I was invited last week to join some colleagues at Episcopal Relief and Development as they hosted a luncheon for priests at endowed parishes.  I was invited in part as a thank you for my collaboration with them in preparing their new youth curriculum, Act Out.  In the course of the lunch, a priest told of one of his parishioners who had decided to leave a large bequest to another aid organization.  He asked, what is so special about Episcopal Relief and Development?  What is the compelling evidence to give to them instead? (I’ve heard the same question asked to me many times here at ELCA World Hunger.)

My colleague was put in a rather tough position.  He has a vested interest so it was  not as if he could speak as an objective observer.  His response was to defer to the bishop of the diocese of Chicago, who replied along the lines of, “Hey, if your parishioner wants to be generous like that, who am I to poo poo his Christian charity?” (My apologies for the crude paraphrase.)

I was not happy with this response.  (I let everyone at the lunch know this–and I will say, it is not every day you get to publicly disagree with the bishop!)  For one, supporting the work of your denomination’s anti-hunger program is a powerful public witness.   Your church’s work in the world sends a clear message about its priorities, and gives it credibility when it speaks publicly about justice related issues.  The bigger issue for me, however, is that wanting to do good is simply not enough.  Unlike the bishop, I will poo poo Christian charity if it is not accompanied by rigorous critical self evaluation (the bishop told me afterward I should submit my resume to the Gates Foundation… I thought it was a nice, subtle brush back).

There are many organizations out there that have fine anti-hunger ideals but in practice exacerbate hunger and poverty.  As one stellar blogger wrote, “A good cause is not the same as a good program.”  That same blogger recounts the following examples:

Think of the well-meaning missionaries whose desire to “save” children from post-earthquake Haiti almost resulted in loving parents and their children being permanently separated.

Or the recent effort by World Vision to send 100,000 misprinted Super Bowl champion t-shirts to people in the third world, improving their own overhead ratios by claiming the value of these gifts-in-kind as program expenses, while in reality sending goods that are readily available even to poor people in the target geographies, widely accepted by the aid community as having the effect of undermining local businesses and creating a culture of dependency, and otherwise causing harm to the very communities they purport to help.

Or consider the Battered Mother’s Resource Fund that never actually implemented any programs it was fundraising for and potentially scared women away from seeking help by falsely claiming that many shelters separate mothers from their children. It was also proposing a children’s ranch that experts said would do great psychological harm to kids if it were ever built. Despite the fact that it was ordered to shut down by the Attorney General, this organization still has a profile on Change.org, with 30 well-intentioned supporters. I bet those supporters read the mission statement and said “that’s a worthy cause.”

To these examples I would add those meal packing programs that may make the donor feel good and scratch that charitable Christian itch, but are also incredibly costly, both in dollars and on the environment.   And in the end, they flood the local market with imported food that otherwise could have been grown and sold to benefit local farmers.

So the take away?  An act of charity is not an end in and of itself.  We need to use that buzz we get from acting charitably to motivate us to do things that truly effect change in the world.  Otherwise it is just a narcissistic will to power.  If we are serious about our Christian call to seek justice we have to be a bit more rigorous in our decision making, especially around giving.  This means doing research and holding organizations accountable.

Thoughts?  I’d love to hear them!

David Creech

Carpooling – Coming Soon to Your Church?

Sharing the driving responsibilities by participating in a carpool can reduce stress, build stronger relationships with carpool friends, reduce commuting costs, and help traffic flow more smoothly by reducing the number of cars on the road.  Carpooling can also be an everyday act of faith, in modifying your lifestyle to better care for God’s creation.  The logistics are often challenging however  – where can you leave your car when it’s not your turn to drive?  Does it take more time to pick everyone up at home than it’s worth?

Identifying a central meeting point for carpoolers can simplify the logistics.  Does your congregation have a large parking lot that sits mostly empty during weekdays?  If so, you have just identified a potentially perfect carpool meeting point!   Of course, you will need to get the blessing from your church council and pastor.  Wouldn’t it be great if your little patch of asphalt could be put to good use, build stronger connections between church members, AND better care for God’s creation?

