Just last week in my local high school’s cafeteria, eager young volunteers stationed themselves with scales in front of garbage cans. Weighing and examining every item about to be thrown away, they came up with a gross tonnage of discards and determined that only 5% of the “garbage” needed to go to the landfill. The other 95% could be recycled or composted.

While some of the compostable items were napkins and paper plates, most of it was food.

Food tossed into the cafeteria garbage can is considered food waste— food wasted at the level of consumption, that we prepare and eat in our homes, stores, and high schools, the ELCA Churchwide Office, our congregations, offices, and countless other  institutions.

Food loss, on the other hand, takes place at the level of production. Failed crops are a good example. So are shortages triggered by hurricanes, typhoons, droughts, war and violence, and diseases like potato blight or wheat rust.

Through ELCA World Hunger, we’re all committed to addressing food loss. But the food waste that takes place in our own kitchens? Invisible, unchallenged, it’s our dirty little secret. Some might defend it as a privilege of our prosperity! Food loss happens everywhere. Food waste happens in high-income regions. Although this chart is a little hard to see, just look at the proportion of red to blue. Blue is food loss. Red is food waste. We North Americans have the biggest red chunk. (To see a larger chart, go to a cool blog called Discard Studies: Exploring Throw-Away Culture, also my source for the food loss/food waste distinction.)

So, fellow hunger advocates. What’s the plan for making our food waste as visible—and as reprehensible—as the world’s food loss?

For including our own shame in campaigns that focus on the world’s shame?

For adding a photo of our excess to the gallery of photos of other people’s lack?

For including our own practices in the hunger equation?

For looking at ourselves?

I can’t wait to hear.

Anne Basye, Sustaining Simplicity

It’s that time of year when we celebrate the risen Christ who calls us into the world in service! It’s also the time of year when the April 15 deadline looms and many wonder, “What do I owe this year?” “Will I get a return, and if so, how much?” “Did I complete all the right forms and attach all the right documents?”

Women Thrive tweeted a very interesting whitehouse.gov resource last week called, “Your Federal Taxpayer Receipt.” This is a resource designed to help you understand how and where your tax dollars are being spent. Since you’ve got your tax info handy, simply enter your social security tax, Medicare tax and income tax amounts to calculate your receipt. (If you don’t have those handy, you can select a more generic income estimate, too.)

As I always wonder when I share my numbers with you all in these handy tools, can you trace it back to me somehow? Well, throwing caution to the wind, I can tell you all that I paid about an 18 percent tax rate in 2011 (My total income and payroll taxes on the calculator divided by my total income). Wowee. Let’s learn more.

Social Security and Medicare taxes make up about 20 percent of the taxes I paid, but the remainder of what you and I paid is on income, which go to a variety of services including:

• national defense (24.9%)
• health care (23.7%)
• job and family security (19.1%)
• education and job training (3.6%)
• veterans benefits (4.5%)
• natural resources, energy and environment (2.0%)
• international affairs (1.6%)
• science, space and technology programs (1.0%)
• immigration, law enforcement and administration of justice (2.0)
• agriculture (0.7%)
• community, area and regional development (0.5%)
• response to natural disasters (0.4%)
• additional government programs (7.9%)
• net interest (8.1%)

The percentages stay the same, but the receipt will give you the amount in dollars that your taxes were spent on in those categories. What do you think?

Mikka serves as program director for constituent engagement and interpretation with ELCA World Hunger. To join the network and for more information on how you can get involved, write us at hunger@elca.org.

Easter Monday Greetings, All! Occasionally, we feature guest blog entries, and today is one such occasion. Here is a reflection by Pastor Paul Ostrem, Assistant to the Bishop, Southeastern Iowa Synod and ELCA World Hunger leader. During the Lenten season, we read Psalm 107 and Pastor Paul was struck by that reading while worshiping at Gloria Dei in Iowa City. Here is his reflection.

