jim and melissa, good friends of kris, came through town last week, did a few gigs at local nursing homes, and stayed with us at the house for a little while. this video was made in the common room of the sparrow house with the help of gulliver and lucy. many thanks to jim and melissa for sharing their music with us. for more of these good folks’ jams, check out youtude.

a beautiful movie made by a community friend, maria sykes, about an awesome project for the people of greenriver, utah. great service anywhere should be celebrated everywhere.

serving dinner in south decatur on new year’s eve didn’t happen as i pondered resolutions or radical exertions that we were fighting the system. i didn’t want to be hasseled by the owners of the parking lot and i really didn’t want to answer too many questions about why i was serving chili off of an oldsmobile.

despite not maintaining a very new years-y, forward thinking posture during our service, there was a new resolve after we packed up everything and left. “the act of analyzing a complex notion into simpler ones”, is one definition of resolution and that is what had greater meaning on the first day of a fresh year.

this mission is simple. serve and love those who receive that service. complexity is added by a world that wants poverty to seem normal, deserved. and the christian voices made public, nourish the confusion by creating moral distractions. jesus was a homeless man from a forgettable town who died as the result of a death penalty that the state, obsessed with war and money, just couldn’t get enough of. if ever there were a scenario that seemed relevant, it is this one. christ’s life, documented and preached about by millions, is lived out every day in this very city by people we can no longer face.

we are told that “they are simply not trying hard enough and to allow them what they need to thrive would be too costly and complex.” but with great certitude, i feel it’s the opposite: “how they arrived at this fearful juncture may indeed be complex but serving them is simple.” it is far past time, for each of us to stop making this work into a cumbersome obligation and start looking forward to the simple service we have before us. i’m resolved to simplicity as this year breaks. here’s hoping i’ll be in good company.

(via thegang)

in the spirit of the season, a little carol by the folks from food not bombs atlanta. this song was sung last year outside a bed and breakfast owned by an atlanta politician who supported the city’s anti-panhandling ordinance.

“10,000 foreclosed homes land on the auction block in Fulton County every month. As a result of so many people losing their homes, Georgia ranks number seven in the nation for foreclosures.”

The Sparrow Community House was formed in the face of incredible need. As a group of people, we needed to feel like part of a community and we wanted that community to thrive on service. But before that thirst was placed the need of those alienated by a culture that sees homeless people, poor people as the enfleshed fear that the American Dream, in its most superficial sense, fails.

So six young people, worn out on liberal individualism and the highly-touted prosperity gospel came together and formed a home with a vision. Some of us had worked for and with folks experiencing homelessness. Others of us knew the statistics (Atlanta is the fourth “meanest” city for homeless people, Atlanta is the poorest city for children, on average 68,000 people a year will experience homeless in this city alone) and had felt paralyzed by the gravity of the situation. A few of us have been homeless. But we all had ideas about what a redistribution of resources meant for creating community and meeting unmet needs in the midst of economic hardship and hunger.

We decided to do our work in phases. As of November, we find ourselves at the onset of the first: serving meals. The money and resources to make these weekly meals possible are quickly being made available to us. And now we are searching for an accessible place within the Decatur community to make what we’re calling a potluck (to avoid the widely used term “feeding”) available to folks missing meals.

The second portion acknowledges that dignity and personhood are pulled from poor people along with other tangible resources. Focusing on emotional and physical wounds incurred through that disenfranchisement via counseling, massage therapy, and yoga is more than healing, it is empowering. We have the space and the volunteers to make that service available to those who have been denied access.

Lastly, we will open our doors to homeless friends without any other option in the state of Georgia. Transgender women who are negative for HIV and are over the age of 21 are left out of Georgia’s shelters due to institutionalized transphobia and sexism. This genocide has to stop and we believe that the work to end it falls squarely on the backs of those who cherish justice and mercy.

To serve those broken by the capitalist system is the very least required of each of us. And it is not long before we see this task as a blessing. For it is by meeting the brokenness in others that we recognize our great distance from wholeness. It is through the cracks that the light of reconciliation and peace finds its way. Our solidarity and service to one another will allow us to see beyond this darkness.

-hillary