Search Results for: RISSE

During this holiday season, I hope you will consider to continue your support for the RISSE Amazon Wish List. This was our idea year ago, and it is am even more worthy idea today.

There are only six items left to choose from on the Wish List, every one of them will help support a refugee child or their family or teachers.

What a joy to wake up every morning and look at this list and watch it shrink – it started two weeks ago with 36 items. We are closing in.

My work with the Army Of Good over the past several years has taught me many things, one of the most important is the call to practical action to help others in need: the Christian and Hebrew prophets both heard the same instructions from their God: take real action in the real world.

I call it Practical Action, Small Acts Of Great Kindness. Focused and meaningful. There is joy in this work.

St. Francis and Jesus Christ both preached that practical action is at least as worthwhile as piety or righteous observance. Feeding a hungry person or helping a needy person is just as likely to bring transformation as prayer or meditation.

I put it differently. I don’t need to be a saint to do good, I don’t need to be perfect to be spiritual, even righteous. And it’s a good thing, because I am the farthest thing from a saint around.

So as we approach the New Year, I am thinking the prophets were correct. It feels good to do good.

True sharing, says the Kabbalah, requires a basic shift in the way we see our lives and our relationships to the people around us. I don’t care to prosper at the expensive of others, I choose to prosper by assisting others.

Please check out the Wish List if you can, and watch it shrink.

Audio: Thanks for supporting the RISSE Wish List

The past couple of years have taught me never to take my country and its values for granted again, I see how much I love America and I have found a way to show that love that makes me finally feel patriotic and responsible.

I buy something from the RISSE Amazon Wish List. RISSE is a non-profit refugee and immigrant aid organization based in Albany, N.Y., I worked closely with them for more than a year and a half, especially with the soccer team that was loosely affiliated with them.

The Wish List – just 10 items left – not only helps scores of  refugee kids in the after-school program (toys, mats, supplies), it directly helps the soccer team we supported so enthusiastically.

They are now a part of RISSE, they need warm clothes for the cold weather and other supplies. Those are on the list.

I am working independently now, but I will not forget the wonderful refugee and immigrant children and their parents who depend on RISSE for so many things.

I proposed an Amazon Wish List, and RISSE has responded. The list is in itself a powerful testament to the varied needs of the people who have always loved our country and enriched it in so many ways, many of them forgotten.

It was active for some months, then went silent, but is back in operation with a new and important list of urgent needs. There are now 10 items on the list, down from 36 two weeks ago. The Army Of Good is on the march.

These items range from thermal soccer clothes to dictionaries to computer paper and a yoga mat. Take a look and see if you can help, I see this as a patriotic duty.

The refugees  need our help now, and desperately. They are being vilified by opportunistic politicians and selfish people who have forgotten our roots. Our government has abandoned them and cut their subsidies.

These are not people who cross into our country illegally, every one that I have met have entered legally and are working hard to become productive citizens.

They are brave and honest people,  there are no criminals among them, they have suffered enough. RISSE is desperately important to them. The soccer team can use some help as well.

Their needs are enormous, they need everything, and it is often difficult to help them, even as government support and subsidies have almost completely been eliminated.

The RISSE Amazon Wish List is a simple, inexpensive and very important way to love our country and help this people, by-passing bureaucrats and administrators and Boards Of Directors.

You see what you are buying, and you decide how much you can contribute. The list is full of small acts of great kindness. Thanks for considering it and supporting it.

In the spirit of Christmas, I went on the new RISSE Amazon Wish List and bout a bi-lingual dictionary for the refugee students at the RISSE after school.

I can hardly think of a better way to celebrate the spirit of Christmas than by helping this refugee children and their families, they have suffered enough deserve the same bright future that is supposed to be open to all Americans.

Take a look at the RISSE list, please and see if there is something you can afford and would like to buy. The needs of these children have never been greater.

You can also help the soccer team by using that list, they need winter gear for their outdoor games coming up. Check out the list here.

There are thirteen items, ranging from a yoga mat for a cold floor, some dictionaries and thermal shirts for the soccer team.

