Let's not stigmatise personal fundraising like GoFundMe

Let’s unstigmatise GoFundMe

There is an undercurrent of concern and stigma accompanying the use of GoFundMe to attract funding for whatever cause or issue you might have. It is probably that concern and fear of stigma that meant I did not resort to this model of making people aware of a situation I need some help with.

I can appreciate that GoFundMe seems like a mendicant shaking a begging bowl on the sidewalk (properly a pavement in English), but that is to misconstrue the value of social networking and seeking the friendship, the support, and the generosity of other people towards something you have limited resources to finance.

Utilising my social media network

It need not be that way, as I have benefitted immensely from the use of my social media networks to first inform and then gain support. My blog has been prominent in that regard where a doctoral student in Canada sponsored my blog for a year, soon after I ran out of funds when I had cancer.

Then, I had a World Bank executive contact me on reading a pertinent blog I wrote in 2012; after a conversation, they wired $5,000 to me, no strings attached, just something to support my endeavours. Obviously, I have not monetised my blog, that is not the purpose of my blog. Rather, I write stories; stories about me, what I see, how I am affected, or just to proffer an opinion.

On LinkedIn, I have had jobs offered without having to interview, again, it is not that all these things happen always, but to ignore a social media following on the many platforms that you engage when things are going well but go quiet in adverse conditions is to forget the amazing usefulness of networking for all sorts of life situations.

GoFundMe is open for all causes

One look at the GoFundMe Fundraiser start page, there are many categories of fundraising, all to varying degrees of criticality and importance, but we should be careful that we do not determine to rate one need more than another as if it is a competition to suckle on the milk of human kindness better than the other person.

Yes, Funeral and Medical needs could speak to life and death issues, but people can also fundraise for others or themselves, for causes or interests in as varied areas as Emergency, Charity, Financial Emergency, Animals, Environment, Business, Community, Competition, Creative, Event, Faith, Family, Sports, Travel, Volunteer, or Wishes.

Crowdfunding is not criminal

GoFundMe is simply another crowdfunding platform, primarily a donation-based crowdfunding with charitable to a wide range of funding requirements for which there is neither financial nor material return to the donor apart from the satisfaction of helping someone else in some need of help or support.

I published a GoFundMe page to address a simple issue, I need to take some time to study and gain some new vendor certifications to give me better job opportunities for which I have extensive background experience, but have recently been quite lacking in confidence. I seek to do this in a comfortable supportive environment, and that is preferably Cape Town. I need to reboot things, I believe that is a purposeful and well-considered activity that would yield results.

We should embrace fundraising

In closing, no one should be ashamed when they have determined what they want to and have to do, to resort to raising funds for their projects. Whilst on the GoFundMe platform, many might think fundraising is just for desperate life-threatening situations, the fact is every endeavour involves a form of fundraising from personal projects and concerns, through startups seeking capital from venture capital firms to big businesses raising finance from banks, on the stock markets, or through the trade of equity.

GoFundMe simply brings the facility to raise funding for personal and community causes. To stigmatise it is to fail to understand the democratisation of fundraising brought to the lowest common denominator. I am persuaded that my GoFundMe drive is going to be extremely beneficial to changing my circumstances, no one need be concerned or ashamed by the use of it. Thank you.

 

We can be angels with and of change

A scarcity of loose change

To the many disadvantaged and destitute in my city, I can only imagine how the pandemic and technological advancements have affected them. For instance, I used to have some change in pound coins or lesser value coins in my pocket somewhere that I could give when asked for some help.

I can think of the many times that I have not been able to give any change nor had the immediate means to collect and handle money physically. Everything is now done electronically either online or through contactless payments.

There was a time I was approached by one man who said he needed something to eat, I was just passing by a fish & chip shop, so, having my mobile phone that could complete a transaction, I put in an order for a meal and drink, paid for it and told him to collect when done. It probably is easier to just ask before I go into a supermarket if someone needs anything, and I get it for them, with a little extra.

Not much change for many

It is the little one can do because even the charities and social services are stretched, they almost always do not have enough places, beds, supplies or the essentials to meet the demands, and even if the supplicants did qualify many have to go through too many hurdles that humiliate and dehumanise them to get the bare necessities, if at all.

