Shortly after I joined the ELCA World Hunger team, I learned a funny little saying: “Lutherans love a disaster.”  Of course, the idea behind the maxim is that Lutherans respond generously to disasters.   In the month since the devastating earthquake that hit Haiti, the saying has proved true as members of the ELCA have given more than $4.6 million to aid in the recovery. So far, more than$471 million from around the world has been sent in response to the tragedy.  The outpouring of love and concern (and tangible gifts!) is inspiring.

The tragedy unfolding in Haiti has received a lot of press (and, to a certain extent, rightfully so).  As noted by economist and poverty specialist Esther Duflo in a fabulous TED talk, every year about 9 million children under age 5 die every year.  That is equal to the death toll of the earthquake in Haiti every eight days.  Every eight days hundreds of thousands of children die from poverty.  The tragedy is that these deaths are largely preventable.

Which brings me back to the generosity of Lutherans across the United States.  In one short month, we pooled our resources and gave out of our abundance more than $4.6 million.  If we continued in our commitment to the global disaster of hunger and poverty at the same rate for the rest of the year, we would gather more than $55 million to put towards relief, development, education, and advocacy.  This would nearly triple our current financial commitment.

What decisions did you make this last month to help those suffering in the aftermath of the earthquake in Haiti?  Could those same decisions be made for a year?

– David Creech

This is the third post in a series considering the root causes of hunger. The Millennium Development Goals serve as a helpful framework, and this week, we’re looking at the rights of women.

Millennium Development Goal 3: Promote Gender Equality and Empower Women

In Malawi, Albeta Chilombo deposits income from her small business into the Kasungu Community Savings and Credit Cooperative, a bank supported by ELCA World Hunger.

The inequality women have faced throughout history is well known. What may be less well known is how much a society benefits when women share equal status and rights with men. Here are a few statistics from The Girl Effect website: 

• “When a girl in the developing world receives seven or more years of education, she marries four years later and has .2 fewer children.”
• “When girls and women can earn income, they reinvest 90 percent of it into their families, as compared to only 30 to 40 percent for men.” 
• “An extra year of primary school boosts girls’ future wages by 10 to 20 percent.”
• “An extra year of secondary school boosts girls’ future wages by 15 to 25 percent.”

This means that as educated girls grow up to lead productive and successful lives, every one around them tends to benefit from their success. They raise healthier and better educated children, enhancing the opportunities for future generations. In addition, educated women, if given the opportunity, are better able to participate in the workforce. This means both income for themselves AND increasing a country’s capacity for economic growth and poverty reduction. Ensuring access to education for girls and women is a critical first step toward empowering them, their children, and their communities.

Traditional laws related to property and assets also create impediments for women. Despite the fact that in many countries women are responsible for the majority of agricultural labor and household management, they often own none of the land, buildings, or businesses, and may have very little to say about how household assets are used. What’s more, they often have no ability to obtain credit. As a result, should they become widowed or abandoned by their husbands, women can be left with no money, no house, no land, and no way of growing food. Worse still, they may be ostracized by their communities, leaving them with no where to go. Yet they frequently retain responsibility for feeding and caring for their children. In such cases, women and their children have little hope of escaping poverty and hunger. Until women achieve the ability and right to support themselves, hunger and poverty are likely to persist.

-Nancy Michaelis

Six months ago I got rid of most of my worldly goods, sold my house, put things in storage, left my ELCA job, and commenced a simple living-style midlife sabbatical. Since then I’ve been a guest, not a resident, in more than 30 places, privy to an intimate view of how we live and consume today.

When I had a home address, simplifying and greening my life was about building a system of regular habits: recycling, public transit, car sharing, community-supported agriculture, resale shopping, expense tracking, green cleaning practices, line drying, etc. My everyday system has vanished. As a guest, I participate as gracefully and gratefully as possible (I don’t always succeed) in the systems around me. Here’s what I’ve noticed.

Too much stuff.

