Monthly Archives: August 2016

* Attributes of the mainstream

Get on your feet, Homelessness, Motivations, OUR BEST POSTS, Squalor,

Do I want to become a mainstream person?

My visions for myself have been (1) becoming self-supporting while still staying at the shelter; (2) obtaining a small, studio apartment with a laptop, radio and cat.  The second one really represents all I aspire to, in terms of material comforts, in life.  But it has occurred to me that maybe I need to envision more than that for myself, if I am to find motivation to really work for these things.

Circa 2008, while I was living in Barclay and working at a dollar store that served a very Barclay-like population, a brother pulled a stunt to bring about an ad hoc family reunion, of my immediate family, at his house.  It lasted two or three days.  It was as if I’d been transported to heaven.

Continue reading * Attributes of the mainstream →

* Job search strategies – The very beginning

Get on your feet, Job search/Job prospects

I have been asked to help a couple young men in the congregation find work.

For me to write this at this juncture, when I myself don’t have work, may seem silly.  However, the strategies don’t change.  They may find work before I do.

Below appears information about some temp agencies I’m aware of.  Their mention here does not imply any endorsement.  I will update this post from time to time as I obtain more information.

I will discuss searching for “permanent” jobs in a later post.

Continue reading * Job search strategies – The very beginning →

* “Every thought is a prayer.”

Get on your feet, Job search/Job prospects, Media, Motivations, National news, National politics, OUR BEST POSTS, The Way of Peace, , , , , ,

The seductiveness of turmoil.

Thursday, August 25, 2016

My foremost task for today is to keep myself focused on the practical things I need to do to improve my lot in life.

They can be seen as boring, mundane, dreary, tedious, and so on — if I fail to love myself enough to actually want to do them.

Accordingly, this morning I was reading through various news articles, and on one page, at the end, the links to “related” articles included this:

I didn’t read the article, but boy, just that headline really got my engines going.  I can’t remember the last time I was in a setting where someone might have been told, “Check your privilege.”  Normally this is addressed to a white person, and, as I’ve noted before, in my world there aren’t enough white people to matter.

Continue reading * “Every thought is a prayer.” →

x From my diary: Learning to pray

Career goals, Get on your feet, Homelessness, Job search/Job prospects, Motivations, OUR BEST POSTS, The Way of Peace, , , , ,

(Originally posted 05/12/13. Reblogged 04/18/24.)

Wednesday 04/24/13

Facing various issues as to how to spend my time. The current appearance of this blog is a far cry from what I want, but I don’t want time spent redesigning it to take away from job search. The same dilemma presents in choice of whether to use my tax refund to restore my former website on Yahoo! for $125.00/year, or instead rebuild the site as part of this blog.

My church is about to launch Saturday morning prayer services in which I will have a leadership role. I will be offering teachings on prayer; I think I have about two hours’ worth of material, and an issue rises of whether to try to organize that into 10-minute or instead 15-minute segments. And there’s an issue that what I would present to the prayer team members only, isn’t necessarily what I’d present to the general public.

This morning at McDonald’s I was reflecting on these things, and on what I might teach to an audience drawn from the general public. I began to understand why Ambrose Worrall fails to refer to Kabbalah.

Prayer team members will be principally interested in learning how to pray effectively for others. People who come from the general public will be principally interested in how to pray effectively for themselves — how to get their own prayers answered.

I presume to be pretty good at the former. That’s how I became prayer ministry coordinator to start with. I’m not so good at the latter.
Continue reading x From my diary: Learning to pray →

* Let that shit go

Bible, Get on your feet, Justice, , , , , ,

The whole hullaballoo about #microaggressions assumes that one can never heal from even the slightest insult. The same applies, frankly, to a ton of what folk obsess on concerning #injustice and #racism.

And certainly I’ve done enough such obsessing myself; in the end it plays a large role in how I became homeless. And have remained homeless.

How I’ve failed to get back on my feet.

In this vein, I often recall Matthew 19:24, about the camel that can’t get through The Needle’s Eye (a particular very narrow gate in Jerusalem). Many people may be “poor” in material things, but exceptionally “rich” in resentments. One must unpack the camel, discard all that junk, if one is ever to enter the Kingdom.

Reblogged 04/11/24.

Ends and Beginnings

Let that shit go

If I were to bet I would guess that 90% of the “shit” that troubles us is already behind us. In some cases, so far in our past that we are not even sure if we still have the story straight.

“Two monks were on a pilgrimage. One day, they came to a deep river. At the edge of the river, a young woman sat weeping, because she was afraid to cross the river without help. She begged the two monks to help her. The younger monk turned his back. The members of their order were forbidden to touch a woman. But the older monk picked up the woman without a word and carried her across the river. He put her down on the far side and continued his journey. The younger monk came after him, scolding him and berating him for breaking his vows. He went on this way for…

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* The best present makes the best future.

Homelessness, Justice, OUR BEST POSTS, The Way of Peace, , , , , , , ,

I’m posting very little new material these days, but there are hundreds of posts different folks may not have seen the first time around.  So I’ve had in mind possibly to start “recycling” old posts.

I happened across this one today.  Actually, its story has been on my mind given recent difficulties getting into the shelter.  And when I re-read it today, I was moved, not just by the story about Leo, but the remark about dwelling in untoward feelings.  I see so many people around me, and so many expressions in the media, of folk dwelling in grievance, anger, the feeling of injustice, of being disadvantaged, of harboring resentment especially against those of different skin color.

And even within Christianity, I find sometimes such negativity being encouraged, in the name of justice; wholly forgetting the Gospel mandate to forgive, forgive, forgive.

The below post first appeared 2015-12-12.

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Saturday 2015-12-05

14:40. Actually, Leo arrived first.

But he got turned away.

Continue reading * The best present makes the best future. →