In honor of President’s Day today, I’ve decided to become president. (It’s kind of a Norman Vincent Peale thing.)… I recently referenced a talk I went to in Rome, Georgia, about the writings of G.K. Chesterton. During the talk, presenter Tom Farmer read a number of famous Chesterton quotes. In referring to modern man being lost in a fog of mental thought, Chesterton said: “Mankind has always lost his way — but now he has lost his address.” And that, indeed, is metaphorically correct in our post modern society. However at our next stop in the heart of Atlanta, we met a good number of people who have lost their physical address as well… We arrived at the Open Door Community in downtown Atlanta to do research for a position paper we’re drafting on poverty. The Open Door is a Catholic Worker House serving the poor and homeless. We were given a tour of the house by Calvin Kimbrough. He said in the lead up to the Olympics in Atlanta, “the city was turned into a Disneyland for people with money.” One of the byproducts was a lot of low income housing was torn down for parts of the Olympic Village, and so on. Coupled with this, metropolitan Atlanta is going through a major “gentrification” process in general. That is, more low income housing is being demolished, and in turn, more high-priced condos, and the like, are going up for such demographic populations as young urban professionals. The result: More poor are on the streets, like Rob… I talked to Rob outside the Open Door while he was waiting to get into the Soup Kitchen. He told me he’d been homeless the past six months. And with temperatures in the mid-20s the night before, he said he’d slept at a homeless shelter a couple miles away. There had been 700 people in the shelter, and some 15 fights had broken out during the course of the night, Rob lamented… Later that night before dinner for the volunteers, Mr. Kimbrough prayed: “Oh Lord, afflict those of us who are warm and full…” Continuing on that theme, the next day I gave a talk to a group of volunteers who had come in to help from all parts of metropolitan and suburban Atlanta. I said that the ultimate social justice irony is that we shelter cars in this society, while people like Rob sleep on the streets… And not only are they on the streets, but Atlanta, of late, has made it even more uncomfortable for them to be on the streets. Open Door volunteer Lauren Cogswell told me the city has passed ordinances to create a “Vagrant Free Zone,” in tandem with those on the streets being arrested for things like “urban camping,” jay walking, loitering. “They are called ‘Quality of Life’ ordinances, but they are really ‘Quality of Death’ ordinances for the poor,” said Ms. Cogswell, who added Atlanta seems much more concerned about tourist dollars than they are about their own poor… And in this paradigm (tourist dollars, gentrification, cars in suburban garages while children sleep on the streets…) is the crux of the problem, according to Georgia State University Philosophy Professor Jeannie Alexander. (She also volunteers at the Open Door.) Professor Alexander said that a person of faith’s economic philosophy, in the face of current inner city, and Third World, poverty, should be: Once your basic needs for shelter, food, clothing, medicine and transportation are met, to increase your comfort is nothing short of “acting immorally.” Professor Alexander added that why this is seldom, if ever, heard from the pulpit is because most modern day priests and ministers are living square in the middle of their own ‘comfort immorality.’ Note: During the three days at the Open Door, I came across a New York Times article about people buying mini-factory built “second homes” for vacation properties. These homes range from, say, a 10-foot-square cabana for about $9,000 to a 700-square-foot “weeHouse” from Alchemy Architects in northern Minnesota… I couldn’t help but think as I read the article, how these places would look like mansions to the Robs of the world. And if we put these houses on the properties of our primary residences and shared, for instance, a common kitchen, the homeless would start to feel like family. And in all this, who knows, God might start preparing at least weeHouses for us in a place where the “last will be first.”   Translated: This means Rob will be in the mansion.   (See the ‘rich guy and Lazarus the beggar’ biblical parable.)