Solidarity is a big piece of “accompaniment” – a way of engaging the world in mission which the ELCA defines as “Walking together in solidarity that practices interdependence and mutuality.”

It seems to me that we have at least two ways to walk together in solidarity with others we accompany. First, we can respect what they value. Second, we can try to understand the roots of their challenges, and then refuse to participate in behaviors that escalate those challenges.

Which brings us to a big uh-oh.

Theologian Cynthia Moe-Lobeda doubts that North Americans can actually accompany anyone authentically. At the recent ELCA Accompaniment Conference at Luther Seminary, she asked participants what it means for us Lutherans to accompany people “we are unwittingly or unknowingly killing” through our participation in an economic system she calls “life giving to us, but death dealing to others.”

She cited a woman strawberry picker in Central America who told her, “our children go hungry because this land grows strawberries for your tables,” and a community in India displaced from hereditary lands into urban poverty by bauxite mines that make aluminum for North American consumption.

Rather than examining our system to see how it harms others, she says, “We think our life is a good one, and we give thanks for it.” Professor Moe-Lobeda notes that while our hymns don’t typically thank God for material goods, our prayers do. “And a lot of those material goods are stolen goods.”

Welcome to the week we give thanks for our way of life, no matter what suffering it causes! Now what, as Christians and people concerned with hunger, shall we do?

Instead of reflexively thanking God for our lifestyle, can we reflect on how our prosperity harms the earth and others? Professor Moe-Lobeda believes that our faith calls us to recognize, name, and resist “social structural evils” that mean, for example, that a child born in North America will consume, waste and pollute in his or her lifetime as much as 50 children in developing countries.

Just being willing to question ways of life assumed to be good is a significant first step. Owning up to our complicity in the systems that support it—confessing that we participate and benefit—is a second step. Avoiding the temptation of shrugging our shoulders and declaring ourselves powerless to change anything is a third step. Seeking to create or nurture fairer alternatives is a fourth step.

That’s a lot of ground to cover over the mashed potatoes on Thursday. Since I’m not always tactful, I’ll probably focus on my fork and limit my efforts to leading a slightly less self-centered prayer.

Friday is another story! No early mall trips for me–I’ll be celebrating Buy Nothing Day, a holiday that helps me think about shopping and realize more deeply how tangled I am in our consumer economy. This year I’m hoping to be inspired to do less willful “not seeing” and creep a little closer to embracing what Professor Moe-Lobeda calls “the pan-human and inter-faith “great work” of our day: forging ways of living—at the household, institutional, and societal levels—that Earth can sustain and that build economically just inter-human relations.” [Read Cynthia Moe-Lobeda’s ideas in this paper and this paper, and look for her title in the Lutheran Voices series, Public Church: For the Life of the World. Find some really radical ways to celebrate Buy Nothing Day, at home or with others, by clicking here or on the poster below.]

This year, let’s reconsider and redefine our blessings instead of counting them—and take a day to appreciate the world God has given us without using our credit cards. It could be revolutionary!

Anne Basye

“Sustaining Simplicity: A Journal”

I’ve been thinking recently about how important it is to have a place to be. I mean this on several levels. The first is the smallest and most personal –  a physical house. A place to go to after work or school. Shelter versus homelessness. I’ve been thinking about this because I have a friend who has recently taken her child and left a destructive relationship. Thank goodness for that, but because she has been a stay-at-home mom, she doesn’t have a job or income, which is making the move difficult. Fortunately, she has supportive friends, a really great church community, and she is receiving child support. She’s got more options than many women in her position, but her situation is still tenuous. She managed to get a short-term lease on a small apartment, but has little money left over for food. She’s relying on friends and the food pantry to help out. She figures it’s easier to get help with food then shelter, and it seems to me that there’s great comfort in having a place to be.

