There is a quaint old story of the Gift of the Magi where was husband and a wife at Christmas both have something they adore.
The husband has a watch and the wife has luxurious hair.
The couple at Christmas do the following in giving, in the wife cuts her hair to purchase a watch chain for her husband and the husband sells his watch to buy her a fitting brush.
It was never my intention to ever focus upon rich people nor to expose the reality of the wealthy in this world. I firmly believe in pulling oneself up by their bootstraps and the Providence of God winning out.
I detest begging and I loathe being put into the position to beg as I have on this blog.
God's leash though is God's and here am I, owned by Him, so I do where He drags me to whether I like it or not.
I found a letter by President Theodore Roosevelt addressed to his former Nurse, Mrs. Dora Watkins. The President was not filthy rich, but he was in a position of being wealthy, and was apparently like King David, looking for those who he could show God's caring for.
In the letter, the President sends this old woman twenty dollars. For many rich people of this 21st century that would seem generous, and 20 dollars is a generous gift......but the problem is, this is 1905 AD.
In 1965, an American could purchase for 20 dollars more groceries than a family of 5 could eat.
So let us return to a reality of just what 20 dollars would be as a gift in 1905, as it was more than generous in what President Roosevelt did.
Twenty dollars in 1905, would probably buy you 70 bushels of oats. That will not mean a great deal to most people as they are so removed from the real world they have no comprehension of what that gift is.
Twenty dollars in an era when a laborer would perhaps earn 60 dollars per month as a good wage, would equate that President Roosevelt gave his former Nurse for Christmas one third of the wage a person would earn for a month's labor.
In American poverty terms, that would something in the amount of 1000 dollars in the 21st century.
This is placed here as the rich people are busy regifting garbage that is not good enough for them from their friends and family, and the rich who are still tossing 20 dollars to a person they know or some expensive tag sweater which costs some China girl 1.60 to sew for LL Bean.
What I state in this is what is generous? For the reason that the strangled American middle class knows what a dollar is worth, those poor people and people who think they are "well off" end up donating here even after I ask them not to, as they are under enough strain financially.
The rich though never are a Theodore Roosevelt or a Ronald Reagan in offering gifts or assistance in true giving or charity. They can sit on 30 million dollars in investments, and then hand out a few hundred, and delude themselves into thinking they are generous.
I have proven that for all the multi millionaires in America, if they would just hire and pay 5 people a good wage, that most of America's troubles would be solved in the financial range as it would boost the real economy.
Yet I marvel stunned at all of this in rich people either are busy getting tax deductions and bragging about it like Rush Limbaugh or are like John McCain seeking how he can screw some beaner out of a few more dollars to get a cheap lawn job done.
America is a nation of Scrooges when it comes to the patrician elite. I fully realize that numbers of the idiot poor are not capable of dealing with large sums of money, because they would be like my neighbor in having hospital bills, and a charity event was given for them, and they went out and bought two snowmobiles for their family with the money.
It is why I have placed a plan here of what I would do with money donated, why I will not waste it, nor be tempted from this plan, because I know what a dollar is worth to the generated cent, and I would never indulge myself knowing money poor people donated needed that money. It would be pure sin to spend 20 dollars on a steak when someone else was eating cracker burgers.
It is pure sin when rich people in "holiday giving" focus on charities for tax deductions or tossing a few dollars at the poor in a bonus, acting like it is the crown jewels.
The rich should have a mandate in not just giving until it hurts, but giving triple that amount, as most rich people never get close to 10 percent giving of their income.
The Bible mandates 10 percent in tithe to God. That does not mean only to the Church. That means in the Bible to provide for the Levites who did service so you could sit in your pew and worship as they killed your fatted calf. That also means that part of that tithe is for the things you enjoy as long as you bring them before God to enjoy them.
I know that the rich have not given 10 percent of what they earn in any given year to the mandates God states. Wherever God has you worshipping Him, and not some cult or whorehouse, is where it begins, but God mandates He requires caring for others, more than new gold icons for the Pope.
Alms for the poor are what moves God, but as you need to be told, God is given first and not last, and the cheerful giver is blessed and not the Scrooge.
Alms are money and goods to the poor. As an example, for Mom, TL and I joined in building her an air conditioner cover as her old one wore out.
Mom is someone who likes trinkets and clothes, but as she says, "Trinkets take too much time to dust and I have more clothes than I can wear".
A magi gift is one which keeps giving and a gift the person will appreciate. What that cover cost was a great deal more than the widow's mite, and is a great deal more in the little I have than the great deal my well to do sisters have.
In exposing hipocracy, I know of several years ago my sister due to her astute husband had 400,000 dollars they pulled out of Wall Street stocks. Want to know what she gave my Mom?
One year she gave a "share" of the cost of a new fridge and then made my Mom feel like shit, when sis strolled in to "see her fridge that she had bought".
