The Five Rules to Protect Yourself from Being the Agent of the Devil In the Community

• Ask whether we are changing the odds for everyone, or helping a few people beat the odds.

• Find another gifts, contributions and capacities. Use them. Give them a place in the community.

• When a service is proposed, fight to get it converted into income.

• If those in power are hell-bent on giving people services rather than income, then fight for those services to come in the form of vouchers. That way the person who must be served has a choice as to who will serve them. And there may be some competition.

• Develop hospitality, recognizing the stranger is one with whom one acts not in services but in equality.

Text by John McKnight (from “The Other Side” magazine), adapted my Mike Mather. Images by Jeff Kubina from the Community Bridge, Mount Olivet Heights, Frederick MD. Graphic Art