Jeremiah, Diogenes and Ed Loring

February 7, 2019

Jeremiah 5: 1 – 9b

Jeremiah 1 describes the prophet’s call. He is obedient but reluctant. Jeremiah 2 announces judgement on the nation of Judah whose flagship capital is Jerusalem. Jeremiah 3 offers rescue for the city and nation already condemned. Jeremiah 4 pictures the destruction of Jerusalem and the prophet agonizing over what he sees coming.

Jeremiah 5:1-9b employs the language of the courtroom. Jerusalem and the nation of Judah have been indicted and found guilty. The sentence has been served. How and why has this happened? Some Bible translations insert headings at the beginning and inside chapters. One New International Version (NIV) publication at the beginning of Jeremiah 5 reads, “Not One Is Upright.” Verse one of Chapter 5 sends Jeremiah scurrying through the streets of Jerusalem looking for one upright person, one who tells the truth and one who does the right thing. The image of an old man, the prophet, with his beard flying and his robe flowing brings a smile. This image brings to my mind two great men, one from long ago, the other from today. The long-ago man is the Greek philosopher, Diogenes. The today one is the Presbyterian cleric, Eduard Loring.

Picture this. Diogenes, lantern in hand, slips inside the Atlanta Chamber of Commerce looking for one honest person. Ed Loring is searching too. He’s downtown at Central Atlanta Progress. Clutching his Bible he looks for one person who tells the truth. Neither the philosopher nor the clergy finds one. Together, the two tip-toe through City Hall security. High and low they look. In City Hall they find only federal agents looking through files. Leaving this third Atlanta monolith, Ed Loring asks his Greek friend if he found one honest person. Diogenes reports the truth, “No, how about you?” The Presbyterian reports the truth, “Hell, no!”

An early definition of “upright” is “vertical.” And “vertical” takes us to plumb line. The Prophet Amos uses the image plumb line to show how far Israel has wandered from her calling, her raison d’etre. The well-fed “kine” of Bashan (Amos 4:1) refers to the women who order their husbands to bring drinks at cocktail hour. Amos knows the cows of Bashan are the best fed and most carefully groomed in the land. Amos is not joking and he’s not making fun. He is exposing the spoiled and arrogant people of the apostate northern kingdom, Israel, whose demise came in 722 b. c. e., 136 years earlier than the fall of Jerusalem. These women are party with those who “sell the righteous for silver and the poor for a pair of sandals.” (Amos 8:11)

The plumb line tells all. In construction, failure to adhere to
its instruction causes the structure to collapse. In covenant, failure to adhere to its instruction causes spiritual collapse. Both Samaria, the capital of northern Israel, and Jerusalem, the capital of southern Judah, collapsed under the weight of their social injustices.

Chapter 5 focuses on Jerusalem’s moral depravity, the charges leveled against her and her unrelenting wanderings. She faces a lawsuit. The searchlight of Yahweh’s scrutiny comes in the form of a court trial, a lawsuit. Jeremiah, strange enough, speaks as a defense attorney in the first six verses. William A. Holladay (Jeremiah, Vol. I, Fortress, 1986) shows Yahweh and Jeremiah talking to each other. Verses 1 and 2 show Yahweh instructing Jeremiah to scour the streets of downtown in order to find one person who acts justly and seeks honesty. At this point Yahweh is saying that this search is taking place so that “I can pardon you. I will forgive this city.”

Holliday sees the first nine verses as a dialogue between Yahweh and Jeremiah. In verses 1 and 2 Yahweh orders the search that could pardon Jerusalem. In verses 3 through 6 Jeremiah tells the results of the search. Verses 7 through 9 record Yahweh’s response.

Note: Whether leadership in Atlanta or California or America believes that the prophets of the Hebrew Bible spoke God’s Word is immaterial. What is pertinent is that quality of life is a universal right for everyone, mandated by God. Universal rejection of the mandate lessons its urgency not a scintilla.

