Sola fide

Have you heard about the Russian luxury yacht company that is offering piratehunting trips?

No, you don't pretend to be a pirate and go around sailing. You literally hunt for pirates. Off the coast of Somalia you sail at five knots, from Djibouti to Mombasa, in the hope of attracting pirates, to hunt them. The cruise costs $500. For $7.50 a day you can rent an AK 47. For $10, you can purchase 100 rounds of ammunition. Must be a gulag version of an urban legend, no?

But reality is stranger than legend. It is a reality that the unemployment rate in Somalia hovers around 50 percent. The people live in extreme poverty. Extreme poverty means that basic survival needs are not met. Jeffrey Sachs describes it this way: The people "are chronically hungry, unable to access health care, lack the amenities of safe drinking water and sanitation, cannot afford education for… the children, and... lack rudimentary shelter… and basic articles of clothing." More than 20,000 people die every day as a result of extreme poverty. This people from whom the pirates emerge are the poorest of the poor.

Yes, there must be a war on such terror. The word terror comes from a Greek root that means "tremble." What sometimes causes me to tremble, tremble, tremble? I have been told to avoid caffeine, to get some sleep. But my pirate wisdom tells me the opposite. My pirate heart tells me that the cure is in waking.

I wake to find that there is no American embassy in Somalia. There is no American diplomatic presence. Don't go there, we are warned. If you do, we cannot help you. This is a no man's land. Here we are at the edge of an inexplicable universe. It is our collective blindness to this world that is the true terror.

And this blindness is no less blind to all the little terrified worlds somnolent within our American dream.

There are ignored but peripherally visible worlds at all economic levels defined by their inhabitants as fiscally poor. Even in America, the richest nation on earth. Poverty is relative to expectation. And expectation is of mind, not matter. Our poverty is poverty, even if it is not extreme poverty.

A greater blindness is in the piss-poor, dirt-poor poor farms of our communal loss. We are blind to our vacant isolation, to our vapid alienation. We are so often lost to each other.

But the direst, gravest, deepest blindness is our blindness to ourselves. Our denial runs deep. Its depth, even as it seems to be refuge, is prison. It is our delusional misapprehension of our own heart's desire that is our greatest poverty.

"Poor" has two Latin roots. One means "little." From one point of view, when we are poverty stricken, when we cross the poverty line, we have little. We see ourselves as deprived.

But if we are little, if we are "poor in spirit," we are completely full with less. If we are little enough, if we cross the line out of definition into infinite possibility, our emptiness is limitless treasure.

From this place, the meaning of the second Latin root becomes clear. This second root means "to give birth to." What might be born?

It is in our recognition and experience of our own poverty that we develop compassion for the poverty of others. The poverty of others is no longer defensively strange and distant. It is so comprehensible, as close as our breath.

And there is birthing of perhaps even more import. This poor self, bottomlessly empty, is like Mary Poppins' magic bag. From out of this inner poor state, amazing in its emptiness, we can draw out, magically, whatever it is for which the here/now longs. We can be container, both ready and flexible, to hold water or wine. We can be reed empty for vibration. We can be nest holding the next emergent life.

With only faith, sola fide, uncluttered, poor, we are lilies of the field, we are free with nothing left to lose.

With only one cloak, sandals on our feet, and no clinging dust, we play in flight, dancing between bullets and swords transformed into both practical tools and visionary wonders.

— Rx is the FloridaW eekly muse who hopes to inspire profound mutiny in all those who care to read. Our Rx ma y be wearing a pir ate cloak of in visibility, but emanating fr om within this shado w is hope that readers will feel free to respond. Who kno ws: You may e ven inspir e the muse. Make contact if you dare.