ROME: 5th March 2006 -- Scrutinium
Paupertatis, "how sweet the sound"! Here's the story of one
confrere's recent experience.
It struck him that since "a wretch like [him]"
didn't really have much money, had only quite modest needs in a
community that provided well without being extravagant, a day focused
on reducing one's superfluities might pass rather
uneventfully. The community reflection sheet had three questions
on it: (1) What must I correct or improve in my own poverty? (2) How
can I help the community to correct or improve its poverty? (3) What
suggestions can I offer within my level of competence? Presumably
this latter was in reference to (2) since the suggestions were to be
given to the Rector. Good questions actually.
The confrere sat at his desk - more or less
the only place to sit other than the chapel (the community had already
spent two and a half hours there and there were Vespers yet to come),
and began to clean up his desk. That took less than a minute -
and then it occurred to him. 'Desktop'! Today's 'desktop'
of the digital kind; now that could do with some scrutiny, and that, my
friends, took much more than a minute.
The exercise involved sloughing
off a slew of programs which
"once were found but now are lost", to vary the lyrics a little....in
the sense of unpaid upgrades. Their "mortal life had
ceased". So out they went, to be replaced by software free and
open "as long as life endures", and all the while the mind was
wrestling with something, and praying about it too...could there be
something here for personal and community poverty in our day and
age? The answer: "..Was blind, but now I see".
Here, then, one or two suggestions, especially when
you read that the daily income per family in East Timor, in
most of the rural places where we Salesians have schools is 30 cents a
day! One of the questions on the community sheet was 'How do I
practise solidarity in a world with "many dangers, toils and snares",
or words to that effect?
The confrere realised that by replacing his
proprietary "Shield and Portion" (his antivirus), and his proprietary
Zip, FTP and PDF maker with FOSS versions (Free and Open Source
Software), he had nominated a figure of some USD 500 which would keep
one of the families mentioned above for something like five years! Of
course, it's a theoretical figure because only now had our confrere
"first believ'd" and the programs were already bought....but in real
terms the upgrade costs and in one case annual maintenance payments
were saved, still enough to keep said family for a year or two.
Secondly, he wrote a simple rule in his Personal
Plan of Life (Plan, Project, whatever): I will use, as a guide to
program purchase, two rules of thumb (1) If I have to pay, I will be
paying more than I think and (2) I will not seek features I don't want,
which 'they' force on me; instead I will seek programs which are
extensible according to need. Two examples - a certain browser
and email client provide the basic platform for the functions proper to
browser and email clients. If you want more you go for 'plugins'.
WYWIWYG - Weeweewig! What you want is what you get. Makes sense
and has an ethical feel to it.
"'Twas grace that brought me safe thus far" I
think. You may or may not know that the author of the lyrics,
John Newton, was the captain of a slave ship. On one voyage, in a
storm, he experienced a "great deliverance". There is a verse
which you only find in Pete Seeger's version, with lines like "Shall I
be wafted thro' the skies/on flow'ry beds of ease...", but that sounds
entirely decadent to me, and not part of
any scrutinium paupertatis worth the name!
GLOSSARY
scrutinium paupertatis: no,
seriously, you don't know what it means? Tch, tch, tch! R.65: at least
it's in English there!
slough: casting, shedding, like a snake
gets rid of its skin
slew: from an old Gaelic word which has
gained modern importance to mean 'a lot of' e.g. a slew of unpaid
bills. It's also what George did to the dragon!
decadent: bourgoise!
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