Jim Beaty

Jeremiah 22:16

February 7, 2019

 

 

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Passersby

July 7, 2017

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TEAM GOLIATH STUMBLES AGAIN!

October 1, 2014

Millions of people throughout the social and local media have learned that the City of Atlanta refused to accept a $100,000.00 check in partial payment of an outstanding water bill at a facility for homeless people. A few days later the $582,383.53 bill was paid in full by the Metro Atlanta Task Force for the Homeless, Inc. averting the water being shut off. The City’s devious plan was apparently foolproof and certainly extensive. Refusing the $100,000.00 proved TEAM GOLIATH did not want the money. They wanted those redundant people out of that building and away from downtown Atlanta. By law a water bill paid in full must be received. TEAM GOLIATH had no choice but to take the money. One of the City’s more disgruntled attorneys muttered something like they were so glad the Task Force was able to pay the bill. In truth, paying the bill is the last thing that person wanted. She and her coterie wanted the water turned off.

Had the City shut off the water at the Peachtree-Pine facility, her officials would have called Fulton County officials. And of course, for health reasons the County health folks for the good health of the people would remove them from UNHEALTHY Peachtree Pine. Those Atlanta citizens numbering children, their mothers and 400 men have nowhere to go; nevertheless, go they will if TEAM GOLIATH has a say.

The City of Atlanta through the auspices of United Way of Atlanta employed a fortnight or so ago a Crisis Team to come from New Orleans to Atlanta for the purpose of “TRANSITIONING” ALL the people out of and away from the Peachtree Pine Community. People were actually paid by United Way dollars and/or Atlanta tax payer dollars to come to Atlanta to be ready for the shutting off of the water. The Crisis Team was in the City for an undesignated period of time. They returned home the day after the half-million-dollar payment was made. City “officials” scheduled a meeting for Monday, September 29, 2014, away from City Hall, set for 1 pm with Task Force staff. The purpose of that meeting was to plan the placing of the 100 women with their children. That 1 pm meeting was cancelled by City Hall.

The need to “transition” women and children suddenly disappears as far as the United Way TEAM GOLIATH movers and shakers are concerned. TEAM GOLIATH stumbles regularly. More often than not, however, the monster, like all evil, rises soon to create more angst. Atlanta has a marvelous opportunity to be a City, a Jeremiah’s City, an Isaiah’s city, that City on a hill that spreads light, joy and hope.

Please pray that LEADERSHIP, real leadership that focuses on suffering men, women and children will come miraculously our way. And on the way to that utopia could we have some potholes filled and person-hole covers leveled. Where is the Great Shirley Franklin’s Pothole Posse when we need it. We have a $100,000,000.00 Streetcar Named Disaster and a thousand streets whose surfaces are an embarrassment. Isaiah 60:17b speaks of a rotten Jerusalem whose governors would be righteousness and whose rulers would be justice. Atlanta, no less guilty than a fallen Jerusalem, can change direction. Mark it well that it does not have to be this way. There exist two possibilities for relief for Atlanta: one, that the present regime do a moral about-face: or, two, that the present regime be extracted from below and beyond its deepest abscess. I fear that the latter has a greater chance of coming to pass than the former.

James Wilson Beaty
Jeremiah 22:16
October 1, 2014

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Rector Hoare Remembered Every Super Bowl Sunday

January 26, 2014

Next Sunday, February 2, 2014, Super Bowl XLVIII (48) will be played at the Metlife Stadium in the Meadowlands of New Jersey. This stadium is the home field of the New York Giants. Some people believe that the late Teamster Jimmy Hoffa is buried in concrete in one of the end zones. This playing field is not too far from the much talked about George Washington Bridge that spans the mighty Hudson River. Weather vultures are speaking of a blizzard for that day; other media goons are talking traffic snarls.

