Remember Fitz
LETTER FROM FITZ - 1986​​
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Cities report poverty on the rise; more families seek aid, shelter.
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We often hear of Jesus of Nazareth as a wandering teacher, and there is a vital truth in that view so far as it emphasizes an attitude towards luxury and convention which most respectable people would regard as that of a vagabond ... It is well to speak of his
wanderings in this sense that he shared the drifting life of the most homeless and the most hopeless of the poor. It is assuredly well to remember that he would quite certainly have been moved on by the police, for having no visible means of subsistence. For our law has in it a turn of humor or touch of fancy which Nero or Herod never happened to think of: that of actually punishing homeless people for not sleeping at home.
-- G.K. Chesterton
I suppose it shouldn't startle that something written so many decades ago still has such timely punch. After all, something written centuries ago - that familiar story about the small town carpenter and his wife, already in labor, with no place to stay on the unfriendly streets of the capitol city - is reenacted every day on the near west side of downtown Phoenix.
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There is simply no room at the inn! Affordable housing is dwindling in all of our major cities. (Some of the folk we feed each night on the streets work full time jobs but cannot find a room or apartment they can afford!)
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In each of the last six years the federal government has spent billions of dollars less than previous administrations on federally
subsidized housing. Meanwhile the cost over-run on the "stealth bomber" has already reached 2.2 billion!
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Since we have a government that sneers at the poor, it is up to the people themselves to either join the cynics in denying there is a problem or else take action to respond to the plight of the dispossessed. I am happy to tell you this Christmas that there are many wonderful people who honor the legacy of the prophets and the birth of the one "promised for ages" by their gifts of time, energy, food, clothing and money. We have been not only blessed, but encouraged as well. Our hearts are full this Christmas!
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