Sharing a Pig
"Sharing the Pig"
I had an experience in Guatemala similar to many others I’ve had in other Third World countries: As soon as you come to the village, in a very short time you will hear the squeal of a pig or the squawk of a chicken. They’re killing it for you. They’ve been saving it for you. And sometimes you find out afterward that it was the last pig or chicken. The poor are so generous.
Hoarding traps you in a kind of scarcity mentality. But when you have a little, for some reason you’re willing to give it away and make a day of it. Saving and preserving is not your way of life. “This is it, the last pig. But Father came to town and we’re going to celebrate,” the people say. So they kill the pig, and then you sit there in that house for hours while they’re cleaning and cooking the pig.
After you’re finished eating with the people who were originally invited to the meal, there’s lots left over. What would we do in our country? We have Tupperware and refrigerators. To save it would be a good, responsible thing to do: Don’t waste food is our commandment. And we have the technology to do just that.
Here’s a perfect example of how technology has a good side and a bad side. What have we lost by our refrigerators and freezers? Guatemalans immediately have to share the pig, the chicken with other people. Bringing food from one house to the next, which creates family, is a daily experience. It creates community and interdependence.
We North Americans don’t need to do that because we can store it for ourselves. So it keeps us more and more inside our houses where everything is mine, and it needs to be protected from you. Our politics of scarcity and individual responsibility leads us to become more and more isolated, independent and competitive. The poor have an amazing politics of abundance precisely because they can rely upon the group and are not as tempted to securing for the future. Our biases see this as irresponsibility, but the poor actually are closer to faith, community and the Kingdom of God.
from Letting Go: A Spirituality of Subtraction
I had an experience in Guatemala similar to many others I’ve had in other Third World countries: As soon as you come to the village, in a very short time you will hear the squeal of a pig or the squawk of a chicken. They’re killing it for you. They’ve been saving it for you. And sometimes you find out afterward that it was the last pig or chicken. The poor are so generous.
Hoarding traps you in a kind of scarcity mentality. But when you have a little, for some reason you’re willing to give it away and make a day of it. Saving and preserving is not your way of life. “This is it, the last pig. But Father came to town and we’re going to celebrate,” the people say. So they kill the pig, and then you sit there in that house for hours while they’re cleaning and cooking the pig.
After you’re finished eating with the people who were originally invited to the meal, there’s lots left over. What would we do in our country? We have Tupperware and refrigerators. To save it would be a good, responsible thing to do: Don’t waste food is our commandment. And we have the technology to do just that.
Here’s a perfect example of how technology has a good side and a bad side. What have we lost by our refrigerators and freezers? Guatemalans immediately have to share the pig, the chicken with other people. Bringing food from one house to the next, which creates family, is a daily experience. It creates community and interdependence.
We North Americans don’t need to do that because we can store it for ourselves. So it keeps us more and more inside our houses where everything is mine, and it needs to be protected from you. Our politics of scarcity and individual responsibility leads us to become more and more isolated, independent and competitive. The poor have an amazing politics of abundance precisely because they can rely upon the group and are not as tempted to securing for the future. Our biases see this as irresponsibility, but the poor actually are closer to faith, community and the Kingdom of God.
from Letting Go: A Spirituality of Subtraction
posted by LuisVelasco @ 2:55 PM
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