​


Today is the first of a number of blogs from Kayemba Enock, Coordinator of the UNSFP and teacher at Extreme High School. Namukisa Christine Mary (Mary is her Baptismal name) is one of the senior young women at Extreme high School. She is also one of a number of seniors who look after the younger girls. Kayemba writes:
​We need to break the cycle of Hunger and abuse. For children like Mary life was filled with chaos, anger, violence and fear. Her mum, used alcohol and drugs to escape challenges of her own life and Extreme Poverty in her family. Her father was a drug dealer and user, and an extremely violent man. Sadly, Mary’s home life was violent and unpredictable. When Mary came into our care, she was showing signs of severe hunger, neglect, and abuse. She was malnourished and hungry, unwashed and covered in flea bites. I know there are good people who have the power to provide children like Mary with the intervention and support they need. Their generous gift can go towards:
More support for our kinship carers, so children can remain with their happiness and connected to the ones that love them so much. She is now in Senior Five and wants to become a Doctor.
She needs support today anyway possible.

The standard online safety answer to my question is, "NO! Never give money to people you meet online whom you haven't met in real life." In fact giving money to people you do know in real life is tricky enough. It can spell the end of a friendship or can damage a family relationship.  And, there are a lot of scams out there.  Particularly those of us who are older can be quite vulnerable to messages, emails, pop-ups and so on which sound too good to be true but we think, "What if it is true?" Well, we learn quickly enough that anything which sounds too good to be true, isn't true. With luck and checking things out first with others, we hopefully learn these lessons without losing money. ' 

What about that stranger who sends you a Facebook friend request and showers you with complement and wants to get to know you? Romantic "love" or "limerence" as the brain drug induced feelings are called, is a powerfully blinding force. So many scammers use it. They create a fake profile and take time to try to get someone to grow to love and trust this fake person they are playing. Almost without exception there will be "red flags" or warning signs that something is not quite right. Perhaps, if you are female, they will claim to be a US Colonel on a secret mission somewhere. They will be divorced and have a daughter whom they adore and miss. All this sounds plausible, except, you ask yourself, "Would a senior military officer on a secret mission really be reaching out on Facebook to a stranger?" Good question. The obvious answer is, "No". So why do you brush it aside? Because, by now, you want to believe him. That's how the brain drugs.  And then there is the English.  You're messaging, not video calling because he's not allowed. And his English just doesn't seem good enough for a senior US military officer. Again, you go along with it and just wonder what this is about.

Well, what it is almost certainly about is that he is not a senior US military officer.  He is, perhaps, Nigerian, or Ugandan, or Kenyan or from some other colonised nation. His English is not poor. It is idiomatic.  It is the form of English grammar and spelling that has developed in that particular nation since it was colonised.  So again, when something doesn't match who a person claims to be, it's safest to assume they are not who they claim to be.

Sooner or later this "romantic" relationship will lead to a some kind of request for money, often to pay money to a third party to pick up a parcel on behalf of this one you have grown to trust and get them to deliver it to you.  It will never arrive.  If you have gone along with this so far, as soon as there is a request for money, you can be 99% sure it is a scam.   

Is it possible to be sure someone is not a scammer without meeting them in real life. Actually I believe it is.  There are many genuine people, especially in poor communities, who simply want to find a friend outside of their community. They may or may not want your financial help to improve their situation. If they do, and are genuine, they will tend to be very direct about it.  Of course you still need to be very careful and assess the risk you are taking realistically. Online relationships are still human relationships in which there is always an element of trust and risk. When we buy a car, there is trust and risk involved. We get advice from experts and do our best to manage the risk. Every transaction involving money involves points at which we have to trust another no matter what the checks and balances.  It is the same with online relationships.

We absolutely must not ignore anything that feels off.  We tuck that away and keep watching for that thing in this relationships. It warns us something about this person or organisation needs looking into before we given anything more than, say, we would spend on a cup of coffee and a slice.  However other relationships grow into deep friendships in which we are as sure of this person as of anyone we know in real life. I have now a number of international friendships like that. We are simply way beyond the point where there is any question of abusing trust.           

