House Day - December 2010

We built, we burned, we bantered.

Smores, Twisty Ties, Dumpsters & Reflection

I remember a time when I waited five days each week for the weekend. I recall a time when couldn't perceive Monday through Friday as a time of joy; rather, it was the routine, monotonous interim between brief periods of fun and excitement in my life. In short, I remember a time when I spent most of my days waiting to live. And then I moved into the Lake House.

Twelve hours ago I was already knee deep in Monday evening. The night's responsibility to prepare dinner was mine, and I was entering the house two hours late due to a last minute appointment at work. I didn't want to let down my family of nine, but I was forced to prioritize a distressed client with a tight schedule, so I rested on my confidence that my community would understand the decision to serve others before ourselves. As I walked through the kitchen door, I found some of them sitting around with bowls of cereal and silent looks of desperation written across their faces. So... I got busy. I was moments away from shelling out $40 at Boston Market when Natalia, who knew my usual cooking partner was no longer available due to a phenomena called "marriage," instantly halted me and volunteered to help me cook. In her usual resourceful way, she scrounged up a bit of this and that until we ended up with a melting pot of various pasta shapes, sausage cuts, homemade sauce and twisty ties that I had forgotten to remove from the bundles of noodles. It was surprisingly tasty.

Before long, Jimmy, the tall, handsome Puerto Rican of our community, waltzed in ready to hit the weights as we normally do on Monday nights. Instead, due to the temperature outside (and inside the Lake House) we discovered ourselves huddled around the living room fireplace with other members of our community, cooking smores, fighting to stay warm and wondering when we might pass out from carbon monoxide. As people dwindled in and out the room, the conversation plunged a bit deeper until Jimmy and I were discussing our recent desire to rededicate ourselves to God. It had begun just yesterday during church when Brian, the director of the Underground, reviewed the impact that Jesus has had on the world over the last 2,000 years. Because of Christ's influence we have hospitals, universities and calendars. We have the very concept of hope and equality of the human race, which had not previously existed in ancient thought. With this in mind, Jimmy and I agreed that our lives would be a tragic waste if in the end we look back and realize that we did not turn the world upside-down. After all, we know personally the most powerful figure in the history of the universe, and we live presently in an age with such great need and injustice. Why shouldn't our lives serve as the conduit for Jesus' radical touch and transformation? How is it possible that our lives might become anything else? And why aren't our lives having that sort of impact right now?

As Jimmy and I were dwelling on the need for deeper devotion to God, Jon and David were in the next room hammering out some house documents for our ongoing communal formation. After they were finished, Jon was soon recruiting folks to accompany him on his journey to Home Depot where he would scavenge blocks of cement from dumpsters. Our house values simplicity and ecological sustainability, therefore we are always striving to do spend less and reuse resources out of concern for our neighbors and the environment. These chunks of cement, which were Home Depot's trash, would become the treasured foundation of our new shed. As everyone piled into Jon's truck and sped off, Jimmy and I stayed behind in order to wrap up our time together with an activity that each of us secretly wanted: prayer. We sat in my room and thanked Jesus for our new found inspiration to know and follow him, and we begged him to help us in this endeavor because we both knew all too well how prone we were to waning.

Jimmy left soon after while the rest of the house returned in time to find the fire dwindling and the room being invaded by frigid air. At this point, most of us would love to turn on the heater except that our electricity comes from a plant that uses coal which in turn pollutes and pains the communities from which it's mined. As opposed to being the covert partakers of an undue system that hurts people and the environment, we lit the fire once more and piled into the living room with our sleeping bags to enjoy injustice-free heat and a good night's rest.

I was half asleep when the doorbell rang at 1:00 AM, as it sometimes does at the Lake House. As Andrew answered the door, I could hear the rattled voice of a young woman explaining how she was nearly stabbed across the street. I will admit that as I lay there I couldn't help but think "Agh... I just wanna sleep. Do I really have to tend to someone else? When does it stop?" But in a flash i remembered what my oath to Jesus entailed, and that this was part of it. There was no way I could ignore her tonight and then say I love God tomorrow. So... I crawled out of the couch and followed Philip into the kitchen. As I introduced myself I noticed the tattoo that spanned both of her hands: "Don't Hate." How appopriate. As Philip slipped into his room to put on something warm, Andrew calmed her down and answered some of her questions, explaining who we were, what we were all about, and why we were all in our PJs together sleeping the living room... before long Drew and Phil had taken her home, and the night was finally over...

