-
The contrast of the culture
I couldn’t get over the contrast on the page of The New York Times when I went to their page today. The first thing that caught me was the breaking news story of the tornadoes that killed 23 people in Mississippi overnight. We woke up to pouring rain, so I was wondering how much we had dodged a bigger storm.…
-
We allow exploitation of the poor and accept letting powerful people get away with it
The story continues to unfold about Brett Favre, former QB of the Green Bay Packers (whose fans now insist he was QB of the Vikings last. Sorry, poor attempt at humor). He made sure funds were earmarked from the state to go to two pet projects of his. One was to the University of Southern Mississippi (his alma mater) and…
-
The poor and the powerful
People who don’t go to jail for exploiting the poor. Among them now is former NFL QB Brett Favre. He took huge amounts of money from the state of Mississippi that was earmarked for welfare programs. He then helped funnel $5 million from that fund to help build a volleyball arena at his alma mater.
-
The hard places
There isn’t any good way to start this. I think about “Last Third Living” and walking with discipline and my efforts to shove out the unnecessary things to focus better on the necessary things in my life… and then for a day I encounter the hard places. Places I have wanted to go to serve when I was younger and…
-
“Poverty” isn’t always about dollar signs.
Brian Flores was fired as head coach of the Miami Dolphins at the end of the season. He was still a hot commodity and was lined up to interview with several teams who had vacancies. Now, he has filed suit against the NFL for what goes unsaid but gets practiced all the time: The NFL has a bias problem when…
-
We fear what we don’t know
It is so easy to pick on immigrants from a majority white congressional district. It is so easy to blame “the other” when you’ve never sat down with someone “in opposition” to you and had an actual conversation. These are the challenges… and too often we are not up to these challenges. (And social media makes it SO much easier…
-
Busyness blinds us
“Our busyness can blind us to other people or at least make us feel less guilty for turning the other way and walking past someone who needs help. When we create margin, we give ourselves the opportunity to notice and truly see people. The way we spend the margin we have affects the people being pushed to the margins themselves.”…
-
Book Review: I See You by Terence Lester
“Privilege has a way of blinding us to the realities faced by those society has made invisible, and in true incarnational fashion, Terence takes us with him on a journey to uncover the true experiences of our most vulnerable neighbors.” (Chad Wright-Pittman)
-
Confronting our misconceptions about “the poor”
We may have heard these generalizations about the poor, or held them ourselves. (Or, still hold them.) — They are lazy and uneducated.— They chose to be poor. They could pick themselves up by their bootstraps and get out of it if they really wanted. — The poor are the government’s responsibility. — It’s their own fault they are poor.
-
Dealing with issues of poverty and broken systems
A couple of weeks ago the president raised the issue of immigration and where immigrants should come from in a meeting with Congressional leaders. What was just plain silly was the talk about his use of a particular word. It missed an entire conversation that needed to happen… but what am I thinking? We’re Americans! We’re good at avoiding tough conversations.
Tag: Poverty
