{"id":370,"date":"2018-04-29T15:22:17","date_gmt":"2018-04-29T19:22:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/wherndon.net\/?p=370"},"modified":"2022-08-11T20:42:06","modified_gmt":"2022-08-12T00:42:06","slug":"wallet-lottery","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wherndon.net\/?p=370","title":{"rendered":"Wallet Lottery"},"content":{"rendered":"

In a March 2017 interview in the Italian magazine \u201cScarp de\u2019 Tenis,\u201d Pope Francis argued that giving money to someone begging on the street is \u201calways right.\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n

What if the recipient of your gift decides to uses the money to buy a glass of wine instead of food? If \u201ca glass of wine is the only happiness he has in life,\u201d the pope replied, \u201cthat\u2019s OK. Instead, ask yourself, what do you do on the sly? What \u2018happiness\u2019 do you seek in secret?\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n


\nI thought hard on that and the conflict that I always felt when pan-handlers asked me for money. I resolved to look anyone who asked me for money in the eye, to give them all the $1 bills in my wallet, and to try to understand their circumstances. What this morphed into on a bitterly cold evening in December was a haiku written after giving a man in Washington Circle ten dollars. More haiku followed—not for every encounter but for many…<\/p>\n

\nWallet Lottery<\/strong><\/p>\n

Should I judge the use?
\nBottle, needle, food? Small joys.
\nWallet lottery.<\/p>\n

Temperature dives
\nDark shape, fading light, last ten.
\nPlease…find a shelter.<\/p>\n

“Something for me now?”
\nPaid for coffee, three new ones.
\n“Out here I’ll die.”<\/p>\n

Babble! Two dollars
\nfor a rant on Metro’s stairs.
\nCheap soliloquy.<\/p>\n

Fourth time on Metro.
\nShabby clothes, expensive sling.
\nThe child never moves.<\/p>\n

“Please spare what you can.
\nHelp me to feed my brothers.”
\nFive is not enough.\n<\/p><\/div>\n

© 2017 – 2018 William Herndon, All Rights Reserved<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In a March 2017 interview in the Italian magazine \u201cScarp de\u2019 Tenis,\u201d Pope Francis argued that giving money to someone begging on the street is \u201calways right.\u201d What if the recipient of your gift decides to uses the money to buy a glass of wine instead of food? If \u201ca glass of wine is the only happiness he has in life,\u201d the pope replied, \u201cthat\u2019s OK. Instead, ask yourself, what do you do on the sly? What \u2018happiness\u2019 do you<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[39],"tags":[45,44,41],"class_list":["post-370","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-verse","tag-charity","tag-haiku","tag-poetry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wherndon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/370","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wherndon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wherndon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wherndon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wherndon.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=370"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/wherndon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/370\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":377,"href":"https:\/\/wherndon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/370\/revisions\/377"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wherndon.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=370"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wherndon.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=370"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wherndon.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=370"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}