{"id":291,"date":"2019-03-26T10:59:31","date_gmt":"2019-03-26T10:59:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/oblates.wccm.org\/v2019\/?p=291"},"modified":"2019-03-26T14:31:34","modified_gmt":"2019-03-26T14:31:34","slug":"poverty-and-simplicity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/oblates.wccm.org\/v2019\/readings-and-resources\/articles\/poverty-and-simplicity\/","title":{"rendered":"Poverty and Simplicity"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The Piazza\ndell\u2019Independenza in Asuncion, capital of Paraguay, stands out strikingly from\nmost of the city as a well-manicured beauty spot. Tourism always presents the\nmost orderly face of a country and then cosmeticises its flaws and self-contradictions\nwith interesting facts and statistics. It is like the Epcot world in Florida\nwhere the pavilion on the Environment never mentions global pollution and the\nnational exhibits reproduce their countries with safe platonic forms \u2013 like the\nEnglish pub that is so like an English pub it could never exist in England. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The national\ncultural museum in the Piazza illustrates the country\u2019s indigenous population\nwith varied artefacts and neatly organised fact-sheets on the different Indian\ntribes and languages. It was not from an official guide, however, that I\ndiscovered that the eight students, who brought the government down with them,\nwere killed in an anti-government demonstration in 1998 directly in front of\nthe museum. Spilling up from the slopes of the hill on which the Piazza\ncommands a view of the astonishingly wide Paraguay River, an embarrassing slum\nalso tells an unpalatable truth that tourist agencies prefer to forget. Despite\nevery offered bribe and threat from the authorities the inhabitants of the\nfavella have refused to move. Whatever it looks like to us, it is their home.\nStaying there they know they cannot be forgotten – and they also enjoy a rich\nman\u2019s view. After sharing it with them I then became the beneficiary of\nlow-level corruption – in fact simple Latin kindness over-riding regulations –\nwhen after a well-placed phone call the museum of religious art stayed open\nlate for us<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Paraguay is\nnot a model republic: the second poorest country in South America and one of\nthe most politically corrupt, a conduit of the drug trade and source of most\nmedia piracy in the region. Yet it has a curious redemptive honesty about it.\nIt is a very Catholic kind of virtue-invice, a truth-in-deception, a lack of\nhypocrisy (or a form of hypocrisy that knows it can\u2019t fool you) that is lacking\nin the Puritanism of North America. There the corruption runs deeper and is\nusually better hidden. All the bad news that the tourist brochures avoided came\nto me from my hosts and it was driven by their passionate idealism<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Honesty\nseems to suffer as soon as ideals are lost. Their well-run religious and\neducational institutions, however, serve a vision of a new world that refuses\nto succumb to its worst betrayals. That vision is as old as the phrase itself.\n\u2018Novo orbo\u2019 was first used in the late 15th century and it can still evoke in a\ntraveller from the old world an intoxicating hope for a better and purer\nsociety. It may often seem like a hopeless hope. But in the eyes of the choir\nof favella children sponsored by the parish of the Resurrection in Rio at the\nlaunching their new CD, or in a corporate official refusing to get drawn into a\ncorruption scam, you can see it can\u2019t die.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

My South\nAmerican trip also took me to Chile and Argentina and Brazil but it was oddly enough\nin Paraguay that I remembered the great metaphor Keats used to describe his discovery\nof Chapman\u2019s Homer:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then felt I like some watcher of the skies 
When a new planet swims into his ken; 
Or like stout Cortez when with eagle eyes 
He star\u2019d at the Pacific\u2014and all his men 
Look\u2019d at each other with a wild surmise 
Silent, upon a peak in Darien. <\/pre>\n\n\n\n