There is never a dull moment at our house. There are always ideas being born, projects being started, people dropping in and dishes being dirtied. I used to wait to live. Now, I'm more alive than I've ever been.

"For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will find it." -Matthew 16:25

Peter Maurin’s Personalist Gift to the Catholic Worker

by Carolyn Griffeth
reposted from Jesus Radicals

Central to Catholic Worker lore is the story of Dorothy Day’s conversion from a life of socialist agitation to a life of Catholic piety, a conversion which both magnified her longing to join the struggle of the poor, and stymied the participation she once had in it. For four years following her conversion Dorothy was reluctant to participate in any form of social activism, a trend she parted with in 1932 when she went to Washington, D. C. to cover the “hunger march”. Her heart was pierced by the countless ragged, hungry men gathered there. The next day at the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception, Dorothy prayed ardently that “I might find something to do in the social order besides reporting conditions. I wanted to change them, not just report them, but I had lost faith in revolution, I wanted to love my enemy, whether capitalist or communist.” Were it not for this prayer, she later admitted, she would likely not have been so receptive to “the French peasant whose spirit and ideas [would] dominate the rest of [her] life,” who awaited upon her return home.
This French peasant, laborer, and itinerant scholar was Peter Maurin, who had immigrated to Canada in 1909, and then to the United States in search of his Christian vocation. This vocation eluded him throughout a decade of teaching and Catholic political activism in France, and then two more decades in the new world where he lived as a traveling laborer until World War One. This lifestyle created an in-road into a comfortable life as a French teacher. Like Dorothy, Peter had also experienced a radical conversion; at the age of fifty-three he walked away from the comfort he had struggled to gain in order to pursue a life of poverty, charity, and agitation, which four years later brought him to Dorothy’s door.
Not being one to talk of himself, Peter never revealed the details of his own inner-transformation, but rather when pressed by one interviewer explained dismissively that “a world in search of affluence and security had gone crazy, and I decided to be crazy in my own way.” One is left to speculate on just how Peter’s vocation was found. Peter is best known as an intellectual and as a synthesizer of the philosophy and wisdom of others. Being of such a nature, perhaps Peter’s conversion flowed naturally from the intellectual clarity and vision he arrived at after long studying the gospel, the lives of the saints, Catholic teaching, and the writings of a diverse group of philosophers and scholars. Peter formulated this clarity into a three-part program of action, a program that began with him, and through his graced encounter with Dorothy Day gave birth to the Catholic Worker Movement.
At the core of all Maurin’s thought lies the life and teachings of Jesus, the Sermon on the Mount in particular: “Blessed are the poor . . .” For Maurin, poverty was essential to entering into the life of Jesus and embodying the message of salvation Jesus preached, as was nonviolence or the love of enemies. One became poor because Jesus gave everything, even his life, to serve humankind. Voluntary poverty and nonviolence also gave witness to the primacy of the spiritual and prophetically demonstrated the orientation society had taken towards materialism and violence. The rumpled, old and only suit Peter Maurin wore on the occasion he met Dorothy gave evidence to the life of poverty he had chosen. After the onset of the Catholic Worker Movement, Peter had ample opportunity to model non-violence as a way of dealing with conflict. Dorothy relayed one account in the September 1948 Catholic Worker: When two men at Easton farm fought over an egg to eat, Peter refused to eat eggs or milk the rest of the summer, so that other might have more.
Peter also took to heart the teaching of Mathew 25:31: to serve those in need is to serve Christ. As the second pillar of his program he recommended Christian hospices, in the tradition of the early and medieval Christians, where the Corporal Works of Mercy would be practiced at a personal sacrifice. In Dorothy’s words: “We were to reach the people by practicing the works of mercy, which meant feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, visiting the prisoner, sheltering the harborless, and so on. We were to do this by being poor ourselves, giving everything we had; then others would give, too.” Peter did not hesitate to be the first to put his teachings into practice: “When a reader who had been sleeping in the subway came into the Catholic Worker office one day and disclosed her need (the apartment and the office were already full), Peter’s literal acceptance of ‘If thy brother needs food or drink, feed him, and if he needs shelter, shelter him’ meant that we rented a large apartment a block away which became the first House of Hospitality for women.” In the same spirit, Maurin would often stay overnight at Uncle Sam’s Hotel for forty cents a night, or simply sleep in the park because he had given his bed to someone in greater need.