A second level of having a place to be is in liking where you live, fitting in there, and having a sense of belonging. I’ve been thinking about this as a relative who was recently laid off considers having to move his family to wherever he can find a job. They don’t want to move. They are very connected to their current community. But ultimately, they have to have income. There’s a difference between having a place to be and having a place you want to be, and, I’d guess, a corresponding difference in the degree to which you thrive.

Which is not so different from some of what I heard in Mexico City a little over a month ago when I was there with the ELCA World Hunger Leadership Gathering. For all the controversy immigration causes in this country, it’s not exactly a first choice option for many immigrants, either. But like my laid-off relative, you go where you can make a living. My relative may have to change states, but at least he’ll still be in a familiar culture, he’ll be able to speak the language, and he’ll be able to provide food and shelter for his family legally. How much more difficult for the Mexican whose choices are living in poverty at home, or as an outlaw in the U.S.? Neither is a very good or fulfilling place to be.

And then there’s the Maldives. Anne Basye mentioned the country in her blog last week. They face the possibility of their entire country being submerged by rising sea levels due to climate change. Where can one bein that situation, when your country no longer exists? I read that their president is talking to other countries about buying land onto which they might relocate should theirs go under water. How does that work?! Do they just move the whole country? Do they become part of the country into which they move, or is, say, Australia willing to sell off part of it’s land so they can create a new Maldives? What happens when a whole country of people has no where in the world to legally be?

The causes of hunger and the interconnections of those causes is complex, and it seems to be that this question of where a person can be ties so many of them together. Employment, economics, land rights, land availability, governance, identity. No big insights here today; just respect for the complexity.

-Nancy Michaelis

Last night a winter storm knocked the power out at my home, and I began to think about things…

• As I pulled out my wind-up flashlight I began to think about renewable resources. If I can power my flashlight (and keep reading my book) with the simple turn of my wrist, what else can I power that easily?
• Luckily the outage started in the evening and was fixed by morning, a couple of years ago the area experienced a storm which caused power outages for a week. What if I didn’t have a cold refrigerator to keep food in? How would that change what I ate and how much time I spent getting and making food?
• The rain poured and the wind howled but the water treatment plants were okay. Sometimes, however, in the really bad storms the water systems get tainted and we either have to boil water or use bottled water for a few days. We often have a supply of clean water in the garage for just such instances. What if we always had to boil water? What if we didn’t have any access to clean water storage?
• I did enjoy making cinnamon toast on the wood stove in my living room, I felt a little bit like a pioneer. I began to think, however, about my brothers and sisters in Christ around the world who cook every meal over the fire and also use this as their only form of heat.

In this winter storm I realized how lucky I am to have a roof, central heating, refrigeration and clean water. It also makes me think more about what I can do for others – like giving regularly, learning about renewable energy, being a good steward of creation’s resources and advocating for important justice issues. God works in mysterious ways – even through power outages.

~ Lana

p.s. For those of you who read last week’s Foodball blog, you’ll be happy to know that the competition raised over 989,000 pounds of food this year!

There’s a competition in the small town where I grew up called Foodball. It’s an 11 day all-out contest between two high schools to see who can raise the most food and money for local food banks. The contest however, is not just fueled by goodwill, but largely by the rivalry which surrounds the competition. Steeped in over 100 years of competition on the athletic playing fields, our two neighboring one-high school towns are bathed in school pride. When it comes to Foodball that pride feeds a lot of people. I remember in high school, while out on our one-day door-to-door neighborhood blitz, an old-timer asked me (right before he donated some money) whether or not the Bobcats were going to win this year. In this case, raising the most amount of food is a matter of pride. How much food? Historically, enough to run the local food banks for about nine months of the year – quite a feat in 11 days.

Well, it’s Foodball time again and every time I walk into a local store there are high school kids asking for donations and little donation bins on every coffee shop and ice cream store counter. Yesterday, however, I got a glimpse of why we really do this and who it helps.

