I asked myself what someone who has little money could actually accomplish to get the homeless back home again, and this is what I came up with — The Lucky Penny.
It has to be hand-searched, not bought in rolls, and it has to be unusually brilliant and unusually lucky to have been found, which covers a very slim territory, meaning that they aren’t all that easy to find, if you’re looking for speed-search.
The captured coins need to then be packaged, first in the small sleeve, then in the large packet, along with a backing card that contains the information about the coin, why it’s so lucky, etc.
Pennies From Heaven is a way of thinking. Let’s look at the situation of the homeless — first of all, there is no “the” homeless, every case is different, and money is not the only reason someone ends up on the street or in a tent city, and none of those reasons makes the victim at fault, but that’s where society places them.
So with little or no personal money, where do I even START???
Okay, first of all, you can’t FEED someone off the street. You can feed the body some food some of the time, but you’ll have to get money to do that, and while you’re getting the money for the food, who’s cooking it?
Then who delivers it, and to whom, and with what plates, knives, forks, spoons, cups?
It’s a LOT more complicated than one person can handle, but there IS a way to help and at the same time do some service and get some Merit.
Merit is the ticket that buys you out of this lower swamp level, and nothing else will do it. You need Merit, and that’s not just “good deeds” or “good intentions”.
Those and a couple of bucks MIGHT get you on a city bus, but it WON’T get you off The Wheel anytime soon.
There is no DIRECT ROUTE from homeless to employed and living at home. It’s a hard and complex road that must be taken step by step, but here’s the thing — if you merely feed the homeless, they may survive, but they still have no hope. Continue reading →