Likewise, Peter paid great respect to the seven Spiritual Works of Mercy as described by the Catholic tradition: to admonish the sinner, to instruct the ignorant, to counsel the doubtful, to comfort the sorrowful, to bear wrongs patiently, to forgive all injuries, and to pray for the living and the dead. In particular, he embraced “instructing the ignorant” or “agitation” as his particular vocation, and sought to instruct Bishops and bums alike. One of his pedagogical techniques was reciting monologues that would continue uninterrupted until his point had been made and then listening to the fullness of his conversation partner’s ideas without interruption. Another technique of his, was to begin a conversation with one person in a crowded setting like Union Square but in a voice loud enough to attract others. In order to get profound ideas across to the common person, Peter wrote and recited Easy Essays, or pithy poems designed to get stuck in your head. With all these strategies it is no wonder John Woodlock of the Wall Street Journal wrote of Peter: “He can cram more truth into your cranium at high speed in a single hour than any ordinary person could do in a week.”
Nonetheless, one could argue that Peter’s pedagogy was a secondary factor in his success as an agitator; the greater factor was his unshakable belief that all individuals shared his interest in the big questions: What has gone wrong in contemporary society? And, how can society be recreated to better serve the common good and the flourishing of the human person? Moreover, he assumed that everyone was capable of grasping profound truths and willing to transform one’s life in conformity thereof. To this end, Peter proposed Round Table discussions as the first pillar of his three-part program. Round Tables were to compel the exchange of ideas across class divisions in order to understand the roots of social problems and thus forge radical answers.
Having found a disciple at last in Dorothy, Peter spent every day for the next four months, from three in the afternoon until eleven, following her around the house in order to give her a “Catholic education.” Respecting that Dorothy was a working, single mom, Peter would not only bring books, but also summaries of them, which he wrote as an act of service for those without the time to read the works he recommended. Peter’s summaries included a digest of Kropotkin’s Fields, Factories, and Workshops (1889), which concluded, from the study of peasant society, that the principals of cooperation and mutual aid, rather than competition, were the most natural tendencies of humankind. Other sources Peter eagerly brought to Dorothy’s attention were the English Distributists who decried the evils of industrialism and advocated a land and craft society, and the French Personalist, Emmanuel Mounier (1905-1950), who emphasized the absolute value of each person, made in the image of God, as the proper philosophical foundation for society. In the words of Mounier, Peter described his own program as a personalist one, a “green revolution,” which begins with an awakened sense of vocation that compels one to take an active role in history.
Another source of inspiration which Maurin brought to Dorothy was the example of the saints. Peter said, “In the Catholic Worker we must try to have the voluntary poverty of St. Francis, the charity of St. Vincent de Paul, the intellectual approach of St. Dominic, the easy conversations about things that matter of St. Philip Neri, and the manual labor of St. Benedict.”
“Peter loved St. Benedict,” wrote Dorothy, “because he said that what the workers needed most was a philosophy of work.” This philosophy flows out of the Benedictine motto: Laboreare et Orare—Labor and Pray—which emphasized an ideal unity between work and prayer, religious life and economic life. In his own life, Peter had seen the degrading effects of capitalism and communism, both materialistic economic models that emphasize wealth and production rather than the wholeness of the human person or the flourishing of human relationships within society. As an alternative, Peter proposed Christian communalism, believing that the development of one’s interior life was best fostered by a spiritually-centered communal life emphasizing poverty over affluence, self-giving over self-advancement, and cooperation over competition.
Peter cited Benedictine monasticism with its emphasis on hospitality, prayer, life on the land, art, and labor, as just such a model which could transform not only the person but also the wider culture. From his studies of monasticism, Peter also acquired the idea that human goodness can be fostered by appropriate structures. Therefore, Peter would formulate a daily schedule with set times for prayer, work in the fields, meals, rest, crafts, study, etc., for himself and whoever cared to follow. It was these small structures as well as the practice of the works of mercy, and the return to a village-like land and craft based culture, which fleshed out Peter’s idea of a “society where it is easier to be good.” To this end, Peter proposed farming communes or “agronomic universities,” to reintroduce city dwellers to the spiritual richness and simplicity of life on the land as the third and final pillar of his program. On Peter’s farming communes, community members were to live not only in cooperation with one another, but also in cooperation with their animals, which were considered as community members, and with the land, which was to be farmed using the most earth-friendly methods available—all of which was akin to living in cooperation with God.
Nonetheless, it is St. Francis, not St. Benedict, to whom Peter Maurin has commonly been compared, and who was arguably his greatest source of inspiration. The radical conversion Peter underwent coincided with his reading a series of books and papal encyclicals on St. Francis. In one of his Easy Essays Peter summarized the way of St. Francis, which he sought to emulate:

Saint Francis desired that we should give up

superfluous possessions.

