“How can you expect a man who's warm
to understand one who's cold?”
Alexander Solzhenitsyn
I remember visiting a home where the family horse
was lead through the front door to enable it to live
in the back yard of the terraced house.
The same house had most of it's floorboards missing
because they needed to feed the fire in a harsh winter. "
I remember one of the family - a young man -
he wanted advice regarding a letter from the court.
"I can't read real writing Pip" he said.
There is a different kind of learning
when you are brought up in such an environment -
in such streets.
A certain kind of wisdom is nurtured
to help the beautiful humans to survive and more than that.
Money can buy comfort and a home in a community
to enable us to retreat from such places.
Escape from violence - noise and draining tension.
Money takes us away from the rawness of life.
Balance.
Knowledge.
Wisdom.
Compassion.
Incarnation.
Wholeness.
Incarnation is about being eye to eye with poverty -
close enough to feel the spittle on your face -
smell its breath and seeing the depth of a human
beyond what we see
beyond our own first feelings
................ beyond behaviour .........
Why do I begin to weep when I get to this line of words?
It stops me thinking.
It blurs my vision.............. the tears .......
How do we change.
Only if we want.
Desire.
If we are distant we don't connect.
If we are unaware of need.
It is like having blinkers,
blindfold,
blind even.
When it comes to changing the world,
it usually starts in a smaller community.
Getting down to a different level
feeling the pain.
Hands and, sometimes,
getting the knees dirty.
We have to feel that cold,
that difference,
usually the uncomfortable.
We need to disturb the comfortable
and comfort the disturbed.
Starting with self.
When God gave 100% of his love to us
(Remember the Christmas story?)
he gave all of it to a human person.
That man divine, came to our level,
his knees became dirty,
his tears found his divine cheeks,
his prayers became sobs,
and the cold turned out to be
his own body,
cold and dead on a tree,
dead.*
Being with those who are poor,
and many live with poverty that imprisons the spirit,
is a life changing experience.
We cannot get there from a distance.
There was a little boy crying when his Dad was putting him to bed?
He said to his son
"Don't cry - God's arms will be around you all the night long"
And the little boy said ::
"But I want God with skin on"
