This is the sixth post in a series considering the root causes of hunger. The Millennium Development Goals serve as a helpful framework.

Millennium Development Goal 7: Ensure Environmental Sustainability

How carefully we manage our natural resources and environment has a direct impact on hunger, especially through issues of employment and health. Here are a few examples:

If we remove fish from our oceans, lakes, and rivers faster than they can reproduce, catches get smaller. As catches get smaller, fisherman make less money and eventually may be driven out of the job altogether. With less income and/or uncertain employment, it is harder to buy food and other necessities. In addition, as we deplete one or more species of fish, it can change the whole ecosystem in that location, affecting additional industries, animals, and people.

When we cut down too many trees too quickly, it exposes soil to erosion. Some of the soil washes away in the rain, causing silting in waterways. Some of it is picked up by wind and carried to other places. In Beijing this month, the sky was orange with dirt. Soil in the air led to a level-five pollution warning, the highest level, with people advised to wear masks and stay indoors. Those with respiratory illnesses were at especially high risk, and people suffering from illness have a difficult time making it to work. In the meantime, where there used to be trees, top soil is lost and root systems no longer hold water, making the land drier, less nutrient-rich, and less able to grow things (like food).

How much garbage did you throw away today? Where will it go? In addition to removing natural resources from the environment, we add many unnatural ones back in. The chemicals. metals, and minerals in our discarded products find their way into the soil and water, which find their way into what we eat and drink. Those who live in poverty and hunger are most vulnerable, as they have fewer resources for acquiring healthier options, and less power to prevent contaminants from being dumped near their homes.

These are just a few examples and a few of the impacts. If you’re interested in learning more, here are some suggestions for additional information that I particularly appreciated:
– The Story of Stuff – a video about consumption and its effects on the environment.
– Collapse, by Jared Diamond – a book that looks at how and why civilizations have caused significant damage to their environments.
– The End of Food, by Paul Roberts – a book that considers how our food production systems affect the environment and us.
– Hot, Flat, and Crowded, by Thomas Friedman – a book that suggests not only how increasing populations and consumerism are a threat to the planet, but also some ideas about how it can be changed.

Do you have additional resources you’d recommend? Please leave a comment!

-Nancy Michaelis

What does living for a year outside your own culture–eating, sleeping, working, and playing in another language–teach you about your own cultural assumptions? Last Saturday I found out, as three participants in the ELCA Young Adults in Global Mission program met me for coffee in Cuernavaca, Mexico.

Stuff

“I’m learning the difference between needs and wants,” said Katherine, who tutors children in a very low-income area. “At home I would be saying ‘I need shoes,’ but in my job, I think ‘I need duct tape!” All three young people agreed that Mexico is teaching them how to save and re-use things. “There is no Salvation Army here, where people take their excess goods.” But, notes Peter, as consumerism creeps in, “there are more disposable products and more garbage, and the trucks pick up more often.” Peter is working with a group that is trying to close a municipal landfill that does not meet environmental standards and is contaminating water downstream. Katie, meanwhile, has been working with an indigenous group in Guerrero that uses plastic bags as a weaving material.

Energy and natural resources

Living in homes where water is received only 2 or 3 days a week (it gets pumped from city pipes up to a storage tank on the roof, where it is dispensed through a home’s plumbing), all three young people (and me, too!)  learned to take “dry showers.” You turn on the water to get wet, turn it off to soap up, and turn it back on to rinse. Pete, who lives in a rural area, builds a fire in order to heat his water. “You see the energy it takes to get hot water if you have to make a fire! I hadn’t really thought, before, that the energy it takes to heat water has to come from somewhere.”  All three will take their awareness of finite water supply back to the states.

