May Day

A good friend recently explained that - as a distress call - the term “May Day” is really from the French SVP m’aider meaning “please help me”.  Well, this is only a call for help in the usual mode of a prayer letter…

Most of you (if not all) also get the intermittent C4L Bulletins, so you have heard that several government grants are immanent for C4L.  That is a huge lift to me personally, although it is more of a medium term factor than short term relief.  This is because government funding moves with glacial slowness.

However, these recent funding approvals should lift C4L to a new plateau in terms of government funding of training through “learnerships” (a combined work-study approach).  This is part of C4L’s 10-year strategy for sustainability – and succession.  I do not see C4L getting past me in its current incarnation.  It has to outgrow the incarnation before it can outgrow me!  So the ascent has begun…

I have often quoted the adage that the role of nonprofits leaders is “to comfort the afflicted and to afflict the comfortable”.  In the following poem, which I wrote recently, you can find me caught in this role of intermediation.  Frankly it’s not a pleasant place to be.  Comforting the afflicted has a nice “look and feel” to it - until you recognize the inherent pitfalls.  But afflicting the comfortable can only be described as an occupational hazard for NGO directors. 

You just have to call a spade a spade, as Jesus did when he met the rich young ruler.  From one youth to another, he said that wealth was getting in the way of eligibility.  So I am in good company in writing these lines, which I hope you will take to heart.  Pray for me to deal with the angst that this role causes me.  I think it is captured in the poetry?

Alienated By Entitlement

Only one letter before the F-word
Comes the E-word that nobody wants to hear...

In a global village
Who says that some continents
Can consume natural resources
Faster than others?
No creed condones it
But some still feel entitled
To leave the lights on when not in the room
To drive a gas-guzzler
Even to the parish church on Sunday mornings
Instead of walking
And to give less to Charity
When they hear that Aid begets Dependency
That there are millions who never get off the Dole
Some of them hooked on drugs

Whose sense of entitlement is deeper?

In a rainbow nation
Who is the most privileged?
Those who live behind walls topped with razor wire
Coasting along on accumulated capital?
Or those who don't have to perform to standards
Protected in their jobs by affirmative action
Overpaid and underproducing?

They both feel entitled
To live in their black enclave or white ghetto
Alienated by entitlement

In Sunday morning worship
Whose prayer rises fastest?
Who does God hear above all the clamour?
Not all are privileged with the gift of tongues
Not are entitled to miraculous healing

Thus saith the high and holy One
Who inhabits eternity
I dwell in the high and holy place
And also with him
Who is of a humble and contrite spirit

Is it humble to be so sure that your doctrine is sound?
Is it contrite to have shoes in your closet
That you never wear
When others go barefoot?
Eternal security feeds entitlement

When doctrine was corrected
Purgatory was abandoned
But blessed assurance crashed humility

The body language of a contrite spirit
Is to kneel prostrate before the altar
Not to raise both hands in Alleluias
Like the Pharisee
Praying beside the groveling tax collector
Who did God listen to?

The only thing gold is good for
Is paving the streets of heaven
Interlocking gold bricks as paving stones
Each one with an imprint embedded
Joe the Samaritan helped me after I was mugged
Frank of Assisi clothed me with family hand-me-downs
August of Halle paid my school fees at the Ragged School
William Booth helped me shake off my drug habit
Theresa of Calcutta comforted me before I died

The road to hell is also paved
With good intentions