A few weeks ago I had a serendipitous conversation with Phil, the wonderful human being who tends my car. Phil is a guy you can trust: he is routinely careful and professional, impeccably honest, unfailingly kind, always  going the extra mile for customers in his repair shop.  On the personal side, he lovingly raised and successfully launched his daughter, and settled into blissful empty-nested-ness.

But then, Phil became concerned about his 10 year old niece;. Growing up in a rough section of our city, she was beginning to have difficulties. An inadequate school and dangerous neighborhood conditions were having their effects, and the family was alarmed.

So post-child-rearing Phil offered to give the kind of self-emptying gift that this season is all about.  In September, he opened his heart and home to the 5^th grader, fixed up a bedroom, enrolled her in the local school, and set about surrounding her with love and opportunity. His enthusiasm and joy are contagious as he describes her new-found love of reading, her delight in Harry Potter Weekend, and her shy request for additional spending money at a local fair. What for?  Books.  As I listen to Phil, I am awed and grateful, drawn into a deep appreciation for the overwhelming  gift of himself that he has so freely and generously given.

And then, there’s Andrea. Really, it’s an entire class full of Andreas at St Joe’s University. As students in Professor Frank Bernt’s  course this past semester, they were required to serve as visitor-volunteers in a hospice. The group gathered recently to talk about their experiences; I got to be a fly on the wall and listen to their stories of discovery and transformation. Andrea’s story is representative of all of them, and I offer it here as another example of gifts that change lives, gifts of the heart.

One of the patients Andrea visited was an older woman with a brain tumor that had caused damage resulting in aphasia, the impairment or loss of the ability to communicate using words. This was frustrating not only for the woman, but for Andrea, who originally saw herself as The Helpful One, needing to DO something, speak, help, fix…..something, anything to be of assistance. With great effort, the woman from time to time would say “ I can’t even begin to tell you……”trailing off, unable to continue, leaving  thoughts unspoken, unknown.

Gradually, as the weeks went on, Andrea became comfortable with that difficult space of Unknowing, and allowed herself to let go of her own agenda and need to be needed or effective. She began to occupy the place of Presence:  occasionally massaging the woman’s hands,  more often simply sitting in the mutuality and pregnant silence of their shared humanity.

On the last day that Andrea visited her, her new friend again tried to speak, slowly, with difficulty, echoing the only words she had managed during their time together. But this time, she finished the sentence. “I can’t even begin to tell you…, she said haltingly, painstakingly, “…how much you mean to me.” Andrea was dumbfounded, and immeasurably moved. “I hadn’t DONE anything. I didn’t think my presence was valuable,” she said. “But doing nothing meant everything to her.”

This may be one of the most profound expressions of gratitude that Andrea will ever get, an acknowledgment of a unique and extraordinary gift exchanged between these two women.  Together, they tapped into what Parker Palmer calls the Hidden Wholeness that dwells in each of us, and offered it to each other. “I didn’t change to world,” Andrea says. “The world changed me.”

In the dark days when I fear that our species is spinning madly out of control, caught in some fevered grip of  ignorance and insanity, I remember all of  you Phils and Andreas out there, giving each other the finest of gifts, the only ones that genuinely  reflect the Reason for the Season:  self-emptying gifts of the heart.  Maybe we could all give even one such gift this year. Think of someone needing this present: the Presence of another caring, loving human, and give yourself, all wrapped up and shining with the Light that dwells in us all. This is how the world is healed, how Incarnation happens every day.  Merry Christmas, Everyone.

Anon (see Listening Post #13) and his friend Hank are both homeless, although  you would never guess it of the professorial Anon. Anon has more resources than Hank, who suffers from paranoid schizophrenia and weighs in at close to 400 pounds. Hank’s illness and size result in a profound lack of personal hygiene, which makes him the most rejected of the rejected; the confraternity of homeless sojourners themselves find it difficult to be near him. He refuses to go into a homeless shelter, fearing both personal ridicule and victimization. So he stays on the streets.

On the night  of the hurricane, Anon could have simply made plans for his own shelter and safety. But he worried about Hank’s ability to weather the storm, and so he ventured out to find him. And  then, amidst the torrential rains and howling wind,  Anon set out with Hank in search of someplace in which to ride out the storm. He got Hank onto a bus, and off they went to 30^th Street Station, that enormous, beautiful, solid, dry Philadelphia landmark, surely a reliable refuge on such a night.

