April was particularly a “not fun” month in terms of finances. We had to pay a fair amount in taxes. My son was born, and that was a great blessing, but thanks to the generosity of my health plan, his birth left us with four to five thousands dollars worth of out-of-pocket medical expenses (including some really questionable line-items on the hospital bill). My deductible year rolled over in March.
Fun! And next month, our mortgage goes up thanks to an increase in property taxes. Unfortunately, our income has dropped over the last year as I’ve changed jobs; both changes make refinancing and gaining better repayment terms on home and student loans simply out of the question, even though I have great credit and never carry a balance. My working days and commitments are much heavier than others’, with a return that doesn’t seem to be enough.
I’m blessed to be able to work several jobs from the comfort of my home desk and thus to find supplementary sources of income. I don’t mind the hard work and long days. I figure I still have it better than a farmer, who can’t take a morning off if he’s under the weather. I have it better than a lot of people. One of the things I can do is pursue my vocation, and a lot of people can’t. I get to do work that I enjoy and think valuable. Because I am a person of faith, that fearful pursuit of my vocation is rewarding. And I am not afraid, because I have trust in God that if I am discerning and prudent, my needs will be taken care of.
My friends listen closely, but the best advice they often give is, “Well, just get a higher paying job.” I say the same thing to myself quite often. Sure. I could. I’m a licensed attorney, so I could make bank somewhere. But I also went through a lengthy discernment process last year, realizing that my gifts and talents were really meant for the field of education. (Also, practicing law was making me sick with anxiety.) I always knew that my transition from law to another career, née vocation, meant a certain change in lifestyle and income. But it feels like financially the game is rigged against me.
A new job or new direction is not the right solution. It isn’t even the easy solution. I want to sense that these problems facing my family are not our cross alone to carry. Yes, of course, as a Catholic, I have a spiritual view of my particular difficulties that prayerfully are united to the sufferings of Christ. After all in scripture He never promised us an easy life. But in the same manner in which I can spiritually unite these sufferings to Christ, I want to be united to my brothers and sisters in Christ materially. I want to feel that they help me carry my crosses as I want to help them.
Nevertheless, I am concerned at how alone I feel in this pursuit. The responsibility to solve these issues is, of course, mine alone, but I do expect others to walk with me, listening, supporting, thinking, and in those ways helping to lighten the burden. That seems a necessary first step in solidarity.
What I want from others isn’t financial help but sympathy. Sympathy is part of solidarity, a disposition that draws us together with our fellow human beings. Within the context of faith, solidarity works to help us help each other to walk step-by-step closer in our common calling toward God. We all have needs and problems that the common efforts of our daily work are insufficient to solve, and we all have gifts, of talents and time, that we can offer to help others in their needs, in a way that shouldn’t be channeled just through the skills and services we sell in the markets.
At a secular level we see examples of solidarity in food drives at Thanksgiving time or the local Habitat for Humanity. New mothers might join a nursing group formed by the local chapter of La Leche League. Families might join a farmers co-op where in exchange for some small help they get a bushel of vegetables each week. We say that these are examples of little associations that make life more livable and “a bit more human.” That’s a funny phrase because it implies that our solitude or remaining alone in need is something inhuman.
Pope Pius XII spoke of the great need for a “law of human solidarity and charity, dictated and imposed by our common origin.” He saw it as a law that is “sealed by the sacrifice of redemption offered by Jesus Christ.” If then there is this law, there must be a way to follow it in daily life. Law without an incarnation in daily human habits and without a model in the imagination remains an abstract ideal. The Portuguese politician José Manuel Barroso explains, “There is no stability without solidarity and no solidarity without stability.”
The Catholic conversation on solidarity generally begins and ends in political economy. The chattering Catholic classes of the left and the right talk about solidarity either in terms of the “preferential option for the poor” or the importance of freedom and free markets for the thriving of society. Both conversations are necessary and important. But they limit an understanding of our call to live in solidarity with others to structurally addressing problems.
I don’t want the easy fix of a little more money or of someone else taking responsibility for my problems. That’s not solidarity. The problems we all face in everyday life are not just our solitary problems. We have to help each other. And that help has to be real. “No man is an island unto himself.” We need to develop a sense of solidarity as something lived in our ordinary, daily lives. We can start with sympathy, the imaginative opening of our hearts to the problems of others.
This sympathy requires humility on my part. It is not easy admitting or asking for help. This is especially true when despite hard work, things don’t always add up. Perhaps I have a (misplaced) sense of guilt that I ought to do more or that I just need to accept the consequences of my limits; in short, that my problems are mine and mine alone. But then, if that were the case, I would be missing in my life very much those opportunities to “love one another.”
This sympathy then becomes the necessary first step to overcome a solitude we find when faced with difficulties. Sympathy means that others will listen and, when they can, offer help. In the longer run it should turn toward conversations about concrete actions, associations, and changes we can pursue to make sure that for myself and for others difficulties are not confronted alone. We rarely discuss solidarity at this level, at the level of action in our everyday lives. It seems that by taking the necessary first step of sympathetic listening to others, we might initiate a necessary change in our charity toward one another.
