You’d be forgiven for thinking we’re crazy.

You’d be forgiven for wondering how a group of Vancouver residents think they’re going to develop their own neighbourhood according to their own specs. It’s a lot of work, and that’s why we have developers.

And yet, in the face of declining natural resources, sprawling cities and our increased reliance on oil, why would we not try to reduce our footprint? Why would we not attempt to reduce the amount of stuff we need to own? Why would we not try to create a gardened community with a stream running through it, a neighbourhood conducive to face-to-face interaction for a change?

In short, why wouldn’t we create a neighbourhood that makes sense for people, not simply a developer’s bottom line?

In recent years, a lot has been made about Ray Oldenburg’s “The Great Good Place” and the work of Jane Jacobs and James Howard Kunstler. They’ve pushed us to discuss the importance of creating “Third Places” in our communities and neighbourhoods with eyes on the street. We’ve begun to advocate for more gathering nodes within our communities to foster connection and relationship and neighbourliness.

We’ve come to recognise the need for a new urbanism.

Some folks in the church are pushing this further by reclaiming the notion of parish in their understanding of their mission. How do we become intentional about living in our place? Of respecting God’s creation? Of living amongst a diversity of people?

All of these things are important, and yet I’ve often felt that one part of the challenge is that so many of our neighbourhoods just don’t make sense. We’ve built anonymous streets and towers that prevent us from getting to know one another, when what we need is to return to a more walkable, livable, neighbourly way of being.

Decenter the car, and make way for the pedestrian.

And so, it only seemed right to start working on this problem. Together with a number of other Vancouver residents, Ericka and I have begun working towards building just such a neighbourhood. Over the past months, we’ve gathered together with an architect to suss out our community’s values, to dream up activities, and to create places for these activities to happen.

We’ve gathered to create a site plan that makes sense for the kind of interaction and values we hold. We’ve gathered to come to know one another, all future neighbours who desire to live more lightly on the earth, to share resources, and to explore new ways of developing for community in a city made so anonymous by numerous factors, including the 160 days of rain we receive each year.

This is a hopeful vision. The idea that we can work together with neighbours to nurture young families and make aging in place more possible is compelling. The idea that we can plan for and build a multigenerational community is a breath of fresh air.

The notion that in a hyper-individualistic culture there are 25 households committed to this vision is encouraging.

Are there people who think we’re crazy? Absolutely. Yet in the face of those questioning glances, I can’t imagine a better way to live.

For more information on our project, visit www.vancouvercohousing.com or check it out on facebook.

by Andrew Stephens-Rennie

We hate them.

You know, those people who deny the resurrection. Those people who see the story of Jesus’ rising as mere metaphor, who refuse to accept that Jesus, that word made flesh, that god-man, could rise from the dead if he wanted to.

If God is God, we say, then you’d be crazy not to have faith in God’s power to raise the dead.

But let’s step back. Not too far, just a couple of days. Let’s step back to that Horrid Good Friday – you know, the one we gloss over because we think we know the end to the story. We know how it all turns out, so we don’t need to really think about how awful that day, those intervening days were. We don’t have to think about them, because we’ve read the final chapter, and we’ve got a good sense of the epilogue.

I hate it.

I hate that for so long I denied the death of Jesus. In the way I acted, in the way I wished everyone a Happy Easter when it was not, in fact Easter. Jesus was still on his march to the scaffold, on his way towards Calvary, and I was having none of it.

It’s funny that we get so bent-out-of-shape when it comes to folks who have a hard time with a literal resurrection. All the more ridiculous for those of us who deny, or at least underplay the pain, the devastation the terror of that Horrid Good Friday and Holy Saturday.

It’s two, maybe three days of the year, and we can’t even live in the tension between death and resurrection.

Such a denial is surely its own infidelity.

Perhaps, as a way to make up for lost time, I’ve lived the past few years of my life stuck in the Saturday between Good Friday and Easter Sunday. Perhaps it’s God telling me something, asking me something, demanding to know whether I will remain faithful even in the midst of the uncertain. Even without the promise of resurrection, will I remain faithful?

I want to say that the answer is yes. I want to say that the answer is that I will follow Jesus as much in his death as I would in his life. I don’t want to turn like Peter. I don’t want to be one of the ones who gave up.

Not to get too far ahead of myself, but I also want to say that I would follow Jesus as much in his death as in his life and resurrection.

