Following up on yesterday's post, two items in today's RTD keep the question before us: how do we, as people of different faiths, live together?
M.P. Williams has it right. Of course Henrico should OK the mosque. Likewise, the editorial page has it right, the President should do as President Bush did and meet openly with the Dalai Lama. Granted, that's easy to put in a web post, and hard to execute foreign-policy-wise; nonetheless, it's the right thing to do.
In only a matter of weeks, we will arrive at the 10th anniversary of September 11, 2001. With this mind, may each of us, and may each community of faith, do all that we can do to promote respect and compassion for people of all faiths. It's the right thing to do; and it's the holy thing to do.
On Monday, the President of Housing Opportunities Made Equal (HOME) was profiled in "HOME Leader Fights for Fair Housing," in the Richmond Times-Dispatch. Speaking to the reporter, Connie Chamberlin explained what motivates her work at HOME:
"I work for an organization that has a mission that involves changing the world, and it's doing a good job step by step."
And change the world they do, showing up day after day and doing the unsung legwork necessary to fight discrimination in housing access and remain a force for justice in our city.
HOME, with St. Paul's roots, was founded in 1971 and celebrates its 40th anniversary this year.
On Saturday, the Rev. Bill Sachs, of St. Stephen's, kicked off a new weekly column in the RTD on Faith & Values. It was a good start and the series sounds promising. We'll have to keep an eye out.
I hope you saw Kelly King Horne's column in this week's RTD, where she talks about the mission of Homeward, the organization she heads. As I say above, St. Paul's is honored to partner with Homeward; indeed, as I have said to Kelly, our partnership with Homeward is one we at St. Paul's hold especially dear.
The Project Homeless Connect, which took place yesterday, is just one example of the vital work that Homeward does, year in year out, day in day out. Thanks to the many St. Paul's parishioners who volunteered this year and to our Social Worker, Jenny Bliley, who helped coordinate volunteers for the day and who has coordinated haircuts for Project Homeless Connect in the past.
I encourage anyone reading this post to consider your part in ending homelessness in Richmond. It begins with prayer. And, as we often say, let us pray for the grace and strength and wisdom to work for those very same things for which we pray.
God bless, Kelly, and God bless Homeward.
St. Paul's & Homeward
Below is a video by Jaclyn O'Laughlin for her Richmond Economy Project that was posted earlier this year, highlighting our partnership with Homeward.
"If hope springs eternal, then why does looking for a job often feel so hopeless?
When I see newspaper or TV accounts of unemployed people lining up at "job fairs" (which don't seem fair at all), clutching résumés and looking stoically ahead into uncertain futures, I wonder if these are the images that historians will use in the 22nd century to describe our prolonged period of economic nausea.
Are they our epoch's equivalent of the graphic Depression photographs captured by Walker Evans in Let Us Now Praise Famous Men?
After reluctantly leaving a job early this year, I experienced for the first time some measure of that gut-churning, insecure feeling of being jobless at a very bad point in our nation's history..." Click here to keep reading.
Thank you, Chip, for (to borrow a line from the 12 Steps) sharing your experience, your strength, and your hope, with countless people.
Bless you, brother.
Pictured: People stand in line as they wait to talk with potential employers during a job fair last year. Photo by Mel Evans/Associated Press.
In Sunday's RTD, there's an interesting article, "God in America," in, interestingly enough, the Flair section. Anyway, it's worth a read, and it gets better as it goes. The author interviewed a range of Richmonders, including our own Ben Campbell. And the story that Renee Cobb tells is one I won't soon forget, with her, as a young girl in her mother's lap, and her mother telling her over and over, "You are here to change the world."
Michael Paul Williams' column today reflects on a regrettable distortion of the historical record, which appears in a current textbook used by some of Virginia's fourth graders. Corrective action has been taken by the book's publisher (a sticker). That's certainly a good thing, the corrective action, that is; however, the error itself draws attention to something too large for any sticker to cover, namely, the invaluable importance of sticking to the truth.
As we swing into the Sesqicentennial of the Civil War & Emancipation, this is a lesson worth iterating and reiterating.
We Virginians must take responsibility for our part in creating and sustaining a river of illegal guns currently flowing into the hands of criminals.
As the Mayor says, lives are at stake here. Indeed, to put it plainly, we have blood on our hands. And it's time to wash our hands, to wash our hands of irresponsible gun policy.
May God give us the courage to do so.
There's no time to waste.
Trace the Guns
Click here to read A Word from Grace Street about my experience at a gun show on the outskirts of Richmond.
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And I hope you saw the 
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