When a new planet swims into his ken; Or like stout Cortez when with eagle eyes He star\u2019d at the Pacific\u2014and all his men Look\u2019d at each other with a wild surmise Silent, upon a peak in Darien. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The\noppression and injustice and corruption of Latin America is not romantic. But\nthe vision and hope the new continent awakened in the western mind six hundred\nyears ago is inextinguishable.\nIn North America it often feels as if it has been completely tarmaced over,\nstifled in sterile litigiousness, choked in the anxieties of affluence and\nsuperpowerdom. In the South there is vitality and joyousness and a kind of\nfreedom of spirit, absent in the North, even amid the poverty and corruption.\nNorthern tourists come to bathe in the sun and music and celebratory spirit of\nlife while fearing the threat it represents to their way of life. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Yet the\nsalvation of North America \u2013 and hence of the imperial culture it controls –\nmay come from the South where the new world still feels new. The unstoppable\nHispanic labour force seeping across the border is a sign of this hope. The\nGreat Wall of the South West that is being built to keep the brown menace out\nis a sign, if ever there was one, of the repression of the powers of the\nunconscious. I once walked across the Californian border into Mexico and was\nsurprised how easy it was to cross a frontier. My next surprise was the sense\nof having cut through with a magic knife into a parallel universe. Everything\nwas suddenly so different. Returning to the Northern new world was another\nmatter. I stood in the US immigration line for three and a half hours with\npatient Latino workers and still drunken white Californian students waiting to\nbe documented, photographed, finger-printed and approved or rejected. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Nowhere is\nthis contrast between the two halves of the new world better expressed than in\ntheir characteristic forms of Christianity. The multiplying mega churches of\nthe North represent an advanced stage of what Ivan Illich called the\n\u2018corruption of Christianity\u2019. Exposed by many black Christians and prophetic\nvoices like Richard Rohr and Jim Wallis for their dereliction of social\nconscience and for their \u2018gospel of wealth\u2019 and self-fixation, these religious\nmalls offer far more than prayer: a whole Christian shopping experience. Gyms,\ncalled with typical Northern marketing genius \u2018Firm Believers\u2019, food courts to\nregain what was lost in the gym, bookstores selling approved Christian titles\nand Christian hairdressers. The word Christian has been horribly mutated here.\nMany of these churches are nondenominational or part of the Southern Baptist\nmovement but they are often shy about advertising their affiliation in case\nthey \u2018alienate\u2019 worshipping customers. Worship itself tends to be formal but\nuntraditional. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
In the city\nof Jacerei, an hour from Sao Paulo, I was to give a talk on meditation after\nthe evening mass. When I went to concelebrate I thought it must be at least a\nSunday if not the patronal feast or the Cardinal was visiting. But it was an\nordinary evening mass. Every pew was full and people were not just there. They\nwere present. The liturgy was traditional but relaxed, warmly communal. There\nwas no pitch but a good sermon on the readings. The singing was passionate as\nthe people liked it, the readings read intelligently and the feeling of unity\nitself was a sacrament. The parish priest asked me to give communion and as I\nstood for a long time at this privileged role I felt moved, rooted in the\nliving Christ and honoured to be in such a community of simple and fervent\nfaith. And they were interested in prayer not shopping. The church was full too\nfor the talk on meditation, despite the tedium of translation. It was as still\nas a cloister during the meditation itself and the questions flowed with a\nserious curiosity about the new contemplative dimension of their tradition. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
With much love 
Laurence<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This letter appeared in Via Vitae, the Benedictine Oblate Newsletter – No. 6 – Christmas 2006 .<\/em>
This is the full text of the abbreviated article printed in The Tablet Dec 6, 2006<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Piazza dell\u2019Independenza in Asuncion, capital of Paraguay, stands out strikingly from most of the city as a well-manicured beauty spot. Tourism always presents the most orderly face of a country and then cosmeticises its flaws and self-contradictions with interesting facts and statistics. It is like the Epcot world in Florida where the pavilion on […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-291","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-articles","7":"entry"},"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nPoverty and Simplicity - Oblates<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/oblates.wccm.org\/v2019\/readings-and-resources\/articles\/poverty-and-simplicity\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_GB\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Poverty and Simplicity - Oblates\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The Piazza dell\u2019Independenza in Asuncion, capital of Paraguay, stands out strikingly from most of the city as a well-manicured beauty spot. 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