Direct help in my view is useful, if anything, it reminds us all, that we have the poor amongst us and that the milk of human kindness and angelic provision still exists in our tough times and tougher, if sometimes, indifferent society. I have purposed not just to give change, but to give money that can do something, to get a meal or a bed for the night, sometimes even more.

Change given without any judgement

Leaving church earlier, I was accosted by someone who wanted money for a meal, I could not even imagine if he had had a meal recently, but I had a monetary note in my wallet and as I was trying to get it, he went on about him only needing it for food, not for drugs or for alcohol. It is that person's prerogative what they use the money I give them for. Obviously, I would rather they applied to use and care rather than abuse, but that is left to them.

As I gave him the money, I told him, I am not here to judge you. It is an evolving lesson of maturing, if I dare, some empathy, that I would constantly entertain, I do not want to stand in judgement because I have means, opportunity, or privilege.

I know what it is to fall on hard times and I am grateful for all those who pulled me through those almost impossible circumstances, I have been blessed abundantly beyond words I can find to express, the much that I have enjoyed.

Give more than just change

Further down the road, a lady smiled at me from under her sleeping bag in the doorway of a building on one of main shopping streets and I determined to do something about that brief encounter, for I smiled back.

I walked up the road to find an automatic teller machine (ATM) and there were none for a good stretch of what is a commercial street. Banks are closing and removing the heretofore ubiquitous ATMs that they are becoming quite scarce to find. I had committed in my intentions to give her something, so, I walked back on myself to find an ATM, even that had a notice that it would be removed in just over 3 weeks.

That would mean that for most of the length of Deansgate in Manchester, there would be no ATMs, how and why that is allowed to happen is perturbing and disconcerting.

We are angels of change

However, I did get some money and walked back up to the lady and gave it to her. I probably should cultivate another thing; the habit of conversation and learning more about the people I have helped, for they all have a human story that I am usually disinterested in.

There is gratitude and uncertainty that crosses their faces, they cannot believe the generosity in the first place and wonder if I am sure I want to give them whatever I have given. I understand their plight, but I assure them, in the worst-case scenario, they have been visited by an angel. That seems to assure them, for whether we acknowledge it or not, we all seem to believe in angels, and that my friends, is a very good thing.

Coronavirus streets in Manchester - LXVI

Breaking my stride

The fear of abandonment was palpable during a chance encounter with a lady I met on one of my walks late at night. Our conversation began on the note of her acknowledging that I was working hard at my fitness, if only it showed that well, I’ll be a happier man.

As I responded to the compliment, she intimated that she was a victim of some sort of domestic violence which I then learnt was an orchestrated gang rape in a sheltered setting for which the main protagonist had been sentenced to 11 years in prison.

She obviously needed help and I slowed down so she could walk with me, it felt she needed someone to talk to and I was quite disposed to listen and see what I could do to help. I could not give her money as most transactions are cashless, but I offered that we might be able to find a place that takes contactless payments to get her a few essentials.

And we talked

The back-and-forth conversation included my revealing I am gay, I have a partner and our domestic situation when we are together. She made saucy and cheeky comments about what might make me attractive to my partner and much else, she was funny and quite lucid, very aware of the dangers on the street.

She apologised for slowing me down as she was still recovering from the 87 stitches that she received for her injuries. I learnt she was a grandmother, she had had some nasty relationships and been with some rather notorious and violent partners, some of whom had negatively coloured her view of life and survival.

Along the way, she called out to a couple of men who were huddled in a doorway, she volunteered that they were on spice, a synthetic cannabinoid with debilitating side effects sometimes leading to fatalities, and this is on the streets around us to which many of us are totally oblivious.

Trust is scarce

We were planning on going to a night shop, but as I realised we were only about half a kilometre from my home, I would rush home to pick up a few things for her and get my bank card to withdraw some money for her. I have never tried to second-guess what people might do with the money I give them, nor do I want to police what they do with it. It is for them to decide what their immediate need is and to either wisely or unwisely attend to that.

When I told her, I can run home to get a few things, she began to cry thinking I was about to abandon her. I could understand, yet I would only give her assurances that I would return apart from the fact that I did not really want to reveal where I lived. Besides, some people are so desperately in need of help and support beyond the immediacy of what we can do for them in that moment.

Completely worn down

On one occasion, in attending to someone in desperate need, I made the mistake of giving him my phone number, first, he said, he had lost the money I had given him to get shelter for the night, and when I still engaged and secured the shelter, through the night, I was bombarded with calls and pleas, more than 40 of them and it continued to the next day.

