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Blessed art thou,
O Christmas Christ,
that thy cradle was so low
that shepherds,
poorest and simplest of earthly folk,
could yet kneel beside it,
and look level-eyed into the face of God. (Anon)
From a story told by a colleague working with churches in Latin America. One farmer said: ‘A single star for the well born and wealthy wise men compared with a whole host of glorious singing angels on the hillside to warm and welcome the poor and scruffy shepherds. That’s how we know how much God loves the poor. He gives them his very best.’
Written on 24th December 1974 by Oscar Romero: ‘No-one can celebrate Christmas without being truly poor. The self-sufficient, the proud, those who have no need even of God – for them there will be no Christmas. Only the poor, the hungry, those who need someone to come on their behalf, will have that someone. That someone is God, Emmanuel, God with us. Without poverty of spirit there can be no abundance of God.’
Seen for the first time 24th December 1968 from Apollo 8 as the spacecraft looked for possible future landing sites, and giving us something to marvel at, and something to worry about. ‘The most important environmental picture ever taken.’
Now playing Barry Louis Polisar: All I Want
If you read one book this year….
Dave Eggers What is the What is beyond extraordinary. It is a multi-storied account of what happens to people when civil war overtakes them. And somehow, against the odds, against the most inhuman opposition, humanity survives and refuses to give up.
The confusing and bewildering story of the Sudan civil struggle is told through the story of one Lost Boy’s journey which becomes almost mythic in the telling.
More on Lost Boy, Valentino Achak Deng, here
Southern Sudan 1993 photographed by Kevin Carter
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Now playing: The Weepies – World Spins Madly On
via FoxyTunes
Bono’s been speaking to his homeboy Bush at a prayer breakfast. It’s likely it’s not a prayer breakfast in the Cistercian tradition.
The full text was on Jim Wallis’ site, who was also quoted at the weekend in connection with another homeboy Gordon Brown.
“Look, whatever thoughts you have about God, who He is or if He exists, most will agree that if there is a God, He has a special place for the poor. In fact, the poor are where God lives.
Check Judaism. Check Islam. Check pretty much anyone.
I mean, God may well be with us in our mansions on the hill. I hope so. He may well be with us as in all manner of controversial stuff. Maybe, maybe not. But the one thing we can all agree, all faiths and ideologies, is that God is with the vulnerable and poor.
God is in the slums, in the cardboard boxes where the poor play house. God is in the silence of a mother who has infected her child with a virus that will end both their lives. God is in the cries heard under the rubble of war. God is in the debris of wasted opportunity and lives, and God is with us if we are with them. “If you remove the yoke from your midst, the pointing of the finger and speaking wickedness, and if you give yourself to the hungry and satisfy the desire of the afflicted, then your light will rise in darkness and your gloom with become like midday and the Lord will continually guide you and satisfy your desire in scorched places.”
It’s not a coincidence that in the scriptures, poverty is mentioned more than 2,100 times. It’s not an accident. That’s a lot of air time, 2,100 mentions. (You know, the only time Christ is judgmental is on the subject of the poor.) ‘As you have done it unto the least of these my brethren, you have done it unto me’ (Matthew 25:40). As I say, good news to the poor.
Here’s some good news for the president. After 9/11 we were told America would have no time for the world’s poor. America would be taken up with its own problems of safety. And it’s true these are dangerous times, but America has not drawn the blinds and double-locked the doors.
In fact, you have doubled aid to Africa. You have tripled funding for global health. Mr. President, your emergency plan for AIDS relief and support for the Global Fund – you and Congress – have put 700,000 people onto life-saving anti-retroviral drugs and provided 8 million bed nets to protect children from malaria.
Outstanding human achievements. Counterintuitive. Historic. Be very, very proud.
But here’s the bad news. From charity to justice, the good news is yet to come. There is much more to do. There’s a gigantic chasm between the scale of the emergency and the scale of the response.
And finally, it’s not about charity after all, is it? It’s about justice.
Let me repeat that: It’s not about charity, it’s about justice.”
He goes on to say how the challenge of justice remains when there is a ‘monthly tsunami’ in Africa as 150,000 die from preventable disease. The challenge of Justice remains especially for those who get to the frontierland Charity, set up their stall and stay there. Justice needs pioneers rather than settlers.
I lost some text last year on charity and justice that got swallowed up into the digital Mariana Trench. Apologies to the reading several who’ve seen it before, but it’s worth having it again anyway:
Charity
Charity is social service
Charity promotes direct services
food, clothing, shelterCharity responds to immediate needs
Charity is directed at the effects of
injustice, its symptoms. It addresses
problems that already exist.
Otherwise put: LOVE MOPS UPCharity is private, individual acts.
Examples of charity: homeless
shelters, prison visiting, provision of
material or funds for the poor.
Justice
Justice is social change. Justice
promotes social change in institutions
or political structures.Justice responds to long-term needs.
Justice is directed at the root causes of
social problmes. it addresses the
underlying structures or causes of these problems. Otherwise put:
JUSTICE TRIES TO MAKE SURE THE MESS ISN’T MADE TO BEGIN WITH.
Justice is public, collective actions.
Examples of justice: legislative
advocacy, changing policies and practices, political action.
(Tim Duffy: Justice and Peace Scotland magazine)
