By Jim Jordal

"We think sometimes that poverty is only being hungry, naked and homeless. The poverty of being unwanted, unloved, and uncared for is the greatest poverty. We must start in our own homes to remedy this kind of poverty."

Mother Teresa of Calcutta, 1910-1997

As this year begins we in the movement to end poverty might well consider the words of Mother Teresa that there is another kind of poverty equally corrosive of human lives as the one we war against. We focus on the poverty related to income shortfalls, joblessness, homelessness, hunger, poor education, and a lack of medical care. We agitate in the halls of power hoping that someone, sometime, somewhere will hear the cries of those unable to help themselves, and join us in the struggle. We believe that deep in the human psyche there resides that small spark that cares for the welfare of others and is able and willing to give sacrificially to those in need. We believe also that what is needed is an igniting force capable of transforming that small spark into a raging conflagration of mercy and justice. These things we believe and work for.

But there is another even more insidious form of poverty that lurks among us---that awful poverty of spirit that arises, as Mother Teresa so artfully said, from being unloved, unwanted, and uncared for. In our complacent attitudes of selfishness, ignorance and denial we too often conclude that this form of poverty troubles only people in other cultures, in more distant lands, or in families different from ours, or in people unlike ourselves. We delude ourselves into thinking this type of poverty does not belong to us. No, it belongs to others not able to see things as clearly as we do or to provide the physical resources necessary to the good life.