Wrong. After offering to buy his friend a ticket to Anywhere if it would ensure his ability to stay put for the night, Anon was informed that Hank could not stay. A van was coming to transport “those people” to a shelter, and the station was closing. Knowing Hank’s intolerance for shelters, Anon got himself and Friend onto another bus, this one headed out to Chester to the casino there, thinking that this never-closes venue would be a sure bet for a night’s shelter. After traveling for an hour through wind and water, they got off the bus, only to find that the casino, too, had closed.

Back on another bus, this one heading for the airport. Anon and Hank, riding through the night, hoping to find lights on and kindly security who will look the other way, at least for one night. The bus driver told them he thought the airport was closed, but having exhausted all other options, they rode on. Hank was wary of going to the airport: he is known to the police who walk the airport beat from prior attempts to sleep there overnight. Some of the cops are kind, but one is routinely brutal, having told Hank on prior occasions that he is “nothing but a stinking, m-fing piece of s–t”… not the sort of comment one forgets.

Upon arrival they found that the airport had, in fact, closed, but that 25 stranded passengers were huddled somewhere attempting sleep under airport-issued silver thermal blankets. Anon and Hank joined them. Conspicuous by their lack of cozy covers, they nonetheless hunkered down for a few hours respite. At 1 a.m., Hank was sleeping upright in a chair when Anon observed the notorious police officer approach the slumbering Hank and kick him firmly in the shin, one final indignity on a night filled with so many others. A few hours later, the storm roared north, taking its destructive power with it, so all remaining airport denizens were loaded onto a bus and deposited at City Hall. His mission of ensuring Hank’s safety accomplished, Anon then bid his friend farewell.

This story is haunting me, and for so many reasons. There are all the socio-political subtexts:  the intractability of a housing shortage and lack of options for people like Hank: our institutional inability and unwillingness to  address the needs of people who have no homes, especially those who suffer from mental illness: the vast sums landing and staying in the pockets of the wealthy, while one woman I know spent the storm crouched inside a port-o-potty she broke into seeking shelter…….and so much more. Despite all of the principled and passionate efforts to provide shelter and the millions spent on the task, there are still Hanks out there.

And then there are the numerous personal indignities suffered by Anon and Hank, from the 30^th Street cop who feigned busy-ness rather than answer Anon’s inquiry right away….he was playing a video game on his phone and made Anon wait for a response…….to the simple ignominy of standing in the pelting rain waiting for a bus during a hurricane.

But the real story here, and what has captured my heart, is the simple, loving kindness of Anon, providing his Friend sanctuary with his own presence and care. I marvel at the willingness of one human being to extend himself beyond what most of us would consider reasonable. It never occurred to Anon to leave Hank out there all alone. Instead, his great heart wrapped itself around his friend, providing a different kind of refuge from the storm. I am in awe of such a sheltering soul.

Muriel Ruckeyser has said that the world is made up not of atoms, but of stories. David’s story is a particularly timely and timeless one; and is indeed part of the fabric of the world. It is as unique as he is, and as universal as any story of war and survival can be. With soldiers still in Iraq, the Afghan war making history as the longest conflict in US History, Bin Laden hunted and killed, and  Qaddafi’s son and  3 grandchildren sacrificed in Libya,  David’ s life shifts into particularly poignant, relevant focus. At 88, he says he has been an old man for over 70 years, and it is this that makes him an ageless icon: the universal soldier. His is the story of the long-term effects of war and violence, a cautionary tale we would do well to heed.

David isn’t his real name, but he chose it for this story because as a Navy recruit during World War II, he says “I took on Goliath.” For David, as for all of us, Goliath hasn’t died yet. Such is the legacy of war; its very conduct sows dragon’s teeth that are the seeds of new conflict and violence. We all pay the price in one way or another, but for David and increasing numbers of returning soldiers, the cost is utterly personal and permanent.

David enlisted at 16, a featherweight at 5’4” and 113 pounds. By the time he shipped out, good nutrition and rigorous training had added 3 inches and 31 pounds to his manchild frame. But he says he grew old within the next year and a half, during which he participated in three beach assaults from a landing craft during World War II.