But the life of the disciples, their reaction, their inability to keep watch on Saturday, the doomed, depressed, shrinking group of friends whose hopes were smeared, crushed, obliterated by the events of Good Friday. I get that. I get them. I get that it would be easy to look at Jesus’ death from the perspective of Friday or Saturday and give up. I get that without the promise of a triumphal victory and a rising from the grave, such things would be hard.

And I want, I want desperately to live into Easter. I’m just not sure if my season of Easter Saturday is over yet. I’m not sure if I’ve wrestled enough with my own motivations for following Jesus. I’m not yet sure if I would remain faithful on that Saturday wedged between death and resurrection.

And what about you? Stuck in the events of Friday, and the unknowing of Saturday, how would you respond?

There were no conclusions to jump to back then, except that it was over. There were some who remained steadfast and others who drifted away. Who am I in this story, and who are you?

I like you. Like a lot. I don’t know what it is, but so many of the things you write resonate with me. It’s almost as if you’ve channelled the voice inside me, the one that is crying out for a better church, a more robust church, a more humble church – one that’s justice-oriented and passionate about its worship, and is willing to ask deep questions about why we do what we do.

I’m just wondering, but are you somehow channelling me? Am I somehow channelling you when I talk about the church? It just seems – to me at least – as though we’re on the same wavelength. Which is scary.

Here’s the thing, your most recent post – you know that one about the Mainline and Me? I could have written that. In fact, in various times and places over the past four years I’ve said very similar things, and predominantly to folks within mainline traditions. I find it a bit eerie. But maybe we’re onto something.

The thing is, I worked within the Anglican Church of Canada for four years. Over those four years as Missioner for Youth Formation and Vocation in our nation’s capital, I spoke numerous times around the diocese about these very same things. I reflected on Kinnaman and Barna. I challenged congregations to think about why it is they do what they do.

And when congregations would come to me and say “we only need contemporary music to bring in the kids,” I often shot back: “actually, what you need to do is live out what you say you believe. You need to live lives of deep faithfulness and integrity. You need to be able to articulate the way in which your story and God’s story intersect.”

Contemporary music is fine. Personally, I prefer a blend of old and new, with a little bit of that so-called secular music thrown in, not for the sake of relevance, but the sake of resonance. I’m more likely to hear that Coldplay song during my week than a Dave Crowder tune or Fanny Crosby number. Bring me back to Sunday. Help me carry the liturgy into my week.

If liturgy is meant to form us, then by-God, allow it to form me. Make it impossible for me to let it go. Have it wash over me again and again, and let it resonate with the world I live in, even as it calls me into a new and different future. Even as it calls me to live into the Kingdom of God. Even as it calls me to look towards a world that is now, and somehow not yet.

Rachel, here’s the thing. I’ve preached to so many congregations and groups of people about this stuff, and I know that many of them get it. I know that many people understand what it is we’re talking about. I’m just not sure how change is going to be affected. I don’t know how we’re going to make that great leap that would entice someone like me – an evangelical on the Canterbury trail myself – to engage in a deep and meaningful way.

I was having this conversation with a senior cleric in my new hometown a few weeks ago who talked about the difference between our educational models in the mainline and evangelical contexts. We talked precisely about how evangelical churches challenge us, demand something of us – time, money and learning – whereas much of the mainline church warms pews on the Sundays, and is somehow unchallenged in how to connect faith and real life.

Perhaps I’m oversimplifying things here, but, I dunno, I guess I just don’t understand. Thing is, I want to be part of a church that’s liturgically creative, whose community demands something of me, even as I ask something of it. I want to be challenged in my faith, and I want a place to rest.

I want worship that is compelling, resonant, and feels as though someone’s not only put some thought into it, but that there’s a sense of purpose and meaning and intimacy to it. Liturgy that acknowledges the beauty and the pain of life.

And if there aren’t hymn writers who can go deep enough into the pain and torment of Holy Week, maybe we start to draw on the great works of James Hetfield, and sing “Nothing Else Matters.” I don’t know. It’s worth a shot.

I guess what I’m saying, Rachel, is that I miss so many of the things you say you do too:

I miss that evangelical fire-in-the-belly that makes people talk about their faith with passion and conviction.

I miss the familiarity with scripture and the intensive Bible studies.

I miss the emphasis on cultivating a personal spirituality.

