What's Wrong With This Picture?

Wow! It's been a long time since I've been on 31st Street--the blog of course. The problem, I've been quite literally on 31st about 8 days a week. A brief rundown: Yesterday I sat down on the curb with the guys. It felt good to be in touch again--like back to my beginning on the street. No, it didn't bother me that, somehow, the guys can buy beer and drink in their little hubs, but still go into the Holy House for dinner. In fact, True Light Church will take up a little of the slack by taking one Saturday each month to feed the needy. Yeah, I said needy! You see, these guys have kind of dropped out of the mainstream. Some have a felony conviction. If you walk alone 31st Street in Kansas City or any street in your city, you'll see some of the same faces--toothless grins, foolish talk, idle time, panhandling (for the next beer) without much hope and surviving. You see, a fella can run into the same wall only so many times before finally learning that, ouch, this hurts, I'm getting nowhere fast. Do you know how hard it is for a felon to get a job? I believe prisons are designed, like the drugs on the street to keep the consumer coming back. And back they come--maybe not to the prison but to the local jail house. My friend Rebecca says, "At least I'm guaranteed three hots and a cot!" What happened to rehabilitation, and redemption? Why do we continue to punish after men and women have served their time. Isn't that punishment enough?

This lady came into the office. She'd been in before for prayer--sometimes there is nothing else and it's free (free is suppose to be funny). Maybe some charge fro prayer. Stranger things happen. Well, she starts to share her story. She had been sent to prison and became very diligent and intentional about prayer. She read scripture and meditated. After not too long, the big folks, for lack of a better word, sent for her and told her she was going out on an administrative discharge. She said, "They gave me some shorts--way too big and I ran out to that bus holding up those pants. They were like balloons--so big and full of air but I didn't care, I was going home." She was so thankful for another chance--free of drugs, free of hopping in and out of cars, free of low self-esteem, freed from the icy grip of death. She road with the Kansas City serial killer and lived to tell about it. Still, she struggles to make it from day to day.

What's wrong when people pay their dues to society and continue to be punished, living without hope for jobs, housing, maybe even food; where do you cook if there's no housing? Why should some crooks sleep in mansions while others sleep under bridges, abandonmiums, porches and steps? I'm just thinking about 700 billion dollars needed to bail the country out of this financial mess--got to be some crooks somewhere, not on the curb drinking beer, probably in a mansion making a toast with expensive wine laughing all the way to the bank--no no they're part of the problem.