WHEN'S IT OK TO IGNORE THE ALMIGHTY?

WHEN'S IT OK TO IGNORE THE ALMIGHTY?

• 1 minute per day?
• 2 minutes per day?
• 364 days per year?

When's it OK? IT DEPENDS:

• What kind of life do you want?
• What kind of world to you want?
• What kind of world and life do you want for others?

GETTING KILLED FOR PAINTING THE EMBASSY

Sudan officially rejects revised UN text on Darfur force

For days I've been praying / comtemplating / pondering over the idea of expressing my views about the Darfur situation (above article) by making the Sudan or Chinese Embassies "ugly" and "awful" like Bashir's goverment describes the UN Peacekeeping agreement wording - "ugly," "aweful."

As I envision doing the painting, it could happen that the Secret Service (the patrol the embassies) would come upon me in process, cry "Halt," and shoot me when I do not.

MY BIG CONCERN REGARDING THIS IS HURTING THE OFFICERS. IF IT TRANSPIRES THAT I AM SHOT AND KILLED, PLEASE MAKE IT KNOWN THAT I LOVE THE OFFICERS, THEY ARE MY BROTHERS, AND I HAVE GROWN TO EXTREMELY RESPECT THEIR SELFLESSNESS, PROFESSIONALISM, RESPECT, AND SENSE OF DUTY.

WHAT IF 100% SERVICE / SACRIFICE IS THE GREATEST JOY?

WHAT IF 100% SERVICE / SACRIFICE IS THE GREATEST JOY?

How would one live if one perceived this?

How would one parent?

SELFISHNESS PERSISTS ONLY WITH FORCE OVER OTHERS

• Cheep US banana's require death squads.
• Cheep fast food labor requires police that would kill Americans forced to such jobs through deprivation of childhood nurture who otherwise stole for existance.
• Cheep, plentiful oil requires armies threatening to kill the poor in oil countries that otherwise would demand resources for a decent life.
• "Care Free" normal middle class lives require police and armies to keep the poor, uninsured masses in their places.
• Etc.
• Etc.

Thank you Howard Zinn, Martin Luther King, Gandhi, TOLSTOY.

THE CHOICE: MAN AS "COG" OR MAN AS "SON OF GOD"

THE CHOICE: MAN AS "COG" OR MAN AS "SON OF GOD." TOLSTOY DOES A DIVING JOB OF REVEALING THIS IN BETTER LANGUAGE THAN MINE.

What I Believe, by Leo Tolstoy et al.
The Kingdom of God Is Within You by graf Leo Tolstoy - Project ... (LAST 2 CHAPTERS FIRST AS TOLSTOY SUGGEST.)

SELFISHNESS, TO FLOURISH, HAD TO CO-OPT THE CHURCH

SELFISHNESS, TO FLOURISH, NEEDED TO COOPT THE CHURCH.

TOLSTOY DOES A DIVING JOB OF REVEALING THIS IN BETTER LANGUAGE THAN MINE.

• What I Believe, by Leo Tolstoy et al.
• The Kingdom of God Is Within You by graf Leo Tolstoy - Project ... (LAST 2 CHAPTERS FIRST AS TOLSTOY SUGGEST.)

The future of... Darfur... Earth? PRICELESS.

What should a human being consider more "priceless" than the future of Darfur? Earth?

JESUS DIED TO ELIMINATE FORCE IN SOCIETY.

JESUS DIED TO ELIMINATE FORCE IN SOCIETY.

TOLSTOY DOES A DIVING JOB OF REVEALING THIS IN BETTER LANGUAGE THAN MINE.

• What I Believe, by Leo Tolstoy et al.
• The Kingdom of God Is Within You by graf Leo Tolstoy - Project ... (LAST 2 CHAPTERS FIRST AS TOLSTOY SUGGEST.)

BOTTOM LINE: WHAT KIND OF 80 YRS DO YOU WANT?