It’s a mess out there. Almost everyone lives in confusion and clutter. The households you could call “spare” belong to retired people (raised under in less materialistic times), former Holden Village long-term staffers (veterans of life in the wilderness) and former ELCA missionaries (like me, visitors to planet consumer, due to their cross-cultural, outside-the-US experiences).

Everyone else, especially those with kids still at home, is too overwhelmed with obligations to bring any kind of order to rooms full of toys and furniture and knick-knacks and sports equipment and coats and shoes and books and televisions and laptops and CDs and DVDs and computers and toys.

My Christmas present to my siblings with families was a day of deep cleaning, of tackling big problems they had not time for. Because I love cleaning with the stereo up loud, I had fun, and my work was significant and appreciated…but hardly made a dent.

If everyone in the US had a garage sale at the same time, would it be like a run on the bank? Would everything suddenly be valueless, so we could somehow stop the flow of stuff from Stuff Central, wherever that is?

Perhaps, like that drawing in The Little Prince of the boa constrictor that has swallowed an elephant, we have a hump stuck in us, and after we digest, recycle, or landfill it, we will get over having to own everything someone tells us to buy, and we can go on to valuing ideas, services, art, music, skills—“things” that are non-material and ask only for space in our hearts and minds.

But hospitality still rules.

Last summer a former ELCA missionary told me that her family noticed, after they came back from 6 years in Tanzania, that nobody invited them home for dinner anymore. All they got were invitations to go out for coffee. After the intense hospitality of Arusha, they were very lonely indeed.

Are we afraid to invite people into our messes, or too worried about time to turn an hour of coffee into a full evening? Somehow my status as relative or very old friend has gotten me around the “let’s meet for coffee” barrier, because I’ve discovered that no matter what the mess, people do still cook, bake, and linger around the table in private. Is there something we can do to open up our homes, and put dinner invitations back at the top of our social lives?

Too many cars.

In the face of nearly universal car ownership, I keep slogging away at getting from point A to point B without one. Portland, Oregon, makes it easy. And if you’ve got three hours, it’s possible to cover the 75 miles between the Seattle airport and my family’s farm in Mt. Vernon on public transportation. In Sacramento, I bike a lot.

When I need a car, I try to be creative. Without a fixed address, I can’t participate in a formal car sharing program, so I share informally by using or renting my siblings’ cars when they are not using them. (I like to think of this as using excess capacity.) I got to Berkeley today by emailing friends and siblings to see if they or anyone they knew had to be in the Bay Area for meetings or work this week. A college friend dropped me here on his way to San Francisco this morning, and my sister will drive me back to Sacramento after a board meeting here tomorrow. I could have taken Amtrak, but using social media—the online equivalent of the ride boards we used to depend on in the 70s—to make a car pool saved me $48 and is giving me three hours of conversation with two dear people.

But where are the others who are thinking this way? Car pooling, public transportation, bicycling and walking—even one or two days a week!—get little more than lip service from drivers. Drivers just keep…driving.

Deciding to live simply and sustainably is harder in a family.

Brushing my teeth in other homes has shown me that simplifying my own life was a piece of cake. As a single parent, I could make and enforce the big lifestyle decisions. And I wouldn’t be on this west coast sofa tour if I weren’t already an empty nester. People in couples and people with children at home don’t get to act unilaterally. More compromise is involved. This has been humbling.

Living simply on the road can make you feel needy.

Could I borrow your car this morning if I take you to work buy you some gas? Can we drive to Berkeley together? Since you’re dropping your daughter off at her job at the mall, could I run into that REI store, so I don’t have to figure out how to get there on the bus? Is there a library with wireless somewhere near by? Could I do a load of wash this morning? Sure, if you really don’t need that GoreTex raincoat, I’ll be glad to use it.

Living simply on the road can make you feel resourceful.

Of course I can show you how to get from your place to the airport on public transit. Have a slice of the pie I just baked you. The Greyhound gets in at 3:00 pm so we can meet at 4:00. Here, let me pick up the lunch tab/buy the concert tickets/get those groceries. Check out the kitchen cabinets I washed and organized for you!

