Remember that old bumper sticker, “War is not healthy for children and other living things?” Conflict and violence damage lives along with the systems that sustain them—the farms, markets, wells, schools and hospitals we depend on every day.

This week in Nairobi, Kenya, 200 youth are participating in an ecumenical peace summit. Their goal is to learn and practice peace building in response to the post-election violence that occurred in Kenya in 2007 and early 2008. The 200 youth include Muslims, Methodists, Anglicans, Presbyterians, Catholics and Lutherans from across Kenya as well as Rwanda, Uganda, Democratic Republic of Congo, Tanzania, United States, and South Africa.
The event’s sponsors are the Kenya Evangelical Lutheran Church and the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. A generous grant from ELCA World Hunger is making the whole thing possible. You can follow the activities, view the slide shows, and check out a daily newsletter at http://peacesummit2009.wordpress.com

Give the blog a look, and be proud that Lutheran churches are equipping people for peacemaking!

Anne Basye

I highly recommend reading Thomas Friedman’s April 11th Op-Ed column in the New York Times. The ELCA World Hunger staff has been talking a lot about climate change recently, and the disproportionate impact it has on those living in poverty. It’s not particularly encouraging.

So what fun to read Friedman’s article! I have to admit, I don’t know much about Costa Rica’s governmental structures or energy usage, which is a shame. Because as Friedman describes it, they are both innovative and hopeful. Apparently “it did something no country has ever done: It put energy, environment, mines and water all under one minister.” As a result, environmental, energy, and economic considerations have more balanced influence in policy decisions. And the result of that is that Costa Rica now gets some 95% of their energy from renewable sources and has reversed its deforestation. From what I can tell from a very quick check, they’ve also managed to do it while maintaining a reasonably stable economy.

Certainly Costa Rica’s opportunities and challenges are different than, say, the United States. But how hopeful to be given such an example!

My Lenten fast from meat ended on Saturday night with the Easter Vigil (Alleluia!). It is one of the only Lenten disciplines I can remember that ended with a strong sense of relief. Relief because I did not have to think so hard any more about what to eat. Relief because my wife and son and I could now eat the same meals for dinner. Relief because I could finish all my son’s uneaten scraps.

When I began the journey, I hoped to use the fast to be in solidarity with those who never get to eat meat and to learn how I could eat less meat. I think that both of these happened to a certain extent.

In general, I found that I was hungry more often (carbs and greens don’t burn as long) and therefore ate more frequently (even breakfast!). I was pretty intentional to offer prayers for those who are truly hungry when I felt mild tinges of hunger.

As to finding new ways to eat less meat, echoing what Nancy wrote earlier, I was struck by how difficult it is in our culture to avoid meat. It was particularly hard when I was traveling–my usual meal was some form of a salad or pasta with red sauce. I also wasted so much more food–veggies just don’t keep as long as meat.

But I think the biggest lesson for me was how privileged I am. When I was hungry, I would eat more. When I bought the wrong veggie, I could buy a different one. When my veggies went bad in the fridge, I would toss them out and go to the store. Even that I could at the end of forty days (+ Sundays) I could simply choose to eat something else. And I felt relief that I could just move on. In this way, instead of feeling a sense of solidarity with those who are hungry, I realized my great distance from them. I realized that I still have much to learn about walking with people who are poor and vulnerable.

I would love to hear from you about your experiences this Lent. Feel free to comment or email me directly (david.creech@elca.org).

David Creech

I happened to have the news on yesterday as I was fixing lunch, and they were talking about the pirates off the coast of Somalia who attacked a U.S.-flagged ship, the Maersk Alabama. My young daughter caught the word “pirates” and asked, “Are there really pirates?” I said yes, and she, being a typical child, asked why. The question gave me pause.

In thinking about how to respond, it occurred to me that piracy is an excellent example of the causes and results of hunger. Why are there pirates? Why were 122 ships attacked near Somalia last year? Because there’s been no functioning government in Somalia in something like 18 years. With no government, there’s been no rule of law and pretty much no economy. There has been plenty of civil war, weapons, and corruption. With no means or incentive for things like infrastructure maintenance, business development, foreign investment, or large-scale food production, poverty is rampant. DallasNews.com reports that some 25% of children die before age 5 and life expectancy is 46. And a generation has now grown up knowing nothing else.

Enter piracy. Lots of ships float by every day, and they present a huge opportunity. Some entrepreneurial folks have determined that ransom is more profitable than the treasure-stealing, “yo-ho-ho” pirate image my daughter has in mind. Apparently kidnapping one good ship can be worth up to $1.5 million. According to the BBC, piracy also creates a local economy. You need pirates to make the initial attacks, more pirates to guard the captured hostages, and even back-up pirates on land in case anything goes wrong on captured ships or at sea. Even local restaurants have joined the industry, making food for the hostages. Plus, once the pirates get paid, they build houses, buy cars and laptops, go out to eat, and otherwise create a market for goods and services that wasn’t there before. An average Somalian citizen considering his options might well see the advantage of an entry-level job in piracy. It’s wrong, but it beats living on a dollar a day with no prospects.

