and I don't have the strength to watch them die of hunger, it could be me selling myself or my children so we can live to see another day.  The fact that I am here, in comfort on a sofa listening to a fire crackle, full from a celebration meal with my family, is a miracle really.  And recognising my own privilege and good fortune makes me realise I have to find ways to share, to be less afraid of ending up without what I need myself, to trust more.

 

So I am thinking of St Lucy's example tonight - of how I can give to others from my wealth and abundance.  It starts by knowing that I am not poor but that others are, and that poverty is not great - poverty grinds people down, robs them of dignity, hope, self-respect and a future, it cripples their minds and their bodies and even their souls, it leaves them open to exploitation and cruelty, and I am certain that if I downplay or ignore that I become an oppressor myself.

 [Apparently the first thing my dad said to my mum when he woke up this morning was that it is St Lucy's day - obviously his Catholic childhood is catching up with him and I find it adorable!]