This need is held against a dark ground: Greed. Terrible inequality. Terror, war. Hunger. Homelessness.
The Christmas story starts nine months before Bethlehem with a girl and her unexpected pregnancy. My friend John Pitney tells the story in “Song for the Wise Ones:”
“Justice was born
In a barn full of hay
In wisdom it happened
To Mary that way
But how would she know,
She would never assume
What promise she bore
As it knit in her womb
“She pondered a free world,
The poor all redeemed
A world where economies
Served all she dreamed
Of land’s wealth divided,
No terror, no war,
All people satisfied,
hungry land no more.”
The Christmas story starts with Mary’s dream of a better world.
One morning, after reading Lindsay’s transportation audit (reported beautifully in last week’s front page article,) I woke with this cry: where is the outrage over our horribly misspent monies?
The focus seems to be held on whether or not the bad spending will make the city liable for repayment of state and federal funds (to the tune of almost $9,000,000 for the TCAG and home loan boondoggles alone.) This causes the city council consternation, but they seem to be holding their breaths, hoping the grants won’t be called by the funders and everything will be ok.
No one seems to be looking at the actual impoverishment of the city’s residents from all this money. There are the families who were not helped become home owners who the funds were for: the improvement of those families’ conditions would have trickled up through our local economy and helped stabilize home values, as well as their children’s educations. There are the neighborhoods whose roads have become so decrepit they ruin our cars and bring down property values, especially relative to the areas where the roads have been improved. And there’s the tax burden on all homeowners if and when the city’s liabilities come due.
What has happened in this city should be an outrage to every teacher who worries about the poorer kids in their classrooms, every health professional who sees people not getting the care they need, every clergyman whose congregation wants to help needy families this season. Every businessperson who dreamed of serving a revitalized community. Every citizen who feels a compulsion to stay.
My friend John finishes the verse above with this chorus:
Wise men, wise women,
Children and elders compassion unfurled
Sing a song for the wise ones
Who bear pangs of justice
To bring God’s Shalom
To a laboring world.
While singing the songs of Christmas this season, may we find our voices and begin speaking of justice in this laboring world we inhabit. And may we begin dreaming of a new Lindsay, where the land’s wealth works its way through the hands of our families and businesses, all people satisfied, hungry town no more.
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