This matters, because there is a vast gap between the needs of people in poorer communities in our world and the resources and organisations trying to meet those needs  The point of  "Live in Love" is to encourage friendship between those who are relatively privileged and powerful (that is we have options) and those who are relatively poor and powerless (that is they don't have options). And it is to help people connect with and support local humanitarian organisations working in poorer communities. 

If we only give to the big humanitarian organisations we will be doing some good. We will not, however , be making friends with those who have less wealth and power than we do and allowing their lived reality to challenge ours.         

I could call this blog "the gap". Because the gap between the richest and the poorest, both within nations, and globally, is growing and with it a whole range of social disorders from addiction and domestic violence to organised crime (see R Wilkinson and K Pickett, The Spirit Level-why equality is better for everyone. See also Max Rushbrooke, ed; Inequality-a New Zealand Crisis; and the 2014 study by Inner City Mission Speaking for Ourselves-the truth about what keeps people in poverty by those who live in it).

I'm not an economist. I hear arguments from those who think the current free market/open competition flavour of Capitalism is the solution to all the world's problems and those who believe the opposite, that it is the cause of growing poverty and all the social ills that come with it. The one thing I am convinced of is that those who defend the current capitalist ideas and spout the now well worn belief that "economic growth" of a nation as a whole will "trickle down to the poor" are wrong. This has been thoroughly debunked for many years. What I do not fully understand is the mechanisms by which the opposite seems to happen fairly consistently. Economic growth following the current ideologies seems fairly consistently to increase the gap between the richest and poorest in a nation. Wilkinson and Pickett document one or two nations who have intentionally taken radical steps to close the gap between the richest and poorest and show how this has benefited everyone, including the richcst in those nations.  There are obvious reasons why economic growth might only benefit the wealthiest and not those who are poor. We only need to ask who is in control of such measures to create economic growth. wealth and power go hand in hand just as poverty and powerlessness do.  So measures to create growth are bound to favour those in control of those measures. However I think there are other mechanisms besides the self-interest of those in power. I think many political and business leaders genuinely believe the poor will benefit from their effort to generate growth in a nation. 

What is needed is a recognition that the gap between the richest and poorest in a nation will only be closed by taking intentional steps to ensure that the needs of the poorest are met. In other words, a nation must gradually give to all its citizens some things as a right that comes with being alive. When  certain targetted basics are freely given to all, not means tested, simply given, no matter how poor or wealthy, that reduces the suffering of poverty and  powerlessness in a nation. Three basics come to mind: a minimum access to nutritious food, free medical care and free education. These things are not new but have been relentlessly undermined in nations which have bought into the current dominant idealogies.

The other thing which I believe is needed (and this will seem to contradict what I have just said above)  is bottom  up grown by intentionally supporting entrepreneurial initiatives by people who have no employment. When I recently visited Kenya I was struck by the reality that, without a safety net to provide for unemployed people, every "unemployed" person was self-employed, selling fruit and veges, selling clothes, people with cars driving people without them, and so on. In this country so many businesses fail. In Kenya, if your business fails, you starve. It does seem to breed certain survival skills in small businesses that our easier environment does not.

How could these two be reconciled? If some hardship is necessary to build into a nation's citizens from their birth the kind of work ethic and basic understanding necessary for self-employment AND some level of fundamental provision of needs is necessary as well, can these be balanced? 

Perhaps a way to think about this is to keep our eyes on the connection between poverty and powerlessness. People who are poor often know some single thing that might change everything for them. Sometimes that has to with education and upskilling. A person knows that, with a particular qualification, they could get work. Sometimes it  has to do with undercapitalisation.  A person has a sound business  plan but no money in the bank to get it to a point where it can generate income. Gifting a person the fees to get a qualification or providing micro-loans to people to enable them to get a business off the ground are ways that empowering a person reduces  poverty. 