If you’re a web designer, could you please build my dream web site?

In the last two weeks I flew from Sacramento to Seattle to Portland to Sacramento, all on Alaska Air. I need a web site that lets me mix and match modes of transportation, so I could book a flight to Seattle, a train or bus to Portland (because for trips under 500 miles, it’s “greener” to use ground transportation), and then the Portland to Seattle flight. If I can’t book it all at once, could the site please recommend ALL the options for traveling between cities before I default to the most common and most highly advertised alternative? If you build it, I will come, and tell everybody else about it. The only thing close is hopstop.com, which offers bus & subway directions for 12 cities plus all of metropolitan New York/New Jersey. This has already been named a “top startup” by some Internet rating agency. I’ll bet my idea would find many fans.

Next stop, Latin America

A sabbatical is freeing but not free. Travel expenses have replaced mortgage, utilities, and grocery bills. Next week, my visits to planet consumer take a dramatic turn as I go off to Cuba, Mexico, Guatemala and Suriname for the next three months. I’ll get to visit Lutherans all along the way (more sofas!), and will post whenever possible. Thank you for traveling with me this far.

Anne Basye

Sustaining Simplicity: A Journal

This week’s post will be a collection of thoughts I’ve been having about the still unfolding tragedy in Haiti.  As you may guess, I have been watching the news and the Web with particular interest as the situation has developed.

By now we are all familiar with the country–how it is the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, how it shares the island of Hispaniola with it relatively wealthier neighbor, the Dominican Republic, and how that the disparity between the two countries is at least in part the result of U.S. policies (for a great informative piece on the history of Haiti, click here).   The earthquake was especially devastating because of the extreme poverty and its proximity to the main population center.

In the aftermath of the earthquake, we have seen many things that demonstrate the difficulty in providing effective aid.  The total loss of infrastructure has made it difficult to deliver aid in the first place.  We have seen people trying to work around the infrastructure, like the (well-meaning, I hope) Baptist missionaries trying to smuggle non-orphaned kids to the Dominican Republic.  This has now decreased the effectiveness of other agencies doing legitimately good work (such as the private air lifts that previously took 15 critically injured children a day to hospitals in the United States to receive treatment–since the arrest of the missionaries, they have taken three children total, leading to the death or permanent injury of at least 10 children).  There was also the debate about who would pay for the treatment of the critically wounded coming to Florida hospitals that led to a halt to airlifts.  (As an aside, this was for me one of the real tragic stories in the whole affair–we have the means to provide immediate aid, but we are worried about costs.  I recognize that nothing is free, and that Florida does have other financial obligations, but it just felt wrong to put money ahead of lives.  Your thoughts?)

To close this post, looking ahead, we need to make sure we maintain our commitment to the people of Haiti.  There have been rumblings of forgiving Haiti’s debt and I, for one, think this would be a good thing to continue to advocate for.  Our continued financial support can do much good, especially since many of our partners work very close to the ground.  As to the desire to go down to Haiti, which I find myself fighting, unless you have a particular skill to offer, it is much better to pray and advocate and give.  Haiti lost a lot of its skilled labor force (they were the ones inside the buildings–the doctors, the lawyers, the teachers–when the earthquake struck), and now has many unemployed, unskilled hands that need work and the money that comes from work.  We should be very slow to take that away from them in our desire be a part of the action.

-David Creech

On Michigan Avenue in downtown Chicago, a man lingered on a street corner, examining a trash bin for items worthy of rescue.  He wore long sleeves and slacks—items that had seen their better days—even though the June air approached 75 degrees.  While pondering whether or not to approach him, give him a few bucks, or just walk by, I studied his face.  An unexpected peace emanated from his eyes.  Not a frantic or dejected survival instinct—no, that was not what was at work.  Clearly something unusual guided this man’s approach to the work of the moment.