Beloved friend,

THERE IS NOTHING ELSE. NOT:

• JESUS
• CHRISTIANITY
• ISLAM
• RIGHT
• WRONG
• ETC...

BOTTOM LINE:
WHAT KIND OF 80 YRS DO YOU WANT?
THAT IS ALL THERE IS.
THERE IS NO OTHER QUESTION.
EVERYTHING ELSE IS TACTICS AND STRATEGY.

KINGDOM'S CONSTRUCTION SITE: THE MIND

It will take me years to grasp and be mastered by the implications of this:

KINGDOM'S CONSTRUCTION SITE:

THE MIND

JESUS EXTOLS FEARLESSNESS; BUSH - FEAR

JESUS EXTOLS FEARLESSNESS; BUSH, WESTERN-FREE-MARKET-CAPITALISM AND "CHRISTIAN ETHICS" - FEAR.

KINDNESS

Dedicated to our brother Nick. Let us pray that the warmth, Love and Joy he delivers to others in such need, is felt intensely by him as this divinity of our Father flows through him.

Garrison Keillor reads - Listen (RealAudio) How to listen

Poem: "Kindness" by Naomi Shihab Nye, from The Words Under the Words: Selected Poems. © Eighth Mountain Press, 1995. Reprinted with permission. (buy now)

Kindness

Before you know what kindness really is
you must lose things,
feel the future dissolve in a moment
like salt in a weakened broth.
What you held in your hand,
what you counted and carefully saved,
all this must go so you know
how desolate the landscape can be
between the regions of kindness.
How you ride and ride
thinking the bus will never stop,
the passengers eating maize and chicken
will stare out the window forever.
Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness,
you must travel where the Indian in a white poncho
lies dead by the side of the road.
You must see how this could be you,
how he too was someone
who journeyed through the night with plans
and the simple breath that kept him alive.
Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside,
you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.
You must wake up with sorrow.
You must speak to it till your voice
catches the thread of all sorrows
and you see the size of the cloth.
Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore,
only kindness that ties your shoes
and sends you out into the day to mail letters and purchase bread,
only kindness that raises its head
from the crowd of the world to say
it is I you have been looking for,
and then goes with you everywhere
like a shadow or a friend.

"Brother" is how Start is most frequently addressed. :-)

I've been told that Don Quixote was a farcical, disrespectful look with riducule at the last days of the time of Knights and Chivalry.

Don Quixote looked the fool.

I looked in the mirror several days ago. I look a month more disheveled than the photo at right. I thought of Don Quixote as I looked.

Yet, in stuffy, image conscious, snooty, prissy, upscale, wealthy Washington DC only once have I been aware of truly being viewed with disrespect. This is amazing. THIS IS AMAZING.

Many, most of those who drive by, and walk by me at the Embassy are obviously "professionals."

When people stop their walk or drive to communicate with me "Brother" is a word very frequent in how they refer to me. :-)

[photo courtesy of White Courtesy Telephone: Darfur Hunger Striker Speaks Out on ... Roving WCT reporter Albert Ruesga interviewed Start Loving this past June 11th. We post excerpts from that interview below. WHITE COURTESY TELEPHONE: What ...]