Seven long decades of living with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder have kept his memory of events fresh. David recalls his first battle, and in visceral terms describes the hell that is the belly of a landing craft: the wretching of sick and scared recruits, the smell of fear and vomit, the raw-nerved anticipation. And then bounding out into the cold water, realizing that first time that this was no movie; those bullets, shells and mortars zinging around his head were meant for him. “Then it hits you: I could die. This is for real. They’re really trying to kill me.” The first time, he says, it’s unreal, you feel pumped for it. By the third time, he said, he was ancient. At 19, he looked at the new recruits with sympathy and sorrow, knowing in his bones that they too were about to age before his eyes. You’re old,” he says, “You’re tired, immune to reason. It’s war. It’s hell”.

There are many stories that David refuses to tell, including those of being wounded….twice. He looks away. “Terrible, terrible,” he says. “Too terrible. You don’t want to know. You can’t imagine it. But all these years later, it can never leave your mind. Never. Not in a million years.” Certainly not in 73. David has lived with PTSD  his entire adult life,often repeating a constant refrain, stated with great intensity and passion, “You have no idea. You have no idea.” I’ve heard him say it many times, yet each time, this haunted phrase wrenches my heart. David is right; I don’t, I have no idea. I cannot comprehend the violence he has witnessed and endured. Most of us can’t; the wars fought in our names are distant thunder that barely penetrates our consciousness. The gruesome, horrific details of violent conflict and its aftermath are reserved for those waging war on our behalf and for those unlucky enough to be caught in the firestorms and crossfire. Men. Women. Children. Multitudes of our fellow humans permanently maimed in body and spirit, all in our declared pursuit of peace. David, and thousands like him, never get over it. He and they carry the physical and psychic burdens of the trauma and violence they have known wherever they go.

After the war David completed his high school diploma, attended Drexel and Penn State, and became a life-long, largely self –taught historian, his quick intelligence readily citing statistics and factoids of relevance:   “There were 3 ½ million Navy and Marines, but only 300,00 were on ships or saw combat.” The vast majority of these were, like David, young. “ It’s always the young who die,” he says. “Wars are fought by innocent kids.” His penchant for historical detail seems to spring from a personal quest to understand his own circumstances. How can life be so completely upended, so utterly transformed by what one experiences in war? “ I don’t like BS, “ he says. “ I like truth,” and this quest for the truth of his own life and the country he served fuels his passion for history and forms his views on the conduct of war. “There are no winners”, he says, only everyone left “to endure horrors and hardship.”

In contemporary wars, more soldiers survive severe injury than in past conflicts; the numbers of sufferers of PTSD are swelling. David’s experience has greater relevance than ever; thousands upon thousands of soldiers and their families now face long lives shadowed by the trauma of war, with inadequate resources available to help them heal. These wars will be part of our common life, shaping the lives of our children and grandchildren for decades to come.

David has some thoughts about all of this:  “God didn’t make war. War is never a solution to a problem. I believe that there are other worlds beyond my imagination, so much more than we see and know. When you live through this you see it for what it is. All the flag waving, that’s not patriotism; our adversaries do the same thing. And so many people end up dead. You need to live to learn the truth: Life is what matters. Life and living. Choose Life. Choose Life.”

Perhaps our bloody battles will end only when we do not insist on killing Goliath, but rather on ridding ourselves of the urge to annihilate him. The poet Rilke once observed that “perhaps everything terrible is in its deepest being something helpless that wants help from us.” Love in action is the force more powerful, and as has been demonstrated in so many nonviolent revolutions, can protect us from tyrants and evil far more effectively than violence and retaliation, without sacrificing the health, well-being, and future of one of the planet’s most precious resources, her young.

David hopes that many people will read this, and listen to him. So do I. Listen to David, who has earned the right to instruct us. Choose Life.

The geese astound me, flying in entrained synchronization, turning, lifting, landing in perfect, peaceful attunement to each other.  They are often noisy, sometimes contentious, but when danger threatens, they move swiftly into position, guarding the young, attentively poised for flight or flattened to avoid detection, all behaviors to maximize each other’s safety and survival.

And then there is the mayhem of Tucson, one of us so seriously ill that he has lost any sense of belonging to this human family, and so slays six and wounds thirteen of his siblings. Yet in the midst of it all, many present there that day, some known, others unnamed, came to the assistance of their fellow humans. In an instant, they drew on their own unique skills and gifts, spontaneously offering them to those in need: comfort, medical intervention, calls for assistance, calming the terrified, preventing further harm.

