Windy!

The wind is very blustery today--well, it’s stormy, actually. It batters at the windows as if demanding to come in, and whips around the bare branches of the trees just outside of our hotel. We have heard more than a few ambulance sirens in the distance as well as going past the hotel on the street below, causing John to comment that the emergency services certainly seem to be getting a workout today.

We went nevertheless to church, invited by Dave and Tanna D (husband and wife); Dave also works at Boeing, and comes from the Puget Sound area of Washington as we do. They are a lovely couple, so friendly.

The church was an Anglican service on base, lead by a 30-something English Anglican chaplain. John and I experienced all the discomfort of newcomers to a church with an unfamiliar service and hymns, but we know that it will soon pass as we become used to it. We will no doubt return.

I confess I had quite a time not being distracted by the chaplain’s (he’s called a “padre” here) English accent. It’s not that I couldn’t understand what he was saying--he had a very educated BBC English accent--but it was the novelty of being preached to in a different accent, hearing the tones of British English, that took me off guard. I found myself listening to how the words sounded, rather than what he was saying, until I caught myself at it and made myself listen to the sermon itself again.

it was about faith, about faith in God. I was struck by the padre’s comment about how it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than it is for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven, not because God has anything against rich people, but because richer people tend to be more invested in their material goods, have more faith in “having” than those who have very little.

I know this is true, having been one of the working poor. I remember working whatever job I could get, finally landing a permanent job, with good benefits at minimum wage (keep in mind minimum wage was $3.90 per hour back then). I could barely afford the rent I had in Capitol Hill at the time, rent that was affordable at first, but kept increasing by 25% then 50% every few months. I remember when my rent check bounced, because I dared buy myself food that wasn’t oatmeal or Top Ramen, and when the grocery store refused my check because the last one bounced--because I had just paid rent. There were times when I wondered whether I should pay for food, rent, or my student loans.

I learned that material goods were ephemeral at best, and could not be depended on. My health insurance was meaningless to me, especially because the insurance company kept sending flyers out about eating healthy foods when healthy foods were beyond my means, and I had not warm enough clothes to keep out the winter chill. All I had was hope that I would not be evicted from my apartment, and that there might be some way I could find a better paying job, and counted myself blessed that I did not--that week--have to live on the streets despite the fact that I was one of the lucky ones who had a job. It was then I became aware of the hypoglycemia (I didn’t know what it was then), which eventually turned into type II diabetes I have now. Certainly it was made worse by the cheap food I ate back then.

In that time--even though I didn’t go to church then--I had faith that I’d make it somehow. Perhaps it was youthful ignorance or young optimism. But what I often thought about was this: Didn’t my parents go through the Great Depression and war time Japan and survive? They knew hunger every day back then. If they could make it, I could too, one way or another; there were people who didn’t have jobs at all, and in that way I was one of the lucky ones.

It’s odd...back then, nobody I knew of talked of not having health insurance. We talked about not having jobs, or a place to live. It makes me think that those who do talk about needing health insurance are the ones who do have jobs, which puts them in a privileged place indeed in these difficult economic times, compared to so many people who don’t have jobs at all.

So that makes me wonder...with so many people insisting on universal health care, even as we supposedly are in the worst recession since the 1930’s, which is true: we have not lost very many jobs at all and we aren’t really in a recession where people have lost their homes and their livelihoods, or people are in good enough economic shape where we can come up with the taxes to pay for universal health care instead of using that money to create jobs?

It seems to me that the good Padre was right: we who are wealthy enough to have jobs, good jobs that give us a roof over our heads and food on the table nevertheless tend to think of what we lack materially, rather than what we are lucky enough to have.

Me, I’ve got asthma, have type II diabetes (low end, though), and though I can do better on the diabetes, I do need some expensive meds for the asthma. But I’m willing to scale back on my health care so that someone without a job can get one. Because it seems to me that people will be a lot healthier if they had the means to get food and shelter than if they didn’t. I have a lot of faith in that idea. :-D