Replying to LO28562 --
Dear Organlearners,
Andrew Campbell < ACampnona@aol.com > writes:
>At has mentioned here that his daughter stayed with
>us recently, Ilse-Marie. Ilse-Marie is an artist as well
>as a scientist.
Greetings dear Andrew,
Then you have seen nothing. Her older sister Jeanette is a food
technologist, but it is her being an artist which brings her sometimes
into trouble. She does before she thinks, she thrives on emotions and she
paints like a master.
>We will then donate the money they create to the family.
>If we hit even an average sum that will create a small
>pool of purposeful capital for At to use as (micro-credit)
>as his wisdom guides him on their behalf and ours. I think
>At is creative enough to handle the entropy production
>side of that aspect of giving.
Dear Andrew, thank you, but no thank you. First of all, we manage to
support them in their material needs. Secondly, where we lack, i simply
ask someone for whom i have done consulting work to write out a check. I
do not want payment for consulting work because then i cannot speak out
honestly. Thirdly, helping one family still leaves thousands of others in
deep trouble.
But the last reason is perhaps the most important of all. A fellow learner
have written in private to me. His organisation is helping a number of
poor families, especially the children. They have learned that in some
cases the poor became so much dependent on their support that they began
to neglect supporting themselves. In other words, external support
corrupts internal support. One of the members of their organisation,
perhaps the driving force behind their support initiative, has now the
saying "Every good deed shall be punished to its fullest".
This is indeed one of my fears for this family and thousands of others
like them -- that our help will corrupt them in not trying to learn how to
support themselves in future. Some families do get out of such a mess with
support or without it, but most other just sink deeper into poverty with
support or without it.
Like DP Dash reminded us -- do we have a problem here of which its
solution requires a higher level of thinking? For example, most of these
poor families have the following two things in common -- they do not fit
in any more with the well defined jobs within organisations and they are
not able to create jobs for themselves. Has their poverty not something to
do in the way our organisations at large function?
>My view tonight is simply this. I have nothing spiritually
>to offer this family. What contact I have had with poor
>people here tells me that I want to 'go' with my outlined
>proposition. I can and do offer them a 'material' outcome
>from a few moments of shared and very special creative
>activity.
We are effectively in the same boat as you. What we give spiritually does
not seem to make any difference. Perhaps it is, but then its effect is so
slow that we cannot perceive any difference. Perhaps it is doing a great
difference in keeping them spiritually alive. For example, in our parish
there was a WAM (White Afrikaans Male). The company he worked for, got
bankcrupt. For more than a year he looked for any job, but could not get
any because of being a WAM. Last month he commited suicide. I think it was
because of a lack of spiritual care in our parish.
>At, One of the things I shared with Rick when he came
>to visit our tiny cottage was that I had found the place
>where I wanted to be buried, I also explained that I
>wanted to have a 'paupers burial'. During this 'project'
>I must make it my business to arrange that.
Yes, my family knows that they will have to do some 1000km of traveling to
the Augrabies Falls in the Gariep (Orange) river. From there the river
runs through deserts to the sea. So must my ashes too.
Thank you Andrew for your input. Throught it one thing is beginning to
become clear to me -- the lack of art in the lives of this family and
thousands of others like them. Where there is art, there is life.
With care and best wishes
--At de Lange <amdelange@gold.up.ac.za> Snailmail: A M de Lange Gold Fields Computer Centre Faculty of Science - University of Pretoria Pretoria 0001 - Rep of South Africa
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