City of Brotherly Love? Part I

Over the next few weeks I'll be digging up stories from my time in Philadelphia with a group called Urban Hope. This is my way of processing everything that happened, so really you're just joining me as I try to figure out what it is that I've learned.

My drive toward Warsaw, Indiana was a bit unnerving. I knew practically nothing about the trip, other than we were going to Philly. I also had no clue who was going on the trip with me. With the exception of one informational meeting, I knew no one who climbed on that old BlueBird school bus, which motivated me to stick my nose in a book for most of the ride.

Just before leaving, Courtney had recommended The Same Kind of Different as Me, the autobiography of a man who grew up as a sharecropper in the south, hopped a train at thirty to the city, succumbed to drugs and homelessness, spent every night for over a year praying beside a dumpster for a close friend, and went almost daily to a nursing home to care for and clean up a severely racist old man who only referred to him as 'nigger.' There is more to it than all of that, and you should probably read the book, but I think it represents the tension of love and addiction that I encountered on the streets of Philadelphia.

It's easy to pretend the world is a simple place, that people are homeless because they are lazy, or do drugs because they make the choice to do so, and that all drug dealers care about is an easy dollar. This sort of oversimplification makes it easier to deal with life. If I see a man on the street with a sign it's easier to look away if I think that he should have known better, or worked harder, or paid attention in school instead of doing drugs. I can reassure myself that I am helping him by not helping. If I give him a dollar, he'll probably just buy drugs. Besides, he probably makes $30,000 a year begging. We can always find excuses. But as I learned in Philly, if we actually stop and listen we will find that there are individual people with individual problems. Who knows, they might even become a mirror.

So I will be telling a few of those stories that I was able to listen to; like Sean, who apparently did two drug deals while we talked about him, or Carl, who worshiped God over a peanut butter and jelly sandwhich before and after his heroin induced caesurae, or Gino, who had turned down a salary because he was still afraid of what money would do to him.

I have to warn you, my experiences were limited in time and scope. While I hope this serves as an inspiration to further understand the complexity of poverty, as well as people, consider this as about as comprehensive and studied as the recent Kony phenomena. There is simply no way that with my limited experience I will be able to do more than broach the subject at this point. I'm just trying to process the things I did see and hear. I hope to do some more reading on the topic myself, and I'll be sure to pass on whatever resources I come across.

May I learn to look people in the eye and listen.

We Are Rich

Half the world — nearly three billion people — live on less than two dollars a day.

More than 80 percent of the world’s population lives in countries where income differentials are widening.

The poorest 40 percent of the world’s population accounts for 5 percent of global income. The richest 20 percent accounts for three-quarters of world income.

Around 27-28 percent of all children in developing countries are estimated to be underweight or stunted. The two regions that account for the bulk of the deficit are South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa.

If current trends continue, the Millennium Development Goals target of halving the proportion of underweight children will be missed by 30 million children, largely because of slow progress in Southern Asia and sub-Saharan Africa.

Based on enrolment data, about 72 million children of primary school age in the developing world were not in school in 2005; 57 per cent of them were girls. And these are regarded as optimisitic numbers.

Nearly a billion people entered the 21st century unable to read a book or sign their names.
Less than one per cent of what the world spent every year on weapons was needed to put every child into school by the year 2000 and yet it didn’t happen.

Infectious diseases continue to blight the lives of the poor across the world. An estimated 40 million people are living with HIV/AIDS, with 3 million deaths in 2004. Every year there are 350–500 million cases of malaria, with 1 million fatalities: Africa accounts for 90 percent of malarial deaths and African children account for over 80 percent of malaria victims worldwide.

According to UNICEF, 26,500-30,000 children die each day due to poverty. And they “die quietly in some of the poorest villages on earth, far removed from the scrutiny and the conscience of the world. Being meek and weak in life makes these dying multitudes even more invisible in death.”

(information taken directly from http://www.globalissues.org/TradeRelated/Facts.asp)

It's not that we don't care; it's that we don't see, and so we don't do. Only when issues become faces are our hearts filled with compassion.

The above photo is of a Sudanese Child crawling towards a refugee camp. He was only a mile away. The photographer did nothing to help the child. Overrun with remorse he killed himself two months later.

Jesus have mercy on us not only for the things we have done, but also for the things we haven't done.