Several of those hailed as heroes in the press have staunchly and humbly disavowed that title. In their heart of hearts they know that what they did was utterly, normally human; they acted on behalf of the Common Good- a capacity that we share. It’s in all of us, this ability to care, to protect, to heal, to extend ourselves in service to others. If we say that these qualities are rare, we individually and collectively let ourselves off the hook too easily. What truly is abnormal for us humans is hatred, apathy, and indifference.

Perhaps what we witnessed in response to the violence in Tucson was a demonstration of human entrainment….individual actions that spring from a deep well of resonance with the Common Good, with what is required for the survival and safety of us all. Over and over, in times of crisis ordinary people spontaneously step into the breech faster than thought or calculation could allow, and do what is theirs to do….not because they are special and extraordinary, but because they are so deeply connected to their own common humanity that they act to safeguard and preserve life. Some are so attuned that they have chosen professions as first responders, medical personnel, crisis intervention specialists, counselors and therapists of all kinds, so that every day, their task is to assure the safety of their fellow humans, preserve peace, be healers.

Like the geese, we can trust our inner guidance about how to keep all of us safe from harm. With such deep listening, we can collectively create  the conditions that  promote our well being and minimize human-generated tragedy: get serious about eliminating the omnipresent threat of weapons, reign in our egos and anger when we disagree, provide care for those of us so obviously troubled, draw deeply on our common longing for peace. Perhaps we are moving past the era of heroes and into an age when we recognize and embrace our interdependence, our inextricable connection to one another, our interbeingness. I don’t know if this is true, but it gives me comfort and hope to believe that it is.

“Meanwhile”, as poet Mary Oliver has written,

“…the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.”[1]

Thirteen years ago, Laura took a job working with women in Philadelphia’s prisons. She quickly noticed that there were no pre-natal classes for the many pregnant women incarcerated there, and so in typically great-hearted Laura fashion, she started one. As visual aids, Laura provided each mom-to-be with small replicas of a fully formed baby in utero.

Within weeks, women were stopping her on the cell blocks, asking if she was the lady with the babies, and could she please give them one? Woman after woman, not at all pregnant, asking for the babies, which Laura kindly supplied. Curious about this interest in the teeny ones, she began asking why there was so much enthusiasm for these plastic models. She discovered that the women were making beds for the ‘babies’  out of tissue boxes in their cells, crafting little blankets out of scraps of cloth, tucking their ‘children’ in at night. Separated from their living and breathing children but still deeply connected to their motherhood, they re-created the loving rituals of nurturance for these tiny plastic infants.

I find these events almost unbearably poignant, both heartbreaking and hopeful. There is an unmistakable echo of another mother in a distant time:  “She… wrapped him in swaddling clothes and laid him in a manger.” There in PICC, the Philadelphia Industrial Correctional Center, is the expression of the Mother God, the eternal nurturer and care-giver, gestating love wherever the maternal heart beats. Somehow this simple, gentle gesture births a little love into the world. Right there in the darkness of a prison cell, the seeds of love are incubated and nurtured, awaiting the day of freedom when they can be birthed.

As I write this, mothers in Philadelphia’s jails and others all over this nation are dreaming of the children they cannot care for and who lie in their own beds, dreaming of the mothers they cannot touch, deprived of this primal bond…..a stark contrast to our idyllic nativity scenes. And yet, there is great power and beauty in what these women did. Perhaps we can hear it as an invitation to all of us this season to pay attention, wake up, and notice someone who needs some tucking in, a tear wiped away, a loving touch, a meal, some simple act of nurture and grace…..a summons to birth love into our little corner of the universe.

I thank the women of PICC this Christmas for reminding us that we all carry The Child, all of us hold Light and Love within us, and on some deep, utterly human and utterly divine level, all of us ache to birth that love into the dark corners of our world. This is how The Child is born. Peace to All on Earth.

First, I would like to tell a phenomenal pro bono success story. My friend Joe co-stars with his client Leon, his accomplice in a miracle of mutuality: the giving and receiving of life-saving, life-giving pro bono legal assistance. Lawyer as Rescue Worker. The comparison struck me a few weeks ago as the 33 trapped Chilean miners were lifted up, one by one, through a veritable symphony of human effort: engineers, scientists, nutritionists, mental health professionals, all working as One to save these precious lives. It was a shared moment of joy for the species, this successful pooling of resources, humans at their very best, using their collective talents to preserve, cherish and celebrate Life. It got me thinking about other kinds of rescue workers, individuals who take it upon themselves to rescue those of us who are lost, trapped, vulnerable, marginalized. It got me thinking about lawyers like Joe.

