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Poverty
One of our young #lovegang guys loudly complained, “Fruit in meat. That’s just not right. I don’t do fruit in meat.” I asked him if he had tried it before. He said, “I don’t need to try it. I know fruit don’t go in meat. My mom always made tuna salad . . .” and he went on to loudly proclaim what things belong in tuna salad.
As Brandon eats his chicken noodle soup, we put a hat on his head. Someone hands him a pair of those warm socks, and the new guy wraps a warm blanket around his shoulders. Snot drips from Brandon’s long nose.
(Excerpt from Beloved Chaos. “Chuck” died in his sleep on the back porch of Joe’s Addiction on May 24th, 2019. He died at home.)
Frank smiled. Then he asked, “Does your iced tea have healing powers?”
Some days I cry. Some days I get mad. Zach is one of so many we know who fall through the cracks. There is no place for him.
A thin, fragile-looking women lay on each one. A volunteer sat next to one bed, holding a nebulizer to a woman’s nose and mouth, helping her to breathe. Another volunteer massaged the hands and arms of a woman who lay completely still. Another combed the tangled hair of a frail and tiny lady.
We rode the train past mountains of garbage, the waste of millions that for the “least of these” is home. We visited Sonagachi, the Red Light District of Kolkata, where over 10,000 women live as prostitutes
Then a toothless, crazy lady who sits on the front row and is usually on some other planet suddenly raised her hand and yelled over the din of voices. “Are we talking about turkeys? I can bring a turkey?!”—And I lost it! Everything was out of my control—the Thanksgiving Dinner AND my emotions.
He resists my scoldings when he requests sugary sweet masala chai and tells me that “He’ll eat whatever the hell he wants to. He’s a grown man, and “ain’t nobody gonna tell him what he can and can’t eat.”
the next piece of information that got back to me on the community grapevine was: THEY ALL TOOK TURNS SLEEPING WITH HER THAT NIGHT!!!
The Food Pantry at Joe’s is an amazing experience every week. As we give out the groceries, we often get to hear people’s stories, sometimes weep with them, and many times pray with them. Volunteers serve in all these ways, and then carry the groceries out to a car, stroller or shopping cart—whatever means of transport they have.
Little Mary was a prostitute—not the street-walker type—well maybe sometimes, but not the leopard skin, mini-skirt and high heels type. For Mary, sex was a currency, as is the case for so many women living in poverty.
While I hear Churchians talking about how “the poor are poor because they make poor choices,” I daily watch single mothers working at the drudgery of minimum wage jobs that just cannot pay the bills, and daily facing the temptation to dance (and more) in the strip clubs on our street
In my mind, I started yelling at God, “You can’t send me people like this, and then not give me some way to help them! What do I do?!”
I looked up from wiping the counter to see a man standing on the front sidewalk, arms outstretched with a thermos jug gripped tightly in his hands. He was shaking from head to toe. Several of us ran to the front door to meet him. He just stood there mumbling incoherently and trembling, holding out his thermos. It was empty.