Residents of the Peachtree Pine Community watch with great interest all Super Bowls. Some 300 plus homeless African American men at Peachtree Pine watched Super Bowl XLV (45) played on Sunday, February 6, 2011. Few of those men remember who won that game or where it was played. However, many of them remember a sermon preached that day at All Saints Episcopal Church at the corner of North Avenue and West Peachtree Street in Atlanta, Georgia. The sermon was delivered on Super Bowl Sunday, February 6, 2011. It carries the title, “Doing Justice,” and it was delivered by All Saints’ CEO, Rector Geoffrey Hoare, that’s Hoare with an “H.” All Saints Episcopal Church’s website published Rector Hoare’s diatribe. I assume the sermon can be read still. It may have been removed.

My blog drjimbeaty.wordpress.com posted a response to some of the Hoare lies about Peachtree-Pine Community on March 23, 2011. The men who live now at the Peachtree-Pine Community watch like Jeremiah’s almond tree in chapter one to see if Rector Hoare might give a repeat performance next Sunday, Super Bowl XLVIII (48). The men who polish the floors and clean the toilets and showers and scrub the sinks and empty the trash and case manage hundreds of women and children weekly want to know if he will say again that we live there in squalor and that their living quarters are filthy and unkempt. Hoare stated that the place is unsafe and dangerous. He’s right about that: that’s true some of the time of the outside, not inside, where drug dealers and pimps and whores, (that’s whores with a “W”) operate most of the time without any police interference. Our security volunteers say that for every Atlanta Police arrest there are fifteen drug deals in the open broad light of the day.

But one long block away, down the street at Renaissance Park there are no such shenanigans now because the neighbors around that park have DEMANDED that all drug users and dealers and prostitutes and pimps be arrested. The Community at Peachtree Pine has no such protection. I’ll bet a six pack of RC Cola that Woodruff Park and The Hurt, home of Central Atlanta Progress and ADID IT has that protection. Another six pack says that CEO Hoare’s business has police protection, business community protection, Peachtree Corridor Churches’ protection, Chamber of Commerce protection, United Way protection, Atlanta Regional Council protection, Atlanta City Council Protection, the Mayor’s Innovation Delivery Team protection and Farmers’ Insurance protection. One must ponder if Rector Hoare has the protection of THE EVERLASTING ARMS.

Read my March 23, 2011 piece and Hoare’s February 6, 2011, sermon preached from a Christian pulpit in an Episcopal church. Then wait for Super Bowl sermon next Sunday to see if Cicero delivers again.

James Wilson Beaty
January 25, 2014
Jeremiah 22:16
Rector

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Is The Handwriting On The Wall?

September 17, 2013

Daniel and his three Jewish buddies, Shadrach, Meshech and Abednego are vegetarians and do not eat King Nebuchadnezzar’s cheeseburgers or French fries. The four are captives taken from Jerusalem when the Babylonians burned the Temple, leveled the palace and carried 10,000 Jerusalemites off to captivity in 587 b. c. e. Nebuchadnezzar is a butcher and a self-proclaimed doer of all good. Any wonder he had bad dreams. He called in all his wise men, downtown geniuses, soothsayers, priests and anybody he could find who might interpret a particular dream. Because Daniel and his three buddies were brighter and stronger than the Babylonians around them, King Nebuchadnezzar placed the four men in his service. Because Daniel tells the king his dream and the dream’s meaning, he is well known in the kingdom as an interpreter of dreams and strange events.

Chapter 5 of the Book of Daniel in the Hebrew Bible, (Jewish theologian Marc Ellis correctly calls it The Older Testament,) relates this story of King Belshazzar and how the fingers of a man’s hand write words on the wall. If you enjoy a chilling story, read on. If you are a practicing member of the TEAM GOLIATH conspiracy, you might not want to read any more. If you love justice and pray that somehow, somewhere, someday it may prevail, read the fifth chapter of Daniel. Babylonian King Belshazzar is Nebuchadnezzar’s grandson, not his son as Daniel reports. Chapter 5 describes how Belshazzar gave a great banquet for a thousand of his nobles and drank wine with them.

