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Join us as we gather at 6:30 every Friday evening for prayer, music, readings and silence in the parlor at Hope, 85 Grand Street here in Newburgh. Come if you can and stay for a bowl of soup, some crusty bread as we plan a study of the Beatitudes we'll be hosting during Lent. 

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Every Day

4:00 p.m. - 8:00 p.m.

Our House is open

85 Grand Street

 

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85 Grand Street

 

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1:30 p.m.

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85 Grand Street

 

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Here's a short list of items we could really use:

1. Winter boots - the exact same size as that extra pair you've got in the closet.

2. Gloves

3. White socks. The Dollar Store kind are fine

4. Lip Balm

5. Disposable razors

6. Deodorant

Bring them by, send them over, drop us a note and we'll pick them up if we can. 
 

     Hi there!
     We got a package the other day. In it was a pair of brand new size 10 boots and a note that read, "Wow - we had exactly the size you were looking for!" That was it. It took a few moments before we realized that our friends Bill & Cathy Schmalkuche were the culprits . . .
   And, of course, the boots turned out to be a perfect fit for
George shows of the new boots he'll wear on his 3-mile journey to work.
our friend George who trudges nearly three miles to his part-time job at ShopRite no matter what the weather. After child support payments are deducted from his pay, George doesn't have enough money for decent place in which to live.
   If you haven't already, you too can make a big difference in someone's life by dropping off a pair of socks or some of those soaps you collect when you stay in a motel or some lip balm or something else we've got on the wish list you see all the way down the column to your left.
   There's other good stuff over to the left as well. We hope you'll take the time to check it out. And, we hope you'll read the story below about this year's homeless count and spend some time with Steve and his ruminations about salt and light . . .
It's not about a number; it's about a name
Leslie Hoffman, a founding member of Ecclesia and Our House mainstay, talks things over with Adam who is one of 70 folks who have no place to live.
 
  Adam abandoned his "summer home" behind a Broadway business when the weather turned really cold. When he's lucky, he stays with a friend. When he's not so lucky, he might stay in the police station lobby or join a handful of others who sometimes spend the night at Our House. He's among the nearly 70 folks here in Newburgh who have no place to go at night. Or, at least that's how many "unsheltered" homeless folks we counted last year during the annual Point In Time count mandated by the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). We're not sure about this year's numbers. Last Thursday, January 30th, was Count Day and the numbers haven't been tallied yet.
   The Point in Time count is a nationwide event. That's how we know there are between 1.6 and 1.7 million of our fellow Americans who are homeless and that about 53,000 of them are veterans. But, more than that, the count is a tool that can be used to support public policy decisions, understand the need for shelters and homeless support services and so on.
   For us, though, the statistics aren't what matter. What matters is the person behind the number, the person living in the woods, a makeshift shelter by the river, the third floor of an abandoned building, their car, or someplace else that you wouldn't want anyone you loved to be staying. We want to know them by name. We want to know their story. And, we want them to know that they're so important that someone they'd never met had them on her heart when she made a big pot of soup or when he headed to the post office to mail him a pair of boots.  
Lighting up the spice of life
    Of course, all that talk about giving to others and knowing names reminds me of next Sunday's gospel reading - Matthew 5:13-20 - where Jesus tells his listeners that they are the salt of the earth and the light of the world. It, I think, was Jesus' way of saying "be the real deal."
   Wait . . . I'll give you a couple of minutes to click on the link and read the passage . . .
  We can go chase all sorts of notions in reading this - how can salt lose its saltiness? What happens when a lamp gets hidden. And, we can go off on some tangent remembering how John Winthrop told the folks who were founding the Massachusetts Bay Colony that they were to found a "city upon a hill" that would be a model and how John Kennedy then Ronald Reagan picked up on that image claiming that America was/is that bright light of hope for all the world and then launch into some ramble about how wonderful "we" are until . . . until . . . we remember that in Jesus' day, Rome and the Roman Empire were known to be the light of the world. . . the shining city.
   So, let's not go there . . .
   The way that salt loses its saltiness is by becoming something else. The way a light stops doing its job is when it is hidden or turned off. So, what I'm hearing Jesus say is that we need to free ourselves of the things that get in the way of loving God with our whole selves and loving our neighbors as though they lived in our skin. He calls us to reach beyond ourselves to the neighborhood and to the world.
   Click here for a song to live by.   
Sweet dreams!.

 

The Rev. Steve Ruelke

Ecclesia Ministries of Newburgh

P: 845-527-0405

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