Reply #92: I remember reading a snippet in the paper about a homeless

[Joe Chi Minh]

man refusing a £50 bill proffered to him by Joan Baez. I think he said he'd just be happy to have her autograph. And I doubt very much that it was with any view to selling it. That is indeed the attitude of the Lord's anointed.

I also remember reading a hilarious anecdote about the great jockey of the twenties - the greatest in England of his era, anyway - Steve Donaghue. He was trotting on his horse to the start, when a pal of his called out to him that he hadn't been able to put his money (£50, a lot of money in those days) on the horse he'd asked him to, as the horse had been withdrawn.

"Well", he shouted, "put it on whatever you fancy!" Now, I know there are many different constructions likely to be put on that, including that it is a sin a against Prudence, but to me it is the most sublime example of Christ's teaching concerning worship of money and contempt for God, or worship of God and contempt for money.

Steve was also apparently very liberal with his money towards others, all his life, and died penniless; but for me, with that happy-go-lucky spirit, not even what he earned - which was evidently a fair amount - could prevent him from owning the whole world, the sun, the moon and the stars.

We have betting shops here, and I believe most of their habitues are people with a similar outlook on life; though in their conscious mind, they think they'd like to be rich. If they did, they would watch every penny, and save them up to make more. "Where your treasure is, there your heart is", were Jesus' own words, so quite how it is that many evangelicals equate a good income and resources with God's favor and a reward for their good living I really don't know.

One other example of the deep, innate spirituality of the "anawin", the "poor and powerless", such as Jesus' own Holy Family, I heard of from a big-time surveyor I was driving to an airport one day. He was in charge of the construction of a large sports and leisure centre in Dubai, Riyadh, somewhere like that, and when he and his people realized they were behind schedule, they decided to pay the workers to do overtime.

Unfortunately, after working a good bit of overtime for a week or two, the workmen disappeared. They discovered afterwards, that they used the extra money to a take a holiday. God's ways are not our ways.... the nature of which however, they were indeed privy to, without needing to read Jesus' Sermon on the Mount, like us - still less, being likely to let it all go in one ear and out of the other.

Incidentally, one of my favourite tracks of Joan Baez was a song in which she sang about a homeless man, with the most hauntingly pure and beautiful tones.