Then there were the "hair appointments" of 150 dollars to get rid of Mom, as I am the one who takes Mom to get her hair done as I enjoy being with Mom.
Currently with Mom having reached her limits with the abuse, and not bowing before this pope, was down last year to a 100 dollar check which Mom threw away on principle. I suspect this year it will be nothing.
The other sister in her mansion, gave Mom 25 dollars in a gift certificate.
Yes you rich people are so very generous, and then want your ass kissed and boots licked down broadway when God knows blessed well you make Scrooge look generous before his conversion as he at least paid taxes for the poor house.
The pretentious rich give for show and then expect the soul of those they gift for 100 dollars. Granted you give a poor person a 10,000 bonus, they might expect it every year, and might just be furious when you give them a bonus of 2 dollars some year, when they become sloven liberals.
The point is that person should have been fired or cut off as a friend long before Christmas.
My sister, the ice queen is called the pope, as she phoned up one day after being a particularly sinful satanist to me and said, "I forgive you for awhull...gulp....llllllah you did to me so now you can forgive me".
It was generous I suppose, but I instead bound her sins to her as it pissed me off in her thinking I was so lowly that she could not just apologize from her pew to me, but she had to conjure up sinful fiction to try and force a forgiveness from me.
Yeah it was a series of particularly heinous things she had been up to in humiliating me repeatedly in public as Mom was in her hospital bed, grilling Mom when she was on morphine pain killer, trying to stick Mom into a geezer home behind both our backs, trying to keep her hands on Mom's little house and then telling Mom that her "babysitter" was her walker she had for a broken hip, so sister did not have to be around to watch her......oh and the entire group leaving me to do all of Mom's therapy and taking her there.
Before any of you cast stones at the sister..........I know you rich people have done the same things as you sit on your high moral ground. When Rush Limbaugh scoots off to New York and leaves the old Mum to her lonesome to die alone, then apples are not ever falling from this self righteous tree very far.
Does everyone deserve a generous gift? Not in the least, as Teddy was not handing out piles of checks as people had not earned that generosity. The reality is though, Teddy Roosevelt was a man who actually ran a ranch, a business, where dead calves and live calves meant money or starving.
Money for rich people is not about money. It is about validation. If others have money, then it lessens their self worth and lordship over others, as that big empty hole is not filled by giving as they miserly do.
It comes back to Theodore Roosevelt. Not every person in his life was a good person, and he cut out the culls as they were always problems. He was though a generous man to those in his sphere.
He was though not a multi millionaire, but he did not give like a miser.
I am confident that I would probably have that big donation for what I have earned from people being taught here, if I had lied to the rich about their generosity as Rush Limbaugh does and other charities which preen the egos of those with money. That though is not the spanking they need as this is about reality and the hope of saving them from their own delusions.
See when a rich person might give a few hundred or thousand dollars, they need to be reminding that in the Judgment which will take place, that this is the price they put on their souls. No one buys admission to heaven, but when you have Jesus surrounded by the priceless gems of Saints, and some millionaire standing there having regifted things not good enough for them or come up with a few thousand as a bonus. Jesus has this other way of Judging things, in whatever you do to the least of My brethren, you have done to Me.
So a millionaire giving some "low class" poor person a few hundred dollars has just said that all Jesus is worth to them is a few hundred or a few thousand dollars. The insult will probably be understood by the rich then as the sentence of Christ "Depart from me ye workers of iniquity" is delivered with all those Lazarus and Widow's mite court standing there as witnesses.
In giving, it is not what Jesus would do, but it is, what would you do, if you were poor, what kind of gift or money would you judge fitting, if you were in the other person's shoes?
Theodore Roosevelt seemed to comprehend the need in other people's shoes in the government protected them from rancid food and bad tonics, but it was the Citizen who gave generously through charity in cheerful giving.
That is the reality in the Birther Obama was but what the people lusted for in removing Christ from Christmas trees and Christmas, and returning to their old pagan rites.
"Who better to be self serving, selfish and self centered over than myself and who better to heap gifts and horde money for than me in my "It is better to give to oneself as who can receive more pleasure from my money than me".
CHRISTMAS PRESENT TO HIS OLD NURSE
(To Mrs. Dora Watkins)
White House, December 19, 1905.
DEAR DOLLY:
I wish you a merry Christmas, and want you to buy whatever you think you
would like with the enclosed check for twenty dollars. It is now just
forty years since you stopped being my nurse, when I was a little boy of
seven, just one year younger than Quentin now is.
I wish you could see the children play here in the White House grounds.
For the last three days there has been snow, and Archie and Quentin and
their cousin, cunning little Sheffield Cowles, and their other cousin,
Mr. John Elliott's little girl, Helena, who is a perfect little dear,
have been having all kinds of romps in the snow--coasting, having
snowball fights, and doing everything--in the grounds back of the White
House. This coming Saturday afternoon I have agreed to have a great
play of hide-and-go-seek in the White House itself, not only with these
children but with their various small friends.
agtG