 It may be a good idea to identify specific areas of the parking lot for carpoolers, and make sure the church office has contact information so they can reach carpoolers if needed. 

If you decide to pursue this idea, I’d be interested in feedback on how it went.   My husband has been carpooling for several years – he and a co-worker take turns driving every other week – and it has worked well.  I’m sure they each appreciate a week off from the driving when they can read, check emails, or even catch a little extra sleep!  We are saving money on commuting costs as his car is used about 50% less than it used to be.   That’s been particularly nice as Chicago gas prices have stayed about $3/gallon or more.

Are you ready to give it a try?  Now would be a perfect time to connect with co-workers from church to see if your schedules can be aligned.  Let’s try practicing our faith in a non-conventional way – carpooling!

Erin Cummisford

In a recent JTerm course at Gettysburg Seminary I had the joy of revisiting one of my favorite ancient Christian texts, the Didache (also known as “The Teaching of the 12 Apostles”; the full text is available here).  The text is an early Christian baptismal catechism that explains to those who are about to be baptized the commitment they are making when they agree to be baptized.  Now granted, some people may be a little frightened by the strong emphasis in the document about “works,” but the point the Didachist is making is worth exploring further: our baptismal covenant will impact how we live our daily lives.

What is striking to me in the Didache is how often the text speaks of the commitment to those who are poor (see, e.g., 1.5-6, 3.5-8, 5.2b).  My favorite text (which I explored in this entry shortly after joining  ELCA World Hunger) tells the catechumen to “Let your gift sweat in your hands until you know to whom to give it.”

In the earlier post I pointed out that the Didachist ultimately assumes that the gift will in fact be given (so give!).  My recent thinking was directed to the command to know the person to whom you give (for the Greco-philes, the word used here is ginosko, the word that implies relationship).  Too often we are content to give money without getting to know the people to whom we give.  In my own life I know that too often I have been  happy to throw money at a problem (and I am not discouraging this, money is part of the solution) but  wary about really engaging the lives of those who are poor.  This ancient text challenges me to invest even more deeply in the lives of those who are poor and marginalized.  What have you done lately to better know those to whom you give?  What tips can you give us?  Leave a comment!

David Creech

Omnivore, locavore–yes, invasivore! Already on the list of new words for 2011, an invasivore is someone who eats species that are crowding out natural species. Click here to google the term (otherwise Google will try to convince you you’ve misspelled invasive) and you’ll find clever articles and www.invasivore.org ‘s tasty recipes for Himalayan blackberry (a pest in Washington state and 24 others), garlic mustard, kudzu, and annoying animal species like the Chinese mysterysnail, now invading many freshwater lakes.

While you’re smiling, note the bottom line: We humans are great at eating species out of existence, but when we’ve depleted their stock, we “farm” them or introduce a new, similar species from somewhere else. Thus, we farm tilapia for our dinner plates—but the little fish make the invasive list when they escape their “farm” and start dominating their immediate environment. And the Himalayan blackberry introduced to our country by Luther Burbank in the 19^th century is making a mess of everything.

Tasty, but pushy, and crowding native species out of their space.

Friends of mine are working hard to get the Himalayan blackberry out of their woods. I’m thinking hard about the wisdom of humans moving plant and animal species to new parts of the world—and planning to make a lot of blackberry jam and pies this summer.

Conflict food is another emerging trend. (Too bad conflictarian isn’t as catchy as invasivore.)  Started by artists in Pittsburg, the Conflict Kitchen only serves food from nations with which the U.S. has conflicts. Every four months, the look and menu changes. The Kubideh kitchen, serving Iranian food, was first. Now open is the Bolani Pazi Afghan takeout restaurant, created with local Afghan refugees and featuring events and discussions about culture and conflict. Coming soon: North Korea and Venezuela.

