This post has been a long time coming. Many people in my world are fundamentally reptilian. This largely accounts for their social marginalization. The question is how to, for want of a better word, humanize them.

July 1, 2018 The evils of organized religion need no rehearsal here. People rightly question whether it has any right to exist. To respond, I can begin with an examination of the life of one single man, John Lee Cowell. Read this: BART killing: Divergent paths met tragically on Oakland platform If that link doesn’t work, click here. That this was a white-on-black crime led to a spasm of hysteria.(*) No heaven or hell is of interest to me except the living heaven or living hel

In the end, not much.

← Home 2) Give up the word “deserve.”→ … exactly what the poor need to do for themselves. On the one hand, I will shortly dispel the notion that wealth means you don’t have the same needs. On the other hand, unless you do these things for yourself, you’ll never understand what they need to do for themselves — the what, the how, the challenges, the work. Absent that, there’s no way you can possibly make yourself useful or helpful to them. For better or worse, one lives in a w

← 5) Pray for the public schools. Home Hostility and turmoil pervade the places you don’t want to go. The spiritual darkness is palpable at noon, and the folk are too lacking in self-love to organize their lives. The area around my church is nowhere near that bad, but still significantly distressed. Prayer for my congregation is inseparable from prayer for that ‘hood, and I engage in such prayer every day.This prayer has evolved. Years back, I would visualize love like a br

Main points: (1) God always provides more than you need. (2) Use well what you’ve got now; only then will you get more. (3) What you abuse, you lose. (4) Absent a disease process, chronic poverty is not a natural condition.

Tuesday, November 8, 2016 Last week I was turned away from the shelter three times: Sunday night, Wednesday night and Thursday night. Under current conditions, to be sure I get a bunk, I must show up no later than 14:15. It’s not just a matter of being on time, but of getting near the front of the line. And that’s iffy in itself, given that there’s always a bum rush when the gate opens at 14:30. Accordingly, I must wrap up my activities at church at 13:30 and leave out no

The last straw for certain things came with a Baltimore Sun front page banner headline: I anticipate no response from Julia Craven, Jenee Desmond-Harris, Ta-Nehisi Coates, Stacey Patton, or Brittney Cooper.[*] What was the last straw? In short, it’s time for me to stop concerning myself with racism and race. All my life, I’ve been intensely concerned about both. Countless hours have gone into agonizing over any possible solution. One version of my conclusion is, there is non

A few days ago, in the “smoke pit” awaiting entry to the homeless shelter where I stay, I sat facing a choice of whether to feel good or feel bad. I allowed myself to stay in that state for some time so as to examine it. As I’ve observed many times in the past, it proved to be, apparently, a completely arbitrary choice. This really puzzled, and puzzles me. Choosing to feel good creates light. Choosing to feel bad creates darkness. There is so much “darkness” in the world

He tells the story of an incident where this young drug dealer had set up shop on his front steps, and he was seeking to get the guy to move. He said, “Look, son …” “WHAT'D YOU CALL ME?” the young man snapped. “I said, ‘Son.'” The young man said, “No one ever called me ‘Son,'” and burst into tears.

———— ♦ ———— Disgusting smells provoke conservatism A logical calculus of vomit stink, gay marriage, and political leaning Research subjects exposed to the smell of vomit displayed a pronounced shift of attitudes toward the right. The Improbable Research article over-emphasizes the Biblical inerrancy question. Researchers surveyed participants on a wide range of liberal-vs.-conservative issues, and the two on which results were most outstanding were Biblical inerrancy and gay

On one occasion sometime between 1983 and 1990 — I can recall where I was living, but not where I was working — I came home from work and became suicidal. I don’t recall the basis of my agony, but it almost certainly pertained to certain foibles of “the flesh” that my “spirit” seemed powerless to overcome.