Belshazzar’s party brings to mind Herod’s Antipas’s party where John the Baptist’s head is brought in on a platter at the request of Salome. My blog entitled “The HAG Delivers Again” features a similar Shirley Franklin party where Debi Starnes is urged by the Mayor of the golden tresses to bring in the head of the troubling, Anita Beaty, the truth-teller who refuses to obey the empire. This is a Swiftian modest proposal. It’s called satire and not history as some moron at Franklin’s City Hall implied. That is a blog I posted on 13 April 2009, entitled, “The Hag Delivers Again.”

Daniel 5:8 reads, “Then all the king’s wise men came in, but they could not read the writing or tell the king what it meant. So King Belshazzar became even more terrified and his face grew pale. His nobles were baffled.” The word “baffled” is a synonym of A. J. Robinson’s word, “mystified.” He used that with a reporter from the ATLANTA JOURNAL CONSTITUTION in responding to Debi Starnes’ invention years ago that a “lice-infestation” was occurring at the Peachtree-Pine Community. See my piece entitled, “What’s In A Middle Name?” posted on 19 April 2011.

At Belshazzar’s party the nobles are baffled. At Central Atlanta Progress the noble A. J. Robinson is “mystified” by the report. Those of us who follow Starnes’ yarns were not able to “interpret” Robinson’s word: “mystified.” Was good A. J. confused by the Homeless Czar’s lie or by the possibility of a lice infestation. Whichever, Fulton County Health Department set straight the record by refuting Starnes’ fabrication saying to the press that there was no infestation of lice present or past at The Pine.
Belshazzar read the handwriting on the wall, “MENE, MENE, TEKEL, UPHARSIN. Daniel came and interpreted,” verses 26-28 of Chapter 5: “God has numbered the days of your reign and brought it to an end. You have been weighed on the scales and found wanting. Your kingdom is divided and given to the Medes and Persians. Daniel 5:30 closes the book on King Belshazzar and his particular chapter of the empire, “That very night Belshazzar, king of the Babylonians, was slain, and Darius the Mede took over the kingdom, at the age of sixty-two.”

Suddenly the fingers of a human hand appeared and wrote on the plaster of the wall, near the lampstand in the royal palace. The king watched the hand as it wrote. His face turned pale and he was so frightened that his knees knocked together and his legs gave way.

Is the handwriting on the wall? Will a jury of their peers hear evidence that exposes Central Atlanta Progress, (CAP); Atlanta Downtown Improvement District, (ADID) and Manny Fialkow’s Premium Funding Solutions of TORTIOUS INTERFERENCE and the RICO Act RACKETEERING against a HOMELESS shelter? Will the trial set for November 4, 2013 really take place? Will the lampstand in the royal courtroom reveal the conspiracy? Is the handwriting on the wall? Could power brokers and movers and shakers who have dodged being deposed for two years have to face a jury of their peers? Is the handwriting on the wall?

Will thousands of documents sent back and forth between the City of Atlanta and all the accused bubble to the surface of this cesspool? Is the handwriting on the wall? The principalities almost always win; however, empires crumble, always. Your good ole boy system in Atlanta runs deep and wide. But on rare, very rare occasions, justice prevails even in Atlanta. We still have two boxes, the jury box and the ballot box. Somehow, just somehow perhaps, justice will prevail. Oh, Lord, what a morning when the stars begin to fall.

My friends, some of my neighbors and several of my relatives chide me gently for my speaking of “God’s burning rain,” Atlanta as “Sin-City,” “when the stars begin to fall,” and now Daniel’s “handwriting on the wall.” I know that the City of Atlanta has the protection of a federal judge in a ruling called sovereign immunity. Of course the City as a tool of TEAM GOLIATH carries the club’s water. The Club’s water carrier has to be protected too.

