Six of Pentacles — Spiritual Message of the Day

There are homeless people all around us (which is a very sad comment on the state of our society) and we, as individuals, so rarely reach out to help them, at least not directly. Why is that? A quarter, a dollar even, what would it hurt us to give that much to a homeless person once in a while? If you’ve ever done this, you know that the unfortunate person also appreciates your acknowledgement of their humanity—probably as much as the money itself—and that don’t cost us anything to give away.

Unfortunately, we make all sorts of excuses for not doing this. We tell ourselves, “He’ll just spend it on wine anyway,” or, “I give money to a local charitable organization and that’s enough,” or, “They’re all just crazy (or lazy).” The truth, however, is that these excuses are, in the main, insincere and disingenuous.

So again, why do we so rarely reach out in charity toward the homeless? Are we afraid that their poverty and misery are infectious, or do we fear that someone will see us interacting with a filthy person and judge us as being filthy too? Maybe we realize that a dollar is not going to fix this person’s life, so dealing with this issue in such a small way makes us feel inadequate. Better to just ignore it and hope it goes away. We also find the pain in the eyes of a homeless person to be too immediate and heartrending to confront directly. It scratches a sore and tender part of us. We may think, “There but for the grace of God go I,” but contrary to our protestations of devout faith, we have but a tenuous belief in the grace of God. After all, if He could let this happen to that poor wretch begging on the street corner, then He might just let it happen to me too some day.

We tell ourselves that we are too wise, too busy, or too broke to give a homeless person some spare change, but the truth is that we are just too afraid. If we can confront and overcome that fear, however, then we can begin to become the generous and charitable person that our soul knows us to be.

If you enjoy these words of spiritual advice from the cards, you will love my book,  The Soul’s Journey: Finding Spiritual Messages in the Tarot. 
The image on this post is a card from my RWS 2.0 Tarot deck. 

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