Aldous Huxley Quotes

http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/a/aldous_huxley.html

1. One of the great attractions of patriotism - it fulfills our worst wishes. In the person of our nation we are able, vicariously, to bully and cheat. Bully and cheat, what's more, with a feeling that we are profoundly virtuous.
2. It is a bit embarrassing to have been concerned with the human problem all one's life and find at the end that one has no more to offer by way of advice than 'try to be a little kinder.'
3. Like every other good thing in this world, leisure and culture have to be paid for. Fortunately, however, it is not the leisured and the cultured who have to pay.
4. Most ignorance is vincible ignorance. We don't know because we don't want to know.
5. A child-like man is not a man whose development has been arrested; on the contrary, he is a man who has given himself a chance of continuing to develop long after most adults have muffled themselves in the cocoon of middle-aged habit and convention.
6. A democracy which makes or even effectively prepares for modern, scientific war must necessarily cease to be democratic. No country can be really well prepared for modern war unless it is governed by a tyrant, at the head of a highly trained and perfectly obedient bureaucracy.
7. An intellectual is a person who has discovered something more interesting than sex.
8. An unexciting truth may be eclipsed by a thrilling lie.
9. Children are remarkable for their intelligence and ardor, for their curiosity, their intolerance of shams, the clarity and ruthlessness of their vision.
10. Consistency is contrary to nature, contrary to life. The only completely consistent people are dead.
11. Cynical realism is the intelligent man's best excuse for doing nothing in an intolerable situation.
12. Experience is not what happens to you. It is what you do with what happens to you.
13. Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.
14. Experience teaches only the teachable.
15. From their experience or from the recorded experience of others (history), men learn only what their passions and their metaphysical prejudices allow them to learn.
16. Great is truth, but still greater, from a practical point of view, is silence about truth. By simply not mentioning certain subjects... totalitarian propagandists have influenced opinion much more effectively than they could have by the most eloquent denunciations.
17. Habit converts luxurious enjoyments into dull and daily necessities.
18. Happiness is a hard master, particularly other people's happiness.
19. Hell isn't merely paved with good intentions; it's walled and roofed with them. Yes, and furnished too.
20. I wanted to change the world. But I have found that the only thing one can be sure of changing is oneself.
21. Man approaches the unattainable truth through a succession of errors.
22. Maybe this world is another planet's hell.
23. Most human beings have an absolute and infinite capacity for taking things for granted.
24. Most of one's life is one prolonged effort to prevent oneself thinking.
25. My fate cannot be mastered; it can only be collaborated with and thereby, to some extent, directed. Nor am I the captain of my soul; I am only its noisiest passenger.
26. One of the great attractions of patriotism - it fulfills our worst wishes. In the person of our nation we are able, vicariously, to bully and cheat. Bully and cheat, what's more, with a feeling that we are profoundly virtuous.
27. One of the many reasons for the bewildering and tragic character of human existence is the fact that social organization is at once necessary and fatal. Men are forever creating such organizations for their own convenience and forever finding themselves the victims of their home-made monsters.
28. Orthodoxy is the diehard of the world of thought. It learns not, neither can it forget.
29. So long as men worship the Caesars and Napoleons, Caesars and Napoleons will duly arise and make them miserable.
30. Technological progress has merely provided us with more efficient means for going backwards.
31. That all men are equal is a proposition to which, at ordinary times, no sane human being has ever given his assent.
32. That men do not learn very much from the lessons of history is the most important of all the lessons of history.
33. The course of every intellectual, if he pursues his journey long and unflinchingly enough, ends in the obvious, from which the non-intellectuals have never stirred.
34. The finest works of art are precious, among other reasons, because they make it possible for us to know, if only imperfectly and for a little while, what it actually feels like to think subtly and feel nobly.
35. The more powerful and original a mind, the more it will incline towards the religion of solitude.
36. The propagandist's purpose is to make one set of people forget that certain other sets of people are human.
37. The quality of moral behavior varies in inverse ratio to the number of human beings involved.
38. The secret of genius is to carry the spirit of the child into old age, which mean never losing your enthusiasm.
39. There is only one corner of the universe you can be certain of improving, and that's your own self.
40. You learn to love by loving - by paying attention and doing what one thereby discovers has to be done.
41. There's only one effectively redemptive sacrifice, the sacrifice of self-will to make room for the knowledge of God.
42. To his dog, every man is Napoleon; hence the constant popularity of dogs.
43. To travel is to discover that everyone is wrong about other countries.
44. We are all geniuses up to the age of ten.
45. What is absurd and monstrous about war is that men who have no personal quarrel should be trained to murder one another in cold blood.
46. Words, words, words! They shut one off from the universe. Three quarters of the time one's never in contact with things, only with the beastly words that stand for them.
47. Writers write to influence their readers, their preachers, their auditors, but always, at bottom, to be more themselves.

