Charity Starts At Home
My mother used to tell me “Charity starts at home”. I always understood it as an attempt not to share with others outside of the family.
Recently I have been thinking a lot about Gandhi’s principle of Swadeshi, the use and service of our immediate surroundings over those more remote or foreign. In economic terms it is the insistence on the use of local goods made by local communities and in one’s own country, and preferably hand-made or home grown. But in charity terms it would mean care for the poor at home first over care for the poor around the world. In nonviolence terms I believe it means nonviolently striving to stop the violence at home, like Teaching War at a local university or No More War Spending by our local congressional representative.
So in light of Gandhi’s Swadeshi I need to rethink the maxim of “Charity starts at home.” Perhaps there is something to it when home is where we are at and we consider everyone a brother or sister.
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