recently met up with a street beggar i had hardly seen for a while.... can you pray for...xxx ? i am told they had died last week ... (my street beggar friend is an ex catholic)... only lost 5 friends this year so far.... last year lost 16 by this time.... it seems an astonishing number of friends and associates to lose ... ther is a big sense of community amongst a big ad hoc social grouping of what to call them down and outters with a mix of love and hate and out of control and community spirit that the homeless the were homeless the not quite .... the proportions of dunno epidemic?

epidemic of deaths outskirts of a war zone..... some though are familiar with death.. ex service men shocked out of existence the ability to return heros... no they have been picking up the bits of their friends out of the water off the tank whatever.... the failure of the Gospel to manifest... i feel that for these places on the street and me am i doing much better ... wearying?

i  spout out what comes to mind and that is some comments on the radio about deaths in custody .... that on occasions the physical condition of drugs and alcohol self abusers self harmers...and alcoholics is so poor they cannot withstand the stress and are somehow unrecoverable.... death in custody means they get measured and notated... person in crisis out of control out of depths...  sound stark? who else is forced to have an opinion one way or another...  death elsewhere...

. we addicts are we ever looked on that way? self abusers self harmers....
 i look at my friend i wasn't intending to give a nannystate lecture... but it is a stark reality.... self harming solutions brings...????  i feel a grunged out despair... we do things to give a short term feel good and all it does is mask and disguise with a temporary sense of well being.... hey why should  we not have it so good too?.... the feeling without the solution? the feeling without the resolution.... it's hard to take that the Gospel is a total solution ... we really think that there are other options and hey we ain't got it right or we never gonna get it right?

a recent story in the press was about the death of someone that the vicar noted on facebook someone who didn't seem to be known by anyone but he was an ex marine and from the facebook posting came 200 marines to the funeral ... we are his family said one...



my friend talks about they are working.... they have explained before that what the state pays is not enough... so they are forced to beg... they have an energetic social life and they are usually spotted drunk though lucid ... but they are incapacitated by alcohol dependence....

i am pleased to hear that my friend has recultured their enthusiasm for a small church i have not been to a small church plant from abroad that has rolled it's sleeves up! and meets embraces the poor! Praise the Lord!....   this one goes to church but explains that they cannot go to church if they don't have the fare for the bus... emphesema they explain yup smoking..... i say nothing i am surprised it hadn't occured to me .....

we have had many conversations about the drink and many wearied and enthusiastic easy prayers... for me it's a wonderful miracle that they go to a church where they feel refilled frefreshed... GOD has got folks to want to go with them ... ie folks who want to go to chuirch... hey we are not talking religious righteous church goers we are talking folks that actually ask my friend to take them with them! Praise the Lord!...