Similarly though, as the Uganda UNSFP quickly recognised, feeding children enables children to learn. And Paul Odiwuor whose Kenyan Permoafrica school teaches permaculture gardening and farming to marginalised people has recognised that, for young women, the lack of underclothing and sanitary products is a barrier to education. Kayamba Enock in Uganda has identified the same issue in his high school. So the lack of basic needs, in itself, creates powerlessness and hopelessness. So does natural disaster like drought  or flooding. GIven people hope that, with hard work and support, they can change their  situation, is a key to addressing poverty. 

Which perhaps points to a weakness in my first suggestion of simply treating certain basics as a right for being alive.  Perhaps that right needs to be combined with some fundamental responsibilities, like hard work. St Paul wrote to one Church, "If they don't work, don't let them eat."  He was not addressing unemployment. He was addressing people who were travelling around sponging off the local churches. "Work" as Paul was meaning it, did not necessarily mean they had to have a paid job and be contributing financially but that they had to be contributing to the community if they were receiving from it.

This doesn't address how the lack of a social welfare safety net in nations like Kenya motivates people to be self-employed.  I have often said fear is a lousy motivation for anything yet fear of death does seem to have one good affect on some nations! 

I think I will leave this blog right there, leaving some gaping holes in my arguments, and invite a conversation from people who know far more than I about some of these things.   

In a previous post I spoke of loving our neighbour AS we love ourselves not AFTER we love ourselves. My point was that the second greatest "commandment" in the Jewish Torah as taught by Jesus is not  about giving others our leftovers. It is not about satisfying all that we consider as our needs, first, then seeing what we have left to respond to others' needs.  Nor is it about giving enough to "charities" to feel less guilty, to feel we are generous. It really is about setting others life realities beside ours and exposing ourselves to the challenging question, "Is it appropriate for me to spend this money on this "need" when my friends are facing this level of deprivation?

Having said that there is wisdom in taking care of our own needs first, literally first, as the safety instructions on an airline tell us, "If a mask appears in front of you, put your mask on first, and then help others." And to make the point, the "other" in the picture is usually a child, one whom a parent might instinctively help first.  Why take care of your own mask first? Because, if you don't, you will likely die and will be no use to anyone, whereas if you do, both you and your child may survive. 
 
Over the past months I have demonstrated in a negative way the consequences of not "putting on my own mask first."  I have responded to others needs in a way I felt compelled by love to do, and have ended up in such a tight spot financially that I am now no use to anyone. I am having to focus solely on sorting out my own financial mess. 

So I'm learning that part of "putting my  own mask on first" is not borrowing from the future. There are always unexpected costs, whether with a car, an oversees trip, one needs to assume things will cost more than anticipated. One approach is to set aside a generous "rainy day" fund which one does not "dip into" for others but only for unexpected costs of one's own. Would I have the self-discipline to leave such a fund alone? When faced with a friend in real crisis? Honestly I don't know.  Where I went badly wrong though, was that I did have some generous amounts set aside for my car and for my trip to Kenya. But when faced with others needs, I trimmed those budgets down and down and gave away money I later found I needed. 

So perhaps for me a better approach than a "rainy day" fund is to simply budget generously for the future and then, if money budgetted is not required, it may be transferred to the "philanthropy" fund. Somehow, if you are soft hearted like me, you need to create a wall between money for philanthropic giving and money for personal needs.

This doesn't absolve one from treating others needs as  just as important as ones  own. For me it is as basic as whether I go out for a coffee  when a friend in Kenya hasn't even been able to eat cabbage for  several weeks, only beans and maize day after day.  I have promised myself that coffee when my friend's situation improves a little. 

I am not suggesting legalism. If your mental health demands a coffee or a visit to your local pub, then that might be "putting your mask on first."  There is a difference, though, between real needs and habitual extravagances we allow to swallow up money which could be relieving the suffering of our friends.        