I happened to see him a few days after and by then I had been so worn down that there was not a scimitar of empathy left in me as I shouted at him and told him how he made me regret ever meeting him at all. He was never ever to contact me ever again and if he approached me, I would tackle him as a mugger. It was the kind of thing that could sear your conscience against having the milk of human kindness, then again, every person’s circumstance is different.

In the readiness to help, the helped, despite their situation, circumstances, and history should be careful and that is difficult, to not frustrate their helpers with untrammelled demands, we all have limited capacity to address issues that are essentially endemic and in need of more professionally coordinated approaches for long term benefit to those that require it.

Willing to angel

I ran home and got a coat, a scarf, pairs of socks, and the thermal underwear that I bought for my sister when she was in Iceland, but I never got to post, and a few snacks packed into a bag, not forgetting my bank card, and rushed out again.

She was still waiting for me, as I took to one side and showed her everything I had brought before giving her some money. She asked if I was sure I wanted to give her what I had already given her, I guess this thought comes with the concept that the generosity from strangers could be in short supply for those in desperate need. I do wonder if giving them a lot of money can do a perverse thing of changing the concept of value, in terms of what they need.

That is probably something for social scientists, psychologists, or anthropologists to study, I can only do my bit in within the means that I have. What could I do when she started crying at what I had been given the opportunity to do? I embraced her and told her, to think of it as if her had just met an angel. Even on the streets of Manchester, there is goodness, kindness, and mercy for all, those who have and many more who do not have much at all.

Coronavirus streets in Cape Town - LI

Rich as could be seen

A Bentley coupe was about to turn into the road in front of me and at the steering wheel was a man with the gentility of rich sophistication, he could have used an eau de Cologne of crisp new currency notes, that he might be described as stinking rich.

It was the highly understated art of making a statement, nothing showy, yet to the eye unmistakably posh. To all appearances on his way from one place to another, not in a rush or hurry to get anywhere.

Poor as could be warmed

A man in a wheelchair, just out of the way on a wide pavement minding his own business and a stranger wraps a jacket around him, a gift, from an angel, a present it was, and sounds of gratitude rent the morning air as one good deed brings warmth and a new lesson of our common humanity.

For on these streets, destitution resides like it has been here a long time with title deeds and not leaving anytime soon. For one man crossed the main road to pick up a discarded used face mask which he then puts on, I cannot tell if he had to, to access premises demanding that precautionary measure. I make a mental note to always have spare face masks on my person.

Needs as could be met

A lady gestures to me, mumbling something incomprehensible even as the message of need cannot be misunderstood. I dip in my pocket and produce a high-value note that I hand to her. She bursts into tears. I do not wait to comfort her, but I pray a silent prayer that we all find places to shed the tears of thankfulness.

We live to give blessings, we belong to one another, for the lack in one is a slack that affects all, even the advice that we contribute to charities does not seem to affect or touch the people me meet on our streets seeking a basic handout for food and sustenance. The pretence of a safety net being available to help assuage our sense of guilt and duty is all that, a pretence because if it did go far, we probably would rarely have such encounters.

Quarantined in my self-isolation

No fun in this

If I am to be honest, I am not enjoying the sequestration, quarantine, self-isolation, or social distancing rave of the moment as part of the scheme to limit the spread of the Coronavirus. Much as I am a confessed hermit, I still like social interaction with other people and more on the physical than the virtual.

This social interaction is the equivalent of the grooming observed in a band of gorillas, we are all social beings. At least, I have not developed the ability to commune with inanimate objects and by that derive the benefits I would otherwise gain from seeing fellow human beings.

Obviously, I have to calm myself down and relax, there is another week and a half left of this matter and it could be extended. I would hate to think of what effect it would have on those of us who live alone at home or are used to social events that were so suddenly snatched away.

Sacred cows of our society

In our society, we lose objectivity when anyone suggests a cause is for charity, we are unquestioning and quite generous to charitable causes. You only have to watch the money mountain grow at nightlong television events like Sport Relief in the spring and Children in Need in the autumn, we have been had in a cult and many exploit it.

