Paralysis of Poverty

I first observed a consequence of extreme poverty in Southern Mississippi after Hurricane Katrina in 2005, and I called it "the paralysis of poverty". I had seen the CNN images of people in New Orleans and on the Gulf Coast who refused to leave their homes. I wondered why they would stay and put themselves and their families in harm's way. There is of course the fact that they didn't have transportation, money for gas, credit cards for lodging, and other travel essentials. When I later met, spoke with, and lived with some of the people who were forcibly removed from their homes, I stared to believe that it was something more. When we are marginalized and live in isolation, we lose the ability to imagine possibilities. We no longer know of options or the human capacity to cope and survive. We can't imagine life beyond the close boundaries of our existence. I again observed this in Gaza, and now in Liberia. People become immobile. We lose our forward momentum, and we become atrophied and paralyzed. In a sermon, "Remembrance & Imaginations", Peter J. Gomes writes, "Christ did not change one thing in Paul's world. What Christ changed was Paul's imagination, and by doing that he empowered him, to live as a changed man in an unchanged world."