Most folk don't want to hear me talk about slums. I once thought that slum life would make this blog unique. The internet is saturated with almost everything, but there aren't many English-speaking slum bloggers. Maybe people wouldn't want to hear what I had to say about money, power, or nonviolence, but at least they'd …
I was gonna write something else this week but this one is stuck on my heart. Our dear friend Aslam was recently diagnosed with Stage 4 cancer. The shock came just a year after he got married, a month before his son was to be born. The news has been a roller coaster - the …
We were wiped out from the wedding. The trip to the nation's capital was in itself exhausting, and a long day had played out getting the groom's side into a bus, across town to the event, and out in the hot sun for the festivities. It was well past dusk before all fifty of us …
Three years ago our 14-year-old friend Neha was married off illegally. As we were very close to the family the preparation was done in secret, so we wouldn't know about it and couldn't stop it. I found out what was happening halfway through the wedding (which was only supposed to be for her older sister's …
I consider the following statement by economist Silvio Gesell, made on the eve of the Armistice Agreement (the end of World War I), to be one of the most prescient assertions in published history. “In spite of the holy promises of people to banish war once and for all, in spite of the cry of …
For centuries the Church spoke with strength against usury. Then society changed so much that the message could no longer be heard. The transition from abhorrence to acceptance is best demonstrated by a letter of St. Francis Xavier, the famous 16th-century Catholic missionary and co-founder of the Jesuits, writing to a priest. When in the …
Basil the Great, among the most renowned of the early Church fathers, states: When the prophet wished to describe in words those who have attained perfection, those who are about to attain to everlasting life, he reckoned among their noble works the following: “They do not lend money at interest.” This sin is denounced in …
I was recently reminded that some people read the books I recommend. Peregrine and I are by no means the first Christians to move into a slum community to find solidarity with the poor. In fact, several of the other rich people who moved into slums ended up writing books about the experience. Here are …
The tiny girl in front of me was learning to read with incredible speed. Though she only knew three letters when she started, by the second lesson she could identify ten letters and combine them to form words. By her 16th lesson she had memorized the entire alphabet (there are more than 50 letters in ours) …
Dèyè mòn gen mòn. Beyond mountains there are mountains. HAITIAN PROVERB ...And right action is freedom From past and future also. For most of us, this is the aim Never here to be realized; Who are only undefeated Because we have gone on trying… T.S. ELIOT, “THE DRY SALVAGES” Mountains Beyond Mountains is …
Stranger in a Slum 