rpitze's reply history at Help.com

Queen Elizabeth,

I’m caused to wonder how old you are and where you come up with such wisdom. Think what kind of world it would be if more people thought like you. My short response: I agree! And I agree with others who say that none of us have all the answers. I like to think of humanity’s evolution toward the Truth (capital T) like this: Imagine an old, wooden-spoked wagon wheel. Place each world religion/spirituality on a spoke somewhere between the hub (center) and the rim (steel band surrounding the wheel) –some further out, some closer in. Label the hub T (capital), Ultimate Truth. Each of the world religions/spiritualities has some truth (lower case t), but not the whole T. Interestingly, as each of the religions/spiritualities evolves toward T, they also evolve closer to one another — as the individual spokes converge on the hub. As far as your writing style goes, and whether or not you use too many words, I wouldn’t change a thing!

Hi, Ron again! I see my email address was removed during the post. I don’t know if I’ll find my way back to this page, so I’ll try to leave my address and phone number. Address is 341 29th Avenue North in St. Cloud, MN 56303. Phone is 320-267-0872. Thanks

Ron

I’m in the same situation: I chose to pursue education in the field of social work and theology — undergraduate, post graduate and clinical pastoral education. I have worked in non-profits (formed two of them over the years), but have not been able to earn enough money working full time to live above poverty, much less pay school loans. Now, 16 years after I started this path, I’m 56 years old and in serious trouble regarding how I’ll pay this $40,000 to slow down a bit as I age. I’ve worked as a chaplain with people in poverty (housing, food, clothing, transportation), jail/prison, drug/alcohol recovery, juvenile/adult street gangs. At this point, I’m scared — and ashamed to admit that I’m a little bit angry that a person could sincerely devote this much of a lifetime to serving the needs of those “least among us” and bump into retirement without a hope of slowing down. I don’t want to quit; I just really need to find a way to reduce/eliminate these loans so I can live out my life at a reduced pace. If anybody has any ideas about grants or other corporate/government programs that might help, please forward them to me. (email removed) Thank you so much.

Ron