After a nice lunch with my brother at a downtown cafe we decided to go on an afternoon walk. My brother is a designer and up in the older neighborhoods of my one-high school town, both tucked in corners and standing resolute on the side of the main street, are beautiful old homes. As reminders of our past, I often refer to a group of them as the timber mansions – built by wealthy timber barons in our earlier glory days. Around them are brilliant little craftsman homes and once noble tudors. On our way out of the neighborhoods we passed the local Lutheran church and the high school, right before we reached the museum. On the other side of the road from the museum sits a local food bank. No doubt a recipient of the funds raised by the high school kids just blocks away. Outside of the food bank during the mid-afternoon I saw people stopping by to pick up their nourishments; a mother with a little girl who was holding a doll, parents with a baby seat, older men in logging attire chatting next to their vehicles and a nice-looking young man who drove up in a newer foreign car. On my little architectural walk I was blessed to see the faces of Foodball – the people all of that rivalry and friendly competition actually benefits. Normal people, just trying to make ends meet. I hope my Alma Mater wins this year, but I know that either way it’s those faces that I saw yesterday who really matter.

~ Lana

To run a country, a seat of government has to have a permanent address.

Back in 1862, a flood transformed Sacramento into what papers called “a sort of a frontier Venice.” Early in January, said reporters, “Water in Sacramento was at such a depth that no one attempted to move about the city except by boat.” Governor Leland Stanford arrived at his inauguration in a rowboat. Ten days later, the State Treasurer’s office was under three feet of water, and “a piano in the parlor of the Chief Justice, though perched upon chairs, was soaked, and the pictures in the parlor were spoiled.”

On January 24, 1862, the government packed up and moved to San Francisco to finish out the legislature’s session. In the fall, everyone got back to work in a dried-out Sacramento, which has been the capital city ever since.

I’m not sure if Gov. Schwarzenegger has a flood contingency plan, but other governments are getting ready! Last month, the Prime Minister and cabinet of the Maldives donned scuba gear and met underwater. This month, Nepal’s cabinet will meet at the Mt. Everest base camp. Both governments are taking to the road to emphasize the perils they face from flooding caused by global warming—the Maldives, by sinking under the sea; Nepal, by melting glaciers.

These people are seriously worried. Me, too. While northern California’s reservoirs are dangerously low, Sacramento—still at sea level, still surrounded by levees, though they’ve gotten sturdier since 1862—is as vulnerable as New Orleans. After Hurricane Katrina, my nephew asked my parents to put an ax in a second-floor closet so they could chop through their roof if they had to. If hundred-year rains and an early snow melt inundate Sacramento and send my parents to their roof, where will they send California’s government?

It’s astonishing to hear that the number of people who think that global warming is caused by humans is declining. Even though humans—and mostly humans living in North America—generate about 4 billion more tons of greenhouse gases than the earth can absorb! I’m hoping the big climate change conference happening in Copenhagen in December will turn that trend around.

Meanwhile, I’ll ride my bike, take the bus, and get that ax upstairs.

The cabinet of Maldives meets underwater

Anne Basye

“Sustaining Simplicity”

As I watched the TED talk “A Third Way to Think About Aid” by Jacqueline Novogratz I began to think about ELCA World Hunger’s work with Companion Synods and partner organizations. According to the “talk” it seems that our work is heading in the right direction. We support microcredit lending opportunities and value relationships with the Lutheran World Federation and ELCA Global Mission as we work as partners with churches around the world to address solutions to hunger and poverty. The key to these partnerships is that we are able to address the real issues – those voiced straight from the communities in which we work.

As the video goes on it looks further into how the idea of a “partnership” can continue to be tuned in the 21^st century. It begins to look toward increasing the use and spread of technologies in places where their abilities would be incredibly beneficial, yet are currently little known. I like the idea of moving forward with an eye toward smarter irrigation, farming, energy systems and clean water supplies. Perhaps we should continue to innovate even our tagline…as “God’s Work. Our Hands.” looks at the gifts we have received – ideas, creativity and hope – and the ways that technology can transform them – solar power, drip irrigation in the desert and all those ideas that are just waiting to be uncovered.