Everyone knows you can’t sue the king even when he murders two of his wives. And if every judge in the EMPIRE renders the principalities and powers “IMMUNE,” there is still a higher court. There’s Jim Lee Scott’s and Dr. King’s arc of the universe. The hundreds of women and children homeless and helpless on the streets of Atlanta INDICT City Hall, City Council, the Innovation $3.3M Delivery Team, The United Way, The Gateway, The Gateway Board of Directors boasting such luminaries as Jack Hardin and Little Miss Debi. Is the handwriting writing on the wall?

Emory University and Emory Health Care, Inc. face a similar lawsuit in the Superior Court of DeKalb County. The charges they face are basically the same as those of the downtown conspirators. Emory is by far the largest member of TEAM GOLIATH. How could snow-white Emory be involved with disappearing a shelter near downtown Atlanta? Emory Hospital is located almost directly across the street from The Pine on Peachtree Street. Many of the uppity ups in the Emory hierarchy break out in hives at the thought of Peachtree Pine being located so near. Its food court is off limits to any of the residents of the Peachtree-Pine Community. And closely following Emory’s hatred of Black men surfaces its love for a 96,000 square foot property facing on hallowed Peachtree Street. Is the writing on the wall? The connections between Emory and the nun-run Mercy Housing, Inc. and Central Atlanta Progress and Manny Fialkow and the SOVEREIGNLY IMMUNE City and Emory University and Emory Health Care, Inc. are a matter of record. Is the handwriting on the wall?

The King James 1611 translates the chilling words, “You are weighed in the balances and found wanting.” The NIV reads, “You have been weighed on the scales and found wanting.” The scales of JUSTICE never balance for conspirators such as TEAM GOLIATH. Is the handwriting on the wall? The most recent atrocity of TEAM GOLIATH flooding the streets downtown with homeless women and children is beyond description. Emory Health Care stands accused by innocent little children who don’t know where they will spend their next hour. The Gateway Board of Directors closed its doors to ready itself for the men at The Pine when Manny Fialkow and our judicial system finish the job of stealing the building. (See my piece, (“Naboth’s Peachtree Pine” posted October 26, 2011) The nuns of Mercy Housing, Inc., a huge arm of the conspiracy, have joined hands with Horace Sibley and Manny Fialkow to force Peachtree Pine into foreclosure. One nun wrote (I have the e-mail) that the City of Atlanta will be in Mercy Housing’s debt for helping to put them in foreclosure. Imagine the NUNS of mercy and MANNY FIALKOW as bedfellows. Is the handwriting on the wall? Oh, Lord, what a morning!

James Wilson Beaty
Jeremiah 22:16
September 17, 2013

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People Are Hurting

August 9, 2013

 

The Metro Atlanta Task Force for the Homeless, Inc. this a.m. delivered a check to a motel south of Atlanta that purchased five nights of “housing” for a family of seven: a husband and wife and their five children,  ages 18 through 4. The Task Force also provided spending money and a full tank of gas.  All four school-age children are in school.  The father begins a job next week as a sales representative.  The father has been unemployed for six months and housing was lost five months ago.  The father in this family will come into Peachtree Pine to speak with one of our staff who daily addresses similar cases.

 The only way that the Task Force could provide financial help to this family is through the kind and generous donations of a few caring people.  ALL funding to the Task Force has been stopped through a decade old conspiracy whose mission is to disappear the Peachtree Pine Community from Peachtree Street.  The conspirators whom I call TEAM GOLIATH have failed to remove Little David from hallowed Peachtree.  Central Atlanta Progress, Atlanta Downtown Improvement District, Philanthropist Manny Fialkow, Emory Health Care, Inc. and Emory University have maneuvered themselves into prickly lawsuits that have some goliaths squirming in their towers.  The City of Atlanta, that moving violation from its pate down to its shoes, slithered out of being sued with its buddy system called a federal judge. The City of Atlanta having to face Little David in a lawsuit like this one could never happen.  Sovereign immunity is a given.  Henry VIII could not be tried for murdering two of his wives; he’s the king.  Walter Brueggemann says, “That’s what kings do.”  Atlanta United Way is another lily white conspirator that has slipped under the radar.  I’m not sure why as this team for righteousness, like the bogus Tri-J Continuum of Care, Inc., sits squarely in the middle of the conspiracy mix.

