Ministry To The Homeless: Homeless Culture: Alternative Labor

Ministry To The Homeless: Homeless Culture: Alternative Labor

A Response to Despair and a New Season

Movements and their labels come and they go. Raised a good Catholic, I choose my confirmation name after the infamous Pope Alexander IV. Alternately driven by the writings of Ayn Rand, JRR Tolkien and Carlos Castaneda, I abandoned Christianity as I pursued as hedonistic a lifestyle as I could afford. This soon grew tiresome and given the self-destructive tendencies of my temperament, overly dangerous. I came into contact by means of the ubiquitous tract distributing door to door evangelism popular in the '70's and '80's with some folks calling themselves the Agape Force.

A charismatic offshoot of the Jesus People Movement by way of Keith Green's Last Days Ministry, I was impressed by their creativity, intelligence, and sincerity. The tract they were using included a version I can't find now of the following MLK quote, "A voice out of Bethlehem two thousand years ago said that all men are equal....Jesus of Nazareth wrote no books; he owned no property to endow him with influence. He had no friends in the courts of the powerful. But he changed the course of mankind with only the poor and the despised." Not knowing until very recently that it was an MLK quote, the revolutionary part resonated very strongly with me at the time. The long and the short of it, I got "saved." Water baptism, evidence of speaking in tongues, the whole enchilada. My wife, who had just had our son, thought I had lost my mind!!

Fast forward through 20 or 30 years. Now a good Christian husband with a good Christian wife (we had been married in the FBC of Woodville, TX of which she was a member). To please my parents we even went through the entire Pre-Cana process and received the Catholic churches blessing on our nuptials.  Attended a variety of churches from interdenominational to Southern Baptist and the occasional Assembly of God. I worked 60 - 70 hours a week as a potato chip route sales guy, we home schooled our son for several years, and father and son bonded over the latest "Hard CCM" music from HM magazine, KSBJ's Saturday Night "LifeForce" radio show, and church concerts by Prayer Chain, Starflyer 59, Rez Band et al. My wife got her MS in Psychology and began practicing as a professional counselor to "At Risk" youth. For a vast array of reasons, we were "out of fellowship" with any formal bodies for most of this time (actually, still are). In 2007 my "career" with Frito-Lay came to an end and my wife found it difficult to work due to health concerns and some nasty stuff going on at Lamar University. (See her MySpace blog here: http://www.myspace.com/stephaniemarsilia)

That brings me to the near present. Through facebook I reconnected with the Jesus People by way of Jon Trott (JPUSA-Chicago), connected with Carson Clarke and his circle, became made aware of the Emerging Church movement, saw that "nothing is new under the sun" Ecc 1:9. Yet, felt optimism.

Hope springs eternal in the human breast;

Man never Is, but always To be blest:

The soul, uneasy and confin'd from home,

Rests and expatiates in a life to come.

-Alexander Pope,

My many facebook friends indicated that intellect was not dead. Across different spectrum the desire and search for a fuller knowledge of Christ was alive and well. Many are still in seeker mode. " not as in my presence only, but now much more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling." KJV Phil 2:12 An interactive dialog, a crowdsourcing of truth that transcends the boundaries of denomination and even philosophies. There will always be a flow back and forth, at times reaching fondly back into the past then lurching forward as new concepts or revelations become manifest. "Life is a journey, not a destination..." ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson A journey filled with trials and disappointments, that I will not deny. Daily, the light manages to break through the clouds.

"To be without desires, is to be content.

If you do not wish to have something,

you are content with what you have." Lau Tzu

So, do not be overly concerned about the power or validity of the movements of the day or the clarion calls for revival. Continue in your fervency to actualize your experience, tap into that which is manifest to be true by your understanding of scripture and the engagement of your rational mind. Do not too quickly abandon that which your heart is telling you, and avoid falling into despair. Realize that seasons of grief are unavoidable, even though somehow necessary. One thing my Catholic upbringing instilled in me is that life is a mystery. One filled with the passion of discovery is the means by which we hold on to a semblance of sanity.

Organizational Engineering and Development with I-Opt, I-Opt Tools you can USE - Organizational Tools

Organizational Engineering and Development with I-Opt, I-Opt Tools you can USE - Organizational Tools

Scientifically validated tools are playing an increasingly important role in economic and social collaboration and interaction. Eric Standlee, the Houston networking guru and initiator of the InHouston network recently encouraged me to check out the work of Gary Salton.