Tales From the Roadside with Bruce Moody

Program Description

Christmas, 1992. Bruce Moody was unemployed, approaching the age of sixty, with no apparent means of procuring February’s rent. He’d attended Yale and Columbia College and worked hard all his life, with a resume that included respectable credits as an author. But, with no other options, he made the excruciatingly painful choice to earn his living begging on the roadside. What began as an experience he couldn’t bear to divulge to family or friends became a source of deep inspiration, even joy. He discovered the enormous kindness and generosity of his community, and a wealth of spiritual fulfillment in the opportunity to stand by the roadside uttering the name of God with each car that passed his way, saying “We all belong to those people, the homeless and those who are given shelter. All of us, all of us who give and those to whom are given, we’re all one.” His inspiring story is a hard won, real-life reminder that life’s most troubling times can indeed become the blessings that bring the deepest understanding. (Hosted by Justine Willis Toms)

Bruce Moody is the author of Will Work for Food or $: A Memoir From the Roadside (Red Wheel/Weiser 2003) and of the novel, The Decline and Fall of Daphne Finn.

Topics Explored in this Dialogue:

• What is the blessing that only a beggar can offer you
• What is it like to be on the other side of the sign that reads, “Will Work for Food or $”
• What do you do when you perceive that you’ve run out of options
• How being a beggar can be sacred
• What is the common bond that unites
• Those of us who give help and those who receive it
• What are the ethics that apply to every job, even that of a roadside beggar

Program Number: 3023            Host: Justine Willis Toms              Interview Date: 11/25/2003