Saint Francis desired that we should work with our hands.

Saint Francis desired that we should offer

our services as a gift.

Saint Francis desired that we should ask other people for

help when work fails us.

Saint Francis desired that we should live as free as birds.

Saint Francis desired that we should go through life giving

thanks to God for God’s gifts.

Like St. Francis, Peter was described by Dorothy as possessing “a freedom and joyousness that come from a clear heart and soul.” This joy and freedom flowed from his adoption of Franciscan poverty and the clarity he possessed about his own vocation, which was, in the spirit of St. Francis, to preach the gospel at all times in both word and action. Peter’s method of “agitation”, employed to awaken the human intellect and to compel one towards conversion, as well as his three part program, were his attempt to bring the gospel to the common person and to the social realities of his time. In short, Peter sought not only to talk of salvation (one’s growth towards holiness, or the full realization of oneself moving towards God), but to make salvation more possible by creating a spiritually nourishing culture.
It is remarkable how precisely Dorothy’s prayer “to find something to do in the social order” for the poor was answered in Peter Maurin. “Without him,” Dorothy concluded, “I would never have been able to find a way of working that would have satisfied my conscience. Peter’s arrival changed everything, I finally found a purpose in my life and the teacher I needed.” In turn, Peter found in Dorothy the student he had searched for, one with the capacity and charisma to put his program into action. Because of Peter and Dorothy’s student-teacher relationship, Peter has commonly been understood as the intellectual founder of the Catholic Worker Movement. Yet from the beginning, Dorothy sought that Peter would be known for more than just his ideas and even insisted that biographers writing about her write instead about Peter. In the end, Dorothy set out to write her own biography of Peter which, though unfinished, was recently published in Peter Maurin: Apostle to the World. Dorothy’s reflections within, make it clear that Peter was not only her teacher but also her spiritual mentor in whom she saw the “face of Christ.” Upon Peter’s death, Dorothy compared their time together to the time the disciples walked unknowingly with the risen Jesus, quoting Luke 24:32: “Was not our heart burning within us whilst he spoke along the way?”

'...to present her to himself as a radiant church'

She had embraced singleness and was single mindedly committed to Jesus. I remember talking with friends over the years about this girl that no guy could get. We called her her the big fish, one buddy always joked that she was Rapunzel in the tower. She was beautiful and her commitment and dedication to God made her that much more beautiful.
Tonight she gave up singleness and vowed to pursue God with Chris. Singleness was truly a gift that she cherished. She was free to go wherever God called and whenever He called. She was free to pour her life out into community and ministry. As they exchange vows I can't help but stand in awe and reflect on the depth of this union. It is no small thing.

As we prayed for Chris as a community before the wedding I was overwhelmed with joy for them both. They are making vows and immediately setting their eyes on the Philippines. There marriage is, from day one, about the kingdom and Gods purposes in the world. I love them both and am so excited to see what God does with these two lives. 

This blog marks the end of Chris's time in our house and the beginning of their life together. They will always be family to us. 

We are so happy for you both.

Joann your life is an inspiration. Chris we will miss you.

grateful

The holidays can be tough. Bad memories and good memories alike can stir ones heart to grief. For many, it is the time where it is most clear that they are alone and lonely. We opened our house to friends and a few strangers that had nowhere to go to celebrate thanksgiving and feasted. It was beautiful to see a 67 yr old vietnam vet sitting with a young punk rocker, a local black minister preaching to a white college student, to see one man who lives on the street serving everyone else while another fell asleep on the couch. What on earth are these people doing together? In what world do these people celebrate holidays together? I am a citizen of the world in which it happens all the time, a member of a communtiy that has embraced this counter culture, and a student of a master that has been growing us in his image each step of the way.