One other cult is our beloved and revered NHS, founded in 1948, we would not have anyone touch our National Health Service, yet, it has been raped, pillaged, starved through the decades, shedding many of its social underpinnings for the profit motive, but it is being called upon to fight this Coronavirus epidemic hobbled, restrained, underfunded, under-resourced, under-equipped and radically politicised.

A disservice to the NHS

It is not enough to throw money at the problem, someone should be solving the problem of throwing the NHS personnel in the middle of a pandemic without Personal Protection Equipment (PPE) against a virulent and highly contagious pathogen. Much as we applaud the NHS, we cannot justify sending them on a suicide mission for that is not what they signed up for.

They are there to save life and it only behoves the authorities to provide tests, protection and tools for them to perform excellently without having to be kamikaze heroes. Medical personnel are dying, many are gravely ill, and others are in isolation away from the battlefront where they are needed, because of failings in the system.

Exploiting our NHS love

To heap insult upon injury, NHS staff are being threatened with disciplinary action if they voice the dangers in their working environment, that is just unconscionably evil and whoever suggested that action should be booted out of the NHS forthwith.

On the message to the public, it was easy to attach the need for us to stay at home to the cult of the NHS. We are to stay at home to save the NHS, yet, the NHS staff are not given adequate protection and support to save themselves from ever-present danger at work and being vectors that take it to their homes. The government has been utterly derelict in their duty. Lest we forget it was used to drag us into the madness of Brexit that has consumed this country for 4 years.

If only we could see

I remembered reading books by Lobsang Rampa in my late teens which covered paranormal and occultic themes. In one of his narrations, he was in a physics class where electromagnetism was being demonstrated with iron filings used to visually show electromagnetic waves. He told the class he could see electromagnetic waves and he apparently went through a test of his assertion with him being able to tell when the waves were present or not.

Won’t it be wonderful to have that kind sight to see where the Coronavirus is, in the air and on surfaces and by that be able to navigate the world without interacting with it except when found in enclosed places with others or when someone expels droplets by sneezing or coughing?

Back to my feeling at the beginning of the blog, this self-isolation is having the effect that I want to further isolate and extricate myself, I feel I am losing the mental capacity to call up people and engage, I am tired.

Opinion: By the measure of homelessness in the UK, we are a poor nation

Our streets of people in need

Daily, I find myself wondering what kind of society I am in, what has broken in our society and communities to see such poverty, destitution and hopelessness amongst us?

There is nothing first world on our streets, despite being one of the largest economies in the world, with all sorts of prospects for the United Kingdom, we cannot judge our progress on the prosperity of the rich getting richer, companies declaring vast profits, the stock exchange hitting new records and anyone else with the opportunity and good fortune laughing all the way to the bank.

As a consultant, I work around the UK, literally living in hotels and walking the streets therein. Living in Manchester, then working or temporarily staying in Edinburgh, Norwich, Great Yarmouth and now Reading, I cannot ignore the obvious.

I see hungry people

I see hungry people, I see homeless people, I see people approaching strangers begging for some spare change for a meal or to get a place to lay their heads for the night. Then some billboards tell me not to give money to street beggars because the said charities are there to help them back to a different life.

I am pained by my own helplessness, I cannot think of what I can really do to help anyone who has been caught in this situation apart from offer a handout. If I stopped to listen to their stories, it is very likely their story will be no different from mine.

Why? I was self-employed and independent, then I fell ill with a sickness and disease that could easily have killed me off, but thankfully I am still here. As I took on my treatment, I had no money coming in, I used up all my savings, I could not pay the mortgage and because of my seemingly independent life, I did not know I was entitled to any welfare.

A precipitous decline

I soon found out about my entitlements six months after I fell ill, my creditors were very understanding, in fact, they probably had more faith in my recovery than I did, they had a good idea of what I earned before and my possible earning potential if I did recover. Yet, there were days I went hungry, my eyes almost popping out in the agonising pain of cancer, but for the succour and friendship of neighbours and friends, I could have despaired and expired.

I still had a roof over my head for another 30 months after my cancer diagnosis, but I could not sustain my situation, things were not looking as rosy as I had hope that I decided to sell up. The day before I moved out of my apartment of 126 months, I did not know where I would spend the next night, and then a free offer to occupy a vacated house come up which I occupied for two months.

After that, a young family put me up in their apartment caring for me for another 6 weeks before I decided to return to the UK after 12 and a half years in the Netherlands, with nothing but the hope that things will turn around, my cousin putting me up in a room as I returned.

