Wrongdoers persist in hostility toward the innocent.
Category Archives: Dependency
The offering plate, part 1
One lives in a world substantially of one’s own creation.
The offering plate came around, and I got a shock. I can remember when I dreamed of putting $60 in there each week, as the woman does who normally sits in front of me. No such dream is available to me now; I am unable to envision myself ever putting anything in there.
My circumstances have rendered me infantile; a complete “taker.” One of those who seeks to receive “blessings” rather than seeking to be a blessing, a “maker.”
What can I give as an offering?
The offertory hymn was, “We are an offering.”
We lift our voices, we lift our hands
We lift our lives up to You
We are an offering
Lord use our voices, Lord use our hands
Lord use our lives, they are Yours
We are an offering
All that we have, all the we are
All that we hope to be
We give to You, we give to You
We lift our voices, we lift our hands
We lift our lives up to You
We are an offering, we are an offering[*]
I myself can be my offering.
More about that next week.
[*]Author: Dwight Liles. ©1984, Word Music, Inc.
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Previous posts mentioning the offering plate:
I’m getting interviews!
What a homeless man dreams of
Previous posts mentioning the credibility of dreams:
Hope and vision
Originally posted 2016-05-14.
Invisibilities
Relates to the next post, “PESB: A ‘woke’ excess.”
The story here is very similar to that of the opening chapter of Edwin Friedman’s Friedman’s Fables, “The Bridge.”
Friday 12/16/22, I got to Dunkin’ Donuts for the first time at about 11:00. I normally do not bring my laptop’s charging cord on that trip. I get a large frozen coffee, which takes me 90 minutes to consume; and after that, a medium frozen coffee, which takes me an hour to consume; I’m busy online the whole time, and at the end of that 90+60 minutes, my battery’s just about drained. I go back to the shelter, take my meds, do my meditation and prayer time; pack up the power cord, and return to DD until supper. But on this day, come 14:00, I was still on my first visit.
Here came Tom. I’ve known him for years, from the previous shelter. He’s short — It’s taken me some time to grasp that bullies pick on him sometimes because of that. — black as coal, has some cognitive deficits, has possibly some affective deficits also; stutters. But he’s a really, really good guy, and has been a good friend.
Given the slings and arrows of life, the randomness of events, the last several months, he’s been sleeping outside.
We visited for a while, and he asked for, and I bought him, an extra large iced coffee and an apple fritter. He put his things down by the table where I was sitting — and then asked me to watch them. He said he’d be back in ten minutes. Very, very much unlike me, I agreed.
I myself NEVER ask anyone to watch my things. Some wholly unexpected circumstance might meet me during my errand, and that person would be left — literally — “holding the bag.”
Which is exactly what happened now.
My laptop battery was very nearly drained by now; in a matter of minutes, it would shut down on its own. Then I would not just not be able to do anything online; I wouldn’t be able to use it at all.
Ten minutes came and went. Then more time; then more time.
How to busy myself while waiting? Had I gone back to the dorm at this juncture, I would have (1) taken my meds, (2) done the day’s first meditation, and (3) done my prayer time. So I meditated now. And did my prayer time now. And waited. With nothing to do.
Staying here to watch his things was about to interfere with my needs.
The time frame for checking one’s mail, on weekdays, is 14:00 – 16:00, and I’d not checked my mail for a couple weeks. Today would be my last chance to do that this week.
If I stayed beyond 16:00, then what? Supper is normally at 17:30. Would I even get supper?
I looked at his things. They consisted of a lightweight athletic jacket; a small grocery bag containing some trash and a pound of sliced cheese; and a pair of shoes he meant to sell or give away.
I determined to leave out, to go check my mail, at 15:45, whether he’d shown up or not. After the mail check would come supper. I’d come back to DD after that.
At 15:45, I got up to go. I prayed over his things, for their safety; I prayed for him, for his safety; and left, without feeling any guilt.
It was still there at 18:20, when I got back from supper.
It was still there at 21:00, when the store closed.
Whether or not I had some obligation or duty or responsibility to stay there and watch Tom’s things, beyond the ten minutes, beyond my available free time; to stay there in interference with my own needs — was and is an invisible thing, if it had any real existence at all. Maybe it existed on the astral plane, as a thing. But it is analogous, I think, to the invisible debts or obligations the organizers of that conference seemed to think that the non-indigenous residents of the state of Washington today, have toward the indigenous persons who previously inhabited that land.
If it’s invisible, is it real? Only the facts, the concrete What Is, is real.
ΔFosB: The genetic addiction risk factor
I only this week became aware of this.
Wikipedia: FOSB
The article is extremely technical, but makes clear in no uncertain terms that Delta FosB is the genetic risk factor for addiction. All addicts have it, regardless whether the addiction is chemical or behavioral.
It also helps me understand how, without having been born with the specific genes for alcoholism, they came to be present for me in middle age; how, after decades of consuming alcohol no differently than any normal person, I abruptly became a “drunk” at about age 32.
Related: Alcoholism basics
Originally posted 2016-02-23.
The babies in the river
A parable of relief vs. advocacy
“Relief” refers to providing for needy people’s immediate survival needs — food, shelter and clothing, direct material gifts. “Advocacy” refers to political activism, meant to change policies and laws. People and organizations who presume to serve the poor, face choices as to which one to emphasize.
The parable of the babies in the river addresses that choice. Activists love it. Desmond Tutu and others have endorsed it.
The new shelter
I wasn’t stranded. (Link.)
“The wrongest verse” revisited
Proverbs 3:5-6:
Trust in the Lord with all your heart,
and lean not unto your own understanding.
In all your ways acknowledge him,
and he will direct your paths.
I need to re-think this.
Podcast – Now he’s in a wheelchair.
A simple lesson
(Originally posted June 22, 2013 at Trojan Horse Productions. Reblogged 2014-09-10.)
My normal day runs as follows. After breakfast at the mission, at 5:45 I head for McDonald’s, where I drink coffee ($1.06) and do my prayer routines. Around 9:15, I head for the library, stopping at a convenience store en route to buy smokes ($2.75) and a soda ($1.69). From 10:00 to 2:00 I’m online at the library. When my time’s up, I go to the Wi-Fi café, write in my diary and have another cup of coffee ($1.00). Then it’s back to the mission, where I have to pay admission ($3.00).
Sunday mornings, I am normally left with bus fare to church ($1.60) and pennies. I meet my patrons at church and obtain an allowance for the next week.
Jimmy, part 2
Thursday 2014-07-03. Jimmy came up to me at McDonald’s yesterday and sat down and talked about the incident. He doesn’t say he’d been drinking. He says people thought he’d been drinking.
Recall his psychiatric diagnoses.
Pastor sent me this clipping about the homeless squatters’ camp underneath the Jones Falls Expressway, which the City was about to raze — again. He thought the housing vouchers it mentions might be available to me. They’re not. A different detail caught my eye: the remark that many people in the camp “struggle with mental illness and addiction.” Note the “and.”
The Homeless Blogger 