The Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Salem, Oregon

DARE WE DREAM OF AN END TO GLOBAL POVERTY?

The Reverend Richard R. Davis, December 7, 2008  

            Mind you, I’m not recommending that anyone actually do this, but if you were to read the entire collection of the sermons I have written during my ministry - which began when I was an intern minister in San Diego, CA. in 1986 - you would see that every sermon is grounded in some aspect of our Unitarian Universalist principles (which are always printed in our order of service).  A systematic surveyor of these sermons would notice certain patterns and come to realize that over the years I have picked up some parts of our principles so often that they are almost rubbed smooth from constant handling.  Yet there are some parts from two of our principles that have hardly been handled at all – they’ve been so neglected that they’ve got layers of dust on them. 

            It’s not that I don’t appreciate and agree with these neglected aspects of our principles – I really do - it’s just that certain parts of them are so unwieldy that I don’t how to handle them.  I’m thinking of aspects of our second and sixth principles, which call for us to affirm and promote “Justice, equity and compassion in human relations,” and “The goal of world community with peace, liberty, and justice for all.” 

            The aspects of these principles that I find so unwieldy has to do with their global economic implications.  If you take these two principles to heart, it means that you are making a commitment to address the problem of poverty around the world.  You see, both principles call for “justice” – and to be meaningful at all that has to include economic or distributive justice.  The second principle calls for universal compassion – and that certainly entails helping those in dire need, and the sixth principle calls for peace – and you can’t have true peace where there is a grossly unjust economic distribution of wealth.  There’s no avoiding it – if you take these two principles seriously it means that you are committed to addressing the problem of poverty in the world.  That’s a tall order and I feel pretty short standing next to it. 

If you read about the scope of poverty in our world - almost one billion and a half people have to live on less than $1.25 a day and many more live pretty close to the ragged edge - and how tangled up poverty is with other harsh realities like repressive governments, lack of educational opportunities, social and gender inequality and environmental degradation, you can see how huge and overwhelming it all is.  (It should also be noted here that the 1,000 wealthiest people in the world control assets worth double what the bottom 2.5 billion control and the top ten percent of the wealthiest own 85% of everything)  What good can I do about all of this?  The scope of this problem is too big for me to handle, so I tend not to try.  The strategy I have used to salve my conscience on this score is to play a role in helping those in need in my own community and speaking out against economic injustice in this country.   Yet when I consider the scope of this problem that feels like a paltry response.  

Part of the problem for me is that “World poverty” is an abstraction – a big troubling abstraction, but an abstraction nonetheless.  Sure, I do see poverty here where I live but not the extreme, grinding poverty that is widespread in developing nations.  I do not personally know those who live in such dire poverty.  They are faraway strangers to me - out of sight and out of mind.  Quite frankly – and I confess this with no pride whatsoever - I have worried more about how my modest retirement fund is doing in the stock market (not too well) than I worry about those who suffer from such poverty.  But I’ll bet if I could meet some of those who live in extreme poverty – see the suffering in their eyes, hear their stories of struggle, despair and hope, I think that might awaken me from this spiritual lethargy. 

We often meet new people here during our social hour – it’s one of the best ways we build community.  Today, allow me to introduce you to two women who can’t be here in person because they live so far away.  Yet knowing them can also help build community – world community.  These two have told their stories to Western aid workers, and now I can relate a few excerpts for you. 

Mercy is a 25 year old Kenyan woman who has two children she is trying to raise, but it’s a daily struggle.  In better times she worked as a housemaid. Now she tries to find work as a casual laborer washing clothes so she can feed her children, pay their school fees and rent a small room for them to live in.   Oftentimes, however, Mercy can’t find this kind of work so she must resort to the only option left – prostitution.   She knows she is exposing herself to AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases.   She would love it if she could marry a good man who could help provide for her and her family.  I heartened to know that here at Michael Servetus your Red Ribbon team is having a special event here on the eve of World AIDS Day – this is to help people like Mercy who are at the mercy of a harsh reality that exposes them to AIDS and other diseases.

It is very crowded in Kibagare, a slum on the outskirts of Nairobi where she and her children live, and it grows more so all the time.  The houses are without plumbing and are crowded so close that there is no room for outdoor toilets – human waste is hard to control – it’s everywhere and flows into the river that people must use for their domestic water supplies.  As a result of this, people get diseases.   Drinking water is available but it costs two shillings and most people can’t afford that.   She notes, “we live like we are not human beings.”  

Mercy knows that it would be good if she and others like her could get together and organize to pressure the government to assist but everyone is so pre-occupied with their own survival and almost no one has any faith that organizing would do any good.  Mercy believes that organizing would help, but she can’t convince anyone else.  

Her highest dreams are that she could get vocational training or a small loan to start a business :"If…I am given a good foundation…I am convinced - without any doubt - that I could change my life and the future life of my children." 

Yet this is a very slender hope.  The chances of Mercy getting such help seem highly unlikely to her.  She says:  “We even wonder if we are wanted in this world – because of the conditions we live in, which truly are not fit for humans. And we wonder when will this situation change or will we die in this state? We also wonder if our children will also be poor like us, because they have no foundations upon which to build a future.” 

If I met her face to face I would wish to give Mercy some words of encouragement, but talk is cheap, and if I say anything I fear my words would just ring hollow to her – and to me.  I hope I’m wrong, but quite frankly, her future and her children’s future does not look bright. 