The Task Force for the Homeless, Inc. receives from the City of Atlanta, ZERO dollars.  The Task for the Homeless, Inc. receives from Atlanta United Way, ZERO dollars.  The Task Force for the Homeless, Inc. receives from Fulton County, ZERO dollars.  The Atlanta Task Force for the Homeless, Inc. receives from the Peachtree Corridor houses of worship, ZERO dollars.  The Atlanta Task Force for the Homeless, Inc. receives from the “unbiased” Tri-J, ZERO dollars. The Atlanta Task Force for the Homeless, Inc. receives from the Nun-Run Mercy Housing, Inc., ZERO dollars. This was not always the case.  Many of these entities previously funded the Task Force. But after Richard Orr of CAP and Homeless Czar Debi Starnes and Homeless Commissioner Chair Horace Sibley did their nefarious work, all funding stopped.

So far, as of this date, August 9, 2013, Anita Beaty, Executive Director of the Task Force has been deposed three days and a total of eleven hours by attorneys representing the defendants.  Remember the defendants are on trial.  They are accused of racketeering and tortious interference.  The Task Force is not on trial.  The conspirators’ attorneys’ questions attempt always to show that the Task Force is poorly organized, poorly run, doesn’t pay its debts and warehouses its victims.  Their questions follow the line taken by Episcopal CEO, Rector Hoare who said from his Varsity Grill pulpit that Peachtree Pine is a squalor.

 After hours of questioning at the Baker Donalson Law Firm, everyone took a break.  In that break time Anita Beaty received a call from a family of five, homeless, carless. penniless.  After her five hours of being deposed by lawyers representing the TEAM GOLIATH conspiracy, the Task Force executive director delivered a Task Force check enabling that family to stay five days in a motel.  How noble it would have been for lawyers representing conspirator CAP, conspirator ADID and conspirator Philanthropist Manny Fialkow to throw in 30 pieces of silver for a homeless family.

 

I’m studying the life of William Stringfellow who stood ready as a brilliant attorney to help destitute people in Harlem.  He did that every day.  In my search to find why would he do such a thing, giving his life for the poor.   I have found the answer.  HEART!!!  Bill Stringfellow was heart, all heart1  He couldn’t say, “No.”  The Task Force has no funds to help families such as the two I have mentioned.  The principalities and powers responsible for helping them won’t help them and are damned and determined that the likes of Anita Beaty will not help them.  Should your HEART move you to send financial support we’ll continue to help whomever we can.  Should you send enough for a tank of gas, it could enable someone to search for a job.  Thank you

 

James Wilson Beaty

Jeremiah 22:16

August 9, 2013.

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Mike Casey March 1974-July 2013

August 5, 2013

 

 

                The following remembrance was distributed at Mike’s funeral at Our Lady of Lourdes Catholic Church on August 5, 2013.  I quote it here in loving honor of this beyond remarkable young man.

 

Michael Edwin Vosburg-Casey was born on March 13, 1974 in Palo Alto, California to Tom and Betty Beetley Casey.  He grew up in Redwood City, California with his brother Dan and his sister Beth.  From the age of three, Mike was often found on various rooftops exploring and stargazing.  He attended Bellarmine Jesuit High School in San Jose and then crossed the country to go to Colby College in Waterville, Maine where he majored in music.

 

Through high school and college, Michael worked for the San Mateo Park System where he nurtured his love of nature and lived out his philosophy of “When you walk in the woods, don’t follow the trail and don’t leave a trail.”

 

When Mike graduated from college he moved to Austin, TX where he learned to roast a pig in the ground, and, as he did throughout his life, developed and maintained strong networks of lifelong friends.

