Lights Will Guide You Home

I think the biggest way that God speaks to me is through books and reading. Maybe its just the act of reading my feelings written by someone else that makes me feel connected to something bigger. It makes me feel less alone. And I have become very alone here. So I've become an insatiable reader...heck, Im even reading FF Bruce's "Paul, an apostle of the heart set free" which sounds like it would be cool and interesting, but no. Its very boring and filled with things I will never remember, dates of battles, and succesions of kings, but its just to be reading something.
Coming back from Yellow Springs the other day, I took a route that I dont normally take coming home--mostly because it takes about twice as long and goes through the poorest most run down neighborhood in Springfield. Its all cracked pavement and rusted cars and bars on windows. There is always someone dressed in the gray dirt and grease of poverty with shifty imporing eyes. Its not far from where I grew up. And sometimes, I recognize the people from volunteering at Rainbow Table. One of the kids there, I guess he's about 18 or so, asked me where I went to school. He remembered me from Middle School.
It disturbs me. Because I am them. I am no better than them, they no better than me, we have the same God given breath of life in us both--but somehow I got lucky.
It bothers me most because I am too afraid to do anything about their situation--as if anything could be done. Let me rephrase that--I am too afraid to get to know them, to love them because it will bring them too close, and I will see how poor I am in comparison. How my pride is cutting me off from God's charity, while I think I am just supposed to give it out because I wear clothes from Buckle and own designer makeup.
I think too often we look at the poor as a problem, instead of people, reducing thier humanity to charity, and when we do that we fail to see our own desperate need for charity. It is easier on our pride to write a check and walk off with warm fuzzies than to love and care for another one of God's creatures.
I've been reading You Shall Know Our Velocity! again, and the main point of it is that the main character came into alot of money, that he didnt feel he deserved. He wants to cheat time and movement by going around the entire world in a week handing out money to people, a lot of money--a life changing amount in most of the countries he and his friend who goes with him visit. An underlying theme in it though, he that he feels cheap. He feels ashamed of giving out this money when he actually does it. He spends a lot of time trying to justify his actions, but always comes back to the conclusion that he is a coward handing out only false hope because he is not brave enough to share any life with them. He dreams about doing it--about walking into their homes and loving them and milking cows and making dinner and sharing in what is really life--but he cant. He is too afraid. So he keeps handing out money and running away from widows because he doesnt want to look in their faces, or have them tell him thank you.
I am a bigger coward than he is. He is at least wresting with this idea, trying to overcome it--I only wrestle with not thinking about it. Im imposing indifference on myself, and I think that is the worst thing there is. I think maybe thats part of what Paul might have been talking about when he is talking about sin, and says that he is the worst of all the sinners. I thikn it might have been because he didnt care about the evil and injustice of the world around him for so long. He watched it, and approved it. He had his own self covered with the law, being a jew among jews, a pharisee, but that he didnt give a damn about anyone else. Its that he was so selfish for so long, and that is the worst sin we can commit. It is also the most common because every evil thing just about can be traced back to "Me".
We need God's charity most of all.