MADNESS: ARGUING VICTORY BASED ON YOUR GYM

Can you imagine?

• Two Olympic runners arguing who is the faster athlete based on what gym they go to?
• Two models arguing who is more attractive based on which diet plan they use?
• Two people arguing who will achieve entrance to Heaven / Joy / Peace / Love / Life based on what church / religion / denomination they each use?

WE ARE DROWNING IN MADNESS.

WE ARE DROWNING OUR CHILDREN
IN MADNESS

IMAGINE YOU FOUND HEAVEN, AND NO ONE WOULD FOLLOW

:-)
IMAGINE YOU FOUND HEAVEN!

The Extacy.

;-(
AND NO ONE WOULD FOLLOW.

The Agony.

YET.

That's how it is with me. So much to do. So much at stake. So little time.

CATALYTIC, CHAIN REACTION. OUR ONLY CHANCE.

Chain reaction! I've been searching for so long for the right concept to grasp the nature of what I believe is our chance.

In studying the monumentally important Peace and Nonviolence essays compiled by Ed Guinan, this term has hit me as right - CHAIN REACTION.

"Only love and sacrifice can engender love and sacrifice. This chain reaction is essential to the non-violent struggle."
from LOVE IN ACTION, Thich Nhat Hanh

"The problem of our new revolution is to find how best to eliminate exploitation, murder, the investment of energy in weapons of destruction—how to provoke chain reactions not of hate and death but of new constructiveness, of new quality of life."

from Nonviolence VS the Mafia, Danilo Dolci

STANDING IN SOLIDARITY: ARE THERE DEGREES?

Are there degrees of turning on an ON/OFF switch?

Are there degrees of pregnancy?

Are there degrees of "enough fuel" to get across Death Valley desert?

In the case of solidarity why is this so; why is ABSOLUTE SOLIDARITY necessary? It is as though there is an on/off switch, or threshold, or quantum orbit within our nervous system that only is "tripped" in the presence of ABSOLUTE, PAY ANY PRICE COMMITMENT. Reflect on your experience and reading and you will come to the same conclusion.

Yes, from the perspective of the "switch" or "fuel tank" there are degrees. From the murderously selfish perspective of a Darfur activist there are degrees. But from the perspective of success / goal achievement / recruitment of a Brigade of PeaceMakers for Darfur, RESCUE AND RESTORE DARFUR NOW ... only ABSOLUTE, PAY ANY PRICE COMMITMENT ... or nothing.

LOVE IS EVERYTHING. LOVE IS THE HOPE.

I scarcely know how to express what I mean. But I stand by this nonetheless:

LOVE IS EVERYTHING.

LOVE IS THE ONLY HOPE.

Now I should qualify. Love is neither of these from the perspective of Pleasure / Selfishness / Disconnection / Exploitation.

But, from the perspective of Global Family / Joy / Solidarity / World Peace / Justice / Elimination of Poverty / Elimination of Suffering - Love is Everything. Love is the only thing.

How can Love be the only thing to Global Family / Joy / Solidarity / World Peace / Justice / Elimination of Poverty / Elimination of Suffering? It is in the same way that opening your eyes is the only thing to navigating across the room; or breathing is the only thing to avoiding passing out in the next three minutes.

Buddhist Nhat Hanh captures this brilliantly in his must read essay: LOVE IN ACTION.

"The usual way to generate force is to create anger, desire,and fear. But these are dangerous sources of energy because they are blind, whereas the force of love springs from awareness, and does not destroy its own aims. Out of love and the willingness to act, strategies and tactics will be created naturally from the circumstances of the struggle. Thus, the problems of strategy and tactics are of secondary importance. They should be posed, but not at the beginning."