War, corruption, ineffective government, lack of jobs/opportunity, poverty. All related and all causes of hunger and piracy. Now how to sum that up for my daughter…

Last November I had the privilege of visiting projects that gifts to the ELCA World Hunger Appeal help make possible in Malawi. In the village of Kambuzi I saw integrated and sustainable development at its best: animal projects (chickens, pigs, goats), seed banks, and a bore-hole wells. After the end-of-visit speeches, the visitors (three of us from the ELCA and six from the Evangelical Lutheran Church Malawi) were invited into a one-room home. Lunch is ready: a steaming bowl of cornmeal along with a chicken-based sauce.

We begin with hand washing. As a bowl is held under our hands, a cup of water is poured over them. We are quiet as ELCM staff members begin to move around the room washing hands. This ritual strikes us as holy, sacred. We think of Jesus washing the feet of his disciples. I expect to remember this experience every year I attend a Maundy Thursday service.

Later we learn that hand washing is traditionally done by a woman, on her knees. As she washes hands, she is supposed to keep her head lower than the head of any man or guest in the room. When ELCM staff people, both men and women, took their turn washing hands, they demonstrated an unexpected, even radical, act of servant leadership. Thinking back on it, a favorite hymn keeps coming to mind: “Will you let me be your servant, let me be as Christ to you? Pray that I may have the grace to let you be my servant, too” (Evangelical Lutheran Worship 659).

Sue Edison-Swift

Find photos from the visit at www.imageevent.com/malawi. Sue-s is associate director for Global Mission Support.

Its all about the story. A simple statement and my mantra for many years. The stories that we all carry about hunger, when told, help others see the reality of world. I was reading the latest issue of Christian Century (April 7) and came upon a beautiful poem by Beth Copeland.

Reflections in a spoon
Hunger is a bowl of reflected light,
a concave mirror of flight,
an image reversed,
the breech birth
of an angel floating from Earth
feet first.

I wondered what the story was behind this work and I contacted Ms. Copeland. Here is her response:
Well, I was intrigued by the way reflections are upside down on the convex side of a spoon. Also, I was thinking of the many hungry people in the world and those who die of starvation. I spent a year in India when I was in seventh grade (1963-1964), where I saw many starving people. There were so many hungry people that we couldn’t help all of them, which tore at my heartstrings, but we did help one family. A baby (the child of servants who lived next door to us) was slowly dying of starvation because his mother could not breastfeed him. The baby’s name was Ramji and his sister, who was probably 7 or 8 years old, brought him to our yard one day. We fed the little girl and my mother bought formula for Ramji and showed his mother how to prepare it for him. I used to hold him and feed him his bottle while his sister played with my younger sister. Ramji gained weight and was able to sit up before we had to leave India to return to the United States. Before we left, my mother gave his mother a supply of formula. I have often wondered what happened to him and to his sister. I like to believe that they are still alive, but I doubt it. We were told that Ramji was 10 months old when we met him, but he couldn’t hold up his head or sit up until after we started feeding him. I believe he is an angel.

The Maundy Thursday epistle text, 1 Corinthians 15:1-11, is the story of Paul addressing a division in the church, some had food others didn’t. He reminds the reader that the gifts were for all and puncuates the message with the common Eucharistic prayer.
Have a Blessed Easter.
Rodger

p.s.
Copeland says:
My poetry book Traveling Through Glass was published by Bright Hill Press in 1999. At that time I was publishing under my married name, Beth Copeland Vargo. Ramji’s story is told in a poem in the book called “Nine Months in Benares.” The book is available on Amazon.com.I hope to have my second poetry collection published within a year or so. In addition to “Reflections in a Spoon,” it will include a poem about the exploitation of children in the silk industry in India, as well as some poems inspired by my childhood as a missionary kid in Japan and India

Hello from your new blogger: Anne Basye, who wrote the hunger resource Sustaining Simplicity: A Journal.

 I wrote this book in 2005 and 2006, and it came out in 2007. Those of you who have read it or used it in study groups know that it shared one person’s story of living life simply in hopes of prompting more ELCA members to start reflecting on their lifestyles. (And boy, does this blog look at lifestyle! Thank you, Hunger colleagues.)

Since then, Al Gore’s movie has brought global warming into everyday life, and the economy has gone haywire. If global warming and the economy were on everyone’s minds, I started to wonder, why wasn’t everybody moving towards simple living? I got impatient and crabby—at home, in my congregation, and especially at work, where we were taking the first frustrating steps towards figuring out how to be a little greener.

During my crabby phase I realized something that relates to Nancy’s last post about the challenge of selecting the “best” product when your criteria include justice and the environment. Living an intentional life requires systems. I may not have a car, but I don’t wake up every morning wondering how to get to work, because I’ve set up a system of alternative transportation that includes a bike, public transit, car sharing, and friends with cars. Living within that system, I can be confident that I’ll get where I need to go with a pretty small carbon footprint (and no car payment, insurance, or gas!)

