For some homeless vets, life on the street easier than going to the VA

This is a very twisted country at times. The same people saying we are a "Christian" nation complain about people being lazy, wanting to live on the streets, eat in soup kitchens, beg for spare change and suffer harsh weather along with harsher stares. It matters not to them how these people became homeless or that this group of our own people arrived living under the stars after they served the stars on the flag of this nation. To the "chosen of God" believing that they have all they have because God thought they were worthy and everyone is deserving of being a wretched soul suffering, they should be thankful they do not receive what they deserve when they turn their backs on our veterans.

Christ said there is no greater love than for a man to lay down his life for the sake of his friends, and this these men and women were willing to do, yet we leave them like trash on the street. We always want someone else to get them out of our site so that our eyes no longer have to see them, walk past their hands reaching out for some spare change and far enough away from them so that we can't smell their dirty clothes. After all they ruin our day when we have shopping to do to celebrate the birth of the Holy Child Christ on Christmas. We have sales to spend our money on and paying attention to the way they live may cut into our happiness when we buy ourselves a much deserved gift for ourselves. We can manage to think of someone we HAVE to buy a gift for as we search for the cheapest price then act as if their happiness was all that mattered when they open it but we can't manage to do anything else Christ talked about. After all, this is Christmas so what He said, what He preached, has absolutely nothing to do with our homeless people any more than it has to do with our homeless veterans.

Luke 12
48 But the one who does not know and does things deserving punishment will be beaten with few blows. From everyone who has been given much, much will be demanded; and from the one who has been entrusted with much, much more will be asked.

Is is much was given to them as soldiers in terms of chow, clothing, shelter and weapons when they served so now they should ask nothing more of us? Is it that they were given so much bravery so they should pick themselves up by their "bootstraps" and get another job now that they cannot do their job as a soldier? Hmm, maybe it is the part about beaten that allows us to walk away? Or, dread the thought, much was given to us if we are rich and have plenty and we are supposed to share, take care of the poor and needy the way Christ preached?

Last night I was with a church group on a bus and was talking to a young man with much love and potential. We were talking about the people who believe they were chosen to be wealthy because God thought they deserved it. They take that attitude and believe that the poor were chosen to be poor because God thought they deserved to suffer. They never stop to think about Christ coming into this world as a child of poor parents, how He was homeless, depending on the kindness of strangers for Him and His 12 friends as they traveled to spread the good news about God's love for them or how He found more value in a poor widow's two cents than the tiny portion of a rich man's wealth. They have short term memory loss because most Sunday's there is a bit of preaching going on about love, compassion, charity and giving someone hope but they forget about it when it comes to the poor.

For them they won't read something like this because they already made up their minds that our homeless and especially our homeless veterans want to be that way.

The truth is most of them wouldn't be on the streets if they didn't serve this country. Post Traumatic Stress Disorder caused most of what they ended up losing but we see a drunk or a drug addict. They used to wear a uniform but we see worn out dirty clothes. Their lives used to matter when it was time for someone to go to some strange country and fight our battles but they outlived their usefulness long enough to become a burden to polite society with shopping to do for Christmas.

They have been beaten down and our appreciation wore out as soon as they got back home. When they would rather live on the street than stand in line at the VA, it shows just how twisted this country has become but no one else noticed but them. The part that should shock all of us is that no matter how we treated them, they do not regret risking their lives for us and would do it all again for our sake. They were given the "greater love" allowing them to be willing to lay down their lives, but that love was never returned to them by the rest of us.

Their mission: rescue vets from the streets
Los Angeles Times

A nonprofit sends a crew out to feed, befriend and console soldiers and sometimes talk them into housing. The group also runs a crisis hotline and bushwhacks through bureaucratic jungles for weary vets.

By Steve Lopez
November 27, 2010|7:47 p.m.

Out near LAX, a dozen military veterans man a war room, strategizing day and night. Their mission is to bring other vets in off the ledge, to gather them up from the streets and shake the dust off them.

With a budget of just half a million dollars a year, the team of "wild cowboys" is intent on saving lives, says the general of the nonprofit National Veterans Foundation -- an Alabama-raised, Lebanese Catholic Vietnam vet named Floyd "Shad" Meshad.

Meshad used to have a big job at the West L.A. Veterans Affairs complex, but he's a guy with no patience for bureaucracy, so he had to get out, way back in the 1980s, and start his own thing.

His outfit runs a crisis hotline and bushwhacks through bureaucratic jungles for weary vets. Twice a week, his crew heads out to Venice, Hollywood and skid row in a big white van stocked with provisions, fishing for soldiers sleeping on cold pavement and in damp ivy beds. They feed them, befriend them, console them and sometimes talk them into housing.

"I'm going through a lot of depression," Vietnam vet Vince Sylvester recently told Meshad's platoon at a park in Hollywood, saying he still hasn't gotten over the loss of a combat buddy who died "in my arms."

Sylvester said he was shot in both legs in Vietnam and had been homeless for three years until getting an apartment three months ago. He won't go to the VA unless he has to, Sylvester said. It's too much of a runaround.

On Hollywood Boulevard, Vietnam vet Rex Baker leaned on a cane as he panhandled. He said he'd been homeless for four years, but wouldn't dream of going to the VA and standing in line for services.

Meshad and his staff get this all the time. For a lot of soldiers, going to the VA is less appealing than going back to boot camp, even after they finally admit they need help.

It's not that the VA doesn't have good people doing great work, Meshad said, and he applauds the vow by agency chief Eric Shinseki to bring all homeless veterans in from the cold in five years.

The problem, as Meshad sees it, is that the VA is too big, too bureaucratic and too overwhelmed. And we haven't yet hit the anticipated wave of banged-up vets coming off multiple combat deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan.
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Their mission: rescue vets from the streets

When you read this, it gives a clear message about those who have plenty and those who have nothing.

Luke 12
The Parable of the Rich Fool

13 Someone in the crowd said to him, “Teacher, tell my brother to divide the inheritance with me.”

14 Jesus replied, “Man, who appointed me a judge or an arbiter between you?” 15 Then he said to them, “Watch out! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; life does not consist in an abundance of possessions.”

16 And he told them this parable: “The ground of a certain rich man yielded an abundant harvest. 17 He thought to himself, ‘What shall I do? I have no place to store my crops.’

18 “Then he said, ‘This is what I’ll do. I will tear down my barns and build bigger ones, and there I will store my surplus grain. 19 And I’ll say to myself, “You have plenty of grain laid up for many years. Take life easy; eat, drink and be merry.”’

20 “But God said to him, ‘You fool! This very night your life will be demanded from you. Then who will get what you have prepared for yourself?’

21 “This is how it will be with whoever stores up things for themselves but is not rich toward God.”

Jesus talked a lot about the poor and needy. He had no patience for the greedy rich or for those who did not see their wealth as something to be shared with others.

Maybe this Christmas as you go shopping to buy things for others and yourself, you can think of what this season of love is supposed to mean and try to live up to the Son who was born in a town called Bethlehem.