As things looked up

Within 6 days of arrival, I had a job to travel around Europe for the next six months, however, some internal issues in the company meant the opportunity only lasted 5 weeks, it was another few months before I got a job in Wales where I was living out of hotels for the next 6 months.

Being in and out of work with no permanent residence could have taken its toll, I had many brushes on the brink of homelessness only to have people give me a place to recoup, reassess, rejig and reapply myself to getting back into useful employment and independence.

None of this would have been possible without a helping hand and there were many for which I am full of gratitude and appreciation that the best of humanity is still out there overflowing with the milk of kindness to help and to redeem.

Where is the help for all?

However, not everyone has that resource, not everyone has an angel, the angels to me were people like you and me. Many are homeless because of so many reasons too many to enumerate, from illness to unemployment, broken homes, divorce, a death in the family and even maybe substance abuse.

It is here that we must ask ourselves, what encourages substance abuse and is that not a symptom of some other underlying issue? I cannot sanctimoniously pontificate on these issues as if in my supposed saintliness I am beyond reproach, neither am I ready to accept as default that all beggars are beggars by choice, any money given them goes on drink and drugs or that they know where to get help and never use it.

I knew where to get help, as articulate and well-dressed as I was, I was both humiliated and turned away with the undertone of how dare I visit the homeless charity seeking help. I submit that if the charities were really doing their charitable duties, there would probably be fewer homeless people on our streets. I am doubtful they are doing anything that would encourage me to donate to the charities when I can open my hand to a person begging in front of me.

They are human beings first

It is a cancer within our midst that we have that many homeless people around us and from my experience, the very likelihood why the homeless would not visit homeless charities is because first, they are not treated as human beings, they are not treated with respect, they are looked down on as the dregs of society that there is nothing in place as the kind of helping hands I had to give me the opportunity and space to come out of the quagmire I was in.

Nobody wants to return to a workhouse environment redolent of the Victorian times and these places that portend to tackle homelessness must be more welcoming than they appear to be.

I see instances when someone begging needs £16 to stay in a hostel, it is unlikely if they make the £16, they would immediately spend it on one night’s shelter when there is food to think about.

The pall of homelessness

It is not without consideration that I think of a man I loved, Chris was ejected from his home by his mother at the age of 15 because he was gay and though he made something of his life to the extent that his parents relied on him to bury them well, Chris died 21 years after that ejection and it cannot be unrelated to the homelessness he suffered as a teenager before someone helped him.

I could see signs of that experience in everything that Chris did because these things are markedly significant, yet, he was amazingly loving and wonderful company to be with. Whilst he rests, I still miss him, 36 was too young an age to die and he’s been gone over 8 years.

I walk to the gym in my shorts on typical winter days seeing people in the dead of the night still hungry, homeless, cold and anything uncomfortable, I do not see anything happening to help them, I have not amazing solutions and sadly, we seem to be at the peak of government indolence and societal heartlessness.

This cannot continue, our society is the poorer for the hungry and homeless that roam around us in the vaunted prosperity of this great land. No, we are not prosperous, we are poor.

Hospital: Between ancient and modern phlebotomies

Ancient and modern

I cannot say I look forward to this experience as I did when I lived in the Netherlands. Things are so different around here and it does leave a kind of psychologically negative effect on the mind.

Walk into any of the hospitals in the Netherlands and it is somewhat welcoming rather than foreboding; well-light, the open expanse of atriums, nature giving life to places where people visit to find cure or respite for their ills and sicknesses.

With note and with thanks

Our much vaunted NHS, the National Health Service, one of the largest employers in the world, probably in the top five and things are not just different, but quite noticeably different.

Now, for my expensive drugs that are covered by NHS system, I am more than grateful, I probably will not see another 3 months if I did not daily dose myself with these therapeutic and prophylactic formulations, that must be said.

However, at the point where you walk into the hospital as I did a few days ago, things are just not as they probably should seem. Asking for directions at the main reception, I could not help but notice that it was staffed by volunteers. Bless their hearts, there have been cuts everywhere that we have to depend on volunteers and charity to get around the hospital.

