the real poverty in america lives in each and every one of us. we have fallen into a poverty of the spirit. we have lost the ingredients that made this country rich...not in material value...but in spiritual and moral value. we have become trapped in a contest that pits red against blue, black against white, christian against muslim and the rich against the poor. we have entered a contest of we versus them. it's a contest that has no winners, only losers. we have become so poor that we can walk by individuals daily who are homeless and manage to not see them. we have become so poor that we can ignore the small quiet voice of a child who is asking for our help. we have become so poor that we can justify the deaths of the mentally ill who live on the street by those who are entrusted with our and their protection. we've lost a wealth within ourselves that will cost not only us but the generations to follow us a great deal more than money, gold, silver, stock or properties. we've lost the wealth of compassion for the people who are experiencing unemployment for the first time in their lives. we've lost the wealth of caring about the men and women who are dying on the streets of our very own city because they have no place to call home. not only have we become poor within ourselves, we have become poor in the eyes of the world. they are watching us as we bankrupt our morals, our character, our sense of helping not only our families but our neighbors and citizens of our own communities.
nowhere is this bankruptcy of the american spirit more visible than in our political system. we have become so poor that we allow these elected politicians to continue robbing us with their careless policies and nonchalant way of doing business in washington. we allow these officials to operate in a way that further rings up the deficit of compassion and acting in the best interest of us all. our coffers have become so bare that we accept this robbing of the american way as the normal and shrug as if to say we concur.
our children will pay a high price for the poverty of our own souls if we continue on the path that we are walking. they will inherit a country of the poor in spirit, poor in compassion and love, and poor in doing what made america great. they won't know the rich country that we knew, they will know a battered, beaten and impoverished country that has grown hard and cold and uncaring. we should not leave as an inheritance to the next generation a country that abandons its own citizens in favor of self preservation and materialistic obsessions. we shouldn't leave to the next generation a country filled with anger and arguments about what is right, what is wrong and what is morally acceptable. we shouldn't leave to the next generation hunger, homelessness, poverty and needless dying. we shouldn't leave to the next generation the attacks on our religion, our beliefs and our morals by those who lack any moral center. we shouldn't leave to the next generation the experience of dealing with members of that very generation who are experiencing homelessness at an age when noone should. we were left with these plagues and perpetuated them by complacency. it's time for us to say enough.
the poor today are you and i. we are in poverty. we are living poor. i read often that anyone can overcome poverty. i also read that often poverty is intergenerational. i hope that the first sentence is correct. i also hope the second sentence is proven to be wrong. it's an inheritance that no generation deserves and a debt that we cannot afford to pass along.
see you around town