I forgot about this man within a few minutes, days (for sure), and after a week I doubt I thought about that encounter.  A few weeks later, I walked the streets of St. Louis during the ELCA Youth Gathering.  One night, I saw the same man doing the same thing on a street corner not unlike the one where I’d met him in Chicago.  I confronted him, unable to determine how this was possible.  Was he the most ambitious traveling homeless man in the country?  Did he migrate from big city to big city when he’d seen all he cared to see?

“I saw you in Chicago a few weeks ago,” I said.

“No, sir.  You must be mistaken,” he replied.

“No, I’m sure I’m not,” I said.  There was no mistake.  “It was definitely you.  Downtown Chicago.”

The man studied my face, a slight grin on his face though his eyes conveyed utter surprise.  That evening, he was wearing a cap.  He removed it and motioned down his body as if to say ‘have a good look.’  “I don’t know what to tell you,” he said, smiling.  “Have a good night.”

I didn’t offer to help the man that night, just as I hadn’t a few weeks before.  It wasn’t my place.  Something much bigger was at work, something I only understood weeks or even months later.

I don’t recall when I have felt a stronger presence of God on earth, embodied in a man who carried his cross with no shame, sleeping wherever he probably could, living by the grace of God.  But that’s just the thing.  One can believe it was an ordinary man, and that built on my certainty that the two were not look-alikes, this homeless man happened to garner a way to St. Louis from Chicago.  Not only that, but I happened to encounter him of all people in both cities, weeks apart.

When we’re called to act, we must act.  But why is it that those in a position to offer help assume that is what is needed?  I realized only later that the reason I didn’t offer to help the man was that he was not the one who needed something.

I was.

-Aaron Cooper is Writer-Editor for ELCA World Hunger

As I was pondering this week’s post I got excited thinking about the fact that today was Groundhog Day (I’m not so excited that Mr. P. Phil saw his shadow, though…).  I was excited to talk about the clichéd definition of insanity–doing the same thing over and over but expecting a different result.  As I gleefully plotted the post I realized that Groundhog Day historically had nothing to do with doing the same thing over and over.  This idea was introduced in a 1993 film starring Bill Murray, with the apt, though perhaps uncreative, title, Groundhog Day.  I marveled at the notion that my precognitive connection, my free association, was something entirely unrelated to the original understanding of the day.  Even more amazing, my first understanding of Groundhog Day (having to do with the length of winter) was something that had been learned then supplanted.  And I’m not alone with this shift in thinking.

So what does this have to do with hunger?  A lot, I think.  For one, much has been made by folks like Nick Kristof and Peter Singer about the intuitive joy we feel when we help someone (a good thing!), especially when our help (e.g., filling a bag of food or serving someone a meal) or the person (e.g., sponsoring a child or giving to a specific project) is tangible and the need is immediate.  While this probably has some evolutionary benefits–human beings are social creatures after all–attending only to immediate needs does not help us in the long term goal of eliminating hunger and poverty.  It could even be detrimental.  Take, for example, the situation in Haiti.  As noted in the ELCA Disaster Response report on Haiti, “With the huge influx of humanitarian aid coming into the country, a negative impact is being realized by business owners.”  The report goes on to explain some of the complexities of the situation, but the point is still the same.  (To be clear, both immediate relief and long term development are needed, and both are integral to ELCA World Hunger’s approach to dealing with hunger and poverty, domestically and internationally.)  In short, maybe our first impulse, our precognitive response, needs to be tempered.  That intuitive joy we may feel by doing something tangible and immediate is good, but maybe we need to also find joy in the long term, and perhaps less glamorous, work of working with and on behalf of those who are vulnerable.

