Poor Blind Beggar in
back of Italian Church

A friend of mine from the Milwaukee 14 days sent me this quote from a letter of Thomas Merton to Daniel Berrigan: …. “I am sick up to the teeth and beyond the teeth, up to the eyes and beyond the eyes, with all forms of projects and expectations and statements and programs and explanations of anything, especially explanations about where we are all going, because where we are all going is where we went a long time ago, over the falls. We are in a new river and we don’t know it.”

People do not ask me where we are going, like Thomas Merton, but often I feel the same way because of our lack of history “where we are all going is where we went a long time ago, over the falls .“ “ We are in a new river and we don’t know it.” This feeling fits in well with my “Wake Up” philosophy, just having ears to hear and eyes to see.

But at the end I must accept that I can change no one except myself and work hard to change the environment so it is “easy to be good.” It gets frustrating at times because I can see how life is getting harder for the poor and easier for the rich.

At faith sharing this morning a person asked the group, after hearing about all he ills of today, where do we get our hope? It was a good question and all I could think about was how we must “do the right thing” even if the results are not what we want. Struggling for what we believe is right and just and not getting it makes me feel poor. I now understand why Jesus said in the first beatitude, “Blessed are the Poor.” To be poor, be one rich or poor or in between, means to be dependent on God. We all like to be in control so being dependent on anyone, even God, is tough. But the second part of the beatitude: “For theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven” seems to make this kind of poverty worthwhile.

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