Hope, not optimism

Hope or Optimism

Hope is not merely the optimistic view that somehow everything will turn out all right in the end if everyone just does as we do. Hope is the more rugged, the more muscular view that even if things don’t turn out all right and aren’t all right, we endure through and beyond the times that disappoint or threaten to destroy us.

Peter Gomes
Source: The Scandalous Gospel of Jesus

Sadness

 I've seen it deeply, indelibly etched on the faces of literally thousands of our neighbors as they sit in the waiting area of our food pantry on Haskell Avenue in inner city East Dallas.

You can't miss it if you stop long enough to take it in.

Sadness.

Deep sadness.

Even beneath the smiles of courtesy and politeness, the deep facial lines, chiseled by a long, long bout with continual disappointment and the limitations imposed by chronic, unrelenting poverty, remain.

Inescapable sadness.

Sadness that spills over into the lives of children early on.

Sadness that imposes limits, curtails expectations, and that all too often pools up at depths sufficient to swamp an otherwise promising life.

Sadness creates cesspools of hopelessness and resignation.

The variety of sadness I've observed again and again in the inner city demands a life-patience beyond my capacity to comprehend.  

Most of my middle class and upper class friends have no clue.  More significantly, we go to great lengths to dispel any notion of sadness.

Sadness discomforts us.

We avoid it at costs.

We even attempt to "shew it away" whenever we see it!

This ignorance arises from a basic inexperience in waiting for anything, especially the necessities of life:  food, clothing, shelter, transportation, education, employment, safety, health care, recreation, entertainment, celebration, civic life and organization, public engagement, to name a few.

Most of us wait for very little.

The patient response of the poor to the overwhelming sadness of so much of life lived in poverty contributes to the maintenance of social stability.

While we should be grateful, most of us remain unknowing.

Poverty creates a foreboding culture defined largely by deep, thick sadness.

Good news to the poor always involves driving the sadness out of life--a mission that can be accomplished only in a community that embraces sadness.  To deliver hope a community must live out of a commitment to understanding, honest self-evaluation, and radical dependence on those who know this sadness best, those who live it out every day.

I wonder if we're up to it?

The daily play for hope. . .

Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring, those ripples build a current which can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance.

Robert F. Kennedy

The "Grief Buckets" of Turner Courts

“We carry grief in buckets here,” the wrinkled, dried up,

Old woman told me.

“Everbody done lost somethin’ round here. . .everybody!”

“I’m tellin’ ya.”

A job.

A house.

A car.

The lights.

The water.

A marriage.

A child.

A grandchild

A momma.

A daddy.

A man.

A woman.

A brother or a sister. 

Freedom.

Respect.

Options.

Health.

Voice, a say.

Hope.

"And it’s sure ‘nuff real stuff!”

“Everbody done lost somethin’ round here. . .everybody!”

“Did I say to ya, we carry our grief in buckets here?”

"Sure 'da truth, brother."  

High impact, human need, great hope

From time to time in the New Year I intend to share the stories of the real people we encounter every day here at CitySquare. What follows here is the first:

A 36-year-old single mother with a 7- year- old daughter came to CitySquare in January 2011 in need of rental assistance. The woman and her daughter were previously homeless before moving into their apartment in September 2010.

In November 2010, she lost her job and fell behind on her rent. CitySquare provided rental and utility assistance through the Homeless Prevention Rapid Re-Housing Program (HPRP) that we administer for the City of Dallas. The woman remained in the program and received intensive case management and financial assistance for 9 months.

During this time, the woman gained full time, permanent employment. She applied for and received childcare services and transportation vouchers). She also attended CitySquare’s Money Management Class and Employment Workshops. She opened a checking account and is now able to budget her money. In addition, we were able to change her electric provider to TXU (who waived her deposit) and enrolled her in Light-Up Texas. More recently, she moved into a cheaper and safer apartment.

She completed the HPRP program and is now stably housed. Last October she paid her rent on her own and still had over $400 in her bank account! As of December 2011, she continues to be employed and stably housed.

This woman worked hard and made significant achievements in becoming self-sufficient. She continues to meet with her case manager here at CitySquare, Krystal Lotspeich, to work and strive to meet her future goals.

Ring out the old, ring in the new!

Ring Out , Wild Bells

Alfred Lord Tennyson

1850

Ring out, wild bells, to the wild sky,

The flying cloud, the frosty light;
The year is dying in the night;
Ring out, wild bells, and let him die.

Ring out the old, ring in the new,

Ring, happy bells, across the snow:
The year is going, let him go;
Ring out the false, ring in the true.