I haven't written a blog for some time as I have  been in Kenya for the whole of February with no access to internet on my laptop. Being in Kenya was a real eye opener to the issues people face in many so called "developing" nations. Despite doing my best to befriend and respond to the needs of friends in Uganda, Kenya, Nigeria and Pakistan there was much they would tell me about their daily realities that I still fed through the lens of my privileged experience living in Aotearoa. Kenya is more prosperous than many African nations yet I had no comprehension of how difficult and costly transport is there. Many people do not own cars but travel in a matatu or minibus which might be designed to carry 14 people but would somehow fit as many as 20 or more people were waiting beside the road. Alternatively one could pay more for a private driver who would likely be one of the many qualified professionals who could find no work fitting their university training so driving becomes their means of survival. And that is the other reality. There is no unemployment benefit yet a great deal of unemployment. So many people are out in the towns selling fruit or clothes or whatever they can to scratch together a living. The wealth pyramid in Kenya reminds me of stories of the Roman Empire in which the vast majority of people were very poor. Then a relatively small number ranged from having secure employment and income through to the obscenely wealthy old families of Rome with the Emperor at the top of pyramid.

Sadly, some of the obscenely wealthy in Kenya are "Christian" ministers who pressure people who are living in poverty to give so they can live in luxury. A favourite Biblical source of support for this seems to be the book of the prophet Malachi who addressed the opposite situation of a wealthy and complacent Jewish community who were neglecting the tithe which paid for the upkeep of the temple and the livelihood of the priesthood. So it was entirely proper to challenge such a community. To apply such a message to justify wealthy clergy and huge money spent on building programmes when a congregation is living in poverty is nothing short of obscene. The "offertory" in Kenyan Churches is a very public affair with people coming forward, placing their gift in the large bag placed on the altar for this purpose and a leader calling out the amount given by each person and everyone clapping. In fact if the congregation fail to clap they will be instructed to do so. I'm not quite clear how this is seen as obeying Jesus teaching in Matthew 6:1-4.  

Recently  a young friend, himself an orphan, who runs an orphanage for nine other street children in Uganda, was evicted by the landlady because he could not find the monthly rent money. He asked me to explain what a western supporter meant by this message: "But...may there be other properly funded ministries or existing charities? Do pray about possible solutions to compare and so will I!" I thought, "Yeah, sure, you really get it don't you!!! NOT! Show me a 'properly funded ministry or charity' in Uganda". If there are any I have yet to come across them. EVERYONE I know who is trying to help vulnerable people in Uganda is hopelessly underfunded and over stretched as they try to simply help a few. Ten orphans who are evicted because they cannot pay the rent simply do not have other places to turn. That is why they have banded together to form their own little solution and managed for most of the time time to have beans and posho to eat, a roof over their heads, and somehow have scraped together enough money to attend school, until the next rent bill came.

Of course when I first met this young man online I was, in my ignorance asking similar questions. "Why did you start this orphanage if you did not have the resources to run it?" As he told me the sad story of how he was orphaned when his parents died in a car accident, how he lived on the streets until a woman took pity on him and took him in, how she then died but for a time he was allowed to live in her home, how he then did what she had done and tracked down some of his street friends who were the closest thing to family he had, how her family then turned them out so he found the place they had been renting ever since, how he had worked to pay the bills and grown their down food in the garden he had planted, until bad weather destroyed everything he had grown, and the person who gave him work moved away. And now that I have been in relatively wealthy Kenya for a month I understand. There is no social safety net to bail people out in such situations. People use their survival instincts to get by somehow, or they become criminals, or they die. 

This is  Africa, and this is life in much of the world. Those of us who live in a different world have a responsibility to do what we can to make a difference for a few, in our own communities, because poverty and powerlessness to change one's situation is is just down the street from us, or only a suburb or two away, and in nations in which this is the life of most of the population

I want to address this blog to my friends who live in, so called, "2/3rd world" nations. I want to help you understand how it feels to me to face your needs and ask each day (or at least each time you face another crisis and reach out to me for help) "How do I compare my needs against yours? When will my needs ever win when yours will always be greater, more critical, more about basic survival, whereas my survival is rarely under threat?"

