what Christian charity looks like
By Phil Lawler (bio - articles ) | November 25, 2005 5:06 PM
While millions of Americans lazily begin working off the calories from a big turkey dinner, as others launch furious assaults on the local shopping malls, the New Orleans Times-Picayune gives this humbling report from a country where things are a bit different:
The Kireka slum clings to a stony hillside above Kampala, Uganda, home to at least 5,000 impoverished refugees who live in hand-fashioned shelters bordered by outdoor latrines. The hillside is not only home, but work: Strip quarries line its face. Men dig out its larger rocks, while hundreds of women spend their days in stooped manual labor, pounding the rocks by hand into walnut-sized stones for sale as construction material. They earn about $1.20 per day.So American aid worker Amy Cunningham could scarcely believe it when she was summoned to Kireka last month for a festive celebration in which dozens of women handed over nearly $900 in wages: their gift to victims of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans.
The story by Bruce Nolan goes on to tell about the AIDS epidemic that is scouring Uganda, the civil war that is killing women and children and stopping relief shipments. And this:
In a country where the average annual income is about $300, Archbishop John Baptist Odama raised $500 over several weeks among Catholics in northern Uganda in special collections for New Orleans relief...
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Posted by: Vincit omnia amor -
Nov. 26, 2005 9:42 PM ET USA
Dear "Canismater." I understand what you are saying, but the use of the word "spiritualism," as it is more commonly used, is understood to be the belief that the dead communicate with the living, as through a medium. Perhaps, "spirituality" in this case would be better. Blessed are the poor!
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Posted by: -
Nov. 26, 2005 3:39 PM ET USA
Yes. The poor can be very generous because they know at first hand what need and hardship are like.
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Posted by: Canismater -
Nov. 26, 2005 3:05 PM ET USA
It’s tough to take but true nonetheless. Poverty produces spiritualism; abundance produces materialism. Blessed are the poor...
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Posted by: Cantor Rich -
Nov. 26, 2005 2:43 AM ET USA
It DOES sort of put us to shame, doesn't it, Phil?
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Posted by: Vincit omnia amor -
Nov. 25, 2005 9:01 PM ET USA
The poor are generally not out done in generosity . . . and the Good Lord see this! May all of us learn from this example that we may give, like Mother Teresa said: "until it hurts."
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Posted by: aarrdy -
Nov. 25, 2005 8:17 PM ET USA
Thank You for this very touching story.. May God bless those doners and their generosity..
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Posted by: -
Nov. 25, 2005 7:58 PM ET USA
Wasn't it the widow who gave the smallest but the most whom Jesus praised? I need this simplicity, generosity, goodness of spirit and faith.
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Posted by: Sir William -
Nov. 25, 2005 5:33 PM ET USA
It makes one feel very very small.