Ring out the grief that saps the mind,

For those that here we see no more,
Ring out the feud of rich and poor,
Ring in redress to all mankind.

Ring out a slowly dying cause,

And ancient forms of party strife;
Ring in the nobler modes of life,
With sweeter manners, purer laws.

Ring out the want, the care the sin,

The faithless coldness of the times;
Ring out, ring out my mournful rhymes,
But ring the fuller minstrel in.

Ring out false pride in place and blood,

The civic slander and the spite;
Ring in the love of truth and right,
Ring in the common love of good.

Ring out old shapes of foul disease,

Ring out the narrowing lust of gold;
Ring out the thousand wars of old,
Ring in the thousand years of peace.

Ring in the valiant man and free,

The larger heart, the kindlier hand;
Ring out the darkness of the land,
Ring in the Christ that is to be.

Light

Isaiah 9
¹ Nevertheless, there will be no more gloom for those who were in distress. In the past he humbled the land of Zebulun and the land of Naphtali, but in the future he will honor Galilee of the nations, by the Way of the Sea, beyond the Jordan—
² The people walking in darkness
have seen a great light;
on those living in the land of deep darkness
a light has dawned.
³ You have enlarged the nation
and increased their joy;
they rejoice before you
as people rejoice at the harvest,
as warriors rejoice
when dividing the plunder.
⁴ For as in the day of Midian’s defeat,
you have shattered
the yoke that burdens them,
the bar across their shoulders,
the rod of their oppressor.
⁵ Every warrior’s boot used in battle
and every garment rolled in blood
will be destined for burning,
will be fuel for the fire.
⁶ For to us a child is born,
to us a son is given,
and the government will be on his shoulders.
And he will be called
Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God,
Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.
⁷ Of the greatness of his government and peace
there will be no end.
He will reign on David’s throne
and over his kingdom,
establishing and upholding it
with justice and righteousness
from that time on and forever.
The zeal of the LORD Almighty
will accomplish this.

I wrote the following essay in June 1997. After you read the story, I'll explain what happened next.

_______________________________

He sat in a chair near our coffee pot. He dozed while waiting his turn to visit with a counselor. His graying hair captured my attention first. When I caught eye of his feet, I stopped.

My introduction roused him from his nap.

I sat down on a table by his chair.

"What happened to your shoes," I asked.

"Someone took them while I was asleep," he answered with a bit of a sheepish grin and a slight downward turn of the head.

"When?" I asked.

"Well, let's see," he paused and rubbed his chin in thought and calculation. "Couple of weeks ago," he reported.

"You've been walking around barefoot for two weeks?" I asked.

"Yes, I expect I have. Look at those feet," he invited, as together we inspected his swollen, weary feet.

Living in a shelter, lost in the city, here was a man basically alone.

"Why?" doesn't matter much, does it?

Yes, he may be battling the consequences of alcoholism. Certainly poverty, hunger and the prospects offered by dead end after dead end contribute to his situation.

But, here was a man old enough to be my father who walked the streets of my city without shoes.

We provided him shoes. I would like to believe we gave him much more as well.

What price do you assign dignity, respect and love? Our work is important.
_______________________________

A few days after this story appeared in our newsletter, I received a note written in an unsteady script that read as follows:

"Larry, I can't do any more at this time--a little to help buy the poor guy some shoes."

Enclosed in the handwritten note was $7 in cash.

I still have the essay, the note and the cash framed and sitting by my desk in my office.

Homework and hope

My friend and Harvard educated business mastermind, Brant Bryan sent me this "stat of the day" from the Harvard Business Review.  I find it most interesting.

Students Do Less Homework When the Jobless Rate Rises


An uptick in the jobless rate from 5% to 6% decreases the amount of time high-school students choose to spend on homework by about 19 minutes per week, says Steven McMullen of Calvin College in Grand Rapids, Michigan. That's because a higher unemployment rate diminishes expected labor-market returns, thus reducing the value of human-capital investment. For similar reasons, a $1 rise in the minimum wage in a state increases students' homework time by about 21 minutes per week, McMullen says.

Source: How do Students Respond to Labor Market and Education Incentives? An Analysis of Homework Time

Food, work and hope

It's all about perspective!

Sometimes we just need a new way to frame things! 

Check this out. 

Reflect.

Get back to me!

Freedom. . .real freedom

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. possessed a radical vision of freedom, liberty and hope. 

We celebrate his life tody. 

Take a look at this as you reflect on the values that consumed his incredible life.

Reflect.