This is why it is easier for me to give to "Save the Children" or "World Vision" or "Child Fund" or any other reputable organisation with its fundraising based in in my world, my relatively privileged, secure, powerful, wealthy world.  Because then I do not need to face you. I do not even need to compare the range of my needs against the range of your needs. I can keep an ocean of invisibility and organisational process between your needs and mine.  I can look at my needs in isolation and decide what feels like a reasonable level of generosity. I can pat myself on the back and feel good at all the organisations I give to. I can go out to a restaurant for dinner, have as many coffees as I can afford, even upgrade my car, or, (if I own my own home) my kitchen. I can keep the scale of my needs and how I satisfy them safely apart from the scale of your needs and how you are, or are not able to satisfy them.

But I have chosen instead to befriend you. So I have built a bridge across that sea for us to freely get to know each other's joys and sufferings, each other's needs and how we are or are not able to satisfy them. And so this confronts me. It confronts my spending on things that I do not need to survive but that comfort me when sad, distract me when distressed, provide fun and pleasure as a relief from my work, the list is endless.

One way to view this is through the lens of Maslow's hierarchy of human need. The bottom layer are physiological or survival needs: "I need food, water, clothing, shelter, sleep." When those are met my mind turns to the next layer, safety and security needs: I'm going to part company with Maslow and suggest this layer says, "I need to know my food, water, clothing, shelter, and sleep will be there tomorrow and the next day, and the next week, month, year."  These two are sometimes called basic needs. Once they are met my mind turns to Psychological and social needs. "I need to belong and feel loved and accepted." Once I feel I belong, I need to stand out, to feel esteemed. I need my accomplishments to be recognised." And once all of these needs are met my mind turns to self-fulfilment needs. "I need to achieve my full creative potential.

If Maslow is right all these  are real human needs. The  difficulty is that your needs, my friends, are so often at the very bottom of Maslow's hierarchy and you never seem to reach level two. Whereas my most serious threat is to my safety and security needs. I know I will not go hungry today. In fact I know I will probably never go hungry. I may worry about employment and how I will pay the rent or mortgage but that is as serious as it gets for me. And if I have been reasonably successful even these are not on my mind very much. My focus is on belonging and love, esteem and recognition, and personal fulfilment.

Now here's the tricky bit. If my call is to love you as I love myself, and you are stuck at the bottom of this need level, does that mean I need to stay there with you until we both are able to move on?  Or do I get to say my belonging and love needs and my esteem and accomplishment needs, are just as vital to me  and your survival needs are to you?" Because, in a world in which vast numbers are trapped at the level of survival needs, if those must always come first, then my needs may never become important enough. They may need to wait forever until your survival needs are  met.

I raise this as a question. I do not offer an answer. My question to you, my friends whose survival needs  continually confront me is how do you view my needs and yours? I had a holiday planned. It was important to me for reason I will not go into here. Yet faced with your survival needs I gave of my holiday savings to buy some of you food, to pay for surgery for others, and so on. Was I right? I almost made a different decision. I told you I could not help. But then I did help, knowing it could put in jeopardy this trip so important to me. 

This is where the rubber meets the road. Please help me see this as you see it.                 

                     .   

    

I  have been "AWOL" from this blog for a while. My own mental health took a nose dive for a bit at Christmas. And in responding to a number of desperate needs in poor communities I connect with I have found myself in a rather desperate financial situation myself. Except mine is not hunger or a life and death medical emergency, or being trapped at night in a town alone with no money to get home. Mine is a planned trip to Kenya in February. So faced with needs so dire that I simply could not place as "unavailable" money I did not need until I leave on January 30, I gave to save a critically ill teenager and then to others to buy food, and then to another take time of work when she was terribly ill and so it went on, until now I have everything arranged for my trip to Kenya but no money to take with me, no money to pay for the trip itself. 

