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Hospitality to the Homeless ˜ 103
from life among, with, and on behalf of the poor. The forgiveness of sins and
new life on this earth (today!) are the unexpected fruits of charity.
The person with cancer eating his lungs out because of the asbestos work he
did for the city ten years ago needs medical care. We must struggle to see that
he gets it now, even as we struggle for guaranteed medical insurance for every
woman, man, and child.
In the Bible, laws exist to restrain the rich and to control the greedy. Charity
is the beginning of the New Jerusalem, of the Kingdom of God on earth.
Tonight in Atlanta, 12,354 people will have no place to sleep. Why What are you
doing about it What about a Band-Aid Invite just one to spend the night in
your home. It just might deepen your hunger and thirst for justice. Thank you.
Band-Aids and Beyond, by Ed Loring
M a r c h 1 9 8 9
There is a famine in the land.
There is a famine in the land.
When Mrs. Durant came to live with us at the Open Door Community, she
most often came in the back door, because that is where we have our handicapped-access
ramp. Mrs. Durant lacked a leg, so she rolled along in a wheelchair.
Why Because she was dying, like thousands here in Atlanta, of invisible
starvation. Long and harsh years of lousy food had ruined her body. Mrs. Durant
had developed diabetes, and the sugar in her system left her sour, not sweet.
She stank. It is hard to move from a wheelchair onto a toilet, especially in a city
which welcomes few poor and homeless to share its white porcelain commodes.
Often she just peed in her pants and let it dry on her shabby clothes.
One day she rolled her wheelchair into the cement canyons and asphalt
rivers which are Atlanta. I never saw Mrs. Durant again. Street stories say she
rolled that chair straight up i-75 to Detroit, Michigan. I don’t know.
But I do know this: Some years before Mrs. Durant came to the Open
Door, she walked—strong of limb—and with a loud voice she entered my office
at Clifton Presbyterian Church. She wanted a bag of food from our food
shelf. “Yes,” I said, and I went to the pantry and gathered cans and bags of food:
beans, tuna, dried milk, five pounds of grits. When I returned to the front of the