The charity that helps

In fact, there are many areas where charity and selfless service has been exploited at the expense of getting professionals to do the job. Yet, volunteerism allows for people to feel useful and relevant to their communities. Even the main shop serving tea and coffee with snacks was manned by volunteer pensioners too and in a way the profits from that shop might be ploughed back into helping the hospital in some little way, it is help all the same.

The directions to the phlebotomy waiting room were clear enough and I got there, Blood Room, it is called to find probably 20 people ahead of me, prey for the vampires we were, every kind of person was there from those you could look at with concern to those you caught a glimpse of and yet were afraid to take a second look and we were all there for the same thing, to get blood drawn.

Forget the comparison

The Dutch have a rather slick operation for phlebotomies, you present your form which lists the blood tests to be conducted and hence the number of vials of blood to be drawn. The nurse keys in the tests and a list of labels are spewed out of the printer with the date of birth, the number of vials, the colour coding of vials and a queuing ticket.

Within 10 minutes, you are called into a cubicle, private with the curtain screen drawn, a greeting, a verification of date of birth, maybe a conversation and then the phlebotomy.

In the UK, Florence Nightingale will not look out of place. For the billions spent on computer systems, it has not caught up with this section of the hospital establishment anywhere I have been. Things are as manual as they come and forget the privacy, we all go into an open plan room where we are just as exposed for the same thing.

Needles!

After the confirmation of name and date of birth, the tourniquet is applied to the upper arm to help bulge up a vein on lower arm and the needle, the needle, steely and vicious, attached to a syringe-like plunger is inserted into the temple of body to draw life.

This needle is usually attached to a flexible tube in the Netherlands ensuring there is no discomfort with any movement especially when changing the vials. You can read from that, that it is different in the UK, our experience here is almost as Victorian as the old buildings that host these ‘modern’ hospitals.

This time, I even looked as the needle went in and did not flinch a bit as 6 vials of blood were drawn, the needle taken out and a bulb of cotton wool applied to the puncture wound which was held in place with plain masking tape. The sort that grabs your hairs in a painful waxing feeling when you are ready to take it off.

I cannot say where the vials went after that, but I can only hope that when the results are shared in a few weeks’ time, they will be from me. It goes without saying that I miss the sense of organisation and professionalism that I found in Dutch hospitals. Yet, when in the UK, we just have to make do with what we have got in the UK. C’est la vie.

Please do not walk on by

Life is not fair

As I passed through Manchester Piccadilly Station the other day, I saw an advertisement poster with the message, “Don’t fund the habit, fund the charities.”

There is a message there, but I do wonder if it is the true reflection of issues to do with many of the people I have encountered who beg on the streets in the many big cities I have been to.

In my own personal life, I have had plenty and very little, I have enjoyed extravagance and after illness I was reduced to penury, needing more help than my heretofore independence was able to ask for.

Doors slammed in my face

When I did ask for help, from a system into which during the good times I had paid all my dues and more, I encountered hurdles, bottlenecks, indifference and difficulty. [It took the hospital to unclog the system.]

Blog - Hospital eases bureaucratic stress

The things I was entitled to were denied me because I did not look vulnerable enough or did not tick all the boxes of desperate privation authored by some comfortable apparatchik oblivious of the realities on the street.

Blog - England: How Lewisham Single Homeless Intervention Prevention humiliated me

I cannot vouch for anyone in terms of whether they are struggling with drug or alcohol problems, but I can say that if the so-called charities were really doing the jobs they suggest they are doing with the funds people throw into their collecting buckets or the ones that can be transferred through the simplicity of Short Message Service (SMS) text messages, I should not be seeing beggars on our streets.

Who helps these people?

Yet, step out into Manchester City centre every evening and quite every major street corner has someone begging for spare change. Then there are others who would approach you with a story, long or short, their need is immediate and it makes no allowances for the smartness of seeking the nearest entrée to officialdom to get help.

In a few recent encounters, these were people who truthfully or otherwise on a cold damp night needed a place to sleep in shelters that would demand a payment before accepting them.

Where these people have fallen through the safety net with holes big enough to let elephants through without entanglement, they simply have nothing and sometimes not even a blanket to take shelter in an open street doorway.

No way out

They are usually in a catch-22 situation, for without an address you really cannot do anything, even if someone ignorantly and naively thinks the system and the welfare state is in overdrive, on anecdotal evidence alone, I can well assume that many who need that help cannot get beyond the first hurdle to get the help they need.

