{"id":1066,"date":"2008-02-13T09:31:43","date_gmt":"2008-02-13T09:31:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/jwalking\/2008\/02\/poverty-meditation.html"},"modified":"2008-02-13T09:31:43","modified_gmt":"2008-02-13T09:31:43","slug":"poverty-meditation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jwalking\/2008\/02\/poverty-meditation.html","title":{"rendered":"Poverty meditation"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I couldn&#8217;t escape the horror &#8211; that was the horror.<br \/>\nThat was my 2am realization.<br \/>\nAs I stood inside that 6&#8242; x 6&#8242; hell hole and as I walked through the slum the horror was that I couldn&#8217;t get away from it. It was pressing in on all sides via all of my senses. There was no escape.<br \/>\nWhenever we see a picture of a starving child or a child rummaging through a trash heap to find a meal or horrid slums we have the choice of averting our eyes or turning the channel or flipping the page. I couldn&#8217;t do that.<br \/>\nThere isn\u2019t any way to convey it but let me suggest a meditation on poverty that may help \u2013 and make you squirm&#8230; in a good way.<br \/>\nFind a picture of poverty that makes you want to look away.<br \/>\nFind a watch.<br \/>\nSpend five quiet minutes on that picture. Imagine yourself there. Feel the grime around you, smell the smell of burning trash and be crushed in on all sides by squalor\u2026 imagine the heat of the place, feel the hot sun, feel the uneven ground beneath your feet from where rain water has cut its own path into the ground because there are no gutters, no drains, nothing to take it away.<br \/>\nLet the picture take you where it will. Ask God to guide you. Live in the picture imagine it behind and above you\u2026 live in it\u2026 and that feeling that you are getting, that horrible feeling?  That is reality.<br \/>\nIs it depressing? Is it sad? Yes and yes. But our story doesn&#8217;t end here&#8230; it just has to start here.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I couldn&#8217;t escape the horror &#8211; that was the horror. That was my 2am realization. As I stood inside that 6&#8242; x 6&#8242; hell hole and as I walked through the slum the horror was that I couldn&#8217;t get away from it. It was pressing in on all sides via all of my senses. There&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1,8,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1066","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-faith","category-poverty","category-social-justice"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Poverty meditation - J Walking<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jwalking\/2008\/02\/poverty-meditation.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Poverty meditation - J Walking\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"I couldn&#8217;t escape the horror &#8211; that was the horror. That was my 2am realization. As I stood inside that 6&#8242; x 6&#8242; hell hole and as I walked through the slum the horror was that I couldn&#8217;t get away from it. It was pressing in on all sides via all of my senses. There&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jwalking\/2008\/02\/poverty-meditation.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"J Walking\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2008-02-13T09:31:43+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"David Kuo\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Poverty meditation - J Walking","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jwalking\/2008\/02\/poverty-meditation.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Poverty meditation - J Walking","og_description":"I couldn&#8217;t escape the horror &#8211; that was the horror. That was my 2am realization. As I stood inside that 6&#8242; x 6&#8242; hell hole and as I walked through the slum the horror was that I couldn&#8217;t get away from it. It was pressing in on all sides via all of my senses. There&hellip;","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jwalking\/2008\/02\/poverty-meditation.html","og_site_name":"J Walking","article_published_time":"2008-02-13T09:31:43+00:00","author":"David Kuo","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jwalking\/2008\/02\/poverty-meditation.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jwalking\/2008\/02\/poverty-meditation.html","name":"Poverty meditation - J Walking","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jwalking\/#website"},"datePublished":"2008-02-13T09:31:43+00:00","dateModified":"2008-02-13T09:31:43+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jwalking\/#\/schema\/person\/e18271b4c5ffaa74854f9b286f9920da"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jwalking\/2008\/02\/poverty-meditation.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jwalking\/2008\/02\/poverty-meditation.html"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jwalking\/2008\/02\/poverty-meditation.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jwalking"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Poverty meditation"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jwalking\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jwalking\/","name":"J Walking","description":"David Kuo blog, faith, politics, christian blog, tempting faith","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jwalking\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jwalking\/#\/schema\/person\/e18271b4c5ffaa74854f9b286f9920da","name":"David Kuo","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jwalking\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jwalking\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/033\/03358ddc67aa385b96785ce75f483c23x96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jwalking\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/033\/03358ddc67aa385b96785ce75f483c23x96.jpg","caption":"David Kuo"},"url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jwalking\/author\/dkuo"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jwalking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1066","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jwalking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jwalking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jwalking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/22"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jwalking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1066"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jwalking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1066\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jwalking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1066"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jwalking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1066"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jwalking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1066"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}