I miss sermons that step on a few toes.

In all truth, I feel a bit church homeless. Anglicanism has felt much like home for the past four years, but that also involved the planting of a church that really takes some of these things into account. Now, in a new town, I feel at a loss. Are there no others out there who feel this way? Is there nobody in Vancouver who thinks the way I do? I don’t know, Rachel. They’re probably out there. And like me, they’re probably fitting restlessly into some other church’s pews waiting for something new to come along.

I just wonder who has the guts and the vision to pull it off.

In Hope.

Andrew.

“I’ve done my one good deed for the day.”

You’ve heard the phrase. I’ve heard it countless times. Probably said it more times than I care to admit. Sometimes with irony. Others with true pride.

As if there’s nothing left to do for the next twenty-four hours.

As if a compassionate life requires more than this.

As if compassion isn’t a moment-by-moment decision. As if it’s a one-off act that gets us off the hook.

And yet, compassion. True, deep, compassion is a posture rooted in the humility that comes from acknowledging our own brokenness.

It’s a posture with which I’m not always comfortable. It’s a posture that requires continual practice.

My muscle memory is weak.

And yet I know. Deep, deep down, I know that I must continually practice. I must continually be attentive. And I must be attentive to God, to place, to the others I encounter.

Because compassion, if it is to mean anything, if it is to go deeper than the surface, requires deep and rooted relationships. It requires deep understanding, and it requires vulnerability.

Without these things, compassion manifests as mere pity.

And you know? I think it’s true that we live in a truly pitiful society. We major in pity.

Rarely do we enter into each others’ sufferings. If I can avoid it, I’d rather walk on the other side of the street, rather ignore the scuffle on the sidewalk, rather ignore the man on the street, head-bowed, arms lifted up, asking for change.

Could we spare a little change? Just a little one. We’re not talking about systemic transformation here. Just a little change. Even still, in the weakness of my spirit, I find it so easy to walk away.

And yet, in this Holy Week. In this Holy, God-Awful week, as we walk with Jesus towards the cross, we are called to enter into another’s sufferings.

This is precisely what we’re asked to do.

Not simply to pity Jesus. Not to preemptively revel in victory, even as he makes his way towards ridicule and humiliation, pain and separation, and torture.

A friend cries out from across the street. He cries out, asking us to join him in his sufferings. “Pick up your cross and follow me,” he says. “Pick up your cross.”

I can’t even imagine what it would mean to enter into the story of Simon of Cyrene. To be the one walking down the street, pulled out of the crowd by the Roman thugs for just such a task. Would the RCMP do such a thing? The Vancouver PD?

It’s so hard to imagine myself there. Can you do it? Is there anything that stands in the way?

Maybe it’s the mile-a-minute-stream-of- self-important-bravado. Maybe it’s the I’m-in-a-rush-so-get-out-of-my-way manner in which I’m used to walking down the street.

But what would it take to come up for air, to look someone in the eye, and enter into their story. To pick up a cross. To enter into that journey, not merely in a symbolic way, but truly. Actually. Picking up someone’s burdens. Someone trampled underfoot by this North American culture of death.

This week we need to enter these stories, to live them out, to try them on. Spend our week in church. Spend our week intentionally embracing the sufferings of others.

I don’t know how it is for you, but I need this week.

I need the ecstasy and the tumult of this week to take me deep into the conflicted heart of God. I need the shadows and the glory of this week to put me face to face with my own defiant brokenness, and to be embraced by the one who welcomes me home, shadow side and all.

Three months ago, just as the calendar tipped into the new year, I began serving with Word Made Flesh - a movement called and committed to serving Jesus amongst the most vulnerable of the world’s poor. Word Made Flesh is an international movement that has been serving for over 20 years in South Asia, Eastern Europe, West Africa and Latin America with and amongst men, women and children made poor in each of these places.

I first ran into members of the movement back in 2005, when I was leading a trip to Kolkata, India with FreeChurch Toronto. I’ll be ever grateful for the support of the community and leadership of FreeChurch, who accompanied me through an incredibly transformative time in my own life.

It was during that summer of service alongside Mother Teresa’s Missionaries of Charity that the words of Matthew’s gospel lept off the page and into real life for the first time:

for I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me.

