It's easy to sympathize with the poor when they're just some sentimentalized group out there that you never really fully encounter. But what about the widow next door who has been, maybe, rude to you on occasion? Does she deserve your help? What about the drug-addicted cousin who is living in pretty desperate economic situations? Jesus didn't tell us to "love the poor"; He told us to love our neighbor. He told us to focus our attention on the people right next to us, with all of their faults laid open.

Brian Holdsworth

3 avril 1814 : Napoléon est destitué par le Sénat ➽ http://bit.ly/Decheance-Napoleon En mars 1814, Napoléon est battu, la France est envahie, et l’Empire s’effondre, le Sénat reprochant bientôt à Napoléon les violations du pacte constitutionnel et prononçant sa déchéance, fixant également que le droit d’hérédité établi dans sa famille est aboli

Frosted Evening  - Paul Evans ::: British , b. 1954 - :: Silk sceen print , 64 × 66 cm.

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“Abundance and destitution are two facets of the one face of God, and to be spiritually alive in the fullest sense is to recall one when we are standing squarely in the midst of the other.” ― Christian Wiman, My Bright Abyss: Meditation of a Modern Believer

#5445

Fair maenad, Go mad In drunkenness Of wild holiness. Bring destitution To a nation Of tyranny, And set joy free.

A few weeks ago, the Joseph Rowntree Foundation (JRF) found that 3.8 million people in the UK – more than one in 20 of us – had experienced “destitution”. For most of my lifetime, I had regarded the word “destitution” as something of an historical artefact, a relic of Dickensian novels and the Great Depression of the inter-war years. Poverty has always been with us – I grew up in the 1980s in a single parent family and was on free school meals. But deep, grinding poverty is back. Decades of progress are being unravelled. The JRF defines destitution as “when people cannot afford to meet their most basic physical needs to stay warm, dry, clean and fed”. Think about that for a minute: one in every 20 of us, and approximately one in 15 children (two in every classroom), are struggling to stay warm, dry, clean and fed.

Andrew Fisher, ‘Royal visits to baby banks are a dangerous normalisation of poverty’, iNews

Le sous-fifre sous-titre par contrepet explicite - les lieux (communs) qui disent

Édouard Philippe ou "L'ard philou d'édippe" - c'est pas lui qui couche avec sa mère pourtant!

Remember the former, rejoice in the future

When we look at the horrific death of Christ, and the fact that the Bible says His death is essential for our salvation, then we can only conclude that our condition is one of extreme and inescapable despair, disability and destitution – to the extent that we ourselves could do nothing to rectify our existing situation. The extreme measure that God took to save us is an indication of our extreme…

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Destitution: UK

—Anne Carson, from Men in the Off Hours

Yes Emily Dickinson is the supreme theorist of destitution, of the way love/God render us utterly non-sovereign: God made me - [Sir] Master - I did'nt be - myself.

[Note: Letters 233 and 248, two of the “Master Letters,” are not, as far as we know, addressed to Higginson. The question of who they were addressed to has long puzzled Dickinson scholars.]

101 Things You Should Know About the UK Tory Government

Thing 63

“One in 100 children are homeless and living in temporary accommodation where many share beds with family members, a charity has said.” (YahooNews: 21/12/22)

The Christmas and New Year reality of Rishi Sinak’s Tory Britain.

Pope Francis’s December 2023 Prayer Intention: For People with Disabilities

God, Our Father, the throwaway culture that is widespread in our time does not consider the human person as something most valuable; that must be respected and protected, especially in they are poor or disabled people. We ask today for the inclusion of all those who have physical or mental limitation. Help us promote a culture of life that continually affirms the dignity of each person, and in particular the defense of people with disabilities. May inclusion be the rock on which civil institutions build programs and initiatives, so that no one is left behind. Amen.

detail from the cover of The Bible, Disability, and the Church: A New Vision of the People of God.

“My dear sir,” he began almost solemnly, “poverty is no vice, that is the truth. I know that drunkenness is also no virtue, and that is even more so. But destitution, my dear sir, destitution is a vice, sir. In poverty you may still preserve the nobility of your inborn feelings, but in destitution no one ever does. For destitution one does not even get driven out of human company with a stick; one is swept out with a broom, to make it more insulting; and justly so, for in destitution I am the first to insult myself. Hence the drinking!”

  —  Crime and Punishment (Fyodor Dostoevsky), translated by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky

#5782

Beauty immaculate, Purity that will reticulate All who seek out mercy That crushes fallacy, You who will never bedim, We sing a hymn Only to you With destitution to hew.

The Duke and Duchess of Sussex have recently released a video of Meghan volunteering at a pop-up baby boutique she staged for expectant mothers experiencing homelessness. This is not an act of solidarity with struggling families, but carefully curated promotional publicity stunts from an archaic institution. In the opening line of The Housemartins’ song “Flag Day”, Paul Heaton sings, “Too many Florence Nightingales, not enough Robin Hoods”. Although written nearly 40 years ago, it couldn’t sum up better the predicament in which the UK today finds itself – with rising poverty, destitution and homelessness. Heaton sings that charity is “a waste of time if you know what they mean, try shaking a box in front of the Queen, ‘cause her purse is fat and bursting at the seams”. In other words, royals, if you’re concerned about poverty give away a spare palace or two, don’t give us a video montage of your latest poverty safari.

Andrew Fisher, ‘Royal visits to baby banks are a dangerous normalisation of poverty’, iNews

At times on the hustings, Jones rambled on about the fine prospects for cotton and once or twice he veered off track to condemn the neglect of Christians in the bush:

The sound of the Gospel is seldom heard in their tents, and the performance of a religious rite almost a stranger in their land. Contrast this spiritual destitution with imperial Sydney, her viceregal palace, her many towering and costly churches, her courts of justice, and other paraphernalia of greatness, one stands in amazement to contemplate that the people contributing largely, as they do, to the General Revenue, should be so much neglected.

"Killing for Country: A Family History" - David Marr