SPUM

 

This is the last of the blogs about the quilt. Twelve t-shirts converted into a beautiful quilt that I keep in my lap all the time I am in my favorite recliner. That includes my writing time because my recliner is also my office.

This shirt is from the St Paul Urban Ministry (SPUM), circa 1994. God’s hand in the development of SPUM is well documented in my books and I won’t repeat all that here. Instead this blog is about the development of the logo.

Mark (#2 son) was the youth minister of the Oxford Church of Christ in Oxford Mississippi. He was instrumental in the development of the urban ministry in several respects. As we were trying to figure out how to start, he called to ask if we could use an intern for the summer. He had a friend, a young man named Richard Palmer who was still a student at Magnolia Bible College where Mark had recently graduated. As it turned out Richard had previously done urban ministry internships in both Atlanta and Nashville. He totally shaped our approach.

During the summer that Richard was with us, Mark called to ask whether we could use a team of Mississippi kids and their parents to do a VBS for us. That was a great time for it and it provided a much needed kick off for the ministry.

At some point in all this I was in Oxford and Mark and I got to talking about a logo for the ministry. Computers were not really all that common yet, but he had access to one in his office and we got to playing around. On the front of this t-shirt is a small logo crafted from clip art. It is a pair of folded hands holding a city skyline. It didn’t make the quilt because the back of the shirt made a better addition to it. The hands and the city were later redone, drawn by hand, by Mike (#1 son).

On the back, the part shown on the quilt, it says “Jesus Loves the West Side.” I took some flack for that one. I got some “Jesus loves everybody” and of course He does, but that misses the point. It’s like Black Lives Matter. Of course, all lives matter, but the point is that it is Black lives that appear not to matter in today’s culture.

The West Side of St Paul is across the river from downtown. It is really south but is called the West Side because to a river boat coming up stream the left side is called “west”, even if as the river twists and turns it is south on the compass. Early on the west side flats became the home of new immigrants from Europe and Russia. More recently it has become largely Hispanic culturally. It is currently home to several well-known Mexican restaurants, gift shops and other such businesses. It was considered a more affordable place to live than St Paul proper. Hence the “Jesus Loves the West Side” reference.

The Urban Ministry, by the way, is still going strong though no longer centered on the West Side.

 

 

Meanwhile Back to The Quilt

This is the penultimate shirt on the quilt our friend Bev made for me from twelve of my favorite t-shirts. We got it at Neil Diamond’s 50^th anniversary concert here in St Paul. The rest of the tour was cancelled because he had been diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease. He retired from touring but made a surprise appearance in March of this year when he took the stage at MGM Grand Garden Arena in Las Vegas giving fans a rare show two years after announcing his retirement.

I have loved Neil Diamond’s music since our Tallahassee days in the 80’s. It is part of the music our kids grew up with along with Cat Stevens, John Denver, Johnny Cash, The Oak Ridge Boys, Willie, and many others. He is ten months older than I am (making him 79 right now) and has sold over a hundred million records. I love all his stuff. I don’t think there is one I don’t like, but my all-time favorite has to be “I am…I said.” It is the cry of so many of us, longing to be recognized for who we really are. 

One of his signature songs, “Sweet Caroline” is probably better known, with the added words from the audience “So Good! So Good” after Diamond sings “Sweet Caroline, Good times never seemed so good.”

How Shall We Help the Poor?

Democracy is two wolves and a lamb deciding what is for lunch – attributed to Benjamin Franklin

That sounds harsh, but it is not intended to be. That is how it works out over time. The poor stay poor; the rich stay rich. Racism plays a part but is not all of it.

Here is what we need to do to end poverty and its insidious effects:

1. Ensure that everyone has a safe, healthy place to live. To do that we must control the ratio between income on one hand and rent or property ownership on the other. That means the government will have to interfere to some extent with landlords’ decision making. See #3 below
2. Educate everybody’s children. You cannot leave that up to the teachers’ unions and the local school board. They both have vested interests that work against the goal. Take them out of the equation. “Defund the schools” if you will. Education must have a strong employment and job skills element with student choice about what kind of job she or he wants to work toward. Encourage entrepreneurship. Set up loan programs to fund the start up for qualifying ideas
3. A living wage for everyone. You cannot put this burden on small business. It just will not work. Everyone must have an income that will house them adequately, feed them and their children, care for the children while they work. Only the government can pull this off.
4. Criminal Justice Reform. Examine every criminal law. Look at who violates it, what is the consequence of the violation, is the punishment commensurate with the violation? Empty the prisons of people who are not a physical threat to society. But if you do not take care of 1, 2, and 3, this part will not work.
5. Mental Health Reform. Assign a professional guide to everyone with serious mental health issues.
6.  End our role as the world’s police. Bring the military, military aid, and weapons funding home. Give up on taking sides in wars around the globe.  Prepare our scaled down military to defend our shores, not from refugees but from those who would use force to harm us. Instead, fund a comprehensive domestic service that pays a living wage and does productive work in our communities and public places.

Who will pay for all this? It must be the people who will benefit financially from it the most: the corporations and people who are making the most money from our current system. They will naturally profit as our society gains equality, knowledge, and stability. Start with the billionaire corporations and individuals and work your way down through the millionaires and into the six-digit earning group if necessary.

It is doable. It makes sense. It is fair and equitable. It takes race out of the equation. Why not? All we must do is overcome the resistance of the people who have a stake in the status quo – like corporate boards and big unions – the people who hold all the money now and will fight to keep it. But there are enough poor and middle-class sympathizers to outnumber the money holders. The percentage of people at the top of the food chain has become smaller and smaller until they are now outnumbered. We just have to stand up.

Oh, and do not give this approach a name that will tie it to history. It is not socialism or communism. It is a fair economy.