Community and hospitality

“The hospitality shown to strangers in Mexico is amazing,” Katherine told me. “You are offered food, drink, and a seat at the table even when they don’t know you! In the US we are more guarded. You need an invitation first.¨ In the indigenous community of Tlalma where Katie has been working, Katie is learning about the importance of touch, of connecting with others, of sharing the day, of learning from others.  Experiencing this depth of community makes returning to the U.S. difficult, I learned while participating in nine years of ELCA Summer Missionary Conferences. One day you’re immersed in a community where everything is shared–and the next day you’re in a place where doors are closed. “I’m lonely,” one returning missionary told me. “People don’t invite us home for dinner. All they do is ask us out for coffee.”

What is development?

Acknowledging that their host families faced real economic difficulties and that water can be scarce, the YAGM youth reflected on what “authentic development” might look like. “Does everything in Mexico have to look like our touristy idea of it before people will consider it developed? Can we measure relationship, and how authentically people are growing in community?” asked one. “The U.S. and Canada are not the standard for measuring others,” said Katie, who has seen how judgmental visitors can be about garbage  in her indigenous community. “Our garbage is just better hidden!” she said.

“The owners of the problem are the people affected by it, not us,” Katie concluded. “But Americans and Canadians can’t put themselves in a place where we see what it is like to be told ‘this is what you lack, this is what you need.'”  

These three young people work in supporting roles alongside Mexican colleagues who are owners of the problem. They share their lives with Mexican host families, and meet monthly to reflect on their experiences. In July, they will return to the States, taking with them their new perspectives on the world and how to live in it as a Christian. Give thanks for their valor, their integrity, their enthusiasm, and their commitment to carving out alternatives!

Anne Basye, “Sustaining Simplicity“

I would like to pick up where I left off in last week’s post.  I concluded with the following musings:

I do wonder how much a shift in group identity could begin to address some of our reticence to do good in the world.  What if we saw ourselves as part of the poor and marginalized group?  What if a threat to those who are vulnerable was perceived to be a threat to ourselves?  I hope to get back to this idea in another post.  For now, I’ll suggest that as the body of Christ, this may be the most natural identity for us to assume.

None of these ideas are particularly new. The ELCA’s HIV and AIDS strategy affirms that the body of Christ has AIDS (as did the World Council of Churches before us).  Stephen Bouman (director of Evangelical Outreach and Congregational Mission at ELCA churchwide) co- authored a brilliant book, They Are Us (please look past the grammatically frightful title), in which he explores the many ways that immigrant stories are our own.  Martin Buber’s I and Thou (written in 1923!) essentially gets at the same idea, just with different language.

From a biblical perspective, as Kris pointed out, Paul redraws kinship lines (see also the early Christian language of “family”).  (Sadly the fictive kin language is also used to divide–see Galatians.)  The “body” language Paul uses suggests that as one body, when one part suffers, the whole suffers (see esp. 1 Corinthians 12:26; perhaps also Philippians 2:4-10 applies here?).  Much could be made of how we as the body of Christ are wounded as he was (and is) by the evils in the world (I think I will have to reflect on this in a further post).

Jesus too redefined the family (see Mark 3:31-35).  Jesus also practiced table fellowship with those who were otherwise considered outsiders; that table fellowship was a clear sign of friendship.  And Jesus to the end brought the “other” into the fold (see this week’s text, Luke 23:39-43!).

The biblical text then offers considerable support the idea that we are those who are poor, vulnerable, and marginalized (and perhaps I have overlooked other key texts–please share them in the comments).  Is this enough to affirm that they indeed are we?  More posts to come!

-David Creech

Today, my daughter will be welcomed into the kingdom of God at her baptism.  She will set out on her own faith journey and one day discern her vocation.  What will she be?  What will she do?  At almost five months, there are many years ahead before these become conscious decisions bound by a series of choices.  Today is only the beginning.

Those of us who strive for justice in an often unjust world are at a different point in our vocations with countless life decisions already under the belt and hopefully many more to come.  Do we ever stop and take stock of our own journey, that which we Christians embark upon often in infancy?  How are we doing?