These kinds of decisions are where the rubber meets the  road when, as those who are the beneficiaries of the terrible inequities of power and wealth in the world, we dare to befriend those who are its victims. Should I have made available the money I didn't need until February? Was this decision, or rather a whole series of decisions, wrong? Most of us build a secure wall around the things we consider our needs. What we need to face is that wall protects our privilege and that privilege stands in dire contrast to what others consider their needs. Once we take down that protective wall we can no longer hide behind it. We can no longer measure our "needs" with one ruler and others needs with a different one. We are faced with a call to live what we claim that every human being has the same dignity and worth as another. 

And now, having given what I am able, my heart is so heavy because the young  people of Extreme High  School whom I have grown to love like nieces and nephews face Christmas Day without even enough food to get through the day. I have given what I can but their needs are way beyond one person to support. I have done all I can to attract other supporters but I have failed in that. I'm not a fundraiser nor a marketing person. I once said to Kayemba I have all the love and none of the skills you need in a friend.

So, if you are reading this, PLEASE consider joining me. We need a friend for each of the 402 young people at this school. We need 402 friends who will go the distance and  increase support as cost increase there.  At  present I am one of a handful of people who support as we feel able. These young people will go hungry and starve if we don't change that. 

Some years ago (well 48 years ago when aged 19 and a Christian youth worker in Secondary Schools)  I met an inspiring and challenging Guyanan Christian called Morris Stuart. he travelled through the country visiting our Secondary Schools. He was the first black person I had the opportunity to get to know and he really did have an impact. At first sight he really did turn heads and evoke curiosity. He was educated in England and spoke with what might be called an "Oxford Accent." And he was an incredible communicator with a sharp mind.    

Morris related so respectfully and easily with non-Christians that his visit fundamentally changed the inward looking culture of the Christian groups in the schools. .Instead of meeting them behind closed doors in a classroom, he would ask the group to meet him instead out in the playground where he would engage with whoever gathered around with humour, humility, and respect.

One of his passions was the terrible inequity between rich and poor in the world. He would speak about "Voluntary Poverty" by which he meant that, as wealthy Christians who have choice we need to use that choice to go in the opposite direction from our culture, to live more and more simply, and to give way power to those who are powerless, to truly follow our Lord Jesus Christ.

A few years later I met another challenging Christian, a Southern Indian called P T Chandapilla. "Chanda" as he was affectionately called quoted St Paul who wrote these words to the Christians in ancient Corinth: 

"For you know the generous act of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sakes he became poor, so that by his poverty you might become rich." (2 Corinthians 8:9)

Paul, a Jewish Pharisee, is doing something quite astonishing. From the beginning Christians have been inclined to "spiritualise" nature and the normal stuff of human life so as to avoid facing up to human realities  Here Paul does the opposite. He takes a Christian religious belief about Jesus (that, before he was the man Jesus, he was a divine being who had lived with and was part of the community we call God.) and argued that this being gave away all that power and privilege to become a "poor" human being so that we could become ":rich" and part of God's family. 

Paul then uses this to shame the wealthy Corinthian Christians into giving sacrificially to the Jewish Christians in Jerusalem who were suffering severe poverty at that time. In part Paul is trying to heal a rift between Jewish and Gentile Christianity.

How might this also heal some ethnic and cultural rifts in our own age? In the words of Pink Floyd in my favourite album "Dark Side of the Moon" "With,  without, don't you  know that's what the fighting's all about." 

Voluntary poverty is a fundamentally different life pathway which, instead of aiming towards accumulating power and wealth, aims toward shedding both of these things and progressing towards the goal of .complete detachment from wealth and power.