-David Creech

So I’ve been struggling lately to write anything worth reading (I hope this post will be an exception!).  It’ s not that there isn’t anything to write about–there’s the horrible tragedy unfolding in Haiti and the long road to recovery (for more on the ELCA’s response and how you can help, click here; a blog chronicling the ELCA’s response will be up and running soon here).  There was the very interesting piece by Nick Kristof on women and development and how religion can help or hinder efforts.  I just spent a week in Tijuana, Mexico, thinking about issues that confront women and children, with a dash of reflection on U.S. immigration policy.  Massachusetts recently held an election that significantly shifted the balance of power in Washington–in addition to potentially changing the contours of health care reform, the election also will likely impact climate change legislation, immigration policy, and economic reform.

So why the difficulty writing and reflecting on any one of these significant events and ideas?  I think it lies in the complexity of it all.  I like to offer pat answers and provide simple ways forward (like, for example, just give to support relief efforts in Haiti–not a bad idea).  But the realities of hunger and poverty are much more complex than that.  Hunger and poverty won’t go away with one simple step.  The way forward (hold on while I simplify it!) is a sustained effort that addresses the multiple causes of poverty (such as racism, sexism, war, corruption, and so on) through multiple channels (such as business, politics, and personal choices).  In that vein, I commend to you (if you’ve not yet seen them) the recent series of posts on this blog by Nancy Michaelis who writes about it with much more ease and eloquence.  The good news is that my colleagues at ELCA World Hunger and our partners in the field get it, even if I struggle from time to time to write about it.

-David Creech

This is the second post in a series considering the root causes of hunger. The Millenium Development Goals serve as a helpful framework, and this week, we’re looking at education.

Millenium Development Goal 2: Achieve Universal Primary Education

In Cusco, Peru, an ELCA World Hunger-supported ministry called Huchuy Runa teaches kids about human rights.

It is difficult to overemphasize the importance of education in social and economic development. Both marginalized people in developed nations and many people in developing nations lack access to basic education. In a developed nation, lack of education can doom a person to a life of unskilled, low-paying work that makes it nearly impossible to avoid poverty. Minimum wage – or worse – just doesn’t buy a lot of food or shelter. In developing nations, where even primary education is often unavailable or inaccessible, the results range from continued impoverishment to death.

The need for universal primary education includes matters well beyond reading and writing. Knowledge of basic sanitation, hygiene, nutrition, and health are essential to improving people’s lives. For example, health education decreases maternal and infant mortality rates, and slows the rate of contagious diseases as people learn how illnesses spread and are able to improve their response to outbreaks. Healthy, energetic people are productive workers who will have better chances of economic success and reduced risk of hunger.

Literacy is another goal of universal primary education. Without the ability to read and write, people are more vulnerable to a life of poverty and hunger. Even marginally skilled work requires literacy. Without the ability to read pamphlets, packaging, or instructions, people miss opportunities to learn about resources available to them. Without the ability to read newspapers it is more difficult to participate in local political or developmental processes which might improve one’s economic situation. Literacy opens many avenues to improve lives, and widespread literacy opens new avenues for whole communities to pursue more ambitious opportunities together. Universal primary education is an essential tool for giving people the knowledge they need to lift themselves out of poverty and hunger.

-Nancy Michaelis

There is a place where the trees breathe wind and the skies bring nourishing rain. There is a place where rivers supply food and flowers spout bursts of joy. There is a place that was created with love and beauty and a pulse. If you’ve seen Avatar lately you may be dreaming about the planet of Pandora, but I’m describing the very dirt on which you stand.

When I was younger my siblings and I practically lived in the forest behind our house. We built forts, climbed trees and unblocked the stream after storms. We only came in at the call of dinner from my mother, a woman who grew up learning from the woods and was sure that we were safe doing the same. We would run home through our self-made trails dirty and scratched, all from a good day’s work. Yes, we played video games and “house”, but we also had mud ball fights. There were also the days when we kayaked on the lake nearby. I remember being both frightened and intrigued by the lily pads at the end of the lake surrounded by a small inlet with hanging trees and sparkling silence. I built a connection with nature at a young age, and had a lot of fun doing so.