That summer, I was disarmed by being asked not simply to do, but to be. Be present. Listen. Respond in love. Moment by moment, day after day in the courtyard of Prem Dan, feeling insignificant, feeling deeply loved in alternating moments of gladness and despair.

Meeting Liz in Kolkata, Liz who had just met my friends Esther and Lisa, and who was finishing up her time on a four-month Word Made Flesh Servant Team. Sharing her stories, sharing her experience of service with this incarnational community, bearing witness to hope in places abandoned by the halls and structures of power we value so deeply in the west.

That summer marked my life. It marked me in a way that I may never truly know. It marked me in ways that I’m still struggling to figure out, to discern the imprint of God’s call, and what it means for me to be faithful in response to the Jesus I met that summer in the faces of the men and women of Kolkata.

The beauty of it all, is that I now get to serve alongside Liz and hundreds of others as a part of this global movement as we stumble and struggle to live into our vocation. Frederick Buechner is quoted as saying about our vocation:

The place God calls you to is where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet

I may just have found that place. I pray that whatever that place is for you, you stumble upon it too.

For more information on Word Made Flesh, check out our Canadian and US websites.

Walter Brueggemann on the power of neighbourhood and neighbourliness in the face of Empire.

Rattling around in my brain last night were words from the second chapter of St. Paul’s letter to the Philippians:

Let each of you look not to your own interests, but to the interests of others. Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus, 

who, though he was in the form of God,
   did not regard equality with God
   as something to be exploited, 
but emptied himself,
   taking the form of a slave,
   being born in human likeness.
And being found in human form, 
   he humbled himself
   and became obedient to the point of death—
   even death on a cross.

And I wondered, sitting around the table with friends over a shared meal, what, if anything, this whole Kony campaign had to do with the way of Jesus.

Countless videos and posts have already stated that this campaign is, perhaps, a decade too late. What concerns me now, however, is the way in which this campaign – high production values and all – has filtered into the church. I’m glad that we’re talking about it.

I just hope that if we do plan on discussing it in the church, we do so in light of the gospel of Christ, and pray, with Paul, that the same mind be in us that was in Christ Jesus. I shared in a previous post that, if nothing else, this should open us up to an honest dialogue about the issues at play, and recommended a few resources, including Emmanuel Katongole’s “Sacrifice of Africa.”

Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove highlights one story from that book in a blog he published earlier today. I think it’s worth re-posting:

Is it possible to respond to Kony with the power of Jesus’ nonviolent love?

For me, this is not a speculative question. I know the answer is “yes” because I have met her. Her name is Angelina Atyam. (For a rich theological account of Atyam’s witness, see my friend Emmanuel Katongole’s new book, The Sacrifice of Africa.)

In northern Uganda, 139 children were abducted from their local school by the Lord’s Resistance Army in 1996. Among them was the 14-year old daughter of Angelina Atyam, a local midwife and nurse. Atyam knew she would never see her daughter again. Thousands of parents before her had bitterly resigned themselves to a brutal reality that could not be changed. She had every reason to be angry, but little room to hope that anything could change.

Still, Atyam could not remain silent. This was her daughter, after all, abducted and abused along with other young women whom she had helped welcome into the world. She knew she had to do something. Her sense of urgency was every bit as strong as that of the KONY 2012 Campaign. But her approach was different.

Atyam founded the Concerned Parents Association, seeking the release of the children while at the same time advocating a different approach to their captors. “Our message is unconditional forgiveness and reconciliation,” she said. “We have absolutely forgiven them. We can turn to a fresh page; we do it for the sake of the children who are alive.” She continued, “I have waited more than three years; some parents even longer. We are tired of war and our children need a better life. Of revenge I would say that we cannot throw petrol on a burning fire; otherwise we would be like them. We can say this because we have been at the center of the pain.”

Atyam was relentless in her love, speaking out against Kony on radio and in print. When he sent threats, she did not waver. Finally, he sent a message to say that he would release her daughter if she would stop her campaign against him. “They are all my children,” she said. “I will not stop until they are all released.”

Atyam’s story is compelling. It is the story of a response inspired by Jesus’ self-sacrificing love, a love that values human dignity, the image of God in every man, woman and child, and a love that transcends the boundaries that often leave us divided.

Hartgrove ends his reflection with these words:

Yes, we are more creative than cynical apathy or violent intervention. We are more creative because we’ve been invited to pray a prayer that’s not ours and live a life that has power beyond our capacity to imagine.

