Homeless Awareness Week

Did you know that it is Homeless Awareness Week? It is: November 12-18. For more information, check out the National Coalition for the Homeless.

Participating in the mission of FreeSpace has hepled me tremendously in putting faces to the issue of homelessness and poverty. If you are interested in meeting people, talking with them, sharing stories with them, watching movies with them, just BEING with them, you are always invited to join us when we hold FreeSpace, an afternoon of rest, relaxation, and recreation for the poor and homeless of Scranton. For more info, check out our website.

Thanks to Cool People Care for the notice about Homeless Awareness Week. Cool People Care is an online initiative based in Nashville to help people find simple ways of engaging the world to make a difference. They have a feature on their website called 5 Minutes of Caring, which offers nearly daily suggestions of ways you can care for the world around you. I've added their RSS feed to my feed reader. It's a great way to include some direction towards compassion into your day. If you don't like RSS syndication or don't get what it is, you can also register and receive the 5 Minutes of Caring via e-mail. How simple is that?

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Looking to the Saints

We've made it a semi-regular practice during worship at our Friday night gatherings to center the time around the life of a Saint whose feast day has just passed or is upcoming.

My friend Phil sent me a message today that I found to be inspiring and explanatory for those who wonder why people honor the saints. Phil is a part of the landing place in Columbus, Ohio, and the brief times I've spent with them have blessed me, encouraged me, and challenged me. This past spring, they lost their shepherd, Mark Palmer. In honor of him and the generations of saints who have gone before us, a quote from Palmer:

In celebration of All Saint's Day, I was going to offer some quotes from those who have gone before, giving us an example of how to live well in the Story. But I quickly realized that the quotes were to random, meaningful to me for a certain time and a certain place, but probably not meaningful to you. So instead, I will just encourage you with this...chase after the stories of those saints who have gone before us. They offer us so much, and too often their lives have been ignored or dismissed, mostly out of indifference, sometimes out of disdain. But if we do not learn from those who have gone before, who then do we learn from?

So read the stories and the writings of the men and women who have lived the life of discipleship to Jesus over the last 2,000 years. Allow their stories to transform your story. You will be all the better for your effort.
2005-11-01
-palmer

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