The pleasures of the less than rich

The pleasures of the less than rich are visible only to those in that number. This is not because these pleasures are illusory but because there is a certain capacity that the poor develop that the wealthy had no need to.

Instead of the health spa, I can walk. Instead of restaurants, I cook well. I don't buy expensive processed food, and the unexpected by-product has been the extinction of a taste for it, and the evolution of a love of fresh fruit. I remember hitchhiking through Ireland 35 years ago with nothing but an apple for the day. How I nursed it, fondled it, anticipated it, and, when the time came, savored it.

When my son was in prison, he wrote me a letter relating this incident: They were all playing volley ball in the exercise yard. Suddenly a hawk was spotted gliding overhead. Everyone stopped in his tracks and just looked at that hawk. Finally someone broke the silence and said what everyone was thinking: "I wish I was that hawk."

Beauty is free. And it is visible in the smallest nooks and crannies. Here is the secret I learned: The less you have, the more tuned in you become to everything beautiful around you --- that hawk overhead, the peculiar slant of sun during your morning and evening walk, a lovely song wafting in from somebody's radio.

I find I don't have to hold the mortgage on a sumptuous estate to pass by and enjoy it. These all belong to my Father anyway, and to his children who are seen "as having nothing, yet possessing everything" (2 Corinthians 6:10).