Now meet Basran, a Pakistani women in her thirties who lives with twenty other family members in a small crumbling house on the edge of Lake Manchar in the far southeastern province of Sind .  For generations her people have made their living by fishing from the Manchar, the largest freshwater lake in Pakistan .  These days, however,  that is no longer possible because pollution has nearly poisoned the entire lake – the fish are few and small and water born illnesses pose a constant threat to everyone.  

As Basran notes:   “Today again, my mother-in-law has an upset stomach and is vomiting. This is an injustice to us: the water of Manchar has turned to poison. Children go to bathe in this water and…even if one drop of this water enters their mouth, they will lose their lives… Recently three of our women, who each had eight-month-old babies, died due to the poisonous waters. In our homeland (Manchar), there is only misery for us… We have no livelihood… there are only small fish. We now survive by begging.”  

“While we still have breath, we are going to feel hungry. To try to survive, we even eat bad fish [even though] we feel that our insides are on fire. To quench our thirst we go to the dirty water. The grownups, somehow or other, manage to survive the poisonous water, but the children do not.”

  Basran has tried to raise her voice to the government and more powerful people, but no one pays her or her people any heed.  She and others like her have no money, they have no power, they are not considered to be of any consequence.   Hers is a very bitter lot.  She describes her life as "daily death"; and bitterly comments that “if the government cannot improve our circumstances it should put us out of their misery with "poison pills".  She tells an aide worker:    “I implore you - if you can talk somewhere, on our behalf, for our rights, well and good, otherwise send some poison pills so that we can take them and die… Our sorrows are too many…” 
             Bear in mind that Basran in Pakistan and Mercy in Kenya are not extreme examples of people living in poverty.  They are certainly not as bad off as people in Darfur experiencing genocide or those in remote villages in Afghanistan who are facing a cold winter and the very real prospect of starvation.  Basran and Mercy are just two out of the 1.4 billion people living in poverty as defined by the World Bank (less than $1.25 per day).  There are millions, nay, well over a billion, such stories that could be told. 

Frankly, I did not want to introduce you to Mercy and Basran because I know it’s not easy to listen even to these little snippets of their stories.   Personally, I would prefer to talk about a lot of other things, but I am required by law to tell such stories.   I’m not speaking about some state or federal statute, I am speaking about the law written on the human heart - the law that lies at the heart of every life affirming religious tradition, the law that is the foundation of ethics and morality –  the law of compassion, the law that dictates that we be aware of and sensitive to the plight of our sisters and brothers and all living beings.

Try though we might we cannot erase this law from the human heart.  We may neglect this law, but then we see the consequences of a lack of compassion - widespread suffering caused by greed, indifference, corruption, political and economic injustice.  And when you become aware of such suffering you can’t help but hear the command of this law:  “Love your neighbor!” – and in our global village that means everyone.  This law is not some arbitrary law imposed upon us by some authoritarian deity – it is a law that flows from the nature of our own compassionate hearts, a compassion that recognizes the interdependent nature of all life.  

But what can you and I do about world poverty?   A little.  You can contribute to our own Unitarian Universalist Service Committee’s “Guest at Your Table” program which assists and empowers those living in poverty or one of the many, many other such charitable options.  Yet such actions, essential and important as they are, will never address the root causes of world poverty.  Thinking of the scale of global poverty can easily lead a person to fall into despair, which eventually leads to indifference, which leads to inaction – I say this from personal experience.  It’s why I have so seldom spoken of this from the pulpit.  The enormity of this problem has paralyzed me into inaction. 

But remember a recent time when we, as a nation, did move very hastily forward into action?    Think for a second to the events that transpired in our nation after Sept. 11, 2001 when several thousand innocent people were so cruelly killed.    Widespread fear led our nation to declare a never ending “war on terror,” we embarked upon a ruinously expensive war in Iraq .  Fear has ruled. 

Well consider this – every day something even more dreadful than the attack of Sept. 11 happens in our world, although it doesn’t make the headlines, or rarely even gets mentioned at all.  Every day about 26,500 children (ten million a year) die of poverty, hunger, easily preventable diseases and illnesses, and other related causes – mostly silent deaths that are not recognized.  This need not be.  World economist Jeffrey Sachs of Columbia University , advisor to Ban Ki Moon, Secretary General of the United Nations, has stated that poverty could be ended by 2025 if the wealthiest nations of the world would dedicate .07 percent (7/100^ths of 1 per cent) of their gross national income to financing development in poorer countries.  This is not some pie in the sky, throw money at the problem and hope it goes away plan.  It has been conceived by those who understand the root causes of poverty and how to give assistance in direct, effective, empowering, transformative, environmentally helpful ways. 

Now here’s something that most citizens don’t know - In 1970, the world’s nations (including ours) agreed to provide just such a financial boost.  This commitment was recently reaffirmed by those nations in 2005.  To date, only a small handful of nations have honoured this commitment.  Our nation has not even come close, and most citizens are neither aware of this commitment or of our failure to honour it.  Yet imagine if a grassfire of compassionate concern got ignited in our land and citizens across the country became aware of this promise and its potential for alleviating so much suffering in our world - a world where we routinely spend vastly more on weapons and prisons and police forces.   Imagine if every politician was routinely asked to account for our nation’s responsibility to honour this commitment and it became an integral part of political party platforms.  Imagine if instead of being an after thought it became forefront in the conscience of the nation.  Imagine what we could do if instead of fear, we had to faith to acknowledge our compassion for all our global neighbors. 

I like the way the French theologian Pierre Teilhard de Chardin put it:  “Some day, after mastering the winds, the waves, the tides, and gravity, we shall harness for God the energies of love, and then, for the second time in the history of the world, humankind will have discovered fire.