Living On The Streets

Rembrandt van Rijn
Beggar Man and Woman, pen and ink, ca.1630-31

Strike your own evening drum, morning bell, then shut the door.
Lamp burning low by a solitary pillow;
gray ashes where just now you stirred the stove to red.
Lie and listen to raindrops splattering the window.

---Su Tung-P'o

Simple people see God as if He stood on that side and we on this side. It is not so. God and I are one in the act of perceiving Him.

---Meister Eckhart

Zazen isn't about blissing out or going into an alpha brainwave trance. It's about facing who and what you really are, in every single goddamn moment.

---Brad Warner

These days people plan for emergencies. The climate is uncertain. There may be invasions---from other countries or just down the road. What about radiation? We have canned foods, bags of rice, extra water, duct tape. What if the electricity goes off---for days?

But are you ready for homelessness? I mean if suddenly you can't make the payments. Your job is gone. Your pension is devoured. No insurance. No roof over your head. How many missed paychecks or Social Security direct deposits before this is you...and maybe your whole family? Can you all fit into your nephew's trailer?

Can you have an emergency plan for living on the streets? Should you? This article appeared in the August 3, 2009 edition of The Nation.

Picture the Homeless, a social justice organization founded and led by homeless people in New York City, has joined The Nation to come up with a list of things you need to know to live on the street--and ways we can all build movements to challenge the stigma of homelessness and put forward an alternative vision of community.


 1
Be prepared to be blamed for your circumstances, no matter how much they may be beyond your control. Think of ways to disabuse the public of common misconceptions. Don't internalize cruelty or condescension. Let go of your pride--but hold on to your dignity.


 2
There is no private space to which you may retreat. You are on display 24/7. Learn to travel light. Store valuables in a safe place, only carrying around what you really need: ID and documents for accessing services, a pen, etc. You can check e-mail and read at the library. You can get a post office box for a fee or use general delivery (free).


 3
Learn the best bathroom options, where you won't be rushed, turned away or harassed. Find restrooms where it's clean enough to put your stuff down, the stalls are big enough to change in and there's hot water so you can wash up. If you're in New York City go to Restrooms in New York.


 4
It's difficult to have much control over when, where and what you eat, so learn soup kitchen schedules and menus. Carry with you nuts, peanut butter or other foods high in protein. Click here to find a list of soup kitchens by state.


 5
Food and clothing are easier to find than a safe place to sleep--the first truth of homelessness is sleep deprivation. Always have a blanket. Whenever possible, sleep in groups with staggered schedules, so you can look out for one another, prioritizing children's needs over those of adults.


 6
Know your rights! Knowing constitutional amendments, legal precedents and human rights provisions can help you, even if they're routinely violated. In New York, for example, a 2003 court-ordered settlement strictly forbids selective enforcement of the law against the homeless. The Malcolm X Grassroots Movement offers another resource, and the ACLU has cards, brochures, fact sheets and films.


 7
Learn police patterns and practices. Be polite and calm to cops, even when they don't give the same respect. Support initiatives demanding independent police accountability. Link with groups from overlapping populations of nonhomeless and homeless people (i.e., black, Latino, LGBT groups) that are fighting police brutality and building nonpolice safety projects, like the Audre Lorde Project's Safe OUTside the System in Brooklyn. Organize your own CopWatch--and photograph, videotape and publicize instances of police abuse. Consider and support models like the Los Angeles Community Action Network or the People's Self Defense Campaign of the Malcolm X Grassroots Movement in Brooklyn.


 8
The First Amendment protects your right to solicit aid (panhandling), especially if your pitch or sign is a statement rather than a request. To succeed, be creative, funny, engaging ("I didn't get a bailout!"). Find good, high-traffic spots where the police won't bother you.


 9
Housing is a human right! Squat. Forge coalitions with nonhomeless but potentially displaced people in this era of mass foreclosures. Support United Workers in Baltimore, the Coalition on Homelessness in San Francisco, the Nashville Homeless Power Project. Learn about campaigns against homelessness in other nations, including the Landless Workers' Movement in Brazil and the Anti-Eviction Campaign in South Africa.


10
Don't go it alone! Always be part of an informal network of trust and mutual aid. Start your own organization, with homeless people themselves shaping the fight for a better life and world. Check out the Picture the Homeless Blog for news, updates and reports on homelessness in NY.

CONCEIVED by WALTER MOSLEY with research by Rae Gomes
http://www.thenation.com/article/ten-things-you-need-know-live-streets

Light In Dark Places

"He put mud on my eyes. Then I washed, and now I see."