Blog - Thought Picnic: Returnee Woes

I cannot ignore such people, having lived so close to the edge, the people who were once invisible to me are too visible to walk past. Having been given a second chance of life after cancer, in the little and plenty that I have, I desire to have an open hand.

Prepare to give

An open hand is one that can give and it is also open to receive, the former being more impactful. Much that we donate goes to child welfare or animal welfare in faraway lands and that is good, but we stand in rank hypocrisy if at our doorsteps there be many who are needy and we in response to those advertisements decide not to do the needful.

These people are our neighbours, the ones on the furthest spectrum of our diverse humanity who have for all sorts of reasons happened upon hard times. Times we may never and I hope many never come to experience.

However, I know what a very little gift can do for someone desperately in need, and if we challenge ourselves to address that need generously, for some, we would have become angels.

In the words of Mahatma Gandhi, “There are people in this world so hungry, that God cannot appear them except in the form of bread.”

Where charities cannot bring bread to the hungry, I will do my bit, I hope the help I offer is helpful, but I would not agonise over what is done with the help I have offered.

Thought Picnic: Of Charity and Sacrifice

Welcome to the temple

Back at church today, one was caught between the enduring and the sacrifice, that being the story of Christ and the seemingly ordinary story of two men as depicted on plaques and memorial stones in the church.

There is much to be said of both the magnificence and simplicity of Manchester Cathedral (Cathedral and Collegiate Church of St Mary, St Denys and St George in Manchester), its very accessible and welcoming nave and a message easy to the ear, the hearing and the soul.

In the traditional church calendar, today marked the Presentation of Christ in the Temple, the hymns, the readings and the sermon followed this theme.

Accommodation and ceremony

The pamphlet contained everything, this time, not much of a fidget to follow the service. At Communion the openness of fellowship is most evident because members of all Christian Churches are invited to receive Communion, yet you can also step forward to just receive a blessing. By informing a steward before the service, you can also receive a gluten-free communion wafer.

This time we did go High Church with incense at the altar, something the pamphlet informed us about, the pomp and ceremony at church can be quite engaging just as it is spiritual, I would suppose anytime I am in Manchester I would be revisiting my Anglican heritage and roots.

Enduring charity

Humphrey Booth (d. 1635) was a wealthy merchant whose charitable activities are recorded on plaque in the church, but more significantly is that what he bequeathed to Manchester that helped in restoring the church in the aftermath of the Manchester explosion of the 15^th of June 1996. I was in Manchester on that day, just 10 yards from where shards of glass fell on someone not long after I heard a loud bang and wondered until it occurred to me that it was a bomb.

Had he expended his means on ostentatious and hedonistic living, it is unlikely that 366 years after his death any of his substance would have been so remembered and recorded in posterity as I have been able to observe.

More on Humphrey Booth’s legacy – The Humphrey Booth Resource Centre.

Recognised piety

John Bradford (c. 1510 - 1555) of indeterminate birth date is memorialised with a plaque as a scholar, a reformer, a fearless preacher, a prebendary of St Paul’s Cathedral and was burnt at the stake for heresy. The heresy being as a Protestant he refused to revert to the Catholic faith that Mary Tudor (Bloody Mary) tried to restore in the land.

English church history has it that the government feared the consequences of putting John Bradford to death, more significantly, the crowds did protest his burning at the stake.

Honour of sacrifice

What caught my eye about his plaque was not that he was a son of Manchester and of great repute to be recognised as learned and significantly opposed to the direction of the royal court but that his last words were, “Oh, What am I Lord, that thou shouldest thus magnify me?”

When I look at traditional Christianity and what passes for it today, especially amongst the leadership, one can only be moved by the stories of charity and sacrifice, charity that endures for centuries and sacrifice where those who suffer by reason of their faith see their suffering in the light of their innocence still count it great honour to so treated for their profession.

One must stop and think, beyond which the search for Good Samaritan humanity that touches people continues in the church and on the streets.

The life of Mother Theresa in a London exhibition

A mother of excellent service

As I walked up Charing Cross Road just after Foyles but before Tottenham Court Road Station on the left where it is a construction site with diversions and a modicum of inconvenience, I was handed a leaflet for the official exhibition of the life of Mother Theresa.