Let this be a reminder that as the stories of suffering in a seemingly peaceless world fill our collective inboxes and occupy our troubled concern, as we profess our own hunger while working to help those who are truly hungry, may we remember the time when we first set along our own faithful journies.  May we remember that in the face of daunting tasks like ending world hunger or fighting for those with no voice, God calls us to renewal constantly, effortlessly, and steadfastly…to be still.

God calls TO us when our minds are focused elsewhere.  And we remember that we are cleansed in our own baptisms, whether by our faith or by our human ability to start anew.

“Be still and know that I am God.”

I am grumpy. I am hungry, tired and have no head space to think about what to write in a blog of all things. I worked all day, went running this evening, and all of the fruit in the kitchen basket seems to have gotten soft and bruised. Since I’m getting home late, dinner is late. On top of that I basically had the same thing for lunch. All I really want to do is go to sleep.

What does all of this mean? Well, truthfully, that I’m in need of a little perspective. I just need to go to the grocery store tomorrow. Tonight, I’ll have to eat some lettuce instead of the fruit I’m craving, and it might be good to get a little better at scheduling too.

When all of this complaining was going through my head on the drive home tonight, I could not help but think: What if I was REALLY hungry? What if on top of being hungry I could not simply get clean water out of the faucet? What if my bed was much less soft, and what if it was the ground? Well, then I probably would not be so grumpy about soft fruit.

It’s time to count my blessings and give a little extra help to those who are REALLY hungry.

~Lana

A couple of weeks back I posed a question that had been raised by one of our hunger leaders on our social network site, The Table (love the new spring background, by the way!).  The gist of the question is why do we continue to struggle against what we all agree to be great evils, namely, hunger and poverty?  If we are all on the same page that the situation should not be as it is, why have we made so little progress?  I am still struggling with the question.

Today’s Op-Ed piece by David Brooks in the NYT spurred some thinking on the subject.  He writes about how as individuals in small social settings human beings are generally very sympathetic to one another.  This fits well with Peter Singer’s thinking on “The Life You Can Save” — human beings are more likely to respond to an immediate need or a particular person than to a large undefined problem (here is a link to my review of the book).  Once we move to larger group thinking, however, such empathy largely disappears.  Brooks writes,

When a group or a nation thinks about another group or nation, there doesn’t seem to be much natural sympathy, natural mimicry or a natural desire for attachment. It’s as if an entirely different part of the brain has been activated, utilizing a different mode of thinking.

This statement resonates with my experience.  Here’s what I think might be at work.  It makes sense evolutionarily for us to care for each other — particularly our young.  We need each other to survive.  For this reason, we are now essentially hardwired to care and we get great joy from doing good.  At the same time, we depend on the group to protect us and help us survive.  The group then becomes vital to our own personal survival and a threat to the group is a threat to our own safety.

I don’t pretend to have the answers (I know I struggle to consistently accompany those who are poor and vulnerable), but I do wonder how much a shift in group identity could begin to address some of our reticence to do good in the world.  What if we saw ourselves as part of the poor and marginalized group?  What if a threat to those who are vulnerable was perceived to be a threat to ourselves?  I hope to get back to this idea in another post.  For now, I’ll suggest that as the body of Christ, this may be the most natural identity for us to assume.

-David Creech

This is the fifth post in a series considering the root causes of hunger. The Millennium Development Goals serve as a helpful framework.

Millennium Development Goal 6: Combat HIV/AIDS, Malaria, and other diseases

Are you familiar with guinea worm disease? It’s a parasitic worm that people get by drinking contaminated water. Here’s what happens to someone who has ingested guinea worm larva. The larva penetrates the stomach walls and grows into a worm as it moves about the body. After about a year, the person gets a painful blister that turns into an open sore. It can happen anywhere on the body, but is often on the legs. The sore can be accompanied by itching, burning, swelling, and fever. Then a full grown worm begins coming out of the sore. It can be up to 3 feet long (!!) and can emerge as little as an inch a day. It is painful and can take weeks to be rid of the whole thing. One of the only ways to relieve the pain (without pain medication, unavailable to many of the afflicted) is to soak the wound in water. This allows the worm to release more larva into the water supply and continue the cycle.

