What's in an 'adjective'?

I'm in Cleveland this morning.

My 72 year old dad is undergoing a five hour surgery today to remove part of his liver where a cancer growth was recently detected. My dad is an amazing fellow. A retired truck driver he and my mom own a family restaurant in Lorain called Rosie's. Through the grace, mercy and healing power of God, he is a cancer survivor twice before in just the last three years. My amazement of him comes from his complete patient and peaceful attitude.

I know many of you who read this will take a quick moment and pray for his continued health - I appreciate that, thank you.

Having arrived at the hospital at around 5:30 this morning, I took the opportunity to read up on the local news in the Cleveland Plain Dealer. On the front page of the Metro section is this headline; "Ohio in top 5 for homeless attacks". It caught my attention as you can well imagine. The article has a sizable picture of Eugene Clemons in a hospital bed with his legs bandaged. Eugene is a homeless veteran who was recently attacked in an alley by unknown assailants who robbed him of his $10.00 and beat him with a board that had nails in it.

The article cites a report titled, "Hate, violence and death on Main Street USA 2007," by the National Coalition for the Homeless, ranks Ohio fourth among 26 states who report such information.

Interestingly enough there was another article on the next page of the Metro section entitled, "A dog doesn't die in that manner." It chronicles the death of Charles Gooden Jr., who was beaten, urinated on and stuffed in a trash can on 117th street by 15 youth sometime early Sunday morning.

Mr. Gooden wasn't homeless. He was however, a convicted felon on drug charges and spent at least six of the last several years in either state or federal prison. He was just released in July 2007.

While I'm grateful that more attention is being paid to crimes against the homeless population, it seems segments of our communities find crimes against some people are more sensational than crimes against others. In this case, homeless vs. addict.

Today, I'm wondering if we could just find that crimes against anyone is senseless. I'm not sure why we need an adjective like 'homeless' to get our attention - but we do. Perhaps one day we'll cease to define what we've become, and have allowed ourselves to become, as a community and focus on who we are.

What do you think?

Dan Rogers