I thought that this following excerpt from Frank Crane's "Heaven Help the Poor" seemed very applicable to today's society with economy being down, and people losing so much money. I feel sorry for those who, when they lose money, feel like they lose all. I feel sad for those who put their worth in how much money they have or make. I know I am guilty of this myself occasionally, and it's good to be reminded what true riches are.
I do not mean the poor in money. For the greatest on this earth have been poor -- Socratees, Poe, Lincoln, Whitman, and Jesus, the poorest of all, who had not where to lay his head.
I mean poor in Resources.
For the only poverty that grinds, deadens, and kills is poverty of resources.
When sorrow comes the poor in resources have no wells of inner happiness from which to draw.
When their money is gone, they have no inner riches. When they drop from their station in Life, they know no human beings to turn to.
They are poor in discipline and their own selves fall upon them and devour them. They are poor in enthusiasms, and when their one little interest is gone they have no other.
They are poor in Passion, and to a love-hungry world have nothing to offer. They are poor in Thoughts, and as Robert Louis Stevenson says, do not have so much as two ideas to rub against each other while waiting for a train.
They are poor in Time, having smothered creative Leisure by the clutter of the unimportant.
They are poor in Beauty, having never learned to See it, let alone feed upon it.
These are the wretched ones of earth. they stand, shivering souls looking in through the window at the warmth of life; hungry souls begging of every passer-by the bread of praise which they cannot digest.
It's pitiful, too, to see poverty-stricken souls trying to buy real riches with money.
'Why do you spend money on tat which is not bread? and your labour for that which does not satisfy? Listen, listen diligently to me, and eat what is good, and let your soul delight itself in fatness.' (Isaiah 55:2)"
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