When I think about the environment today I hope that we don’t forget the beauty and connection we instinctively have with nature, God created this Earth to be cherished and enjoyed. My reaction, however, is my own realization that I must start thinking about that nature when I think about “environmentalism”. There are lots of lenses through which people connect with an environmental cause – global warming, climate change, save the whales, hunting & fishing rights, organic agriculture, protecting national forests and habitats, endangered species…whatever way that you look at the environment around us, thank you for caring. A need to reconnect with the environmental movement on a very personal and real level has been brewing in me for awhile. You might even call it a spiritual necessity.

Outside my window trees sway, rain falls and in the spring time flowers will bloom. The Pacific Northwest is my backyard. I love barbecues with fresh caught wild salmon and picking my own pumpkins for Halloween. I smile when I see the little trees popping up all over a clear-cut thanks to renewable forestry, and when I see an advertisement for Harbor 100 – a carbon neutral, 100 percent recycled paper product. I breathe deeply when I visit our temperate rainforest and when I step outside after a nourishing spring rain. My favorite place on Earth is this tiny tulip and daffodil bulb farm 20 minutes from my house – you could make anywhere beautiful with a few bunches of their fresh cut perfection. Each of these things makes my life happy and full. While I’m glad that environmentalism through climate change is being addressed worldwide, I think it’s also so important to remember what feeds the soul right where we are. For me, remembering that God created this world is the most influential environmental lobby I can think of. I think of our interconnection with the resources of the earth – food, shelter, water, joy and peace can all be found in the nature and wildlife that surround us. I can’t imagine giving away the earth for prosperity, indeed there is no such thing as prosperity without our natural environment.

Reduce. Reuse. Recycle. Feed your soul.

~Lana

Here’s a bunch of interesting things I’ve come across lately, about simplicity and sustainability, some of it here in California.

Individual carbon credits? Among the “10 ideas that might make the next 10 years more interesting, healthy or civil” proposed by U2 star Bono in the January 3 New York Times is the concept that individuals, not industries or countries, be allowed to trade carbon credits. “The average Ethiopian can sell her underpolluting ways (people in Ethiopia emit about 0.1 ton of carbon a year) to the average American (about 20 tons a year) and use the proceeds to deal with the effects of climate change (like drought), educate her kids, and send them to university,” he suggested.

Spending time, not money. A recent New York times/CBS News poll found that instead of spending money, Americans “are spending additional time with family and friends, gardening, cooking, reading, watching television and engaging in other hobbies.” See, we’re already taking steps away from consumerism towards communitarianism, which I got all excited about before Christmas in this post.   

Urban gardening  One of those backyard gardening places has begun in my town – a community-supported agriculture project that farms in its subscriber backyards and the farmers’ own yards. The farmers are still struggling financially because “it isn’t as income-producing as we’d like,” they say. Can you start one in your town – or maybe build community by creating a CSA on your block with your neighbors? Maybe add some chickens? 

Quit watering your lawn. Lawn watering uses more than half the water used by households in California. Sacramento has a campaign to turn off automatic sprinkler systems (especially in winter – for heaven’s sake, it’s raining!), and the Bay Area is looking at limiting lawns or landscapes to no more than 50 square feet per dwelling unit or no more than 25 percent of the landscaped area. The rest would have to be planted in native plants or plants requiring little or no water. Owners of upscale manors with millions in landscaping are not happy about this.   

Then mow your lawn with a goat.  Forget your push lawnmower. If you have more than an acre of land, you can rent goats to chomp your weeds and unwanted vegetation. You can hire 20 to 200, depending on the size of the project.

Save trees by changing toilet paper. Because we love ‘super soft’ toilet tissue, we consume 67.2 million trees annually.” How about saving a tree by using tissue made from post-consumer waste?

Talking about simple living in Oregon.  I’m honored to be speaking about simple living and global mission at the Oregon Synod Global Mission Event on February 6 in Milwaukie, Oregon. I hope to see you there!

Anne Basye, Sustaining Simplicity