Prayer and Poverty the World Over

During my visit with the United Way in Taiwan, I headed out early one morning to visit the Longshan Temple --- a prominent place of worship in Taiwan. As I walked from the subway station across the park towards the temple, I came upon a familiar sight to me. Homelessness.

There in small corners and atop benches were those individuals without permanent housing: often a newspaper served as the blanket. As you can see, this setting was right in front of the Temple. Inside the beautiful Temple a couple of hundred worshipers went through a moving prayer service. Many of those in attendance where those on their way to work.....stopping for the 6:00 am prayers.

I write this not to point out poverty and religion in Taiwan, but the universal aspect of homelessness and prayer in the world over. The other day as I walked into work at the corner of Grand River and Griswold ---near the rebirth on Woodward Avenue in Downtown Detroit--- layed a man in a doorway with a newspaper pulled up over him for a blanket. Around the corner on Washington Avenue, individuals headed into church for their morning prayers. Not so different than the reality at Longshan Temple.

As in Metro Detroit and the US as a whole, there is a widening gap between those with resources and those without in Taiwan. They are experiencing manufacturing being outsourced to mainland China. Very different cultures and worlds apart, yet, there are some universal threads that run through every society.

The work for organizations such as United Way and others---as well as our responsibility as citizens---is to help community improve --- to see children grow up healthy --- to see those without find a path to stability. No small task, but one that requires a daily effort --- the world over.

No suprise I know, but as Stanford's Larry Lessig recently said, "We make progress when we make things visible."