It would be a lie for me to qualify this extremist statement:

LOVE IS EVERYTHING.

LOVE IS THE ONLY HOPE.

Everything in my personal, scholarly and professional life of 56 years leads to this conclusion. I suspect that your experience is the same.

THE ALMIGHTY SUFFERS FOR ALL GENERATIONS, EQUALLY. UNBORN INCLUDED.

The Almighty Powers, Our Father loves ALL generations, including FUTURE, EQUALLY. No? SO MANY PEOPLE.

This is an incredible revelation for me. I've never before seen it. Current generation, yes. Unborn generations? I just saw it now.

Now that I see this I can much better see my "daily bread," I can much better see how to serve, where, when, and WHY.

There is so much at stake with how we use our lives.

IT IS SO IMPORTANT THAT YOU ARE ALIVE.

MAKE YOUR LIFE COUNT.

MOST PRAYER SEPARATES US FROM THE ALMIGHTY POWERS

It is with desperate sadness, not triumph that I say - the absolute perversion of Jesus' teaching we have achieved is unfathomable.

Prayer is what I am thinking of. The Our Father is said in every "church" service right? "Our Father, who art..." Takes about 60 seconds, right.

YOU CANNOT BE PRAYED BY THE "OUR FATHER" IN LESS THAN 5 MINUTES. IMPOSSIBLE. THE "OUR FATHER" IS A TOOL TO HAVE US LISTEN TO AND HEAR "OUR FATHER" BY USING OUR IMAGINATION TO THE OPTIMUM.

But by belching the words "Our Father...,"

all that anyone does,

instead of exercising the imagination,

WE CLOG AND BLOCK THE IMAGINATION,

ALL THE WHILE TRAINING OURSELVES

AND FUTURE GENERATIONS

THAT THE "OUR FATHER"

IS TO BE USED IN THIS WAY.

IS THERE ANY GREATER VIOLENCE PERPETRATED ON EARTH?

PROBABLY NOT.

"Our Father..."

"SAVED" FROM OUR "FAMILY" EXPECTATIONS, AS MUCH AS ANYTHING

To say that I don't feel like I'm receiving oxygen after a lifetime of suffocation would be a lie.

In the last year or so, every second, EVERY SECOND OF MY LIFE, day in, day out, week in, week out - feels like finally being "Saved" from suffocation.

So what is the tight cable that was binding my chest, preventing me from breathing?

Few people were / are as blessed as I with their upbringing from the most important perspective - spiritually. My father in the flesh was a Spiritual Giant. But he was far from perfect, far from mature, and he and I existed in the toxic-waste-pool of our society which too, seeped into my pours, and his.

Despite all my blessings,

my Soul, the Almighty Powers within me

have been bound

to the point of asphyxiation

by "family" and "social" expectations.

Now I'm Saved.

I freely inhale the Will of the Almighty.

I weep with joy, gratitude, gladness.

START LOVING ON YOUTUBE

I just came across these on YouTube:

Analysis of June 11, 2007 Israeli Occupation Protest 08:11
Added: 3 weeks agoViews: 18

Analysis of June 11, 2007 Israeli Occupation Protest part 2 05:54
Added: 3 weeks agoViews: 15

Thanks to Matthew at Univ. MD.

EQUAL IMPORTANCE: YOUR GYM, RELIGION, DENOMINATION

Can you imagine wars between "Gold's Gym-ianity" and "LA Fitness-am?!?!?!"

Well, that is how disgustingly out of perspective is our view of Religions.

We are clear that a Gym is for a purpose - to make our bodies strong and healthy. IT IS INCIDENTAL WHAT GYM WE GO TO.

Same with Religion and Denomination - THEIR ONLY VALUE, IF ANY, IS TO MAKE OUR SPIRITS / HEARTS / COMPASSION / WORLD-FAMILY-CONNECTION STRONG AND HEALTHY.

