" He was in the world, and the world was made through Him, and the world did not know Him. He came to His own, and His own did not receive Him. But as many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God, to those who believe in His name: who were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God."(John 1:10-13)

...help me to understand this more and more

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one post-industrial city to the next
detroit was a very hard city to love. i think its condition is unique to the rest in that most of the housing and business isn't even liveable/sustainable. how can it be when most of it has been burned down by the city's own residents? i eventually did come to love it. now, my time in the area is up as i'm moving along the great lakes to another post-industrial city, cleveland, that has it's own set of problems. however, i don't think i can ever forget the first time i was exposed to poverty and inequality in my hometown of rochester during flower city work camp (city-wide church youth group mission). it's just hard to think about going home though, when there seems to be so much to do in detroit and cleveland. it's also just hard to have the emotional capacity to think about another depressed, mid-sized city, even if it is my hometown.

thanks to sophia--an article in the nytimes about rochester:

"ROCHESTER, N.Y., May 23 — Two years ago, this city of 190,000 people — with more per-capita murders, high school dropouts and children living in poverty than any other in the state — paid $32 million for a high-speed ferry. It was considered a way to help revive the local economy by shuttling thousands of passengers a day to and from Canada, across Lake Ontario."

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"...what is perhaps Rochester’s greatest challenge: unifying a community where restored historic homes and cozy cafes sit a few blocks from boarded-up houses and streets where heroin is sold in broad daylight.

The city has six universities, yet fewer than half of the ninth graders in Rochester’s public schools go on to earn their diplomas. Rochester has a thriving high-tech industry — and the number of patents its companies and residents have been granted is among the highest per capita in the nation — but one-quarter of its residents live in poverty.

“What you have in Rochester are people who are quite well-educated, wealthy and white living alongside people who have none of these attributes,” said John M. Klofas, a professor of criminal justice at the Rochester Institute of Technology. “The result is a growing culture of separation.”

Rochester, which has lost 40 percent of its population in the past three decades, now has about 80,000 white residents and 80,000 black residents, according to United States Census Bureau statistics. But of the 50,000 people living below the poverty line, 32,000 of them are black."

weep weep weep!