Happy New Year... Feed the Poor

Hello all, I hope that you are having a wonderful New Year. I've been reading (it was short but took up one whole night, very intense) a book by a man named John Michael Talbot about St. Francis... I gave the book away to Barbara, who loves it. It's  called Lessons of St. Francis.
(http://www.amazon.com/Lessons-Saint-Francis-Simplicity-Spirituality/dp/0452278341)

The writer started a community called Little Portion in Arkansas, based on the simplicity and peace of Franciscan ideals.
I found it very moving and deeply aware, in the Catholic tradition-- the tradition of St. Francis. Barbara and I watched "Brother Sun, Sister Moon" again and I also saw another movie -- "Clare and Francis."http://www.ignatius.com/promotions/clare-and-francis-movie/"

In any case, I received a new sense (I've had it before, of course...)from the St. Francis book regarding how helpful it can be to let go of feeling one always has to have more of everything;  to be ok with having little, and to help those who are really, really poor, wherever we can. I felt that it could be wonderful to give away one's clothes, like St. Francis in the square in Assisi when his father accused him of theft, and be, in a sense, free. (I don't think I could manage the Vermont winter without warm clothes, a coat and shoes, though!)
Andrew is about to move out, and so I have some idea of how Francis' mother, Pica di Bernardone, must have felt when Francis (one of Andrew's heroes, actually) gave his clothes back to his parents in the square at Assisi.  I will desperately miss him. But the young must move on and be what they are to be in the world. And we'll see him... he's going to Vermont Law School, not far away, this coming fall.
Re poverty...
There are many ways to help people who are poorer than people in the U.S. We feel we are poor because we have 10% unemployment... and it is a problem. I myself presently have no paying job. But there are so many people who are more poor than we are here, and there is a delightful freedom in the sense that casting one's bread on the waters will bring about greater joy and closeness with the All-Self, God, the real person whom we are. I sent some money to a guy in the Phillipines who distributes rice to the poorest people (money from contributions, it seems).  I believe that it is good to help people...

I will always think this, I am sure.

Love to all. Happy New Year. Feed the poor, unless you ARE the poor. Have joy in your life! Create! (That's another lesson of St. Francis, a poet). I want to help others, even though my whole life has been a pouring out effort to help others, and even if I am burned out at times.