Oh. And you can have more than one worm emerging from different parts of your body at the same time.

I ask: how well would you be able to work or learn during the weeks or months it takes to get the worm(s) out? Would you be able to concentrate? Hold a job? Exercise? Cook meals? Care for your children? At best, a person’s productivity is slowed. At worst, the person is completely debilitated. And if you can’t work, you don’t make money or tend your garden or care for your family. If you can’t learn, you reduce your chances of getting the knowledge you need for a bright future. If a disease like this is afflicting several family or community members at the same time and serially, it can stunt a whole town.

According to the World Health Organization, there were some 50 million cases of guinea worm disease worldwide as recently as the 1950’s. Today, due to a major effort by the international community and affected countries to combat it, the number is under 100,000.  Tremendous progress, but this is just one disease, and many others take a similar toll on the ability of people to make a living, secure food, and end hunger.  What’s more, diseases like guinea worm, malaria, and HIV and AIDS affect the young, most productive workers in a community. In the case of AIDS, not only does productivity slow, but people in their prime working years die, leaving not only a weakened community, but orphans who need support from that community.

In places where people are already hungry and weakened, in places where they must expend inordinate time and energy just to stay alive, in places with minimal access to health care, disease can be the final blow. Helping people maintain their health is a critical component to ending hunger.

-Nancy Michaelis

As I was thinking of what to blog about this week the idea that came to mind was exercise. The problem was, although an avid exerciser myself (though I have no illusions of being any sort of expert in the field), it almost seemed counterintuitive to write about burning calories on a hunger blog. So why is it that I can’t seem to shake the idea? Here’s my attempt at that answer:

When I think of ELCA World Hunger I don’t just think of our projects which help people to grow and attain the food they need to survive. I don’t just think about water collection systems and domestic hunger grants. In fact, I don’t always think about food! That’s because I also think about advocacy, education, simplicity and sustainability. I know that these are often based on food and water issues, but ultimately our concern is the good health of God’s people, and that includes you and me. Last summer as an intern I learned a lot about domestic obesity and food quality. I also followed the map in our office as the Tour de Revs bicycled across the United States raising awareness for hunger, poverty and wellness issues. Overall, I discovered that ELCA World Hunger isn’t just trying to feed people in the literal sense, “feeding” is also figurative. People need spiritual, mental, emotional and movement food as well. Movement food? Don’t worry this isn’t a term you should know, or one that I have ever even heard someone use, I made it up. What I am referring to is our God-given gift of movement. While we all have different ability levels many of us enjoy running, jumping, walking, climbing, crawling and every other form of movement you can think of. It is my experience that there is something very fulfilling about movement; for me, exercise can even have a spiritual impact. Sometimes, however, movement food can double as emotional food. Remember back when you played double-dutch at recess? Games can also provide the fruits of laughter, social interaction and fun.

Exercise can also be simple and sustainable. You don’t need much to jump rope, go for a run or walk your dog. Snowball fights and hourlong games of freeze tag only require imagination and weather cooperation. In my experience these simple activities can help to sustain both good health and big smiles.

It’s also a lesson, because when we value movement food we teach others through our actions. Exercise, drinking clean water and eating nutritious foods are all powerful ways to practice good health and to thank God for the gift of our bodies.

~Lana

This week is the National Week of Prayer for the Healing of AIDS.  According to the Web site,

The National Week of Prayer for the Healing of AIDS is the coming together of all people of faith to unite with purpose, compassion and hope. Through the power of God’s love we will educate every American about HIV prevention facts; encourage and support HIV testing; advocate for the availability of compassionate care and treatment for all those living with the disease in every community in America; and love unconditionally all persons living with and affected by HIV/AIDS.