I almost “zoned-out” after hearing verse 2:  “Let the redeemed of the Lord say so.”  I was abruptly though briefly (thankfully) taken back to the Our-Savior’s-Radcliffe-Haugean-piety days of my youth and perhaps to my equally pietistic days at Waldorf College.  “Speak up!  Tell people you are saved!  Let the redeemed of the Lord say so!”  So people got up and gave their testimonies, sounding more pious than many of us knew they were, and I suppose from time to time I tried to do the same.  And when the guitars came out, we sang with great enthusiasm in call and response fashion (at least through the first two lines)  “I am redeemed by the blood of the lamb!  I am redeemed by the blood of the lamb!  I am redeemed by the blood of the lamb, filled with the Holy Ghost I am!  All my sins are washed away, I am redeemed!”  It was true in its own right, I suppose, but last night I realized that Psalm 107 is about a whole lot more once we get past verse 2.

The Psalm is about God feeding the hungry, giving water to the thirsty, bringing light to gloomy lives, freeing those in bondage, and delivering people from danger and even death.  The Psalm speaks, section by section, of all that God does for those wandering in desert wastes, hungry and thirsty, for those sitting in darkness and gloom, for prisoners in misery and in irons, for those on storm tossed seas.   Each section ends “Let them thank the Lord for his steadfast love, for his wonderful works to humankind.”

I couldn’t help but think about ELCA World Hunger as we moved toward the end of the psalm, verse 35 and following where it speaks of how God “turns a desert into pools of water, a parched land into springs of water.”  The psalm says that God lets the hungry live there and that they establish a town to live in.  They plant fields and vineyards and get a harvest.  God “does not let their cattle decrease.”  (God’s Global Barnyard)  Here is a picture of God working with the hungry in a way that provides more than relief.  This is a picture of God in the work of development, creating a means of livelihood, even community with towns to live in.

And the Psalm pictures a God who holds those in authority, those in government, accountable to the needs of the poor.  Verses 39-41:  “When they are diminished and brought low through oppression, trouble, and sorrow, he pours contempt on princes and makes them wander in trackless wastes; but he raises up the needy out of distress, and makes their families like flocks.”  This Psalm includes the responsibility of civil leaders in a comprehensive vision of caring for the needs of those who live on the edge and whose very livelihood is threatened.  Therefore, the work of advocacy accompanies the ministries of relief and development in being a part of God’s mission to the poor and hungry in the world.  “The upright see it and are glad!” (verse 42)

The Psalm ends “Let those who are wise give heed to these things, and consider the steadfast love of the Lord.”  Being wise has something to do with another component of ELCA World Hunger, namely education.  Part of that wisdom comes from telling stories of how God is at work even through our efforts in relief, development, and advocacy to care for those most vulnerable among us, how God uses human ingenuity, inventiveness and persuasiveness for the good of hungry people.  This is how the steadfast love of the Lord becomes visible in the world, and we are wise if we give heed to it and see it.

Psalm 107 illustrates the acronym READ as a description of the comprehensive work of ELCA World Hunger:  Relief, Education, Advocacy, and Development.  “Let them thank the Lord for his steadfast love, for his wonderful works to humankind.”

Thank you to Pastor Paul for this great reflection. Do you want to contribute to Hunger Rumblings? Write and let us know!

Just getting up in the morning can be a struggle. Seeking justice, championing a world in which people flourish, trying to discern God’s will and live into God’s culture in our (or any) times? Exhausting, and often discouraging. But then comes Easter. Refreshed, we start anew!

To celebrate, this wonderful poem by Ronald Wallace:

Blessings

occur.
Some days I find myself
putting my foot in
the same stream twice;
leading a horse to water
and making him drink.
I have a clue.
I can see the forest
for the trees.

All around me people
are making silk purses
out of sows’ ears,
getting blood from turnips,
building Rome in a day.
There’s a business
like show business.
There’s something new
under the sun.

Some days misery
no longer loves company;
it puts itself out of its.
There’s rest for the weary.
There’s turning back.
There are guarantees.
I can be serious.
I can mean that.
You can quite
put your finger on it.

Some days I know
I am long for this world.
I can go home again.
And when I go
I can
take it with me
***

May the Easter season infuse us with hope and renew our commitment to do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly with our Lord all the days of our lives. He is risen indeed!

Anne Basye, Sustaining Simplicity