Fashionable

“Today it is fashionable to talk about the poor. Unfortunately, it is not fashionable to talk with them.” ~ Mother Teresa

Oh man. Do I really need to say anything to this? I live so segregated from the poor. Now, I really think impoverished Americans have it much better than those in other countries because of the vast amount of social services and free government care we provide. Still, there is no reason for me to be so distanced. My mum always says I care too much for my social life. I typically see my friends once to twice a week, sometimes more.  I feel it's how I keep sane, because working with people who are in preschool is lonely. But what if I could give that much time to people who aren't loved? It's easy to love on the lovable, and to have coffee dates and lunches with them. What if I did that with the poor?

New Horizons

                                                                  "New Horizons"

So you're tired but you're alive
So open up your eyes
And you can get your sleep when you are dead
Kill the clock inside your head
Bring your normalcy to the edge
And watch it drown in new horizons
New horizons

You said I'd only have to wait until I died
And that's no time
How did we come to thinking this was funny
Cheering and laughing at the dying
While we're riding the light in you

Wait
You said I'd only have to wait until I die
(New horizons)
There is no such thing as time
Inside this moment no sun rising
Wait until I fly
(New horizons)
Wait until I fly
(New horizons)

Life floods in with a conquest
Life floods in with a new quest
Here's a voice for the voiceless
And a song for the soulless
Life floods in

When the times keep going wrong and we go right
When the times keep going wrong and we go right


When the times keep going wrong and we go right
We go right

gospel

enter my bitter rants--

Religion sucks. It's merely a prescribed behaviour enacted for the praise of one's cohorts. If you can't live the gospel you fake on Sundays then why bother to claim it at all?

Taking Christianity as an example, shouldn't Sundays be the day people see you at your worst? If you're out living your gospel during the week, wouldn't Sundays be when you repentantly bring your faults to those who would exhort and encourage? Shouldn't Sunday be the day when you break from toil, and just breathe? Shouldn't Sunday be when you confess your downfalls to your peers and seek forgiveness? Shouldn't Sunday be the day when you realise just how much you need your God?

Instead Sunday is the day you seek out your best. You seek to impress. The speech is affected and a faked manner of dress. Crisp collars, pleated pants. You don't go to cry for God's mercy. Instead you go to play-act. Present a façade to the others to convince them of your holiness.


Holiness needs no spokesperson. If you're "set apart" the world will see before you open your mouth. Because they will see the poor fed and clothed. They will see the oppressed lifted up. And they will see you bear the mark of an intimacy with your God because you live the God-breathed scriptures.

"Is this not the fast that I have chose: To loose the bonds of wickedness, to undo the heavy burdens, to let the oppressed go free, and that you break every yoke? Is it not to share your bread with the hungry, and that you bring to your house the poor who are cast out; when you see the naked that you cover him, and not hide yourself from your own flesh?" Isaiah 58:6,7

Defend the poor and fatherless;

⁴ Deliver the poor and needy;Free them from the hand of the wicked Psalm 82:3,4

But if anyone has this world’s goods (resources for sustaining life) and sees his brother and fellow believer in need, yet closes his heart of compassion against him, how can the love of God live and remain in him? 1 John 3:17

Do justice to the afflicted and needy. If you can't live the gospel without words, you are not living the gospel. That god-damned act crumbles under scrutiny

oh, to be someone else

Mr. Swan, I envy you. You live in a canal in an extremely wealthy area. Your winter consists of paddling around a sparkling blue (though at some parts murky green) waterway. The most annoying thing to you is those loud ducks that congregate around you behind people's decks and those squawking squabbling coots. You can get children (and adults) to feet you bread almost whenever the whim hits. Does anybody ever tell you that you aren't more than an object? Does anybody ever tell you you've failed? Does anybody ever tell you that you should be dead?

Is there any satisfaction in being human? Does it mean anything more than experiencing pain and seeing others in pain and feeling completely unable to help? Is humanity any more than a cruel creation of beings set to oppose each other, to prey on others, to live a life of bitter hatred towards others?

It seems sometimes that love is just an illusion, and emotion a curse.