WHO CARES WHAT "GYM" RELIGION / DENOMINATION WE USE OR DO NOT USE?!??!?!
CERTAINLY NOT THE ALMIGHTY.

THE ALMIGHT ONLY CARES THAT OUR HEARTS ARE STRONG AND HEALTHY - AND ENGAGED FOR THE LEAST OF THESE.

Hit and thrown by a car, and unfazed

I crushed the windshield on the driver's side, caved in the hood, bounced back in front of the car, sensed the left front wheel coming toward my head, and then it stopped.

It was my fault and I'm very sorry to have ruined her vehicle - a small station wagon for a Florist. However, I absentmindedly walked out against the light across not one, but two lanes of traffic. The first lane apparently was empty giving her a clear view of me. She must have been on a cell phone or otherwise totally distracted.

It was all very fast. My first inkling was seeing a bumper six inches from my knee. At her 10-20 mph it was less than 2 seconds for me to be thrown onto the hood, crush her windshield and bounce back in front of the station wagon aware that the car had not slowed, and interested that my head was about to be crushed. Then the brake was applied.

She was nice, and seemed not be traumatized. Her mind was protected by the cell phone call I suspect. She seemed to want to buzz off and I was worried for her car being in the middle of a busy street so I encouraged her that I was fine and that she should see to her car. It was only then that I saw her poor windshield all caved in.

I'm fine. My ear was bleeding pretty fast but with pressure it stopped.

The point of all this? I am so relaxed; so much submitted to what the Almighty wants of me. So at peace. It's been 8 hours since the crash and there has not been one second when my heart has increased a beat. Not at the time, not since.

What DOES get my heart going is what I can do; what I might be able to influence. The rest is the business of the Almighty; Her concern, not mine.

Interesting.

TOLSTOY / GANDHI VISION: WE CAN AWAKE TO CONSCIENCE

THE TOLSTOY / GANDHI VISION

From Chapter IX of "The Kingdom of God is Within You," by Tolstoy.

The last two chapters of this book, IX & X

formed Gandhi as a Law student in England.

The following, at the heart of Chapter IX

is the crux.

"Men need only understand this, they need only cease to trouble
themselves about the general external conditions in which they are
not free, and devote one-hundredth part of the energy they waste
on those material things to that in which they are free, to the
recognition and realization of the truth which is before them, and
to the liberation of themselves and others from deception and
hypocrisy, and, without effort or conflict, there would be an end
at once of the false organization of life which makes men
miserable, and threatens them with worse calamities in the future.
And then the kingdom of God would be realized, or at least that
first stage of it for which men are ready now by the degree of
development of their conscience.

Just as a single shock may be sufficient, when a liquid is
saturated with some salt, to precipitate it at once in crystals, a
slight effort may be perhaps all that is needed now that the truth
already revealed to men may gain a mastery over hundreds,
thousands, millions of men, that a public opinion consistent with
conscience may be established, and through this change of public
opinion the whole order of life may be transformed. And it
depends upon us to make this effort.

Let each of us only try to understand and accept the Christian
truth which in the most varied forms surrounds us on all sides and
forces itself upon us; let us only cease from lying and pretending
that we do not see this truth or wish to realize it, at least in
what it demands from us above all else; only let us accept and
boldly profess the truth to which we are called, and we should
find at once that hundreds, thousands, millions of men are in the
same position as we, that they see the truth as we do, and dread
as we do to stand alone in recognizing it, and like us are only
waiting for others to recognize it also."

Hellish world?

Start, "Hellish world" you say?

• 1 billion people live on less than $1 per day
• 3 billion people live on less than $2 per day
• 18,000 children starve to death per day. PER DAY.
• Darfur genocide continues unstopped.
• Palestine hell is in year 40.
• 1 million exterminated in Iraq.
• Millions of Iraqi's displaced.
• 100 million in US Poor or Near poor.
• Etc.
• 5% of the world's population has the wealth and resource to eliminate the above... and WE DO NOT ELIMINATE THE ABOVE!

