Finally getting around to reading my July/August issue of The Other Side magazine.
On page 8 under "Short Takes":
"Americans spend $250 per month on fast food and $5 on helping poor people." Ouch! I'm afraid I must locate myself in that statement. I'd like to think I spend less than the first number and more than the second number on average, but I know that my first number (food for me) is still more, much more, than my second number (food for others.)
On page 9, in "Yeast of the Pharisees," Shane Claiborne writes about Luke 18, where the prayers of the tax collector and the Pharisee are recounted. Shane writes, "...if our commitments are not born out of relationship, if they are not liberating for both oppressed and oppressor, and if they are not marked by raw, passionate love, then we do little more than flaunt our own purity by showing everyone else how dirty they are."
That hits directly on a longtime struggle of mine - for whom am I working? For whom am I passionate and compassionate? In my work for the earth, for example, being vegetarian, buying organic, etc., I do help people, but not directly. When do I work with my neighbor? In particular, when do I work with my less-well-off-than-me outside-my-daily-spheres-of-activity neighbors? What relationships are at the base, the foundations, of my actions? Or is it just me?
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