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On Tue, 15 Nov 1994, Alan Yasutovich wrote:

> > 
> > 
> > Alan,
> > 
> > On Mon, 14 Nov 1994, Alan Yasutovich wrote:
> > 
> > Haven't you noticed that you are most satisfied and turned on when you 
> > are actively in pursuit of a worthy goal.  Doesn't matter whether it is a 
> > project at work, or adding the addition to the church.  Each has it's own 
> > rewards, but there is a simple satisfaction in the pursuit itself.
> 
> 
> 	Yes. Exactly.  That is the reason that kids need to be kept
> 	busy.  In productive, non-selfdestructive activities.
> 
> 	1) To keep them out of trouble.
> 	2) To form good personal habits for time usage.

I have been thinking about what kind of commitment might really make a 
difference from the standpoint of the church actually making a difference 
in the drugs/gangs/crime cycle of the street.

If the church was available as a community center, 7 days a week, with 
structured activities every afternoon/evening and saturdays as well as 
sunday service, after-service, and evenings, you could actually make a 
difference in the streets.  Do you know of any churches that have made 
that level of commitment?

> > Suppose that you weren't ALLOWED to pursue worthy goals.  Suppose that 
> > every time you tried, armed, uniformed men would stop you, humiliate you 
> > publicly, and physically abuse you?
> > 
> 	Well I'm not sure what you're driving at.  Maybe I'm naive.
> 	But the examples above don't seem to be at the forefront
> 	of reality.  You know, there was a point in time that I essentially
> 	believed that EVERYONE smoked pot?  That was my surrounding.
> 	My world.
> 
> 	On a higher level, I now know that EVERYBODY does not do
> 	ANYTHING.  And those examples seem like a subset of reality.
> 
> 	Certainly a reality that I have had no problem avoiding.

You proposed a solution to the cycle of gangs and street crime.  I spent 
a significant part of my life in the nice, safe suburbs of Denver.  The 
street was like another country.  In Denver "The Street" is Colfax.  I 
actually sought out the street.  After spending 20 years listening to 
nice, safe, white, upper middle class engineers, accountants, and lawyers 
talk about how we should minister to the people of the street (which only 
a few ever did) I found myself confronted with the reality that I knew 
nothing about the people I was trying to "help".  I got into their 
reality and gained a new respect for those people.

 
> 	It is a scary and somewhat unbelieve able scenario that I see
> 	when I talk to you.  On occasion in life I have met people 
> 	who just seem to have experienced too much of any one thing.

In many ways, I have had a charmed and miraculous life.  I am very 
successful and I'm happy most of the time.  I've had to overcome a few 
limitations like asthma, hay fever, epilepsy, alcoholism, and drug 
addiction, but then everyone has their own challenges in life.
 
> 	You seem to have a horror story about almost anything.
> 	Street life.  Church.  It is in the same realm as all the
> 	things I was saying about Purity.

I share some of the harsher experiences of life to illuminate a 
particular aspect of a problem.  You don't normally see the rats in the 
basement, but if you have rats in the basement, you need to know where 
they are, set the traps, and manage the problem.  If you want to address 
the issue of cleaning up the streets, you need to look at some ugly 
people, places and things.  When you can view it with compassion, and 
stop making it wrong, you have the ability to see the possibilities for a 
solution.

Purity is a woman who has been raped, beaten by her husband, and then 

> 	I can see people having known about or experienced a small
> 	number of bad things in association with something, but
> 	if everything you say is true, you have the uncanny nak
> 	of being in the wrong place at the wrong time.
> 
> 	Makes me scratch my head.  (Or is it my shampoo?)
> 
> > If when you really want to, you cannot quit entirely, OR if, when you 
> > indulge, you have little control over the consequences of your 
> > indulgence, you may be suffering from a disease which can only be treated 
> > through a spiritual awakening.  You may get that in a church.  I am 
> > paraphrasing A.A. literature (Big Book).
> 
> 	I don't agree with the definition of "disease".  Everything
> 	is a disease of an excuse today.  I'll email you an interesting
> 	post I read called "picking at scabs".  It discusses how people
> 	never put anything to rest anymore and have to find someone to
> 	blame or sue.
> 
> 	Yes, you are right.  Drinking is a habit for me.  I normally
> 	drink when I'm at home.  First thing I do. But I'll go out
> 	or away for a week and not drink at all.
> 
> 
> > Not really.  The more intensly the culture is repressed, the more covert 
> > the acting out against it.  In extreme fundamentalist religeons, there is 
> > a high incidence of wife battering, incest, marital rape, and 
> > prostitution patronage.  In orthodox religeons, you even see murder and 
> > torture in the mix. 
> 
> 	It is a funny thing how, after a time, language seems inadequate
> 	to describe phenomenon.  People will often discuss how, "satan
> 	tempts you more when you're fighting him".  This is true in
> 	a real sense.  But the low level reality of the mechanism is that
> 	when you are working against something evil, you are also thinking
> 	about it more.  Kind of a catch 22.
> 

From rballard@cnj.digex.net Mon Nov 21 11:22:14 1994
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