We’ve been invited to pray the prayer of Jesus, the Lord’s prayer. A prayer of resistance, perhaps, but it is not the prayer of an army. This is a prayer of humility and dignity and creativity. A prayer that calls us and this world into a new way of being. It awakens our imaginations to new possibilities – possibilities that move beyond the cycles of violence and injustice that ensnare us. It awakens us to the truly creative act of self-sacrifice.

Isn’t it Jesus, who himself suggests that “Unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit”?

While targeting the world’s celebrities and so-called change makers is one thing, I wonder what this has to do with the way of Jesus and his approach towards power and politics.

Above all, what does it have to do with the way of the cross? This is, after all, the road on which we travel throughout this season of Lent.

(originally published at generation.anglican.ca)

Yesterday, almost as soon as I hit ‘publish’ on my previous post, I had the sense that I would need to write a follow-up. The thing is, I know that it’s really easy to rail against a group or an organisation, to write someone or something off. Maybe we don’t agree with their mandate, their approach. We all have biases. We all have different ways of understanding the world.

I know that I have mine. And as someone who serves with Word Made Flesh – a global movement dedicated to serving Jesus amongst the most vulnerable of the world’s poor – I have to take my share of responsibility for my role in both dialogue and response.

Yet, I am convinced that each of us is called by God to engage the world, to participate in it, and if we subscribe to Jesus’ words in Matthew 25, there is something important about the way in which we treat those who have been pushed to the margins.

But it’s not about fixing people. We are not saviours, and we desperately need to get that through our heads.

At the end of the day, my initial post left off with a great deal of criticism, but not much in terms of moving forward. In so-doing, I may have done a disservice to the young people, youth leaders, and readers of this blog who were and are moved by this campaign, and wish to do something.

It’s one thing to get swept up in a movement. It’s another to tear it to shreds.

It’s quite another, in recognition of the complexity of it all, to engage in meaningful, respectful and transformative dialogue and action.

I, for one, am glad for the conversation started by the Invisible Children campaign. I think it gives us a lot to think about. For those of us who work amongst youth and young adults, it may give a really important entry-point into conversations about faith, justice, and how we participate in seeing God’s will be done on earth as in heaven.

After cross-posting yesterday’s thoughts to facebook, I received this comment on my timeline:

I really wish bloggers would stop slandering and criticizing others who are actually trying to make the world a better place. Since when has helping people in need become the wrong thing to do?…This sends out a message that says, “Don’t even bother trying to help someone because you are probably going to get it wrong anyway.”

I had hoped that my post, ending with the headline from an article written by Ugandan-born Musa Okwanaga would have suggested the need to move forward, yes, but in a more reflective way. The answers are not simple. The issues complex. As Paulo Freire puts it in Pedagogy of the Oppressed (htEric Ritskes)

In order to have the continued opportunity to express their ‘generosity’, the opressors must perpetuate injustice as well. An unjust social order is the fount of this ‘generosity’, which is nourished by death, despair, and poverty…

True generosity consists precisely in fighting to destroy the causes which nourish false charity. False charity constrains the fearful and subdued, the ‘rejects of life’, to extend their trembling hands. True generosity lies in striving so that these hands – whether of individuals or entire peoples – need to be extended less and less in supplication.

We need to ask questions about the structures of oppression, and not just the presenting symptoms. We need to think deeply about these issues. We need to become better informed. We need to engage in deep relationship with those amongst whom we wish to serve. Only then can we act, if invited, alongside those whom we hope to help.

And of course, we can speak up.

Blogger Ashley Drake makes some helpful suggestions along these lines:

1) Blog! or comment on blogs, air your concerns, have others weigh in, do others share your same concerns? send a group email to IC expressing this.

2) HASHTAG! disagree with the allocation of IC funds? #invisiblechildren80 military mission? #kony2012peace (I actually don’t hashtag…these are horrible examples but you get the idea, right?). Or read other critiquing hashtags and simply Retweet.

3) Tell yourself that being passive is not an option. Donate to a grassroots movement, volunteer some time advocating. Create an email template that you and your community can send to your MP. Don’t sit at your computer and repost a critical piece, which by the way are filled with their own rhetoric and false information.

