Salvageable.

Clothes are awesome. I love clothes. The trendier the better. I'm not talking about trendy like you see on MTV where skinny super models wear fishnet stockings on their heads and garbage bags around their legs and call it fashion. Not at all. American Eagle is one that I love. When I go to my local mall, that's usually the first place I go.

The signs they have are beautiful. The people on the posters look so happy as they swing on tire swings and squirt water at each other. I want that life. My feet usually lead me to the sale rack and I think, 'Wow, this still isn't cheap.". As much a I love this store and the clothes that sleeps inside of it, I can't wear it anymore.

Just a few years ago it was cool or "vintage" to buy your clothes at a Goodwill store. Trust me, I was one of the first ones in line to buy some of that clothes. Now the cool thing is to "go green". I will tell you, I am a true convert of this lifestyle. The road is long for my family and I on this going green thing but we love it so far. We recycle our plastics, glass and things of that nature. There's not always light on in our house and the water won't dare drip where we live.

So if I'm going to make this a lifestyle, why not make it clothes as well? I usually don't care what I look like because my $60 jeans from AE have holes and patches in them like goodwill clothes mimics. Or wait, maybe AE is mimicing them. Anyway, I am making a new vow. There is plenty of clothes out there for all of us. We just need to get over the fact that someone else wore them. (Make sure and get passed the smell of moth balls and feet as well.)

So my new shopping place is Goodwill. Not because it's cool, but because it's there. If we all started buying our clothes from Goodwill, the major corporations like AE and Hollister couldn't monopolize the market anymore. You know why? They wouldn't have anyone to make clothes for...

Peace from the mean streets of "the 'rillo".

PS - Tell me what you think.
-ricky g

Jeffery.

He was beautiful.  His need was real and honest.  He walked into our building, head lowered as he removed his work-worn hat that shaded his head from the sun that held him as slave for the day.  "I'm not from here.  I have nowhere else to go."  This was Jeffery.  Jeffery walked into our church building tonight and asked us for help.  "My wife is dying of cancer and she needs insulin for her diabetes."  Tears filled his eyes as he took a moment to gather himself into what seemed to be a vast wave of emotion that enveloped him to a point of suffocation.  "I really need your help...I have nowhere else to go."

I took Jeffery to the local Wal-Mart and as we walked in he looked at the grand-lit letters "WAL-MART" that looked down on him with much disgust only to find that the pharmacy had closed 13 minutes prior to our arrival.  His world was crushed and the feeling of failure rushed through his head to his cement covered boots.  Without much movement, Jeffery took a step in front of me and began to rub his balding-blonde head as he walked out to my car.

I've never felt this helpless.  I've never felt this hopeless.  There was not one thing I could do for him.  My attempts at telling him that there was hope and that there was a God that loved him were futile.  There may have been a seed planted but this seemed so much more grand than any christianese anicdote my training had prepared me for.  

We live in a fallen world.  Nothing makes sense to me after tonight.  I will go to bed in my warm bed, kiss my boys and my wife goodnight and dream dreams of safety and freshly mowed lawns.  I am so unworthy of the things I have.  Jeffery deserves better than this.  

Jesus said, "the poor will always be among you..." does that mean the rich and comfortable will be too?  This is way beyond what they taught me in Sunday School.  There is a disconnect.  Is there hope?

PS - Don't try and cheer me up.  I swear, if there are any posts with cheesy sayings or anything of that nature, you will hear from me...