---The Gospel of John, Chapter 9

An inspired Father Bill Carroll shared the Lenten message with us yesterday at the Church of the Good Shepherd in Athens, Ohio~~~

Some of you have probably heard me quote lyrics from the Indigo Girls. As you may know, the they are a duo of activist singer-songwriters who were very popular when I was in college and are still recording today. They've been especially active in movements for peace and environmental justice, women's and LGBT equality, and the rights and concerns of indigenous peoples. What is often not known is that Emily Saliers, one of the group's two members, is the daughter of Don Saliers, a United Methodist Pastor who until recently was the William R. Cannon Professor of Theology and Christian Worship at Emory University. Several years ago, Don and Emily wrote a book together on "music as a spiritual practice" and gave a joint presentation about it at the Society for the Study of Christian Spirituality at the annual meeting of the American Academy of Religion in Atlanta.

One of the songs that Emily talked about that day was "Strange Fire," which deals with some biblical themes we ignore at our peril. The part that always gets me is the following:


Mercenaries of the shrine, who are you to speak for God?
With haughty eyes and lying tongues and hands that shed innocent blood.
Who delivered you the power to interpret Calvary?
You gamble away our freedom to gain your own authority.


What an indictment this is of what passes for religion among us. It is a good reminder to all of us, lay and clergy alike, who are called to represent God in word and deed.

This points us in the direction of some rather central themes in today's Gospel. For, in the presence of Jesus, the man born blind gets more than just his sight back. He gets his life back as he begins to break free of a religious system that asks the kind of question we see the disciples asking Jesus, namely "Who sinned, Rabbi, this man or his parents that he was born blind?"

The disciples should know better. After all, they are Jews. They know the story of Job, whose false comforters gave the very same kinds of explanation they now offer for the man's blindness. They have the testimony of Job, who refuses to curse God, even as he protests his innocence and cries out for justice from the ash heaps of history. Job, who in the end is brought to silence only by the hidden Wisdom who creates the world in love--the living God whose gratuitous, beneficent goodness defies the cruel, tit-for tat logic of our religious landscape, filled as it is with harsh monuments to our fear of the stranger and desire for control.

No, in the presence of the Son of God, the man gets his dignity back and is restored to human community. No longer is he an object of pity, a beggar by the side of the road. Now he is a person who can testify on his own behalf. "Ask him," his parents tell the Pharisees, "He is of age and will speak for himself."

But let's back up a bit. The initial answer of Jesus to his disciples would be troubling, if we took it to mean that God is somehow glorified by the man's suffering. That's not what's at stake. As we'll see next week with Lazarus, illness and suffering and even death are but the occasion of the manifestation of God's glory--a glory consummated on the Cross, where Jesus casts out the prince of darkness and offers himself up for life of the world. God is glorified, not by suffering itself, but by the victory of God's mercy and love in the midst of it.

The debate that breaks out among the Pharisees is a sign of our differing reactions to the light that exposes the sin and violence at the root of the earthly city and its religions. It is the chosen sin of self-justifying ideologies that counts as true blindness for Jesus. The Pharisees find themselves divided between those who accept the works of God for what they are and those who find fault with Jesus for breaking the Sabbath.

In the end, even the man's parents are frightened by the escalating recriminations and threat of expulsion from the synagogue. When the Pharisees ask them whether this is their son and whether he was born blind, they defer to their son's own testimony, partly out of fear. In the dialogue that ensues, the Pharisees try again and again to convince the man to speak against Jesus, but he steadfastly refuses. On the basis of his own experience, he has come to trust the One who opened his eyes. "One thing I know," he says. "I was blind, but now I see. If this man were not from God he could do nothing."

The reaction of the mercenaries of the shrine is as swift as it is predictable. They drive him out. Only his expulsion can secure their righteousness, their position, and their authority.

Needless to say, we're on dangerous ground here. The Gospel of John was written in the immediate aftermath of the expulsion of the Christians from the synagogue. And its treatment of the Jews is polemical in ways that might have been understandable when Christians were a persecuted minority but have led to further persecution ever since. After the Emperor Constantine, we began control the keys to the shrine ourselves and have needed to look more and more critically at our own use of power. One of the unsought blessings of a post-Christian age may be a return to the margins, where we Christians can rediscover our true home and voice.

As we prepare for Holy Week, however, a traditional time for anti-Jewish violence among us, we ought to underscore our history of complicity in oppressive violence, especially against our Jewish brothers and sisters. Even though it is now rejected by all responsible Christian bodies, the theory of a genetic guilt on the part of the Jews persists in its ugly and deadly power, amounting as it does to an evasion of the shared responsibility of the human race for all forms of sin and violence.

