“They are an embarrassment”
The they the speaker is referring to are the homeless. Who are the homeless? The homeless are:
I am sure that this is an incomplete list and it is not a new list although the numbers may be greater than ever before or they may be more visible.
I think it is was in the sixties or the seventies I recall reading about huge barriers being erected and painted to look like “nice neighborhood buildings” to line the highway leading from the New York City airports. I was born in Chicago and early learned that there were those on the right side of the track and those of the wrong side of the tract. Family history, money, race, mental health and many other factors determined who was and remained on which side of the track. I clearly recall many people, including my parents, saying that there was nothing wrong with “those people” as long as they stayed on their side of the track. At that time if one was seriously mentally ill one was hidden away in what passed for a state hospital but which was really the “snake pits”. Here in the United States we do not like to be reminded of death, those with problems or any aspect of our own humanness. We do not like those who remind us that we are all a step away from being one of “those people”. We also do not like to be reminded that we age and then die. We do not build pyramids but we dress up corpses to look “alive” and bury them in expensive, caskets as if one can preserve the human body or pretend that one is taking care of the deceased.
Our current president upon arriving in Los Angeles for a roundtable and then a fund-raising event is quoted in the Los Angeles times as saying:
“Clean it up,” he said. “You’ve got to do something. You can’t believe it. There are our great American cities and they’re an embarrassment.” In other interviews he has said “they’re inappropriate.”
California has roughly 130,000 homeless. “We have people living in best highways, our best streets, our best entrances to building where people in those building pay tremendous taxes, where they went to those locations because of the prestige.” LA times sept 17, 2019 by Benjamin Oreskes, Susanne Rust, Colleen Shalby in article headlined “Trump says cities are ‘destroying themselves’ with homelessness as he arrives in California”.
The gift of our current president is that he and his most avid supporters are forcing us to hear what many of us in this country have been saying or what we have believed in the bright light of day without any shame. His brashness and shameless may be new. The words are not new. There is no longer the shelter of pretense.
We are embarrassed about the inappropriate people that do not stay hidden and covered in shame. We now have to decide if we are going to take our nice sounding, unconditional loving works of Jesus, the Buddha and other spiritual leaders into the workplace, the boardrooms, the halls of Congress or the chambers of the Supreme Court or are going to be as honest and arrogant as the president and his supporters.
I am not suggesting that there are easy answers for any of us. Spiritual honesty and growth takes a great deal of faith, courage and strength. Do we believe what we say in houses of worship or do we believe what our actions declare? I am suggesting that if we are serious about building a society in which all are equally sacred we have to explore some radical changes in our thinking. It is true we are human and any pretense that we can build a perfect utopia is pie in the sky thinking. Yet we can do much better. The homeless are not an embarrassment. Our hypocrisy perhaps is “inappropriate” and an “embarrassment”.
Written September 18, 2019
Jimmy F Pickett
coachpickett,org
The they the speaker is referring to are the homeless. Who are the homeless? The homeless are:
- The mentally ill including those living with addiction
- The working poor including professionals on the lower end of the pay scale.
- The educated who can no longer find meaning in selling their souls to make a deal no matter who gets hurt in the process.
- Those who do not want to be confined in neat little boxes or even shelters whose rules feel oppressive.
- Those who are fleeing violence at home or from their gang.
- The who are hopeless.
- Those who refuse to hide.
I am sure that this is an incomplete list and it is not a new list although the numbers may be greater than ever before or they may be more visible.
I think it is was in the sixties or the seventies I recall reading about huge barriers being erected and painted to look like “nice neighborhood buildings” to line the highway leading from the New York City airports. I was born in Chicago and early learned that there were those on the right side of the track and those of the wrong side of the tract. Family history, money, race, mental health and many other factors determined who was and remained on which side of the track. I clearly recall many people, including my parents, saying that there was nothing wrong with “those people” as long as they stayed on their side of the track. At that time if one was seriously mentally ill one was hidden away in what passed for a state hospital but which was really the “snake pits”. Here in the United States we do not like to be reminded of death, those with problems or any aspect of our own humanness. We do not like those who remind us that we are all a step away from being one of “those people”. We also do not like to be reminded that we age and then die. We do not build pyramids but we dress up corpses to look “alive” and bury them in expensive, caskets as if one can preserve the human body or pretend that one is taking care of the deceased.
Our current president upon arriving in Los Angeles for a roundtable and then a fund-raising event is quoted in the Los Angeles times as saying:
“Clean it up,” he said. “You’ve got to do something. You can’t believe it. There are our great American cities and they’re an embarrassment.” In other interviews he has said “they’re inappropriate.”
California has roughly 130,000 homeless. “We have people living in best highways, our best streets, our best entrances to building where people in those building pay tremendous taxes, where they went to those locations because of the prestige.” LA times sept 17, 2019 by Benjamin Oreskes, Susanne Rust, Colleen Shalby in article headlined “Trump says cities are ‘destroying themselves’ with homelessness as he arrives in California”.
The gift of our current president is that he and his most avid supporters are forcing us to hear what many of us in this country have been saying or what we have believed in the bright light of day without any shame. His brashness and shameless may be new. The words are not new. There is no longer the shelter of pretense.
We are embarrassed about the inappropriate people that do not stay hidden and covered in shame. We now have to decide if we are going to take our nice sounding, unconditional loving works of Jesus, the Buddha and other spiritual leaders into the workplace, the boardrooms, the halls of Congress or the chambers of the Supreme Court or are going to be as honest and arrogant as the president and his supporters.
I am not suggesting that there are easy answers for any of us. Spiritual honesty and growth takes a great deal of faith, courage and strength. Do we believe what we say in houses of worship or do we believe what our actions declare? I am suggesting that if we are serious about building a society in which all are equally sacred we have to explore some radical changes in our thinking. It is true we are human and any pretense that we can build a perfect utopia is pie in the sky thinking. Yet we can do much better. The homeless are not an embarrassment. Our hypocrisy perhaps is “inappropriate” and an “embarrassment”.
Written September 18, 2019
Jimmy F Pickett
coachpickett,org
RSS Feed