Sixteen years ago, Joe volunteered to staff a monthly pro bono clinic through Philadelphia’s Homeless Advocacy Project (HAP). One Wednesday at noon, he found himself face to face with a homeless man, Leon, who had wandered into the clinic at a nearby center city church.  Leon told Joe that he had been sleeping under a bridge for nine months, ever since he and nine other residents were forcibly evicted…overnight… from their SRO.[i] Their landlord wanted to rehab the building to take advantage of gentrification in the area, so he dumped his low-income tenants onto the street.  Not knowing that this was illegal and having no knowledge of any available help, Leon moved under the struts. At this point in the interview, Joe pulled out an intake form and offered to explore what he could do for Leon. Leon respectfully demurred, but asked Joe if he would come back to see him ‘next week.’

Joe is a persistent man with a great heart; he went back the next week. And the next. And the one after that. For ten straight weeks, Joe met with Leon for half hour conversations. Each time, Leon tentatively asked Joe to “come back next week.’ During the tenth conversation, Leon interrupted Joe and said “OK, you can help me.”

Today Joe says, “Helping Leon is one of the best things I have ever done in my life.” It was clearly one of the best things in Leon’s life as well. Over a number of years, Joe represented Leon in obtaining a medical card, applying for and winning disability (SSDI) benefits, qualifying for and moving into safe, permanent housing. Before a representative payee could be found, Joe assumed that role for Leon. When Leon eventually died, Joe made sure Leon got the Catholic funeral and the Veteran’s burial that he had wanted.

Joe saved a life, and Leon gave Joe’s meaning. When we take the long view of our lives and our work, it doesn’t get any better than that. That’s justice: right relationship.

But now, to the terrible-outcome pro bono story.

I’ve gone over and over this in my head, and have concluded that it is indeed fair to say that Barbara died of Foreclosure. There were other punches in her life, but it was the loss of her home of 40 years that knocked her down for the count.

Two years before she retired from her secretarial job, Barbara was told that she qualified for a home equity loan badly needed for roofing and plumbing repairs on the weathered Philadelphia row home she inherited when her mother died four decades earlier. She made her payments regularly on the $10K loan until a year after her retirement; a fixed income and the sudden ballooning of the loan quickly resulted in arrearages. When she was $800 behind in her payments, foreclosure proceedings were begun.

Frantic, she went to two separate lawyers in her neighborhood. Both told her she would need to provide them with a $1500 retainer before they would represent her. Barbara would smile ironically when recounting this story: “Now if I had $1500, would I have been in that mess in the first place?” She was unaware of free legal help through legal services, but it would not have helped her had she known. At the time of her foreclosure, the local legal aid office, overwhelmed by the flood of foreclosure cases that heralded the Foreclosure crisis, had closed intake for these cases. Barbara, like over 50% of those who apply for free legal help, would have been denied assistance.

It was a rapid descent into some circle of hell from then on. Over the next few years, Barbara lived in a succession of SRO’s, ramshackle, cramped dumps which, she would say, were “unsavory for a lady.” When I met her in 2007, she had begun to drink heavily, her health deteriorated, and she slid into a deep depression. On the day before Thanksgiving last year, she was seriously injured when struck by a car. There is a very good chance that she stepped in front of it. After several months of tortured existence in a sub-standard nursing home, Barbara died last May. Her former neighbor and best friend Patty confirms:  “It was losing the house that did it,” she says.

Barbara needed a Joe; she needed a good lawyer with a good heart, but there were none to be had. Even the most optimistic projections indicate that at best, 15% of the legal needs of low income people are being met. Every day, our sisters and brothers lose their homes, their incomes, and even their children for want of a lawyer to advocate for their basic human needs and rights. We in the legal profession are the gatekeepers to justice; we have a lawful monopoly. Access comes through us or not at all. For justice to come, every lawyer must be a pro bono lawyer. If the statistics are accurate, we’ve only gotten four or five of the ‘miners’ into the light of legal assistance. It’s time to think hard about how we are going to reach the other 28.

