--San Diego's Regional Task Force on the Homeless
SERMON
The dull pounding voiceTHE LORD IS MY SHEPHERD,
wheezing, rising, pleading,
I SHALL NOT WANT.
goes fifteen ways to Sunday
HE MAKES ME TO LIE DOWN
seeking, I guess, meaning,
IN GREEN PASTURES.
but finds instead roll and resonance,
HE LEADS ME BESIDE THE STILL WATERS.
pitch and trill scattered in fragments.
HE RESTORETH MY SOUL.
across the congregation.
The real sermon happens outside
YEA THOUGH I WALK THROUGH THE VALLEY
broadcast from hollow hungry eyes
OF THE SHADOW OF DEATH,
of a hundred homeless people waiting,
I WILL FEAR NO EVIL
staring across the street at the church
FOR THOU ART WITH ME.
where as a token that the faithful really care
THY ROD AND THY STAFF
a simple lunch will be offered
THEY COMFORT ME.
but only after the people who live in houses
THOU ANNOINTEST MY HEAD WITH OIL.
have gone on to smart lunches
MY CUP RUNNETH OVER.
in fashionable Uptown restaurants.
SURELY GOOD AND MERCY SHALL FOLLOW ME
ALL THE DAYS OF MY LIFE,
AND I SHALL DWELL
IN THE HOUSE
OF THE LORD
FOREVER.
2 comments:
Hi Jerral,
I have found, through the years, that a goodly number of homeless come here for the benign weather from other parts of the country. I suspect we have more than our fair share of indigents. I’ve also been witness to those who took some of these people in, gave them a meal, got them a job, only to find the person preferred not to work, rather to continue to enjoy his “freedom” from responsibilities.
I must confess I find many of the “homeless” an annoying plague on our society. We give regularly to organizations such as Father Joe, the Rescue Mission, etc. to provide help for those interested in rising out of homelessness and poverty. The mentally ill are special cases that should have never been turned out of institutions by the state. For the “lazy”, I’m really not interested in taking from my family to give to them to further such a lifestyle.
I don’t know what can be done with so many people all over town. I see a lot of able bodied men at the stop signs and freeway entrances.
Regards,
Ron
Ron,
Thanks for sharing your experience with San Diego’s homeless and especially your observations about who they are and why they are in trouble. I confess to you that I had almost no contact with people who live in poverty until I spent seven years as a public school teacher in Southeast San Diego where many of San Diego’s poorest people live. For almost all of my entire career as an educator, I had worked with people who had all the advantages provided by our social and economic systems. I learned, for example, that one of my brightest and best students in my first year was living with is mother and sister in the family car after their husband/father abandoned them in Los Angeles. That fantastic young man and his sister are both graduates of UCLA. They and their mother are productive, contributing citizens of our state. They were down on their luck for reasons beyond their control.
At Gompers Secondary School I helped develop a special program for seventh graders. The mother of one of our students in that program had limited cognitive function because (she told me) her father had hit her in the head many times when she was a child. Her child bearing faculties functioned very well, so she had three other children younger than her seventh grader. One week when the boy in our program missed four days of school, I went to their home to see what was wrong. I found an eviction notice on their padlocked apartment. I went to a nearby park and found the mother with her four young children huddled around a park bench. I did what I thought was the right thing to do and called Child Protective Services. “The County” came immediately and swept them away to shelter. The program also swept them out of my life, because understandable laws to protect the privacy of citizens kept me from ever finding out what happened to them.
My experience has been quite different from yours. In my experience, poverty is neither a cause of nor a result of laziness. The poorest people I met when I was teaching in Southeast San Diego were invariably people who had few if any of the advantages I have enjoyed from the time I was a child growing up in a supportive family. Sometimes I met people who had been paralyzed by poverty and despair so they may have seemed to some people to be shiftless and lazy. Most of the poor people without work whom I met in those days were embarrassed and in deep despair because they couldn’t earn their living.
Like you, I am annoyed by those people holding signs at our intersections, especially the ones who appear to be “able bodied.” I don’t know what to do about their situations. Obviously, giving money isn’t appropriate because of what the panhandler may buy with it.
Thanks, Ron, for your note...
Jerral
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