ELCA World Hunger has many reasons to be engaged in HIV and AIDS work.  AIDS and hunger are closely intertwined.  AIDS is rapidly spreading in the most impoverished areas of the world (including the poorest areas of the United States)—places where education, women’s and children’s rights, and peace are hard to come by.  Many areas, especially Sub-Saharan Africa, are trapped in a vicious cycle in which the symptoms of poverty facilitate the spread of the disease while the lives and productivity lost to the pandemic further impoverish vulnerable communities.  Moreover, AIDS is especially devastating to hungry persons.  Malnourished persons cannot take anti-retroviral drugs—an empty stomach cannot handle the powerful medicine.  In the absence of drugs and adequate nutrition, HIV develops into AIDS more quickly.  Once a person has AIDS, more food is needed to fight the illness and counteract weight loss.

Join us this week in prayer and advocacy with and on behalf of those living with HIV and AIDS.  To learn more about the ELCA’s engagement in the National Week of Prayer for the Healing of AIDS, click here.

-David Creech

“Cuba did not go the way of possessions,” says the Cuban singer Ibrahim Ferrer in the lovely movie, “The Buena Vista Social Club.”

Last month I experienced the possession-less path on a visit to the Lutheran Church in Cuba. I’m not pro- or anti-Castro, but as a Lutheran with serious questions about U.S. consumer culture, I found it refreshing to step COMPLETELY outside it.

Our first few days were spent on the Isla de la Juventud, an island off the southern coast where the Cuban Lutheran Church is based. (Click here to read the island’s history.) On this rural island, time seemed to have stood still. With few private cars, people moved about on foot, on bicycles, in bicycle taxis, in trucks converted to buses, and even by horse and buggy. When the roosters stopped crowing and the hour for turning down the ever-throbbing reggaeton music arrived, it was amazingly quiet. The din of traffic we are accustomed to was absent.

Also absent were television commercials. Movies ran without interruption. Newscasts lasted 45 minutes. Of course, the movies and the music videos being shown were themselves a kind of commercial for the way of possessions, but never once was anyone exhorted to buy a product. Public health announcements and promotions for cultural events ran instead.

The home I stayed in had everything but clutter. My hostess had enough glasses, plates, and silverware for everyone present, but no more. When I shivered under a sheet during an unseasonably cold night, she produced a second sheet and a blanket.

Isla de la Juventud gave me a glimpse into life organized around something besides stuff. Now, it wasn’t Eden, and most people I met were actually trying to get MORE stuff. One man said that Cuba does $650 million in business with the U.S., but because of the embargo, the goods arrive chopped up in the  suitcases of returning relatives and residents. The Havana charter area of Miami Airport was teeming with televisions, radios, and microwaves wrapped in blue plastic to protect them on their flight. My fellow travelers from the ELCA Florida-Bahamas Synod, the companion synod to the Cuban Lutheran Church, said that on their last trip they had seen a bumper, a muffler, a car door, and a windshield wrapped for the journey.

It’s not easy to move around on the island, and we were frequently hungry. 9 hours might pass between our breakfast and our return to the church for our communal supper. That obese or even overweight people were few and far between was evidence that you can’t just drive up to a store or a restaurant for a snack.  The consumption of milk and meat are restricted for most people, and it can be hard to secure food and building materials. That was clear in Havana, which has more cars and restaurants and stores and tourists,  but is teeming with beautiful buildings that are falling apart.

My book Sustaining Simplicity: A Journal asks the question, “what is enough?” Most Americans passed “enough” decades ago. I’m convinced we are entering a time in which we will happily and willingly scale back our “enough”, for the sake of our physical, emotional, and planetary health.

In Cuba, the answer to “what is enough?” is “this is too little.” And although Cuba’s way of few possessions has been imposed, I know, from the top, in its stark mirror it’s possible to see our own excesses clearly.

90 miles from Miami, and no television commercials. ¡Imaginelo!

Anne Basye, Sustaining Simplicity