Food not Bombs, which I heard about last summer from a young woman at Holden Village, collects and cooks surplus and wasted food and serves vegetarian meals for free in many cities. You’ll get the basic story but not the specifics on the web, because it’s controversial; some of the food comes from dumpsters, and FNB often has skirmishes with local municipalities over food licensing. But I appreciate their strong challenge to our wasteful system, which wastes or discards about 40% of our food.

Lenten supper season will soon be upon us. How about replacing the same old thing with meals of invasive, conflict, or scavenged foods? As a cook, I’d love to investigate and prepare local invasive plants and animals. Or learn about a different culture, a conflict, and its implications as I cook a dish from a conflict country. Or even find out firsthand how much food is wasted in my town, by trying to scavenge something for a meal!  Besides challenging the cooks, all three would open bold new conversations around hunger.  Shall we give them a try?

Anne Basye, Sustaining Simplicity

What follows is an excerpt from a hunger sermon starter for this coming Sunday’s texts.  It is a reflection on Leviticus 19:1-2 and -18 (click here to read the text).  If you would to join the ListServ and receive weekly hunger related reflections on the lectionary, visit this Web page.

“You shall be holy, for I the Lord your God am holy.” (Leviticus 19:2)

Leviticus’ holiness code opens with the command to be holy because God is holy.  In the modern context, we can often equate holiness with piety or inner virtue.   Many of the Old Testament purity laws address ritual impurity, those exterior things that are a threat to holiness.  This week’s lesson adds some (perhaps surprisingly) concrete moral practices to the holiness codes.

Holiness in this text is not simply an inward disposition or avoidance of certain impure things.  God’s people are holy when they leave parts of their fields unharvested for those who are poor and marginalized to glean.  There are many amazing gleaning programs that are feeding many people (see, for example, Feeding America, www.feedingamerica.org; the Society of Saint Andrew, www.endhunger.org; and Foods Resource Bank, www.foodsresourcebank.org).  How else might we leave portions of our “fields” unharvested for those who are hungry?

God’s people are holy by paying just wages.  God’s people are holy when they look out for the interests of those who are vulnerable.  God’s people are holy when they do not profit from the blood of their neighbor (on what this might mean, check out “The Story of Stuff,” www.storyofstuff.org).  By loving one’s neighbor as one’s self—this is not an appeal to how one feels about their neighbor, but a call to action—we bear witness to the Lord.

David Creech

My office is a little crazy right now. A recent restructuring has led to a physical reorganization as well. Fewer people and changed departments mean that most of us are moving to new floors and cubicles. When the IT guys showed up to move my computer and phone today, I was at a loss. What work could I do without a computer?

At home we also have a computer (more than one, truth be told) and high-speed Internet access. We’ve had these things for years now, and only when the cable goes out do I realize how I’ve come to rely on them. From making plans to go out to dinner with friends, to looking up how late the library is open on Saturday, I stop at the computer several times a day.  When my young daughter asks me something and I don’t know the answer, she’ll respond, “Well why don’t you look it up on the computer?” It won’t be long until she’ll be doing it herself. I’ve seen her watching me, trying to figure out how. (As soon as she learns how to spell, I’ll have to get serious about those parental controls!)

All of this computer literacy is, for me and my family, second nature. Which is why I was a little startled to realize recently that my skills may not be up to snuff after all. Several of my friends in the corporate world now work with two monitors on their desks. You can drag things off the edge of one monitor and onto the other. You can read the email on one screen while reviewing the attached document on the other. I thought it was cool and a little Star Trek-y to watch one of my friends doing this, until I learned that it’s fairly common now, and I shouldn’t be so surprised. Then I was a little alarmed; how far behind are my computer skills? How well would I compete if I were looking for a job?

Luckily for me, I have education, friends, and resources that can catch me up pretty quickly. But what if you don’t? It’s not just about job skills, though that’s critically important. But it’s also about access to information, the amount of time you have to spend getting it, and the ease or difficulty of daily living. For example, we haven’t had a printed phone book in our house for years. I assume they still exist, but they probably won’t forever. Will everyone have computers by then, or will some people simply lack access to basic things like phone numbers and listings of plumbers? How much harder is life when you can’t readily get to the single biggest source of information? How big are the additional barriers to getting out of poverty? And for those of us in more fortunate circumstances, what’s our role in removing those barriers – or preventing them in the first place?

