FOOLISHNESS? WASTE? (ANOTHER LAMENT)

This house is not far from our home. I didn't realize what was happening until I passed it recently. It is literally right across the street from the river which runs through our city.

As you can see, it is a large house; perhaps a quarter or a fifth of it has been demolished. The building looks structurally sound. The windows are in good repair. The outside was brick-covered. For all intents and purposes, a good house. 

But it is being torn down to make way for a bigger, fancier house.

I've long believed that the more affluent we become, the more effluent we produce. And I'm not just thinking of sewage; I'm thinking of waste in general. A perfectly good house, which might have been able to accommodate two families, is being turned into garbage, taken to the dump, at a time when we have a lot of homeless people in our city (an issue which, ironically, I raised in my last posting). 

To quote a couple of lines from a contemporary hymn, by a friend and colleague:

    when waste and want live side by side,
    it's gospel that we lack.

Or to return to my earlier premise, homelessness is an ethical and spiritual problem long before it's an economic problem. It's problem with what we value as human beings.

Sigh!