Ecological Consciousness

Our concern for nature recognizes mans place within the environment. Mankind and the societies that we develop are as much a part of nature as the trees and rivers. Mankind however has demonstrated throughout time our capacity for standing as an antagonist in this relationship. We have historically imagined in building our modern society that natural resources were infinite and that the road to the future was paved with infinite development. As Leonardo Boff has pointed out, these two presuppositions have proven themselves to be illusionary. We now know that natural resources are not infinite and that they are actually rapidly diminishing. This depletion of the earths resources directly, negatively and most severely affects the poor of the earth. Social injustice, which finds itself at the heart of our ecological mindfulness, is the manifestation of a violence against the most complex being in all of creation, the human being. Ecology should be both environmental as well as social and advocate sustainable development that attends to the basic needs of human beings without sacrificing the earth’s resources. We must also consider the needs and rights of future generations as well as the current needs of the earth today.
Because the society that has been developed over recent centuries is all consuming, it values humans based on there consumption, makes indulgence our modus operandi,  and also inhibits sustainability. There is a mental conversion needed in each individual for us to move toward sustainability. We have been brought up to consume and we also have within ourselves instincts of violence and a desire to dominate. In most cases our culture has only echoed these instinctual drives and in worst cases encouraged them. Many environmentalists disregard man as part of nature because we have set ourselves up as its enemy and sought to destroy and consume the earth. This is little more than a pendulum swing from our anthropocentric way of seeing the world to the opposite extreme. Mankind is as much a part of this world as any other element in nature. We must attend to the needs of man as well as other beings in nature such as plants, animals, or microorganisms, because they are all part of the delicate and valuable system of this planetary community. All beings are interdependent and live within an intricate web of relationships. Anthropocentric culture considers humans to be the rulers of the universe. We must repent of this idea, culture, and lifestyle. Jesus Christ is the only ruler of the universe and we are responsible for stewarding creation and are responsible for the deterioration of this planet and are paying dearly for our sins. It is imperative that we recapture an attitude of respect, adoration, and care for the Earth.

Revolution is here....

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Freezing Jesus.... I was naked and you clothed me

Brian's talk following our time on the street

A brief Pilgrimage, a permanent impact.

So my friend Brian and I took to the streets for a few nights led by our friend Tomas who has lived on the streets for years. He said that we would need to find our own squat to sleep. That was part of the experience and he was not gonna just tell us where would be safe or where he normally sleeps. The first day we met up with him in the middle of Ybor and he told us that we were unprepared and at least had to find some blankets. We went to a local ministry that works with homeless people and they gave us a couple. Not before they questioned us about being on the streets. (I am pretty sure she didn’t believe us but it was getting weird and she just gave them to us.) Tomas said we were far to clean to fit in but that we wouldn’t be for long. Since we knew that The Well has a meal they call The Banquet every Thursday in ybor we knew that we would be able to find some dinner that night so we put our minds and feet to finding a squat (a place to sleep). We found a few spots that seemed promising but at one we really liked I stepped in some poo and lets just say there was some paper nearby! Not dog do do! Not that we still thought this might be a good spot but as I cleaned up Tomas told us how important it is to bury your poop. We could think of several reasons that this might be a good idea but in the end his reasoning was that he wants God to be with him. What? Yup, Deuteronomy 23:13-14 says : “...when you relieve yourself, dig a hole and cover up your excrement. For the LORD your God moves about in your camp to protect you...” God doesn’t even hang around if theres crap there!! So on we went. WE ended up finding a nice spot behind a manicured section of the I-4 exit ramp. We stashed our blankets and stuff in the bushes and kept walking around the city. Below are a few reflections on the journey.

Pruning
As we walked he asked us what we would grab if we could get one thing from home. Shoes! i said emphatically. these are killing me. I already had blisters and we were only half a day into what I was learning was an itinerant life. Tomas granted my wish and we stopped by the lake house to swap shoes. The Lake House is normally great about helping guys on the streets but Natalia screamed at me as I came up to the house “Homeless people can’t just go home and get their other shoes!!” She was right and I still did get some better shoes. Then her hospitallity kicked in and she brought us all a drink on the porch and off we went. (By the way brians response was “hmm, that will probably keep changing, right now its headphones, tomorrow in would probably be socks and underwears, and after that who knows.” He is right the longer we were on the street the more basic our needs and desires became. All of our normal cravings and whims were silenced and a soda seemed indulgent. After the couple nights we spent outside his answer became clear. ‘A watch.’ I can’t tell you how slow time seemed to move and how clueless we were about when the sun might come up. THis morning we were wide awake just waiting for the sun to rise and he finally walked to a gas station to find out what time it was. When he got back he informed us that it was only 3:15 AM!! I wanted to cry. I was freezing, wet with dew, and just sore from laying on the ground.) 

