Every other Sunday a box is delivered to my doorstep from the local Food Bank. The children are always delighted. It often contains a pizza and a few other things I don’t normally buy for them, and there are eggs from a volunteer’s chickens, lentils and spices because the organisers know I usually cook from scratch, and there are always treats at festive times. I’ve written before about how poverty has been a humiliating and crushing part of the journey out of an abusive relationship. It’s been a task all of its own to tame the shame as I’ve grieved everything that was lost when the marriage ship finally sunk.
On Sunday, as we poured over the contents of our box, I reflected on another aspect of poverty, something a little more nurturing than the ignominy that has coloured much of my experience. I have had to hone the capacity to receive. I grew up in an Evangelical home (which will, in part, explain my proclivity for abusive partnerships!) where giving and missionary work for the poor was done with an air of condescension. Kindness, true, but also condescension. So, to find myself in the condition of receiving at a time when I should, by my reckoning, be meeting all my family’s needs, has been a challenge. And, where there’s a challenge, there’s almost certainly a gift.
Some time ago, I came across the wonderful Carolyn Elliot’s book, Existential Kink. While waiting in line at the Food Bank, Carolyn reaslised that it wasn’t a bedroom kink that she had, but an existential one – a warped pleasure in being so poor that she couldn’t afford to feed herself. Her solution was to open herself up to the pleasure of it. She allowed herself the unfettered gratification of every last bit of the demeaning experience of poverty. When the tide turned, because her whole being was so tuned into pleasure, she swanned off to Bali on the swell of newfound wealth and notoriety. You can imagine the impact this had on me. Carolyn is one sharp cookie – intellectually brilliant, sexy, and witty to boot. Just knowing that she too had once been a recipient of the Food Bank gave me hope. Knowing that she had found a way to luxuriate in it gave me permission to stop feeling like such a desperate failure and receive its gifts.
The capacity to receive is much more vanilla than the edgier, shadowy aspects of the poverty kink that Carolyn describes. In many ways honing this capacity ought to be a conscious part of the second half of our lives whatever our circumstances. It is almost certain that, unless we drop dead suddenly from a heart attack or something like that, we will decline slowly, requiring increasing amounts of help from others. Being able to receive help and feel as fully human, as worthy and as valuable as those giving the help, is a priceless gift to our dying times. I know, this train of thought seems to have taken a morbid turn but hear me out. As an End of Life Planning Facilitator, I am certain that the more we prepare for our personal end times, the more chance we have of experiencing the mystery of death more richly. And it’s this that I’m leaning into as I observe my daughters gathered about the box, deciding who’s going to eat what, when.
I notice the thought that has gone into packing the box so it meets my family’s particular needs. I notice the team of volunteers who pack and transport the boxes around my neighbourhood. I notice their discrestion. I’ve never once had to explain my circumstances or give account for how I use what I’m given. I notice those in the background who have applied for grants so that there are freezers available to store the surplus food that is collected from the Coop at the end of the day. I notice too, and this point is perhaps apt considering my Evangelical origins, that they never try to change me. I’m not offered uninvited advice about how to earn more, save more, claim more. No-one has commented on my erstwhile husband’s character. On Sundays when I’ve not been home, someone has come right into the house and put the food away in the fridge. Allowing myself to receive, allows me to feel cared for rather than a failure; it frees me to experience gratitude for the community that I live in at a time when I have, at my lowest points felt unbearably alone. It allows my nervous system to relax a bit more after the years of living in fight or flight.
As I discover the capacity to receive with grace, I concede the possiblity of self-love. The admonishment, ‘love you neighbour as you love yourself,’ requires, that in order to be neighbourly, there must be self-love. Although I heard this phrase repeatedly throughout my childhood, the self-love bit was completely obliterated by the teaching that we are rotten to the core of our being. So much so that we are utterly dependent on the utterance of a very specific prayer to a very specific man-god to be saved from eternal punishment. If we don’t get the prayer or the exact Christology correct, we’re doomed. It’s a fearful tightrope. You can’t save yourself with good works, although you do have to be good, especially if you’re a woman. You can’t be seen to be selfish, you must forgive (in the Evangelical world, this doesn’t actually mean forgive, it means allow yourself to be gas-lit) and you must submit – either to God or to a man, depending on your gender. Where’s the self-love in all this? It’s taken me a lifetime to appreciate that the core teaching, ‘love your neighbour as you love yourself,’ is a profound truth that serves us all regardless of gender, religion, sexuality, health or economic status. And all the rest is tosh.
Self-love at this particular junction in my life permits me rest even when it means I don’t earn enough to meet all our needs. It frees me to appreciate the time I spend with my children without the self-recrimination of having let them down. It liberates me to tend my grief and do the deep work of healing as I mourn what has been lost and my broken dreams. It humours the idea that my life is meaningful just because it is. It sanctions receiving.
It’s tempting to wait until this whole poverty thing is all in the past before writing about it. But, given I’m thinking about this experience as a rehearsal for dying, there’s no ‘after’ in dying (well, there might be, but we’ll only find out once we’ve stepped through death’s door). There’s no certainty about an ‘after’ to this experience of poverty either so I’m indulging in acceptance and practicing dying. Dying to my independence, dying to the need to be always the giver, dying to the self-loathing, dying to the past and surrendering the future. I think my older self will thank me.
What situations in your life lend themselves as rehearsals for your dying times.?
If you’re looking for support to tend your grief or plan for the end, check out what I’m offereing.