 

                A friend wrote recently, “Mike, please be aware that you have created the interaction of the most widely diverse group of intense humans I have ever seen.  You have won!”

 

In 1999 Mike moved to Atlanta for a two-year term with the Jesuit Volunteer Corps.  He worked at the Central Presbyterian Outreach Center and the Georgia Justice Project.  During these years Mike became involved with the Open Door Community and met Amy Vosburg, the love of his life.  Amy is an attorney who represents Georgia prisoners on death row with the Georgia Appellate Resource Center.

 

In August 2001, Mike moved to the Open Door where he lived and worked full time until 2003.  His gift for pounding out everybody’s favorites on the piano continued long after he had moved out, and he regularly returned to play for the guests in the soup kitchen.  In October 2004 Mike and Amy were married and established a home that has welcomed many friends, co-workers and wandering souls. 

 

In 2006, after many years of discernment and actions against war and violence, Michael crossed the line at the School of the Americas at Fort Benning, Georgia, during the annual protest.  The SOA (now called the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Operation) has trained thousands of soldiers from South and Central America who have been responsible for death squads, torture and assassinations across the region.  After taking part in many of the demonstrations over the years, Mike stepped up to join those who were sentenced to federal prison time for their resistance.  Over the 100 days of his imprisonment, Mike and Amy maintained their partnership and continued their joint work to bring justice and peace inside the walls of prison and jails and radiating to the streets of our towns and cities.

 

In June 2010, Elena Lucille Vosburd-Casey was born to Amy and Mike and Mike became a full-time father.  Along with her daddy, Elena visited the sick, went to soup kitchens, and vigiled for peace every Friday.  He taught her to sing at the top of her lungs, play the piano in a unique style, dance in the rain, and to never meet a stranger.  He read to her every day and helped her to develop an astounding level of curiosity, concentration and verbal skills.

 

Mike made a unique contribution in the movement to abolish the death penalty.  Every time an execution was scheduled in Georgia, Mike planned a vigil in front of the office of Dr. Carl Musso, the physician hired by the Department of Corrections to administer the lethal drugs.  Mike organized protesters to join him to hold signs calling on the doctor to stop his deadly work.  Michael’s vigil was an important factor in leading the Georgia legislature to pass a secrecy law that classifies the prison personnel who participate in executions and the source of the prison’s lethal drugs as “state secrets.”  This law (which is unconstitutional and out of accord with the state’s “sunshine laws”) is currently being challenged in the courts, and we give thanks for Mike’s work to shine a light on this part of the death machine.

 

In December 2011 Mike was diagnosed with Stage IV colon cancer.  He struggled through treatments and maintained his ongoing work for peace and justice.  Toward the very end of his life, Mike insisted on attending in his wheel chair the Friday peace vigil.  It was his last outing.  Through it all he maintained his remarkably quirky sense of humor.  Early in the morning of July 31, Mike died in the loving home that he and Amy have created with the help of hospice and surrounded by devoted family and friends.

 

A funeral mass will be celebrated at Our Lady of Lourdes Catholic Church on Monday, August 5.  A memorial service will be held on October 5 at the Open Door Community followed by a picnic served by the community.

 

Mike Vosburg-Casey’s life remains as an inspiration to action for all who love justice, peace, and the radical vision of the Beloved Community.  Deo gratias.

 

Note:  I met Mike Casey the first time when he interviewed me on WRFG, Radio Free Georgia.  I marveled at his humility, his astuteness and his compassion.  His humility came through as an interviewer.  He was more interested in the words of his subject than his own, a quality rare in most interviewers.  His astuteness came through as he showed a clear understanding of the atrocities committed by City of Atlanta government against homeless people, the total anomie of local leadership, public and corporate.  And his compassion revealed the spirit of a young man who cherishes his fellow human beings, all human beings.  May Mike Casey’s tribe increase.

