In the end, not much.
I will examine these aspects in this order; these list items are all links:
1) Do for yourself …
2) Give up the word “deserve.”
3) Get your hands dirty.
4) Invest your own money.
5) Pray for the public schools.
6) Emanate love.
| <– Home | 2) Give up the word “deserve.” –> |
… exactly what the poor need to do for themselves.
On the one hand, I will shortly dispel the notion that wealth means you don’t have the same needs.
On the other hand, unless you do these things for yourself, you’ll never understand what they need to do for themselves — the what, the how, the challenges, the work. Absent that, there’s no way you can possibly make yourself useful or helpful to them.
| <– 5) Pray for the public schools. | Home |
Hostility and turmoil pervade the places you don’t want to go. The spiritual darkness is palpable at noon, and the folk are too lacking in self-love to organize their lives.
The area around my church is nowhere near that bad, but still significantly distressed.
Prayer for my congregation is inseparable from prayer for that ‘hood, and I engage in such prayer every day. Continue reading 6) Emanate love.
Friday, November 3, 2017
This message is principally addressed to me, myself. After a couple weeks of doing pretty well at The Way of Peace, I’ve come again to a juncture where I seem to have tired of being happy, and am inclined to let go of this Way and return to, frankly, the way most people live.
Related: Learning curve
I may need to reason with myself, to persuade myself that self-management (1) is really worth the effort and (2) deserves to be a “First Thing” — a concern to be given priority, and to be held more important than other concerns.
On one occasion sometime between 1983 and 1990 — I can recall where I was living, but not where I was working — I came home from work and became suicidal. I don’t recall the basis of my agony, but it almost certainly pertained to certain foibles of “the flesh” that my “spirit” seemed powerless to overcome.
A former student had left a cassette tape at my door that day, full of music he wanted to share with me, beginning with “Bad” by U2. I had a second floor apartment, and had sometimes heard this from the boom boxes of people who walked by outside; and I knew what effect it would have on me, particularly the opening section, with the bells. Given my state, for that reason I intentionally delayed playing it.
When I couldn’t bear the pain any more, I put it on, and was at once transported from the pit of despair into a place of perfect peace. I count this as a case of divine intervention: by means of that young man and that music, God saved my life.
Continue reading A short route to agony
Having reblogged “Nancy Lanza, a mother tragic and infuriating” two weeks ago,
and “Nancy Lanza, chapter 2” last week,
it only fits now to link to the very substantial piece that concluded that discussion:
The post includes a significant discussion of self-esteem and the devastating effects of low self-esteem pertinent, for example, poverty and crime.
Miscellaneous notes about accepting bad feelings.
[Second in a series.]
One afternoon some years back, I hooked up with my bud Brian Williard at the Light Street McDonald’s. We were there for maybe half an hour, and then set out eastbound on Baltimore Street towards the shelters where we stayed. I stay at one, and he stayed at another about 100 yards farther east.
We walked and talked, and he talked, and he talked, and a lot of what he talked about wasn’t necessarily of much interest to me. It came to me: “I’m doing ministry; he needs this.” Finally, he said, “It’s such a relief to talk to somebody sane.”
Continue reading Accepting revulsion 2: Life in the looney bin
In a comment on a WaPo article about “Prosperity Gospel” televangelists, someone said:
Jesus taught us to think of others needs before our own.
As of now I dispute that Jesus taught that.
If he did teach that, Jesus was wrong.
Continue reading Dilemma
Don’t torture your conscience over whether or not, on any given occasion, to give or not give to a panhandler.
Go with your gut.
Main points:
(1) God always provides more than you need.
(2) Use well what you’ve got now; only then will you get more.
(3) What you abuse, you lose.
(4) Absent a disease process, chronic poverty is not a natural condition.
I write as a man with next to nothing, concerned principally for others who have next to nothing. God put me in this position for a reason.
I am strongly tempted to want to rename it “The Parable of the Bootstraps.”
The Homeless Blogger 