Care for Homeless

Not having shelter isn't the only issue homeless sojourners deal with.  Many times the inability to procure health care is also an issue, either because of money, or because of not having a permanent address.  We need to care for sojourners in our midst not only through providing shelter, but allowing all people to have access to health care.  A persons health largely depends on opportunities available to them, as it has through history.  Life expectancies are the highest they have ever been, but for those without access to healthcare, or shelter, or food, or adequate clothing, the life expectancy rate drops significantly.  With rising homeless numbers in our midst, these issues become front and center and should be recognized by all people.

http://www.stltoday.com/suburban-journals/stcharles/news/homeless-count-up-for-st-charles-lincoln-warren-counties/article_a5c4964f-3a21-5e32-b0ac-20ac5c61c26b.html

Yay for Richmond Heights

Richmond Heights, MO just passed a city ordinance that bans discrimination based on sexual orientation.  This would have been covered in the Equal Rights Amendment to the Constitution, if it had passed, but even so, the state of Missouri ratified it in 1975.  This is a symbolically great thing, but should be something that is just natural to humanity (SHOULD BE).

 Richmond Heights Bans Discrimination Based on Sexual Orientation

Homeless Camp Bulldozed

This is treating the symptom...not helping the problem.  Is bulldozing a homeless camp really how we're going to treat the homeless these days?  That doesn't quite seem like how God calls us to give shelter to those without.

Standing in Solidarity with Creation

Lakota Indians in South Dakota provided a minor distraction, but a large symbolic statement to the Keystone XL Pipeline development that brings oil from the tarsands in Canada through the U.S.  By standing in front of the trucks, the Lakota people made a statement that the mining of oil from the tarsands in Canada is destructive to "Mother Earth" no matter who the buyer and consumers are.

 Lakota's Standing in Solidarity with Creation.

Journal Update for Bib 2

Support for the deaf culture, within the deaf culture.  We get so divided into groups of "others" that even minority groups begin to divide into groups of others.  There is and has been a debate within the deaf culture of whether to treat hearing loss, or to embrace sign language.  It's yet another part of our society that divides us into more and more groups of others.  How or when or will society ever look to the larger issue of what brings us together as humans, rather than what divides us as people?