At the luncheon following Mike’s funeral, Anita and I sat across from Mike’s uncle, another Casey from California.  He said that Mike once said that Irish music is learned best in Irish pubs.  That brought to mind W. H. Auden’s tribute to another great Irish man, William Butler Yeats.  Upon hearing that Yeats had gone home, Auden wrote,

What instruments we have agree

The day of his death was a dark cold day.

 

James Wilson Beaty

Jeremiah 22:16

August 5, 2013    

 

 

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Is there uneasiness on the 31st floor of Sin City?

May 16, 2013

 

 

This old town is filled with sin

It will swallow you in

If you’ve got some money to burn

Take it home right away

You’ve got three years to pay

But Satan is waiting his turn

The scientists say

It will all wash away

But we don’t believe anymore

Cause we’ve got our recruits

And our green mohair suits

So please show your I. D. at the door

This old earthquake’s gonna leave me in the poor house

It seems like this whole town’s insane

On the thirty-first floor a gold plated door

Won’t keep out the Lord’s burning rain.

 

A friend came around

Tried to clean up this town

His ideas made some people mad

But he trusted his crowd

So he spoke right out loud

And they lost the best friend they had

This old earthquake’s gonna leave me in the poor house

It seems like this whole town’s insane

On the thirty-first floor a gold plated door

Won’t keep out the Lord’s burning rain.

 

Note:  CREATIVE LOAFING reporter Scott Henry in a May 2010 diatribe against the Community at Peachtree Pine wrote, “Jim Beaty wrote portentously that the shelter’s enemies may feel the vengeance of God’s burning rain.”  Friends, enemies and neighbors were amused by my “God’s burning rain.”  That was May 2010.  Scott Henry no longer writes mellifluous prose for the tired CREATIVE LOAFING.  Much of the laughter has subsided.  “Tortious Interference” and “Racketeer Influenced Corrupt Organizations” are terms being discussed on thirty-first floors and in other low places.  Listen for those who are under running laughter.

 

James Wilson Beaty

Jeremiah 22:16

May 16, 2013

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Pope Celestine V And Benedict XVI

February 27, 2013

Before Celestine V was elected pope in July of 1294, he lived alone in a cave and slept on a rock.  He wore a hair shirt in order to maintain a level of holiness.  He believed that physical pain protected him from the temptations of the world, especially the sins of the flesh.  The conclave of 13th century Cardinals charged with electing a new pope could not agree on anybody except the hermit in the cave.  They went to him and told him he was the new pope.  He didn’t last long.

 

He missed his cave and his hair shirt; he never wanted to be pope.  He resigned after having served only five months as the Holy Father.  He resigned before the end of 1294 but not before he wrote into church law that a pope is permitted to resign if he resigns for his spiritual well- being and for the good of the church.

 

The current Pope Benedict  XVI over recent months has made several visits to the tomb of Pope Celestine V,  Most of us had no idea why the present pope would visit the remains of a pope dead for over 600 years.  Nonetheless, following his surprise resignation, the reason for his visits have become more clear.

 

In Canto III, ll. 58-60, of his INFERNO,

Dante writes,

“And after I recognized some of them,

I saw and knew the shade of him

Who, through cowardice, made the great refusal.”

 

Many scholars, including Dante’s son, believe “the shade of him” to be Celestine V.  Others believe this shade to be Pilate who ordered the empire’s execution of Jesus on a Roman cross.  Note that even though Dante recognizes his subject in the vestibule of Hell, he does not dignify him by naming him.

 

In Chaucer’s Prologue to The Canterbury Tales, the narrator gives the merchant the very same treatment.  Of this member from the business community, the narrator says,

“The estimable Merchant so had set

His wits to work, none knew he was in debt,

He was so stately in negotiation,

Loan, bargain and commercial obligation,

He was an excellent fellow all the same;

To tell the truth I do not know his name.”

 

James Wilson Beaty

Jeremiah 22:16

February 27, 2013

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