Finding
Our Way Home
“To
be homeless the way people like you and me are apt to be homeless is to have
homes all over the place but not to be really at home in any of them. To be
really at home is to be really at peace, and our lives are so intricately
interwoven that there can be no real peace for any of us until there is real
peace for all of us. That is the truth that underlies not just the news of the
world but the news of every one of our own days.”
Frederick
Buechner (The Longing for Home, p.140; Harper, 1996)
I
wonder whether you have been watching the news about Texas having had a winter
storm that left millions of people without power. For three days now, they have
had no heat or lights and another storm was expected there overnight. Three
whole days, and people are howling mad about it. It’s hard to be cold.
I
visited Guatemala two decades ago, specifically, with some Mayan families up in
the mountains. I also visited Costa Rico in 2016 where I stayed in an American’s
home in a little village on the Pacific coast. Except for one night in a tent
in the rainforest of Belize, I had power—lights, heated water for baths, and plenty
of food. But the people around me did not. No washing machines, no telephones, no
bathrooms with showers, no electricity, period. So, the American homes and
businesses had power, but the village people did not—ever.
Last
week when the winter storm was forecast, the folks on our Southern border were
scrambling to find tents for shelter for all the asylum seekers who had been
stranded in Mexico waiting for hearings in the United States. Tents don’t
provide much protection in a winter storm, but I’m sure they were grateful for
any protection at all.
It has been bitter cold
in Birmingham for several days. Warming stations have been opened for people
who are homeless to come in and stay warm. We’re pretty good at finding
temporary solutions to such problems, but there aren’t enough shelters for all
the homeless people here, and no permanent solution is being sought.
During the year of the
pandemic, forty million Americans filed for unemployment and were at risk of
losing their homes, while our 614 billionaires grew their wealth by $913-billion-dollars.
Jeff Bezos alone owns an 80-million dollar-mansion in Manhattan, a 23-million-dollar
mansion in D.C, a 165-million-dollar mansion in Los Angeles, and another
24-million-dollar mansion in Beverly Hills, a 30,000-acre ranch in Texas, and a
63-million-dollar mansion in Washington state near Seattle. Those are only a
few of his holdings, of course, but you get the picture. We have an
unconscionable wealth gap.
The big question in my
mind is this: Do we want to continue to have this monstrous divide? Is it okay
with us for poor people to be homeless on the streets of American cities while
we spend billions on special diets for our family pets? This is America. This
is who we are.
Buechner said that none
of us will be at peace until we all have a home. We are not separate from this,
no matter how protected we may be. In Luke 6:24, Jesus said, “Woe to you that
are rich, for you have received your consolation.” I think what he meant was, “Woe
to you who are rich and refuse to share…” How close to the bone does that cut
for us? It’s something I think about every day. I know I can’t feed the world or
provide shelter for every homeless person. But I can give a little bit and together
we can help provide for one or two. How about you? Are you in?
In the Spirit,
Jane
No comments:
Post a Comment