In the context of youth ministry, engage young people in conversation. Chances are, this issue is on their radar. Work with them and come alongside them as they participate in and think critically about possible solutions. Within your parish, community or diocese, find out if there’s anyone who knows the local context, or who is involved in other organisations on the ground in Uganda.

You may wish to contact the folks at www.justgeneration.ca - the youth arm of PWRDF, our church’s Relief & Development Agency for more resources. They have all sorts of resources that will help you and the young people in your church engage more deeply with the complex issues at play here. KONY2012 may be passionately trying to address the presenting symptoms, but the real issues are lying somewhere beneath the surface.

And if you’re into books – I can’t recommend highly enough, the works of Fr. Emmanuel Katongole, co-director of the Centre for Reconciliation at Duke University. Here are a couple to get you started:

• The Sacrifice of Africa :: A Political Theology for Africa
• Reconciling All Things :: A Christian Vision for Justice, Peace and Healing

(originally published at generation.anglican.ca)

Many of you have probably heard the hype by now. I’ve seen links to the cleverly marketed Kony 2012 video come through my feed from multiple unrelated sources. It’s come from men and women, young and old, and mostly white. If you haven’t yet seen it, my guess is that you’ll see it pretty soon.

I bring it up for a number of reasons – not least of which is because the issues raised by this video are intimately connected to our attitudes and approach to short-term missions.

Here’s why: Hype, a false sense of empowerment and simplistic answers can obscure the truth of the situation. 

Whether it’s a bunch of North Americans raising funds to travel and build a school in Central America or a gaggle of hipster kids trying to fix Africa by making the leader of the Lord’s Resistance Army famous, in order to raise support for his arrest, there’s a common theme here.

On his blog today, Eric Ritskes sums up a significant part of the problem:

The problem? From the beginning to now, the goal [of Invisible Children] was premised on a White desire to save downtrodden Africa regardless of facts. The movies are premised on the idea that: North American (White) attention will save Africa.

Whether we’re talking about Short Term Missions, or the work of a tech and marketing savvy NGO, the conversation can tend towards a renewed colonialist attitude. Somehow, the logic goes, what poor people need, is for us to come and save them. Ritskes goes on to express the logic in this way:

White people only care about White people and the only way to save Black people is to get White people to care about them, so to save Black people we need to talk about White people.

In all of this, we have the tendency to place ourselves as the false centre. Whoever we are, if the solution we’re proposing is more about ourselves, our experience, our journey, or satisfying our cause mentality, we will leave behind the complex realities of what is really going on in Uganda.

These, of course, are things I have no authority to speak about.

But what I can speak about, and what we should consider before we get too caught up in the moment, is how we might find what Oliver Wendell Holmes terms “simplicity on the other side of complexity.” Writing enigmatically, Holmes shares:

I would not give a fig for the simplicity this side of complexity, but I would give my life for the simplicity on the other side of complexity.

Often times, what we are left with are the easy answers and simplistic solutions on this side of complexity. We don’t allow ourselves to wander through the complexity. We aren’t open to be corrected in our misperceptions or lack of understanding. In our youthful exuberance, we crave simple solutions. Our heroic cause mentality wants to fix the problems.

And yet, solutions aren’t as simple as we’d wish.

As Musa Okwonga writes this week in the Independent, Stop Kony, yes. But don’t stop asking questions.

Blessed.
…You are blessed.
…You are blessed,
……for you share your bread with the poor.

Blessed.
…You will not be blessed.
…You will not be blessed,
……because you shared with the poor.

This blessing will not come.
This blessing abides.

Did you not notice it?
…Did you not see?
…Did you not hear?
……Did you not taste and touch and smell?

You will not be blessed because you were generous with the poor.
…As if your blessing has not already met you.
…As if your blessing has not already come.
…As if you haven’t already stared that blessing in the eye…

As if you have not already met her.
…Mother of three, single and poor
…Teller of jokes with an incessant smile
…Lover of stories and poetry and alley-way art
…Conoisseur of Vivaldi,
……and life’s every season.

As if she has not already blessed you
…in ways you could not have previously dreamed

You will not be blessed because you were generous with the poor.
…As if the prosperity preachers were right.
…As if God gives a shit
……about your better life now

(which may as well be code for
…your better life when…
……the house,
……the car
……the job
……the [insert perfection here].

Or, more to the point:
…Your bitter life now.)

Those who are generous are blessed for they share their bread with the poor. Proverbs 22.9