Like me, Barbara Shisler, who lives in a small town in Pennsylvania, thinks a lot about what it means to be a human.

She sent two checks to my Post Office Box this morning, and it is letters like hers that are balm and fuel for me.

“Much of your philosophy of life rings true for me,” she wrote. “I’ve been a follower of Jesus my whole life and your quotes about his care for the poor and unjustly treated are the message for us to live by. It helps to have one way through your Army Of Good. Peace and joy to you and Maria and Bedlam Farm this Christmas and for the New Year.”

Thank you Barbara, the same to you. This Christmas, I start every day by looking at the new RISSE Amazon Wish List, which gives me the opportunity to help the poor, the needy, and the unjustly treated all in one place. There are 18 items on the Wish List, they offer gifts for refugee and immigrant families, who are in desperate need of comfort and support.

They range from warm clothing for the winter to games and dictionaries for the RISSE after school students to office supplies for the dedicated  teachers and staffers.

If you can, take a look, helping these people is not only in the best traditions of America, but it helps me to feel good, stay grounded and follow the call of some of the world’s most amazing and admired people: Dr. King, Jesus Christ, Gandhi, Pope Francis, Mother Theresa, St. Francis, Nelson Mandela.

These people are universally admired but only sporadically followed.

I am not a Christian, but like Barbara, but I do try to follow the call of Jesus to help the needy. Son of God or not, he was the real deal: “Then the King will say to those at his right hand, ‘come, you that are blessed..inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world; for I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me.” (Matthew 25:34-36.)

For me right now, that means buying a gift from the RISSE Wish List every morning, there is no better way to start my day. For pennies, I began my day in color and light and in good feeling. They can’t take that away from me with their poisonous “news.”

I have been working with the refugees in the Albany area for nearly two years now, they are in greater need than ever before, our government has abandoned them and defamed them. They are good people, risking their lives and suffering greatly to pursue the American Dream. There is no one more American than they are.

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I also offer another option for following the call to do good. You can contribute to my Mansion/Refugee Fund, I can do some of this work for you if you can’t or choose to do this work in other ways.

That’s what the Army Of Good is all about.

The Mansion fund is focused on filling the holes in the lives of the elderly poor, those who are left behind. I am transparent, I document with word and pictures every single thing we do.

If you wish to contribute to my work, you can click on the “Support The Army Of Good” button at the bottom of the page, or contribute via Paypal, [email protected], or send a check to Jon Katz (note Mansion Fund), P.O.Box 205 State Route 22, Cambridge, N.Y., 12816.

And thanks. I will make sure your money goes precisely where it is supposed to go. I’m going to the Mansion this afternoon to do readings to the residents, a new weekly activity for me.

There are 16 items on the new RISSE (refugee and immigrant support center in Albany, N.Y.) Amazon Wish List, down from 36 a week ago, and thank you. We are chipping away, one day at a time.

I see the Wish List this way. This morning, I bought a package of Rainbow Dance Ribbon streamers for young kids, the refugee and immigrant children at the RISSE after school who wish to dance in America. It cost my $13.79.

It was a wonderful way to begin my week and my day, it makes me feel good, and it makes me feel like a true patriot, something I have not always had a chance to do in my life.

This is a way to stand up for America in my mind, a nation of immigrants and refugees, a melting pot that is the envy and inspiration of so much of the world.

The small and angry and disconnected fear and hate refugees and immigrants, they feel they are taking away something that is theirs. But we are the refugees and immigrants, their lives are ours, their stories are ours. They are not the other, they are us.

I would encourage you to take a look at the shrinking RISSE Amazon Wish List and see if there is one thing you might wish to buy for these people in great need. By definition, a refugee is a person who has suffered enough. I have heard many of their horrible and wrenching stories.

I believe they have come to the right place, we are a beacon of light in this world, and every time you purchase an item on the RISSE list, I believe you standing up for our country, and the values we share so deeply.

The items left range from $12 to $140, they are aimed at the refugee children and their families.

Thanks for listening. Go see the list here.

If Amazon asks for security reasons, the RISSE address is RISSE, 715 Morris Street, Albany, N.Y., 12208. 518 621-1041.