A religion centered around a tortured and crucified Savior ought to be able to come to a place of honesty about that. We ought also to be able to admit the Church's role in propping up other forms of injustice. In the clear light of the Gospel, we ought to be able to see those whom we ourselves exclude and oppress. We ought also to be able to see those nearest to us in a new light. We ought to be able to see our fellow parishioners, our co-workers, our family and friends in new ways. Whom do we hold at arm's length? Whom do we avoid or ignore? From whom do we withhold the passing of the peace? We must learn to seek these people out and turn to them for justice and mercy. For our salvation is bound up with theirs.

It is by exposing the works of darkness among us that we draw closer to Jesus, the light of the world. And it is when we pretend, contrary to all experience, that we see clearly or completely, that we risk staying in darkness and finding ourselves judged accordingly.

We are called to something better, brothers and sisters.

For once we walked in darkness, but now we are light in the Lord.

Ohio Senate Bill 5 At A Glance

To be interested in the changing seasons is a happier state of mind than to be hopelessly in love with spring.

---George Santayana

In rain during a dark night, enter that darkness.

---Shiva

An Englishman and an Indian were sitting in a garden together, and the Hindu was trying to explain basic Indian philosophy to the Englishman. "Look," he said, "there is a hedge at the end of the garden---against what do you see the hedge?"
"Against the hills," said the Englishman.
"And what do you see the hills against?"
"Against the sky."
"And what do you see the sky against?"
The Englishman had no answer, so the Hindu said: "You see it against consciousness."

---Indian mondo

Ohio Senate Bill 5, having passed our Senate by 1 vote, currently has moved to the Ohio House where testimony is taking place before the Commerce and Labor Committee. Hundreds of citizens have signed up to testify, but only the first dozen or so who manage to arrive at the Statehouse each day get in. Unlike other committee sessions of the Legislature, Ohio Government Television is not broadcasting these public hearings...nor can more than a couple dozen people get in the room. The Committee has promised to finish its work on the bill by the end of March. Upon passage Governor Kasich will sign it and, unless there is a referendum, it becomes law. The deadline for petition application for a referendum in November 2011 is April 6th.

Senate Bill 5 would affect all employees whose wages, health, safety, pension benefits and vacation and sick time are compensated in any way by the State of Ohio. The bill is 500 pages long. An attorney for the Ohio Civil Service Employees Association told a group on Saturday it took him 2 days to read it. I spent an afternoon on it just to see what's in it besides union negotiation. There's a lot! If you want to get an idea of what I mean, take a look~~~ http://www.legislature.state.oh.us/BillText129/129_SB_5_PSC_N.html

Here is a quick summary, as provided by OCSEA and the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, AFL-CIO, who are opposed to the bill~~~

1) Bargaining unit state employees do NOT have the right to bargain about the following:
* Privatization of a public employer's services or contracting out of work
* Staffing
* Joint Health Care Committee
* Layoff by seniority
* Promotional Qualifications
* Starting and Quitting times
* Number of hours worked by employees
* Shift assignments
* Assignment of Overtime (and any payment beyond 1 1/2 times rate)
* Pick-a-Post
* Labor Management Committees about any prohibited topics
* Following the Work when Contracted Out
* Past Practices

2) Healthcare
* Employee share of health care premium MUST be at least 15%
* No ability to bargain health care plan design

3) Equipment & Safety
* Cannot bargain minimum staffing requirements
* May only bargain equipment (including personal protective equipment) if management chooses to do so

4) Fiscal Emergency
* Governor can declare a fiscal emergency and void ANY and EVERY provision of the contract

5) Reduces Benefits
* Vacation Accrual is reduced to 7.7 hours at 19 years of service
* Sick Leave cashout at retirement is reduced to a 1000 hour cap at 50%
* No longevity or step increases
* Maximum sick leave accrual is reduced to 3.1 hours
* Personal Leave is limited to 3 days per year
* Merit pay increases only

6) Fact-finding/Dispute Settlement/Strike
* All Strikes are ILLEGAL with possible jail time and fine for violations
* If Fact-Finder's report is rejected, parties appeal to legislative body (same body that voted on Fact-Finder Report) to pick which last offer to choose (management or union)
* No Conciliation
* No informational Pickets

Unlike Wisconsin, in Ohio there is referendum but not recall. Therefore, the issue of SB5 can be put to a statewide vote, and a petition for that action is being planned~~~

What is a Statewide Referendum? It is:
* A challenge to a bill recently passed by the Ohio General Assembly (Senate and House) and signed into law by the Governor
* A citizen-initiated request that the law in question be the subject of a statewide vote
* A referendum "stays" the bill until the people have voted, so that the bill cannot be implemented