If I remember correctly, she died in the week following the death of Princess Diana as if she chose the occasion to slip away with pomp or ceremony as the world was distracted by the celebrity and sad end of the fairy tale of this other famous woman.

The exhibition in a church just off Soho Square had a chapel with a statue of Mother Theresa in prayerful pose with a notice for all to pick a prayer card from a bowl beside the statue. I in fact thought the statue was real at first.

Features to see

There is was a 55-minute documentary about the life of Mother Theresa, a corridor with pictures of events in her life and a hall with about 100 posters illustrating and describing her life from birth, through her ministry to her death.

There was so much to read of this remarkable woman, her faith, her service, her Christian piety and her deep commitment to the suffering of so many, her example puts to shame too many Christian leaders reaping their rewards already that they might naught when heaven comes.

Profoundly, I was moved by her response to aborting by getting involved, she offered to care from the unwanted children pleading that they be brought to term. It is a lot different from those who pay lip-service to being pro-life but are not there to really bear the burden that comes with the good-intentioned activism but absence of requisite charity to back those agitations.

There were panels of effects of Mother Theresa to view much of which I believe when she is made a catholic saint will be put in reliquaries for veneration and supplication.

Elsewhere in the church a replica of the room where Mother Theresa lived was constructed for viewing too.

Getting there

The volunteers were helpful, friendly, knowledgeable and nice, they exuded temperance and soothing affection, you could not demand too much of them.

The exhibition runs until the 15^th of September from Tuesdays to Sundays between the times of 11:00AM and 7:00PM at St Patrick’s Church, Soho Square, London W1D 4NR. The entrance to the exhibition is at the corner of Charing Cross Road and Goslett Yard.

Those requiring wheelchair access should call 07719 927 419, it is also the number of other enquiries and you can also email MotherTheresaExhibition@gmail.com – visit if you do have the time, donate to the church and write in the register of visitors.

To that Young Christian Family, blessings that overflow

A book for example

If men of renown should gather once again as they gathered many centuries ago to select canonically inspired texts to include in the Holy book, I will suggest it be called the Acts of the Disciples.

For what I have had revealed to me as real as when Moses stood and watched the burning bush is the magnanimity of humanity expressed in Christian care, love, compassion and support.

They gave and blessed

There be many who have our of their hearts, out of the minds and out of their hands poured blessings, gifts, encouragement, prayer and help into my life beyond that I can express.

Out of their little, I got much and out of their much I got some, in money, in lodgings, in food, in words and in deed. In the midst of nothing, I did not lack for anything; they did not let me fall.

However, for all the stars that shone in the night sky of Bethlehem of old, one showed the way to where the new born king was lain in swaddling clothes for the wise men to visit to pay homage.

A young Christian Indian family

Likewise, there in the midst of the many that gave of what they have was this family, a young Christian Indian family whose heart overflowed with such undeserved compassion, love, tenderness and mercy towards me that they invited me into their home to stay.

Their daughter with the sweetest smile you will ever see on anyone that walks this earth and so cutely fixed on a child gave up her room, happily, willingly and without reservation to joyfully have me stay with them.

We shared of everything and they constantly made me feel special, wanted and appreciated even though I was the one being supported.

Every consideration was given to make me comfortable, they refused to let my thoughts wander into the depths of despair as they fed me, watered me, gave me rest, gave me peace and gave me space.

Yet, they did not stop giving and helping from what they had, their example is one of Christian purpose with commensurate action, ever prayerful, ever humble and ever gracious.

A veritable lesson

For what they did, they brought discomfort to some who were not there to help but ready to criticise and one can understand. They had combined matchless Christian charity with incredible Indian hospitality that definitely made much of the Christian expression in our Western culture and values look wanting and lacking.

I cannot be thankful enough to this young Christian family, where they are from as they always told me was secondary to their Christian purpose in life – to help the needy, to minister to others and to give even when they did not have enough for themselves.

My prayer

In my heart of hearts, I pray that their rewards of joy, of prosperity, of health, of peace and everything that is wholesome, good and nice come upon from this time like the floods of Noah that they begin to enjoy the pleasures of Paradise from earth well into their old age and that is just the beginning of the prayers for them.

I am forever in gratitude to them for if the Acts of the Disciples were to be written today, they will deserve a chapter just to talk of their exploits – living out the Christian way.

Think about this as you conclude reading and bless them from your hearts as you do.

Thank you.