National Pro Bono Week gives us an opportunity to pause and reflect on the harsh realities of our current system, and to work to change it. This is a hopeful week, good things are happening: there are law students in Boston canvassing low-income neighborhoods, educating homeowners about  foreclosure and their rights. Hundreds of Advice and Counsel clinics are taking place all over the country this week, lawyers throwing some light down that mine shaft and reaching in to pull people out. I urge all of us, colleagues in the legal profession, to begin to think of ourselves at least in part as Rescue Workers, people whose skills and talents are indispensable in the work of creating a safe and just world, of ensuring that each of our precious lives is advocated for, preserved, and in some cases, literally saved.

So be a good Joe. Do Good. Do Justice. Do Pro Bono.

For more information, visit celebrateprobono.org

But I sat there thinking about other good hearts and fine minds in other places, specifically on the streets of Philadelphia, people who have a different take on money management. For example, there is Fannie Mae (a pseudonym she chose with deliberate care for this article.)

Last July 1, I encountered Fannie Mae, full of delight and glowing with good humor, wanting to share her first-of-the-month news with me. She lives on a fixed income of a few hundred dollars a month, but as she sometimes does when her check arrives in her bank account, the first thing she had done that morning was to go out and buy 40 tokens and bring them to St. Francis Inn, a Philadelphia soup kitchen and spiritual hub. She then gave them to the staff there to distribute to people needing transportation to get to medical appointments, job interviews, housing opportunities, and other necessary travel.

Fannie Mae felt great about her donation. It’s her way of showing how much she appreciates all that the Inn does, and she firmly believes in the necessity of expressing gratitude in some way. She also feels that she is an active participant in a community of donors, doing her part to aid those who have less than she. Forty tokens represent a more-than-healthy chunk of her meager monthly income. We speculated that day on what an equivalent donation would be from a millionaire, well-compensated executive, or even just someone ‘financially comfortable’. It staggers the mind, this comparison. When asked about her own always-precarious finances, she says, “I’m broke before and I’m broke after, so what difference does it make?  Everyone should open their heart and soul and mind. A few dollars here and a few dollars there can save people a lot of turmoil.”

“But Fannie Mae,” I protest,  “at the end of every month, you don’t have what you need!” “But I get it!” is her instantaneous retort. “It comes back down to the heart,” she says. “You do it from your heart.”  Fannie Mae knows all about the heart; hers has been broken enough. I should add that the tokens are not Fannie Mae’s only regular donation; her heart has expanded to such a size that she also buys clothes for a motherless baby in the neighborhood. I am awed by her generosity.

There are studies documenting the disproportionate charitable giving of people who are themselves in need.[i] What is the secret to this amazing magnanimity of spirit? Part of the answer lies in a profoundly different attitude towards resources held by many who live on the social margins. Money is fluid, something that pours readily from hand-to-hand on an as-needed basis: If I have it today, but you need it, I’ll give it to you, trusting that when I need it, it will flow back to me.

Are there grasping, fearful, resource-clinging, stingy folks who are poor? Absolutely. Are there abundantly generous wealthy people? For sure.  But it is worth noting and celebrating the spirit of giving in people like Fannie Mae, people who have so little, but do not fear giving from their want. What if all of us embodied this spirit? Think of all the  resources, financial and otherwise,  currently stock-piled and stuck in bank accounts, portfolios, and locked vaults, frozen and unavailable to do the work of feeding, housing, clothing, educating and healing the world. What if those resources were freed, flowing like living water, meeting people’s needs?

So I asked Fannie Mae about the Endowment idea. She is not a fan. “Give people what they need Now,” she says adamantly. Why add to your bank account when people need so much right now?  They should listen to the people with needs” she says.

At some point, we barter our passion for justice and desire to do good in exchange for financial security- our own or, in the case of nonprofit Boards, the organization’s. It becomes more important to ensure that ‘the work’ continues than to re-think the work itself, and creatively envision how best to use resources to end the need for services…. permanently.  In our efforts to end poverty, are we supporting and perpetuating the bureaucracy that has been spawned to address it?

Is it important to save? Certainly. But exactly how much can we, ought we pack away and store up in our barns when the needs of the human family are so vast and immediate?