We just walked and walked and walked. We did stop and relax at a few parks along the way but if we wanted to eat we had to get ourselves to the next meal site, plus we got shooed when we stopped for one of us to tie his shoes. We literally spent the second day walking to get from lunch to dinner. We walked all the way to Brandon for dinner. The meals were great and what a relief it is to sit down with smiling faces and enjoy a meal after walking in the dust and heat and scorn of everybody all day long. As I stood in a line outside of the salvation army’s Trinity cafe for lunch I was struck by the general joy of people with real struggles and I couldn’t help but think about my middle class community and its tendency to complain about everything. Literally drive to a restaurant in an air conditioned car, sit down at a beautiful meal, in a beautiful place, with a beautiful person and complain. It really staggers the mind. “God forgive me for I am a man of unclean lips and I dwell among a people of unclean lips.” -Isaiah 6

Coffee and the Morning Paper
Both mornings we were up before the sun and itching to move again. (Even though our feet were in blatant disagreement) We each had a few dollars which was enough to get us a coffee and dollar burrito at McDonald's each morning. I am telling you I have never enjoyed being in a McDonalds more in my life. We sat in a booth, read the newspaper, drank coffee and just soaked in the Micky D’s goodness. On the front page was an article about tampa discussing the banning of panhandling. What a great situation to have this discussion. We talked about the ways that we felt about this possible ban and what that might mean for poeople, like tomas, who really need help from others. How can it be made illegal to ask for help? How could anyone without any access to money ever sit in a both at Mcdonalds, read the paper and discuss their lives together? How could rich people disgust and disregard for the poorest members of our society hide behind the guise of public saftey. There have not even been any reported accidents other than one newspaper salesman three years ago. This is strictly about the potential for an accident OR bigotry and distaste. I was pleased to hear that the debate has been shut down for now as Joseph Caetano failed to get a second, so his motion to ban panhandling died. I was relieved. Maybe we should each take a minute to call or write those that stood against the ban and thank them for doing what is right.

http://www.tampagov.net/dept_City_Council/about_us/ here is a link to write the members of City council. 

By the way you may feel like this is a good debate and you are not sure which way you are leaning and thats ok. But these people are calling for an ‘immediate’ ban for public safety reasons without cause. Lets pray for them and their families and ask God to bless them, soften their hearts, and lead them to a place where they would feel the impact of their legislation. 

Pam Iorio is calling to make the ban county wide instead of just in the city.
Charles ‘Chip’ Fletcher, who was named by Iorio as the City Attorney

The City Attorney's Office is located at:

Old City Hall, 5th Floor

315 E. Kennedy Blvd.

Tampa, FL 33602

Tel: (813) 274-8996

Fax: (813) 274-8809

Assistant Police Chief John Bennett

Faith
Tomas says it takes a lot of faith to live on the streets. Trusting God for safety, rest, food, etc. The presence of peace is, to him, Gods presence. Incidentally that is also why he is so adamant about burying poop. That presence is all you have and you do whatever it takes to keep Him with you. Faith is everything in such precarious places.

Feet
Jesus was always on the move, a tramp, and he called disciples that would leave everything and follow him. Many times we think how hard it is for people to leave everything. It is, but with these blisters on my feet after walking around tampa with Tomas I can’t help but imagine how hard it would have been  to actually follow Jesus. TO get up and walk from town to town, seek out food and trust God for rest. When Jesus was leaving his disciples he said, if you love me you will do what I do. You will keep on walking. He promised that he would send a guide that would walk alongside them, and walking, being sent, movement, was implied.
Isaiah 52:7 says “How beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news”
Beautiful are the feet that are dirty, blistered, calloused, stinky, covered in ant bites, and still moving. They don’t stop because it hurts. They are on a mission and marching to the cadence of our Father.


Hilarity
Oh and when I found a bathroom at the park and it had no toilet paper Tomas asked me if I needed some 'shit tickets' as he offered me a stack of napkins. Then he warned that often times on the streets your body will use a lot more of what you take in causing your movements to be a little loose. Really? I asked. "Ya its called Tramp Splat" He smiled as I threw up in my mouth a little.