-Nancy Michaelis

Thus was the caption of this picture on my friend Katherine’s Facebook page.  (Katherine is the founder and CEO of Solar Sister, a social enterprise that empowers women through a market based approach to development; you can follow her on Twitter @Solar_Sister).  And having just lived through the third largest storm in Chicago’s history while I watched the protests in Egypt… I just had to share.

As has been noted frequently on this blog and elsewhere (Paul Krugman’s op-ed yesterday in the NYT is a good recent example) , climate change and hunger are very much interrelated. Last year was tied for the warmest on record; this winter has been one of the wettest for the North East (it is true that one weather event is not a direct result of climate change–rather, the severe weather is in line with what scientists predict will happen as the earth grows warmer).  The heavy snows are wreaking havoc on farms in Connecticut: buildings are collapsing under the weight of the snow leading to the loss of livestock.  The obvious loss of food is one impact; the farmer’s loss of income and investment is another.   This is to say nothing of the loss of food that continues to happen in the Global South where the climate is so unpredictable that farmers no longer know when to plant their seed.

In the U.S., there continues to be skepticism around the human role in climate change.  Setting the debate aside (though I think it is a silly one–which scientists, other than the ones on the payrolls of big businesses and energy companies, really think humans are not at least partially responsible for climate change?), from my vantage point, if humans do have any control over climate change, why would we not do everything in our power to address it?  If we are serious about food security for all, why not have mitigation and adaptation strategies?

David Creech

In blizzards like this week’s, basic services matter. When snow fell in Chicago, I was always grateful that my heat, water, and light almost never quit.

Where those resources came from mattered less. But connecting to services in my new home in Washington State, I’m asking: where does it come from? Where does it go?  And what is its environmental impact?

Electricity was first. In Chicago, my carbon footprint was high even though I had no car, because so much electricity is generated from coal. Naively, I assumed that Puget Sound Energy electricity would come from hydropower in the mountains and the manure-to-power plant down the road. What a surprise to learn that 56 percent of PSE power comes from coal and natural gas. A big chunk comes from the Colstrip plant in Montana—the second-largest coal power plant west of the Mississippi!  On the plus side, by signing up for Green Power, I can help boost the proportion of biomass and wind power in the overall PSE power mix. Consider it done.

Next, cooking gas. For the first time, I have a propane tank. Checking into this, I’ve learned that more than 80 million barrels of this byproduct of natural gas and petroleum processing are stored in giant salt caverns in Texas, Kansas, and Alberta. Factoring in extracting, processing and delivering, propane produces slightly more greenhouse gas emissions than natural gas but much, much less than electricity, which “looks” clean when it is used, but, once you add in emissions released as it is produced, stored, and transported, is the dirtiest of all fuels. (Something to keep in mind if you are excited about owning an electric car.)

Water, supplied by the county, comes from a mountain watershed, is stored in a reservoir, treated, and then piped to homes like mine. But I’m not connected to the sewer system; my waste water goes into the septic system out back. The science of septic tanks is something else I’ll be reading up on.

My landlords take their garbage and recycling to the local transfer station themselves. With no car and no outdoor storage shed, this is not an option for me. But the most recent Skagit County Solid Waste Management Plan recommended that local scavengers support recycling and composting by offering every-other-week pickup of one trash can. Bingo! I signed up for that paradigm-shifting service. When my garbage leaves the transfer station, it will be sent by train to a landfill in Klickitat County, where electricity is generated from methane. My compost will go in the garden and the dry recyclables will be stored until I can join someone else’s recycling run.