I don’t know what that point of barter is, but it’s a conversation worth having. Listen to Fannie Mae

Nonviolence

The hard, often unforgiving  streets of Kensington felt a little softer underfoot this week. A Stranger was overheard making an amazing pronouncement. “I came to Philadelphia to commit a crime,” he said to no one in particular. “My daughter was raped, and I was going to kill the man who did it.”  Most of those in close proximity to him didn’t register the magnitude of this statement: perhaps they did not hear him. But Mary Beth did; she leaned in to hear the rest.  “I came for revenge,” he said, but I couldn’t do it.” Why? “Because when I went to his house, he was coming out the door with his four daughters. And I thought that if I killed him, his daughters would have no one to protect them from a rapist.” He called his own daughter on the phone. “You just have to forgive him,” she said.

The Stranger’s impulse for murder is horrifying, if understandable; his movement toward Mercy is miraculous , which is to say, what can happen every day if we pay attention.  I don’t know what the mystery called Grace is, but this man who turned away from mayhem was surely a recipient of its instantaneous in-breaking of clarity, compassion, empathy. He embraced what was offered from the deep inner wisdom that is available to us all: a flash recognition of our common humanity, the vulnerability of all our children, the utter futility of the cycle of pain and sorrow that violence perpetuates.

In our violence-plagued and habituated world, here is a moment of hope, a template for our responses to all of the terrible wrongs that are inflicted on our bodies and souls. Here  is a man who listened to his better angels and recognized his unity with others, their shared humanity.  Such insight may be an indispensable factor in the forgiveness equation, but we don’t know if the Stranger has or will forgive his daughter’s attacker. We know only that this aggrieved and raging father chose life, not death.

I wish a news team, or Oprah would find and interview this man, spotlight both his struggle and his triumph. This is the mercy that is twice blessed, that incrementally heals the world and  inches us closer to the day when all of us will live in peace and unafraid.

I offer for your reflection the following magnificent poem by Taha Muhammad Ali[i] Bless the Stranger and the poet; they are kindred spirits who have something profound, essential, and crucial to teach us.

Revenge

At times…I wish I could meet in a duel the man who killed my father and razed our home, expelling me into a narrow country. And if he killed me, I’d rest at last, and if I were ready—-I would take my revenge!

But if it came to light. when my rival appeared, that he had a mother waiting for him, or a father who’d put his right hand over his heart’s place in his chest whenever his son was late even by just a quarter-hour for a meeting they’d set—then I would not kill him, even if I could.

Likewise, I would not murder him if he had a brother or sisters who loved him and constantly longed to see him. Or if he had a wife to greet him, and children who couldn’t bear his absence and whom his presence thrilled. Or if he had friends or companions, neighbors he knew or allies from prison or a hospital room, or classmates from his school asking about him and sending him regards.

But if he turned out to be on his own…cut off like a branch from a tree without a mother or father, with neither a brother nor a sister, wifeless, without a child, and without kin or neighbors or friends, colleagues or companions…then I’d add not a thing to his pain within that aloneness….not the torment of death, and not the sorrow of passing away.

Instead, I’d be content to ignore him when I passed him by on the street, as I convinced myself that paying no attention in itself was a kind of revenge.

This was not my normal Wednesday morning, when I usually listen to people who live on the social margins, hearing not only of  hardships, griefs, mistreatments, but mining the wisdom, enjoying great humor and optimism as well. Fairly frequently, lawyers are the subject of the conversation. Not surprisingly these stories of law and lawyers do not rouse pride in our system of justice. A few examples:

▪ Joanna, an elder  woman who lost her family home of 40 years to foreclosure after an initial shortfall of $800 in a ballooned home equity loan. She had no legal representation: both of the  lawyers she visited insisted upon a retainer of $1500. Having landed in a fetid rooming house, she smiled bitterly: “Now, if I had $1500, would I have been in their offices in the first place?” She was unaware of any other options.[i]

▪ Nate, who unknowingly selected a clueless lawyer to handle his disability appeal. He hasn’t heard from his ‘advocate’ in almost two years, and all of his phone calls go unreturned. He wonders if he dressed better and had more education if he would be treated this way.

▪Those entangled in the criminal system have hair-raising stories of being tossed through courts like pennies….worth something, but not much.

▪ There are frequent, long litanies of unmet legal needs. Many, many people have legal issues so ubiquitous and overwhelming that they simply concede defeat before even attempting to find a remedy, believing that there is no help for them, or it’s too exhausting, or expensive, or that access to justice is available only to the wealthy and to corporate interests. To these women and men, lawyers and the law are more hindrance than help. They need Lady Justice to take off her blindfold in order to see and remove some significant barriers before they can climb up onto those scales of justice.

