c. 2004 Religion News Service

(Tom Ehrich is a writer and computer consultant, managing large-scale database implementations. An Episcopal priest, he lives in Durham, N.C. Visit his Web site at http://www.onajourney.org.)

LEAVING TEXAS _ Somewhere east of Houston, wedged into a tiny regional jet, I think about Texas, the expansive and somewhat mythical Lone Star State.

After a dozen visits to South Texas, I have little more than impressions, certainly not an insider’s knowledge.

In one sense, South Texas seems like every other place in our increasingly national franchise culture. The same Macaroni Grill and McDonald’s line the same interchangeable highways. Televisions beam the same hours of football, CNN’s everything-is-urgent newscasts and Fox News’ faux news.

As elsewhere, residential streets seem eerily quiet. I see few children playing outside.

In another sense, South Texas seems different. People greet strangers. In San Antonio and Corpus Christi, I sense genuine delight at a visitor’s appearance. At a two-story Whataburger in Corpus Christi, I am so startled by a fellow customer’s friendly greeting that I lose my step and spill my water. At Boots & Britches in Corpus Christi, the owner spends 30 minutes happily explaining developments in the boot business.

Unlike areas that are self-conscious and edgy about multiculturalism, South Texas seems to have adapted to blended cultures at every social level, including posh country clubs. Perhaps they have been at it longer.

South Texas has more pickup trucks, of course, and fewer European sports cars, more billiards parlors and fewer tanning salons. Small towns seem not quite so beaten down by urbanization and Wal-Mart. Farm towns seem livelier, perhaps because corporate farming hasn’t yet driven owner-operators from the land.

What I can’t tell from my sampling is how South Texans currently deal with wealth and poverty. The state is notorious for creating vast fortunes from “black gold” and fostering politicians and systems that took their orders from the wealthy. The rapacious attitudes of Houston’s Enron Corp. are a good old Texas story. For decades, Congress and the White House have done similar bidding.

At ground level, however, especially in churches, I see a keen awareness of the victims of greed and a desire to ameliorate poverty. I see a determination to blur the lines of class. Maybe it is the strong influence of active and retired military, who reflect environments where rank matters but flaunting rank is discouraged.

I see plenty of rich folks and poor folks, but less of the ostentatious “purple and fine linen” that Jesus described in his parable of the rich man and Lazarus.

I am not naive enough to think that poor isn’t poor in South Texas, or that the chasm between rich and poor is any less wide here than it is elsewhere. I am told that the closer you get to the Mexican border, the wider the chasm becomes.

Maybe what I see here is less fear of getting close to the poor, less need to sequester them beyond sight. People of privilege don’t consider themselves above touching and helping others.

I doubt that I have seen enough of South Texas to declare it the Promised Land. But I know this: I leave today more hopeful about the future of our land. The war in Iraq will end someday, and politicians will scurry to hide their culpability. We will have split every available hair over sex and managed to offend just about everyone. Awaiting us then will be the issue that we have never wanted to confront candidly and creatively, the issue that will determine the quality and character of our life as a nation. That is how we handle rich and poor.

At the moment, the rich are getting richer, obscenely richer, to the point that 1 percent of the population owns 33 percent of the nation’s wealth (perhaps as much as 40 percent), and the bottom one-fifth (maybe two-fifths, by one official count) have virtually nothing.

That isn’t a sustainable condition. It undercuts every value that we proclaim as a nation. It suggests that democracy has been subverted for the benefit of the few.

We cannot live like that. We will want to look for better examples, such as what I see in South Texas.

PH END EHRICH