What do electricity, gas, water, sewage, and garbage services have to do with hunger? Severing these resources from their context and system makes it easy to waste or denigrate them. Knowing where our resources come from can change our behavior. (Maybe I should rely more on propane and less on electricity that turns out to come from a Montana coal mine!) Understanding who delivers these services also builds respect in a climate marked by griping about taxes. (Thanks, Skagit County, for designing a system that will treat everything from construction waste to agricultural waste to the cans and bottles of people like me. Thanks, Skagit PUD, for the clean water.)

Wherever we work on hunger issues, it makes sense to identify and understand existing systems before pursuing individual projects. How many of us well-building Lutherans know about the context of Water Supply and Sanitation in Tanzania?  A little due diligence might persuade us to invest water funds in strengthening an existing water delivery system instead of building “our own” well from scratch.

We live out our days inside systems. Most of them are transparent. Can you see yours?!

Anne Basye, Sustaining Simplicity: A Journal

I’m a word person. I majored in communication in college and I’ve always been taken by words. Whether they’re lyrics, book passages, verses, great quotes or written in cards by loved ones – I find words fascinating, moving and important.

I’ve been studying Biblical Hebrew for the past few months and have been fascinated by the definitions of words in the language of the Old Testament. After my exam this morning I decided to look into some English words more closely. What are the less common definitions that I don’t usually think about? What are the second and third meanings? In addition, what would it be like to read the definition of a word, instead of assuming that I know it?

These are words that made me think of ELCA World Hunger:

Perhaps you too will be interested in meditating on their definitions.

Hunger
+ the painful sensation or state of weakness caused by the need of food
+ a shortage of food; famine

Food
+ any nourishing substance that is eaten, drunk, or otherwise taken into the body to sustain life, provide energy, promote growth, etc.

Neighbor
+ one’s fellow human being
+ a person who shows kindliness or helpfulness toward his or her fellow humans

Serve
+ to offer or have a meal or refreshments available, as for patrons or guests
+ to render assistance; be of use; help

Christian
+ exhibiting a spirit proper to a follower of Jesus Christ; Christlike
+ decent; respectable

Love
+ affectionate concern for the well-being of others
+ the benevolent affection of God for His creatures, or the reverent affection due from them to God

And a verse…

Matthew 22:37-40…Jesus replied: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the Law and Prophets hang on these two commandments.”

Maybe you too would like to look up a word. Or a verse.

Enjoy & God Bless,
Lana

I had the good fortune to attend the Region 3 Hunger Retreat in Alexandria, Minnesota this week. I admit that the deep interior of Minnesota is not my dream destination in January, but I was told it would be lovely in a bleak, wintry sort of way. I was not disappointed! The air was crisp and the snow was pleasantly crunchy underfoot. But best of all, I got to spend time with some really phenomenal people.

 The content of the event was wide ranging, but one of the presenters was Tammy Walhof from Bread for the World. She spent some time talking about advocacy, and she shared a couple of things that I’m anxious to pass on, since they seem so helpful.

 The question arose about whether or not sending those email form letters to your elected officials is helpful. In response, Tammy shared some research. What makes the most difference in influencing your politicians?

1.  Visits from constituents. Nothing makes an impact like showing up in person – or persons! Consider taking a delegation from your congregation. Or organize delegations from several congregations in your community.
2.  Individualized postal letters. And hand-written are best.  If, however, your handwriting is illegible, individualized email are third on the influence list. The key is individualized! If your letter starts with the same sentence as 100 other letters they’ve received, it will be dismissed. You may be saying the same thing as others, but be sure to say it in your own words if you want to make sure it’s carefully read.
3. Of medium influence are phone calls. On a daily basis, there was a pretty even split between political staff who thought they were made a difference and those who thought they didn’t. But Tammy was clear to point out that at key moments, they are incredibly important. When time is of the essence, call! But otherwise, your time is probably better spent writing.

In the category of “no influence at all” were form letters. Whether email or postal, there’s a decent chance that if you send these, they will be discounted and make no difference. 

 One final tip: Tammy said to never underestimate your elected officials desire to be compassionate. It struck me as not only true of our politicians, but probably most people, and probably something we don’t acknowledge often enough.

 Now let’s go advocate!

 -Nancy Michaelis