Process (limited to 90 days, which begins when the Governor signs the bill):
1. The initial petition application must be approved by both the Secretary of State (Husted-R) and the Attorney General (DeWine-R)
2. Then, petition signatures are gathered. Number of signatures needed:
a) 6% of the total number of votes cast for the Office of Governor in the last gubernatorial election, including
b) out of the total number, signatures from 3% of the votes cast in at least 44 of the 88 counties
3. Consequently, more than 450,000 signatures will be needed to ensure the requirements are met

Between now and April 6th, information will become available widely on how interested citizens, on either side of the controversy, can help. If the Governor does not sign by that day, a referendum would be held in November 2012, a presidential election year. The law still would not go into effect, pending results of that referendum. We believe Mr. Kasich will sign within the next 2 1/2 weeks. Comments and replies of course are welcome.

Who Will Save Us?

Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing there is a field. I'll meet you there.

---Jalal-ad Din Rumi

Would that life were like the shadow cast by a wall or a tree, but it is like the shadow of a bird in flight.

---Haggadah

We would rather be ruined than changed,
We would rather die in our dread
Than climb the cross of the moment
And let our illusions die.

---W.H. Auden

Those of my generation, in our seventh decade, were raised by a mom who was home and a dad who worked. They were assisted by watchful relatives and neighbors, a school you could walk to...and come home for lunch...our church and community organizations. But alone in our rooms---and many of us had rooms of our own---all of those were assisted, however dubiously, by comic books and radio drama. We had real heroes, like baseball players, but for the tough jobs like saving the world from power-hungry bad guys or a family in trouble in the Wild West we needed our imaginations.

There weren't many special effects yet in the movies of the 1940s. Bogie lighting a cigarette was good enough for us. Flash Gordon's spaceship had sparks that came out the back and then fell down onto a table or something. Even we knew there was no gravity in outer space. The real effects were from superheroes in the comics or from the voices and sound effects on the radio. Mom and Dad worried all that stuff was a waste of time and maybe worse. Were they right? How do the Lone Ranger and Tonto help me face Ohio Senate Bill 5?

Superheroes worked best in comic books. Superman on the radio just didn't cut it. A single frame in a comic could show Superman flying around the earth to turn the clock back to an earlier time. You couldn't do that on the radio and we had to wait for Christopher Reeve to show us in the movies. The Green Hornet and the Shadow were great on radio, but they weren't true superheroes. Batman and Robin had to be comics, and the Joker on the page still transcends even Jack Nicholson and Heath Ledger. (Joker may be working for FoxNews though.)

What we liked about superheroes was that most of the time they were regular people. Sometimes they even were disabled people...but when duty called or ultimate danger was in the air for all humankind, they changed into beings who could fly or have incredible machines or impenetrable suits and superhuman strength. They could and did save us with these powers.

OK, we knew all that stuff was fantasy and just pretend. But Westerns were different. Here we could go to the movies...and we did every Saturday afternoon. But the most popular Western on radio never worked in the movies. Jay Silverheels WAS Tonto, but you couldn't get a Long Ranger except on the radio. He had been a lawman whose unit was ambushed and wiped out by bad guys. He wore a mask so no one would know he had survived, saved by Tonto in fact. Why Tonto was a lone Indian never was explained I think, but today we can imagine perhaps his tribe had been rubbed out or driven away.

So here were these two individuals riding around trying to right wrongs and help the Wild West become safe and peaceful. The Lone Ranger's mask made people think he was an outlaw, no matter how famous he became. Tonto was feared because of the heritage of his race, so the whole project of doing good was an uphill battle. They had a secret silver mine where they made their ammunition. His horse was named Silver and his calling card was a silver bullet. All of these aspects enriched the saga that every kid knew probably until more recent times.

Now as I hobble into our present day, what have these stories brought me? We have an overcrowded planet and countless more babies born every minute. The earth's ability to sustain life as we experience it may be in peril. Air, water, and resources are increasingly dear. Employment soon may return precisely to what the boss thinks of you rather than how you can prove you do the job well. Governments, that we set up originally as a kind of fortress against the wilds of Nature, no longer may protect us. Disasters of health and finances will be a death sentence, unless you personally can find help somewhere.

I cannot hope for the Lone Ranger to arrive in a cloud of dust and a hearty HiYo Silver! I must take the lessons he and Tonto taught me and use them to support my friends and family. I don't have the riches of Bruce Wayne or a ward who can become Robin the Boy Wonder. I have no superpowers. I can write this essay though. My imagination from all those old radio shows remains keen and sharp. Is there a way out of this mess? Is there something I can do besides cower before those who already own so much and are buying more and more? I have published my values and they may know who I am. Soon I may be completely vulnerable, exposed, captured. In that event, may I have the courage I learned in my youth!