But in general, trying to make choices that are easier on the earth, lighter on the pocketbook, and less demeaning of others takes a lot of time, because there’s no system. Every choice is individual. How much easier it would be if we could be reasonably sure that the energy we used, the goods we purchased or made to feed, clothe and shelter one another, and the vehicles we chose to move around the world in all fell within green, just parameters!

Perhaps naively, I’ve always believed that the choices I make widen the path for others seeking lifestyle alternatives. Now, how can we work together to transform the tedious “this product yes, that product no” of individual choice into something that changes the whole system we live in?

That’s what I’ll be blogging about in the weeks to come. See you soon!

Anne Basye

One of my ongoing frustrations in trying to be a better consumer is that it’s pretty much impossible to judge what the best choice is without spending hours of research on every little purchase. I’ve blogged about this before. Try this: pick up something around you right now. Anything. What is it made out of? Where did the component parts come from? What inputs went into manufacturing it? Does it contain any chemicals? How were the people who made the item treated? What is required to maintain the item, and what are the impacts of that maintenance? The questions are endless and unanswerable, and apply to nearly everything. So we do the best we can with the information we have and hope for the best. Or we quit trying and just buy whatever we want.

Enter Good Guide! Imagine my delight when I read on their web site,

“GoodGuide strives to provide the world’s largest and most reliable source of
information on the health, environmental, and social impacts of products and
companies. GoodGuide’s mission is to help you find safe, healthy, and green
products that are better for you and the planet. From our origins as a UC
Berkeley research project, GoodGuide has developed into a totally independent
“For-Benefit” company. We are committed to providing the information you need to
make better decisions, and to ultimately shifting the balance of information and
power in the marketplace.”

It’s a new organization. Apparently they’re aggregating all of this data and summing it up into product ratings. They seem to be working hard to ensure their data sources and evaluating teams are credible, and they’re considering not just health, or environmental, or social impacts, but all of them. Exactly what I need! My own extensive research is not practical, but looking stuff up on a web site is. This one has a long way to go; there are lots of products in the world in need of ratings. But it’s a start, and I’m sure glad to see it.

Check out these new resources:

ELCA World Hunger just released a hunger education resource for congregations. The Hunger Education tool kits will help you design, host, and lead a learning experience on hunger or hunger-related topics. It is adaptable to your audience, including participant activity level (low, medium, and high) and your time frame. The resource is practical, easy-to-use, and intergenerational. At present we have two kits: one introducing the work of ELCA World Hunger and another exploring the connections between climate change and hunger. Visit www.elca.org/hunger/toolkits and see how you can use them!

We also just released a new hunger education curriculum, Taking Root. The curriculum is divided into five two to three hour sessions that can be easily broken up into shorter lessons. The curriculum is designed for three different age groups: grades 3–6, grades 7–9 (junior high), and grades 10–12 (senior high). Taking Root helps students explore biblical texts that envision a world without hunger, discover steps that can transform that image into reality, and challenges them to imagine a better world. For more information, visit the Taking Root Web site, www.elca.org/hunger/takingroot. For a free sample of the curriculum, visit the Augsburg Fortress website.

As I noted in a previous post, I am now on Twitter, with the user name hungerbites. I am posting two to three times a day with articles I’m reading or thoughts I’m having on hunger. I do not always have the time to pass along all that I get to read on the blog so Twitter opens up new avenues for information sharing. A little plug to join Twitter: not only can you follow me, you can follow other aid organizations (such as Oxfam) and concerned citizens (like Bono). It is a great tool.

In April, PBS will air a new documentary on the 2004 Nobel Peace Prize winner, Wangari Maathai. The documentary, entitled Taking Root (not to be confused with our new curriculum!), explores interconnections between climate change, human rights, and democracy. The show premiers on Tuesday, April 14. For more details about the show and its premier, visit http://www.pbs.org/independentlens/takingroot/.

Finally, the American Bible Society has put out a great new resource entitled, Poverty and the Poor in the Bible, available free at http://www.bibles.com/products/ABS_NEW/121715.aspx. The short booklet is a collection of biblical texts that deal with poverty. It also has three appendices–letters that have been written by various Christian groups (one of which that was signed by our own Bishop Hanson) that speak to the injustice and scandal of modern poverty. I am excited to use this resource. I think it highlights well the way in which our foundational document calls us to be on the side of those who are poor and to walk with them in their struggle for justice.

David Creech

I was on the Green Festival web site today (looking up the dates that it will be in Chicago – May 16-17) when I discovered Green Festival TV. In browsing the video clips, I ran across the following interview with Lester Brown. In 15 minutes, he does a nice job of explaining how things like climate change, food production, economics, and poverty are related, and why everyone’s urgent action is needed. I encourage you to take the time to watch the clip:

And if you happen to live in Seattle, Denver, Chicago, Washington DC, or San Francisco, you might also want to attend the Green Festival in your city. Seattle’s is this weekend! If you don’t live in those places, some of the highlights and lots of information are still available at the Green Festival web site, as well as the sites of Global Exchange and Green America (formerly Co-op America), who put on the festivals.

If you happen to be a person who plans events of any size, the video clip called “Greening the Green Festival” about how they minimize landfill garbage at the Green Festivals is pretty interesting and inspiring, too.