Do we do so because these things are evil. No, not at all, it is the attachment to wealth and power that is evil, that perpetuates so much human suffering, and destroys human joy. It is an addiction. Addictions grow out of looking for something in the wrong place but finding there just enough of the real thing we yearn for that we keep looking in the wrong place until we can no longer let it go. Neither wealth nor power are evil in themselves. Evil is that which diminishes or takes away life. Attachment to wealth and power leads us to put the eradication of poverty and hunger into the "too hard basket" when actually the only thing hard about it is relinquishing our addiction to wealth and power. so we are free to give in away.  



                     .  

As I write this Extreme High School has no money for food this month. 402 students are hungry and there is nothing I can do.  My friends in Pakistan have devoted their lives to brining food, clothing and medical care to others. But they have insufficient funds to pay for their own medication for conditions which, without it, are life threatening and I cannot help.  Another friend in Kenya who has just lost his brother in a fatal car accident has been told his wife has Rheumatoid Arthritis. She needs treatment for this terribly painful and debilitating condition. He can't afford it, and nor can I. Another Ugandan friend was orphaned at about five years old when both parents were killed in a car accident. He lived on the streets with others until a woman who knew his parents searched for and found him and took him in. She died. Eventually he took in some of his street friends and formed a small "orphanage" which is more like a large family or small community. he was able to provide for them until bad weather destroyed their crops. In their case such a small amount of money can make a big difference that I have sometimes helped. However now they have only "posho" to eat. No beans to eat with it, no sauce to make it palatable. I am so short of money myself that I cannot even help with this small need.

It is so satisfying when we can express our love in practical giving that changes the experience of suffering of people we have grown to love and trust. And it is so difficult to stay present with them and say to one person after another,  "I'm so sorry. All I can do is pray.". 

This is a really hard part of loving people who are suffering. Changing their situation when we can is so wonderful. And we are rewarded with such gratitude.  Remaining in communication with them when we are struggling to meet our own needs cannot do anything to help is not an easy thing to do. Yet befriending people who are suffering without going into "fix it" mode, being present to people in their suffering without giving unsolicited advice,  this is where love begins. This is love 101. And, it is one of the toughest expressions of love there is. 

With all of my international online friends I began here because I took seriously the online safety principle of never giving money to people you only know online and have not met in real life. It seemed easier then when I could simply state that boundary. and say, "I can pray." I cannot give you money. And I cannot ask others to give you money." Those who respected it I kept corresponding with. Those who did not, I blocked.   Those who remained became dear friends and, over time, one by one, I decided I knew they were not scammers and, when I prayed for their needs I also asked, "is it time I become part of the answer to my own prayers." And a new journey began of (in the words of the World Vision motto some years ago) living simply to help others simply live.

However I simplified my life too much so that there was no room for miscalculation, increased costs, or unexpected medical or car bills. And now, while I have money in my accounts, I am significantly short of money I will need in tow months from now. So now I need to return to that first boundary of staying present to dear friends who are suffering at the level of basic survival and health needs, praying for them, maintaining connection with them, and not emptying what is left in my savings account. This is a truly miserable experience.  This is when loving others becomes its own suffering. 

And yet it is nothing to what my friends are suffering. They are suffering at a primal level and I am not.  It is likely I never will.  I am short of money but will not go without food, shelter, or health care. I am short of money in a budget but I am not hungry.  This makes it terribly difficult to say, "No" right now even though I know I must do so.  This is the misery. Frankly, I would rather I was hungry than to not be able to ease the suffering of my friends.      

I was talking with a young business person about my humanitarian work and how to promote it successfully. He suggested I needed to understand that everyone who gives to humanitarian projects or organisations does so to feel less guilty.  We feel guilty for the personal power and ease we enjoy as those who are relatively privileged in the world when we are confronted with others suffering hunger and others things. He was suggesting that all successful humanitarian fundraising is about increasing that guilt so people give more to relive it!  We give enough to be able to continue to enjoy without our pleasure being spoiled by feeling guilty about it. He did not see this as a bad thing to use! He simply wanted to me understand this was the thing I needed to appeal to! He was saying we give to take away a negative, not because we really care!

