Hear Our Prayer

    

Remember all those the world
     has forgotten,
  Those without family, or 
  Those on the streets,
  Those who are damaged by
    drugs, alcohol or
    their own minds.

Remember the unemployed,
  The widow, the orphan, and
  The prisoner.

God in your mercy,
    Hear our prayer.

But For The Grace

We are all G/d's children.

 There is an old saw: "There, but for the Grace of G/d, go I." 

The usual accepted meaning is that there are, for all but the select few, always those who are worse off: in material wealth or physical or spiritual health. 

 What I'd rather think is that, as we have been granted that sufficiency of that Grace, it is beholden on us to pass it forward - if we received it once, whether that Grace will be replenished or not is immaterial. 

Recently, some members of the Episcopal congregation where I am welcomed worked, as part of their outreach and witnessing, assisting the regular members of the Worcester Fellowship on their Sunday lunch and worship, held on Worcester Common ("Worship at 1 PM Sundays, Rain or Shine"). 

This fellowship group gives lunch, socks, fruit and bread to anyone who comes, poor, "genteel" or homeless, no questions asked. Followed by a non-specific Christian service, with no requirement to participate, listen or even stay. The only requirement is that, if you hunger, you partake.  Either of the bag lunch or the service.  Or both.   Wherever your hunger is.

For our congregation, it was a "field trip" for the candidates for Confirmation and those of us considering reaffirmation of our Baptismal covenant. I've helped in such occasions before, but for for quite a while, and usually in a much more secular context. 

Among the persons the fellowship serves are the gamut of what our modern society either ignores, lets slip through the strands of the "safety net" or outright rejects. I've heard, again and again, that it's "their own fault," or "their own decision" to be in the straits they are. 

"They're homeless by choice."  

"He's just too lazy to get a job"

"She's just crazy"

"If she's a runaway she can always just swallow her pride and go back home"

"If she can't work 'cause she can't afford child-care she shouldn't have had those kids"

"It's not *my* fault he went to prison and now can't find work"

 And if you hear it often enough, you begin to believe, and you are willing to harden your heart. After all, we can't save everybody, now can we? There are just so many of them.

But. 

Once we see these people, how can we, any of us, whether Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Zoroastrian or atheist, not help? 

The man who received his seven miracles that changed his life, the woman who was afraid that she didn't "deserve" to have a pastry while in line for a sandwich, or the father with his deaf daughter who couldn't contain herself when offered a second doughnut hole?

How can we not at least offer that help, as best we can? 

The despair is that we, as individuals, can make such a small difference. 

But.

As individuals we don't have to work alone.  Together we can work miracles.  Yeah, they may be small, itty-bitty miracles, but get enough small ones and maybe the light gets a little brighter for the rest.

Many people come to working with the people we should remember through their churches, and move to political awareness or action from that springboard.  I kind of got it backwards.  My upbringing as a "left behind" Roman Catholic (and extremely "lapsed" as well) informed my choices as a "progressive" after I grew out of the childhood of "conservatism," and my re-entry to the active Christian community was that progressive bent helping me to find the spirituality, and recognition of faith again.

But.  But.

This is arguably the richest nation in the world.  How do we even tolerate that programs like soup kitchens and food banks or bag lunches on the Common are needed?

Oh, right.  I forgot.  "It's their own fault."

Oh, Ye Of So Many Faiths

On Pandagon, Amanda has noticed that some commentators think that the Religious Right is really reforming and reaching out to the Roman Catholics to bring under the "conservative big tent." Or that the pickup of Catholic voters for Democatic candidates this past week was the result of pandering to that population.

As someone who was raised Roman Catholic, I can certainly attest to the fact that most of the rabid "fundies" see Catholics as saint-worshipping idolaters who will follow the Whore of Rome unthinkingly, and will *really* welcome people of all races into the fold to pray in the same church pews, at the same time as the white folks (yes, I'm pandering to stereotypes here, it's a rhetorical device).

And, to get the full irony, bear in mind that, for all the fundie fringe proclaims about how "oppressed" they are for "their faith," remember that the christian denomination that, in this nation, has suffered the most explicit discrimination and suppression is the Roman Catholics. And that one denomination is, and has been for a *long* time, numerically the denomination that tops the charts in the "self-identified religion" surveys.

Add in that, overall, the Roman Catholics are a lot more "liberal" on social issues than the Fundamentalist base denominations like the current rulership of the Southern Baptists Convention. And any Catholic that votes based on the single hot-button issues like abortion and stem-cell research is ignoring the balance of things that should also be on their minds, like worker's rights, concern for leaving a viable environment, concern about *not* shafting the poor, the use of the death penalty, and separation of Church and State

Any Catholic who thinks that the Religious Right had anything really in common at the core, instead of just a few issues (like BC and abortion) is either being willfully obtuse or knows absolutely no history about the "relations" between Catholic and the myriad other christian denominations, from loudly proclaimed predictions that JFK would be following secret orders from Rome, the expressed fears that the Catholic nannies and housemaids would steal away good protestant babies for secret baptisms, to the equally load proclamations that all these Catholic immigrants would be out-breeding the good Protestants and taking all the good jobs away, and costing the gummint dollars to support 'em.

Believe me, I have issues with the RC hierarchy and current theological climate, but to think that the Religious Right views the Catholics as any but a Dark Days Desperation Denomination-ally as a collaborator is smoking something that will probably net you several years in the gey-bar hotel.

In the interests of full disclosure, even though I was raised Roman Catholic (as opposed to a variety of denominations that call themselves "New Catholic,") I worship these days with an Episcopal congregation that, bless their pointy little heads, has even recruited me to be one of their Sunday School teachers.