HELLISH

TODAY WHAT DEFINES YOU: TASKS OR MISSION?

You know the questions we ask each other (or ourselves):

• What do you do?
• What is your job?
• How do you "make a living?"

Well, what is your answer to yourself - What do you do?

1. TASK: Accountant, executive, shop keeper, Dr., scientist, architect....?
2. OR, MISSION: Trying to save the world; end suffering; bring global brotherliness and joy...? And, I do not "make a living; I live a making."

TASKS are "me" and "mine" oriented for Pleasure; prostituting ourselves and teaching our children to do the same.

MISSION is "we" and "thine" oriented for JOY.

"THE MATRIX:" HOW MANY WOULD COME OUT IF THEY KNEW?

"The Matrix" despite its violence remains the single best picture of our existential choice yet created in art:

1. Do we choose Pleasure at the cost of Divorce / Detatchment / Disconnection from our World Family / Truth / Love / Life?
2. Do we choose Live / Love / Truth / Joy / Solidarity at the cost of Pain and Sacrifice?
3. There is no 3rd choice.

How many of us will come out of this "Matrix" when we know of the choice? How many of us will choose to be "Saved?" FRODO DID NOT.

Dickens saw the same problem. I suspect he wrote "A Christmas Carrol" entirely to try to show us, and bring us out. The "Ignorance" Dickens speaks of I am sure is our Blissful Blindness to, Divine Divorce from the "Want" of others:

`Look here.'

From the foldings of its robe, it brought two children; wretched, abject, frightful, hideous, miserable. They knelt down at its feet, and clung upon the outside of its garment.

`Oh, Man. look here. Look, look, down here.' exclaimed the Ghost.

They were a boy and a girl. Yellow, meagre, ragged, scowling, wolfish; but prostrate, too, in their humility. Where graceful youth should have filled their features out, and touched them with its freshest tints, a stale and shrivelled hand, like that of age, had pinched, and twisted them, and pulled them into shreds. Where angels might have sat enthroned, devils lurked, and glared out menacing. No change, no degradation, no perversion of humanity, in any grade, through all the mysteries of wonderful creation, has monsters half so horrible and dread.

Scrooge started back, appalled. Having them shown to him in this way, he tried to say they were fine children, but the words choked themselves, rather than be parties to a lie of such enormous magnitude.

`Spirit. are they yours.' Scrooge could say no more.

`They are Man's,' said the Spirit, looking down upon them. `And they cling to me, appealing from their fathers. This boy is Ignorance. This girl is Want. Beware them both, and all of their degree, but most of all beware this boy, for on his brow I see that written which is Doom, unless the writing be erased. Deny it.' cried the Spirit, stretching out its hand towards the city. `Slander those who tell it ye. Admit it for your factious purposes, and make it worse. And abide the end.'

`Have they no refuge or resource.' cried Scrooge.

`Are there no prisons.' said the Spirit, turning on him for the last time with his own words. `Are there no workhouses.' The bell struck twelve.

Scrooge looked about him for the Ghost, and saw it not. As the last stroke ceased to vibrate, he remembered the prediction of old Jacob Marley, and lifting up his eyes, beheld a solemn Phantom, draped and hooded, coming, like a mist along the ground, towards him.

WEALTH IS MURDER OF THE POOR

"The superfluities of the rich are the necessities of the poor. Those who retain what is superfluous possess the goods of others.”

Dorothy Day

"Now we can see how ridiculous it is to define violence in physical terms alone. For a man killed by a bullet is no less dead than a man who has died from a disease resulting from eradicable poverty.
When you stop to think of it, poverty is no longer inevitable; therefore it is intolerable.
It is no more a private tragedy;
it is now a public crime."
William Sloane Coffin