Sacramento Homeless blog

Hosni Mubarak While the sermons at the Union Gospel Mission are, as I’ve written elsewhere , mostly excellent, there have been a spate of problems recently, according to me [mostly] and other careful listeners in the chapel’s field of seats. Last night, “the inimitable Hector Marquez” [as the Gideon host once loftily described him] was the featured sermonizer, and he came, in that way that he always comes, loaded for bear. Hector [everyone in the pews seems to call him by his first name] always works himself up in the coarse of his preaching, and he certainly did that last night. He yells and screams and pounds the altar, albeit in a non-threatening way, except when he spikes it to make a particularly prominent point. His topic was one of there being a great disobedience out there in the secular world and in many church communities. The kids today are particularly bad. Several have murdered their parents. The world is going to hell in a hand basket -- that kind of thing. I’m not...

Last night at the mission, and on previous nights, the earthquakes near Haiti and Chili have gotten attention by the preacher. Last night, Hector Marquez told us that seismologists were alarmed and that this was evidence that the earth was being rocked off its axis. [He said "axel," but axis is surely what he meant.] The quake activity is evidence of End Times, he told us. Actually, a google search of the Internet tells us that recent earthquake activity is not abnormal, and seismologists are not alarmed. A Christian Science Monitor article, last Thursday, titled, " Haiti, Chile, now Taiwan: earthquake escalation? " says this: [Kuo Kai-wen, director of the Seismology Center of Taiwan's Central Weather Bureau]says the Taiwan, Chile, and Haiti quakes involved different tectonic plates. Globally, he says, there's an average of one magnitude 8 or higher earthquake per year, some 17 magnitude 7 or higher quakes, and 170 to 180 of magnitude 6 or larger. ...

On the way back to the mission last evening, I ran into a friend [whose name, oops, I've forgotten] who calls me Stretch . [The moniker is warranted; I look a lot bit a tiny bit like the toy, plus I'm tall, stretched out, though I'm a bit bowed, higher than even Danny Fisher or Justin Whitaker .] One thing me and my friend talked about on our walk along North B Street was the sermons at the mission and my observation that the preachers avoid the "soft" topics of Christianity, like they were the plague. The Sermon on the Mount ; Paul's words regarding love [ I Corinthians 13 ]; and Christ's Two Commandments [ Love God & Love Others ] are just-next-to-absolutely avoided. The homeless congregants at the mission are told in 90%+ of sermons that they are loved by Jesus or God. We're told to praise God and fear Him and Hell. But for us to love or be compassionate? Why, that's for girlie-men. Before the sermons each evening, The Rules are re...