For Writers and Readers

Long ago, in Amsterdam, we were staying at a youth hostel and several of us went out occasionally to make some money as street musicians. One fellow had a trumpet and he could play it very well but on the street he purposely made it squawk and screech because people were more likely to give him money if they thought that would send him away, which it did.

Now I feel as if advertisers have taken on a similar m.o. If I get fifty ads from Bombas socks, I’m supposed to fall for their pitch at least once. I would probably buy some if I thought they would then leave me alone. But they wouldn’t. They haven’t the integrity of that trumpet player. Even go to their website to window-shop and you will get countless more pleas.

Charities have followed their lead. Here’s why that saddens me deeply.

I spent some time at Mother Teresa’s Missionaries of Charity Seminary in Tijuana and learned the MCs flat out don’t ask for support. They take what people give and they get by without begging. If all they have to eat is corn flakes, that’s what they eat. A seminarian who became my friend had to change to a different order because he was hypoglycemic and was getting sick.

The best church I ever attended had a collection basket by the door but nobody ever asked for money or weaved a sermon around the subject of tithing. I truly miss that church, which closed for reasons other than financial.

During this awful season of political bickering and backstabbing, I have probably gotten a thousand pleas for contributions. Besides that the idea of a presidential candidate begging dismays me, every time I donate to any cause, I get rewarded by a hundred pleas for more and more. It feels as if the guy on the corner to whom I gave a dollar is racing down the street to beat me to the next corner so he can beg me again.

Asking for money has become a tremendously profitable and, in my opinion, disgraceful industry, at least in the way it’s commonly practiced. Advertisers of all sorts depend upon sending out pleas to donate or buy again and again and again, as big data probably tells them that eventually I will give up my resistance and comply.

If reincarnation happens, I suspect they will become mosquitos.

Now, this state of the union or the world puts me in fix, on account of my position with Perelandra College where I find myself to be, among other jobs, the fundraiser. The college needs money because we are determined to keep our tuition so low nobody will need to take out loans. But education is in no way as obviously vital a cause as ministering to the poorest of the poor, and I am not even close to as charismatic as Mother Teresa.

Logic insists I should start aggressively begging. But I am stubbornly illogical.

Maybe some of you will pray for the college finances. If you do that, may God bless you. If you don’t, may God bless you anyway.