The Gift

Yesterday, some Good Samaritan placed a $100 bill under my windshield wiper blade. The donor had packaged the treasure in a cellophane wrapper with a note about the gift of the Christ child.  Clearly, I had been blessed for  no good reason.  The implication seemed clear to me:  someone else needed to receive a similar blessing just because.  

As I thought about giving the gift away, or passing it along, my mind raced and I found the anticipation of giving the little treasure to someone who really needed it extremely satisfying. 

Arriving at CitySquare's Opportunity Center this morning, I observed a long line in queue to shop in our grocery store.  Our customers waited patiently to get in the building and out of the cold. 

Possibly my gift should go to one of these lovely persons. 

How would I decide?  There were so many people in need.  Who could know the correct choice?  As I stood almost paralyzed in my confused, elusive discernment, emotions flooded my heart.  Tears filled my eyes. 

Who could choose?

Everyone needed my gift.  The scale of the need just in our center outstripped the capacity of not only my meager offering, but our entire "blessing ecosystem." 

This many precious people, reduced to depending on charity to exist, infuriates me. 

It is so wrong. 

We can do so much better. . .if we decide we want to do better.  

And, oh yes, the $100 bill found its way into the grateful hands of a grandmother who came to "shop" for Christmas dinner. 

Thanks to the special angel who left the gift on my windshield.  It proved to be an eye-opening gift. 

Time for Revival!

Rev. Dr. William J. Barber, II will be speaking in Dallas Monday evening at 7:00 p.m. at Moody Performance Hall, thanks to the Dallas Institute of Humanities and Culture.


 

Opportunity!

Wealth gap at historic high

The truth of white privilege

By an accident of birth I was born privileged. 

I was born a white male.

My gender and my race set me up in a position of amazing advantage. 

To deny this basic truth would be the ultimate in self-deception.  To pretend that I've "made it own my own" would be the most damaging lie.

No one ever turned my father or me away from a drinking fountain.  In fact, my society thought so much of us that we had a designated fountain with the word "ONLY" set in place to assure no one but our kind drank from these special places of refreshment. 

No one ever turned me away or thought of turning me away from a school, a hotel, a neighborhood, a church, a restaurant, a business establishment or a job due to my racial identity. 

My father moved from share cropping in West Texas to being a successful real estate developer.  How?  He was smart, but not formally educated beyond the 11th grade.  He got an opportunity.  He was given a chance. 

Everyone in his work world was white.  The job he began with at the City of Richardson could have been filled by a black man, but that's not how things worked.  He was able to move into the private sector from that job and its experiences.  I have to believe that the only thing separating a black dad from such success was the absence of an invitation to give it a try. 

Growing up, I never thought of myself or my family in racial terms.  Such thoughts were reserved for people  of color. 

Special schools were reserved for me and my friends, and they were all white.  The black kids in the area had their own schools.  I never saw the students or their schools.

The barriers facing my black and Hispanic friends as they grew up were real, considerable and almost impenetrable.   It literally took an act of Congress to open doors sealed shut for so long.  Actually, it was a matter of cutting doors through thick, unforgiving walls that finally opened up some passages for advancement in spite of their racial identity. 

But, it's not all about history, or the past.  Today it is certainly not all about "the progress" we've made. 

There is no place for smugness when it comes to racial justice in the United States. 

We have an African American president.  That is a signal achievement for the nation. 

However, don't be fooled.

White privilege, and male at that, remains a powerful force in our culture. 

And personally, before I get too sold on my own accomplishments, it is always helpful to remind myself that I started, via a genetic lottery, with a huge advantage. 

If you look at life as if it were a football game, I was born on my opponents' 5-yard line, while they weren't even in the stadium. 

Business faces hard facts. . .plans accordingly

This week an amazing report on the shrinking middle class in the United States hit the streets via The New York Times.  The report was based on analysis done, not by social scientists or liberal political talking heads, but by business leaders and marketing strategists.

These two paragraphs set the tone for the article:

As politicians and pundits in Washington continue to spar over whether economic inequality is in fact deepening, in corporate America there really is no debate at all. The post-recession reality is that the customer base for businesses that appeal to the middle class is shrinking as the top tier pulls even further away.

If there is any doubt, the speed at which companies are adapting to the new consumer landscape serves as very convincing evidence. Within top consulting firms and among Wall Street analysts, the shift is being described with a frankness more often associated with left-wing academics than business experts.

Read the entire report here.

Clearly, this sort of trend alerts us to the growing numbers of people who stare poverty in the face on a daily basis.  We must work smarter.  We must become bolder.  We turn away from systemic, collective strategies to our own and our society's peril.

Are we simply asleep?

Facts for thought

Sunday assignment

Step one:  read Revelation 18

Step two:  ponder each word and phrase, underlining the most interesting words and phrases

Step three:  summarize the chapter in one sentence

Questions:

1)  What dominates the reason for the great agony and mourning in these words?

2)  What is the place/position of great wealth in this part of the story?

3)  Is economic power a problem here?

4)  In what way do various actors "commit fornication" in the story line?

5)  Is the focus of this chapter sex or economics?

6)  What role does wealth and economic power play in this story of failure and defeat?

7)  What does the chapter seem to reveal about God's attitude toward wealth and its power?

8)  Where are "the poor" in this vision of the community in question?

Finally:  what is the "takeaway" for you?

Turns out the "wealth gap" hurts us all

JANUARY 19, 2013, 6:47 PM

Inequality Is Holding Back the Recovery

By JOSEPH E. STIGLITZ

The re-election of President Obama was like a Rorschach test, subject to many interpretations. In this election, each side debated issues that deeply worry me: the long malaise into which the economy seems to be settling, and the growing divide between the 1 percent and the rest - an inequality not only of outcomes but also of opportunity. To me, these problems are two sides of the same coin: with inequality at its highest level since before the Depression, a robust recovery will be difficult in the short term, and the American dream - a good life in exchange for hard work - is slowly dying.

Politicians typically talk about rising inequality and the sluggish recovery as separate phenomena, when they are in fact intertwined. Inequality stifles, restrains and holds back our growth. When even the free-market-oriented magazine The Economist argues - as it did in a special feature in October - that the magnitude and nature of the country's inequality represent a serious threat to America, we should know that something has gone horribly wrong. And yet, after four decades of widening inequality and the greatest economic downturn since the Depression, we haven't done anything about it.

There are four major reasons inequality is squelching our recovery.

To read the entire essay click here.

Joseph E. Stiglitz, a Nobel laureate in economics, a professor at Columbia and a former chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers and chief economist for the World Bank, is the author of "The Price of Inequality."