But this Wednesday morning was spent with lawyers who have taken off the blindfold, with Justice Embodied, the members of the Delivery of Legal Services Committee and public interest community of the Philadelphia Bar Association. Some of the most notable legal minds and hearts in the region have chosen to devote their considerable talents to representing and empowering poor and vulnerable people. In an extraordinary and nationally unprecedented collaboration, they have met for decades on the first Wednesday of every month to discuss and envision how they might do their already impressive work even better.

The individual and collective efforts of this extraordinary group of lawyers have benefited people living on life’s edges in so many ways. They protect children from abuse, whether by their caregivers or the judiciary. They launch the healing of women’s lives through effective advocacy that frees and protects them from abusive relationships and other obstacles.  They advocate for elders and for children, defend our eroded civil  and human rights, prevent foreclosures, assist people who are homeless with a host of legal issues, accompany immigrants through a bewildering legal minefield, secure income, work, health care, and housing for countless individuals and families. Check out more of what these fine folks do.

All of this is in addition to concerted, collaborative efforts to change those systems that create  and perpetuate the conditions keeping people in grinding poverty.  Their passionate dedication as individuals is tangible;  their collective energy is potentially  transformative. And they are working hard at discerning what shape that energy might take.

So to those who have grown cynical and jaded about lawyers, take heart and hope from this. Times are tough, economically, socially, politically; it takes courage to be visionary when the practical, hard-headed impulse is to circle the wagons, tend our own gardens, focus on narrow self-interests. But here are attorneys who are trying to envision and give birth to an equitable and healed justice system, who are  dedicated to changing the untenable status quo. Their passion for justice pervades  their creative hearts and minds, directs the work of their hands, and informs the commitments of their lives. These are lawyers you can love.

Poverty is debilitating in many ways, not least among them its role as a literal crippler. Almost everyday at the Catholic Worker Free Clinic in Kensington, someone has a shoe problem, caused by one or a combination of common poverty-induced foot issues: frostbite, the impossibility of proper hygiene, lack of medical attention to bone and skin problems, untreated diabetes, chronic dampness and pain caused by inadequate, ill-fitting, or exhausted footwear, the list goes on. Some snapshots:

A young mother pushes a toddler in a stroller down the street. The baby has shoes, but in the bitter chill and snow, Mom is wearing socks and flip flops.

PJ, sitting patiently waiting, legs crossed, revealing shoes so full of holes that he has wrapped his feet in plastic bags before shoving them into the dilapidated brogans.

The lovely, nearly-always smiling man who, lacking a needed orthopedic lift, has such a distorted gait that he walks on the side of his shoe, not the sole.

The patient with severe foot impairments who arrives from the snowy streets wearing, inexplicably, only one shoe

Ralphy, an older man whose severe arthritis prevents him from being able to bend over and cut his own toenails. And so for several months every year he walks through life limping, waiting for Foot Doctor Day, that eagerly anticipated tri-monthly event when volunteer podiatrists come to the clinic and tend to the many needs of the down-shodden.

The late Mitch Snyder, indefatigable  advocate for homeless people and member of the Committee for Creative Non Violence in DC. famously said: ” Anyone who has more than two pairs of shoes is a thief.”  I remember hearing a story about how the actor Martin Sheen, who played Snyder  in a 1986 film,  was challenged and humbled when, upon meeting Mitch, he was asked: “How many pairs of shoes do you own.?” Sheen went home changed by the encounter, and counted his shoes.

Let’s all look in our closets and count. Thief that I am, I have 9 pairs, ample evidence of the great disparity in my circumstances and many of those who seek treatment and warmth at the free clinic.  Mitch’s prescription for closing the yawning gap in resources and access to life’s necessities in this wealthy nation echoes the call to Unity found in our most cherished and professed faith traditions: “We must begin to act as if these are our brothers and sisters, our sons or daughters, our mothers or fathers, ourselves, for these they are. …You must be called upon to stop whatever you are doing, and do what must be done.”

I don’t know what this means for me or for you. But for starters, perhaps each of us could take at least a few minutes to ponder the significance of Shoes[i] both in our personal and collective lives, and then “do what must be done,” that is, respond in whatever way seems ours to do. Given the uniqueness and creative potential in each of us, I do not presume to know what resonant response might arise in anyone else. But please, think about it, and then just stop what you are doing, and do what must be done.