Get back to me. 

YouthBuild

Here's a very strong and effective effort to walk alongside youth eager to move out of poverty and all of its limitations. Young people plus hope equals real change!

What do you think?

Colum McCann, Let the Great World Spin: A Novel

After hearing Colum McCann interviewed over the Christmas break, I put his latest novel, Let the Great World Spin, on my "must read soon" list.  The book is about life in urban America. 

Listen to an interview with him by clicking here.

Hopelessness vs laziness

It occurred to me recently that middleclass and upperclass folks who accuse underclass folks of being lazy don't really understand life in the ghetto. 

When you have little or no hope of landing the kind of job that would allow you, literally, to work your way out of poverty and all of its deadends, a paralysis of hopelessness can set in.  When it does, lots of people simply come to a halt.  It is as if a wall emerges from the ground in the pathway and the parade of a person's life simply stops. 

Hopelessness may lead to a series of odd jobs; you know, hit and miss kind of work that pays a wage, but not one that's liveable or progressive.

For lots of people the deadends of life signal an end to effort. 

"What's the use?" can become the fundamental question of life.  And, until that question finds a reasonable answer, life is going nowhere.

So, the next time you think "lazy," stop and reconsider. 

Ask some questions. 

Get better acquainted with the power of hope and the devastating nature of hopelessness.

Objectives for 2010

I've never been much for "New Year's Resolutions."  Something about my history of achieving failure so early in the year I guess just discourages me from making grand promises to myself about what I'll accomplish personally. 

Do you know the feeling? 

Anyway, for 2010 I'm thinking more in terms of "objectives."  That just seems much more doable, especially since realizing my goals or objectives will necessarily involve lots of other people who are part of the team around here. 

So, for whatever they are worth, here are my objectives for 2010: 

1.  Develop a new outreach and equipping center in a strategic location in S. Dallas/Fair Park that will enhance our ability to deliver hope and new opportunity to thousands of individuals who've had enough of poverty and are eager and ready for a brand new shot at life.  This "center of hope" will address nutrition, health care, wellness, hard and soft skills employment training, access to high-quality grocery options, jobs and community renewal. 

2.  Play a part in the development of a significant number of additional permanent supportive housing units for the chronically homeless who at present live on our streets and in night shelters.

3.  Oversee the intentional growth of a dynamic staff of urban workers for the good of our city wherever the opportunity emerging in 2010 takes us.

4.  Deepen my day-to-day relationships with neighbors from the community who provide invaluable assistance to us as volunteers and paid staff.

5.  Nurture new friendships with the residents at CityWalk@ Akard, the location of my new office beginning in January. 

If I can realize these objectives during the New Year, I will be able to look back at this time next year and feel a great sense of accomplishment and satisfaction.  Putting this in print helps me, especially since I know your reading it!  

The next 12 months will tell the story of my success or failure.  I think my objectives are clear.  Of course, the rub is discovered in the work.

Shaking it off and stepping up. . .

Received this from a friend of mine out of another life! Enjoy!

One day a farmer's donkey fell down into a well. The animal cried piteously for hours as the farmer tried to figure out what to do.

Finally, he decided the animal was old, and the well needed to be covered up anyway; it just wasn't worth it to retrieve the donkey.

He invited all his neighbors to come over and help him. They all grabbed a shovel and began to shovel dirt into the well. At first, the donkey realized what was happening and cried horribly. Then, to everyone's amazement he quieted down.

A few shovel loads later, the farmer finally looked down the well. He was astonished at what he saw. With each shovel of dirt that hit his back, the donkey was doing something amazing. He would shake it off and take a step up.

As the farmer's neighbors continued to shovel dirt on top of the animal, he would shake it off and take a step up.

Pretty soon, everyone was amazed as the donkey stepped up over the edge of the well and happily trotted off!

*****
Life is going to shovel dirt on you, all kinds of dirt. The trick to getting out of the well is to shake it off and take a step up. Each of our troubles is a steppingstone. We can get out of the deepest wells just by not stopping, never giving up! Shake it off and take a step up.

Remember the five simple rules to be happy:

Free your heart from hatred - Forgive.

Free your mind from worries - Most never happen.

Live simply and appreciate what you have.

Give more.

Expect less.

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Dreams

Message found on a paperweight in my dad's desk:

All people dream: But not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds wake in the day to find that it was vanity. But the dreamers of the day are dangerous people, for they may act their dream with open eyes to make it possible.

T. E. Lawrence

Shane Claiborne's call to "dance"

A meaningful call to joy. . .