I did not like his analysis. Yet I have to admit there is truth in this when I pay attention to my own motivation for the sacrifices I make. I certainly have, in past years, given to reduce guilt in precisely the way he described. I would freely enjoy my privilege while also giving something to most charities that asked for it. It is actually now that I have less and am needing to budget more carefully that my motives are becoming clearer. I do give out of discomfort with things I enjoy while others are suffering but not so I can continue to enjoy those things. Rather, if those enjoyments no longer feel right while my friends who live in poverty are suffering, I let go of those things. I do not try to live exactly as they live. That is neither possible nor helpful. However I do ask whether I enjoy things because I really need them or just out of habit and a sense of entitlement.  I no longer think of my income as mine to do with as I please. It is there for love. It is there to love others as I love myself.  

 This weekend I sold my sports car, my lovely little 2015 Mazda MX5 Roaster (manual and soft top of course). I replaced it with a Hybrid that was $12,000 less than I got for the sports car.  This money will, mostly, pay back money I have given to humanitarian work that was set aside as tax savings and for my own future planning. I have "borrowed from the future" to respond to some needs I couldn't see how I could afford to respond to. 

Not all those decisions were good decisions. A wise person has said, "Every 'yes' is a 'no'". When we cannot say "no" to human needs that we are faced with, that is a problem. We cannot relieve all human suffering.  Sometimes all we can do is be present with someone in suffering neither they nor we can change, Yet I could change these things by taking from money for my own needs. It was "my" money I thought. I had the personal power to make that decision. And so I did. Yet this was a weakness not a strength, a vice not a virtue.  This was, about my unwillinglness to be present to suffering when I had the personal power to take it away. This was not living in love because I did not love myself in these decisions. I said "no" to myself and "yes" to others.

When I put my car on "TradeMe" I cried. I had no idea I loved it so much. It really has brought me a lot of fun and joy, far more than I even thought driving a car could give. It looked very expensive and that embarrassed me. I don't like to be thought of as "rich". I feel shame associated with wealth. I know when I was really struggling with a level of poverty I did not think kindly of people who owned expensive cars, houses, yachts and so on.  Why? Is this "true" guilt (guilt because I am behaving badly) or "false" guilt? It is surely a good thing for my behaviour to change when I become aware I am living unjustly. However the shame I felt was all about other's opinion. I care far too much about what others think of me.

The past three years have been mentally and emotionally tough for me as I have transitioned from "Nicholas Ian Frater" to "Nicola Sian Frater". Coming out publicly as a trans woman was the easy bit. The really tough times was leading up to that decision. However the emotional and mental journey through the hormonal side a girl's puberty at age 64-66 has been rough. And it has triggered childhood trauma and taken me to some very dark places I almost did not survive. This is not an easy thing to go through while everyone is expecting you to have the maturity of a 66 year old!  And the HRT meds themselves can trigger serious mental and emotional instability.  

So my little sports car was both a distraction and a comfort through some of the darkest experiences of my life. That, I now realise, was a need. I should not have felt guilty about it. I did feel discomfort around the harm I was doing to the earth by driving a petrol driven car and enjoying its power and acceleration. We use most fuel when accelerating. Getting to the speed limit in the shortest time possible (and making some noise doing so) was one of the really fun parts of driving this little car. And I loved driving it around windy mountain roads So I would hop in and drive it just for the pleasure of driving it. 

It was also right to enjoy it for a time and right to let it go,  Now that I have sold my car I am very happy with that decision. It feels right that I enjoyed it for a time and right to let it go now and look back on that as a wonderful memory. 

Coming back to the young business person's analysis, I don't want to manipulate money out of wealthy people using guilt. This is not an "ends justifies means" situation for me. 

I do want to facilitate community with others who really desire to journey deeper into love love for those who are poor, really desire to live in love for self and others in a wholesome and mature way, to grow some friendships with people who are relatively poor and powerless, both in their own communities and in in our global community, and to learn the courage to say "no" and well as the courage to say "yes" both to self and others.