Enjoy the video!

~Lana

The following was written by Dr. Warren Chain, who recently led a trip during which participants learned about and reflected on ethical aspects of our food production systems and food choices.

From Thursday October 22 through Sunday, October 25 in Waco, TX, ELCA World Hunger gathered 20 campus and congregational leaders from Region 4 for a Leadership Training on the Ethics of Eating. The event was held at World Hunger Relief, a Christian organization which trains individuals in sustainable farming practices that are useful both in the United States and abroad. This event focused on three issues at the intersection of food and faith: justice issues affecting workers in food production, the intersection between agriculture and climate change, and hunger.

We engaged with a wide variety of speakers – Food Worker Activists Anita Grabowski and Sean Sellers, Theologian Shannon Jung, Waco Hunger Activists Shirley Langston and Kenneth Moerbe, and Climate Change speakers Dr. Travis Miller and Dr. Benjamin Champion. We also engaged in a number of activities. On Friday, we prepared one of our meals from live chickens and vegetables that we gleaned. On Saturday, we visited Farmer James Nors of Nors Dairy, a raw milk dairy farm. Through these speakers and activities, I gained a good deal of new information and had a number of personal revelations; I will share two of them.

On Saturday morning, Dr. Benjamin Champion provided an overview of some of the challenges associated with eating ethically, with a focus upon the impact of our food choices upon climate change. His research examined local food systems in the state of Kansas. There are a variety of ethical concerns to think about as one eats. For example, were the workers who produced and distributed this food paid a living wage? Was the food produced locally and sustainably, and with the intent to minimize its carbon impact? I was struck, in particular, by his data which examined the carbon impact of various aspects of the food system. Among those who are concerned about the carbon impact of their activity, much discussion has focused on eating locally. But, Ben’s data suggests that our own local transporation to and from the store where we buy our food, combined with the carbon impact of our food storage, can actually have a higher carbon impact than the carbon impact that stems from tranporting industrial food to our local store. This finding complicates the idea that eating locally is always better for the environment. If you would like to learn more, see Ben’s presentation (particularly slides 60 – 63) which is posted on the The Table, the World Hunger social networking site: http://elcaworldhunger.ning.com/group/region4ethicsofeating/forum/topics/benjamin-champions.

On Saturday evening, we screened the documentary film Mississippi Chicken, and afterwards had a dicussion with the producer Anita Grabowski and her husband, John Fiege, who was the film’s director. The movie chronicles Anita’s work to create a worker justice center in Mississippi to organize undocumented poultry workers in the summer of 2004. We began to hear about her work on Friday, as Anita participated on a panel that dealt with the justice issues faced by poultry workers and farm workers. We continued our learning with Mississippi Chicken, which highlights the multiples barriers poultry workers face as they seek to feed their families. While working in these poultry plants, workers face terrible conditions. Futhermore, workers are vulnerable to exploitation by plant managers while on the job, and by local police and criminals outside of work. These workers are vulnerable to exploitation because they often are either unclear about their rights, or are reticent to engage with the police due to their undocumented status. At the end of the documentary, our group was subdued and stunned by what we saw – it was not a graphic movie, but the social injustices faced by these workers are heartbreaking. Afterwards, John and Anita led a discussion about the film and how the individuals we met through the film have fared since it was produced. This film can be borrowed from ELCA World Hunger or it can be purchased from Amazon. I recommend it highly.

These are just two of the experiences that impacted me over the weekend. If you are interested in working on issues of food and faith, a number of ways to engage emerge from this event. I invite you to join our discussion on The Table (http://elcaworldhunger.ning.com/ & http://elcaworldhunger.ning.com/group/region4ethicsofeating). In addition, all of the participants will host an activity in their sending campus or congregation. So, if you see an activity on The Table that you would like to participate in or would like to sponsor in your area, feel free to connect with one of us to participate or to gain assistance.

Warren Chain, Ph.D.
ELCA World Hunger

Elena (seated) with Stephanie (Amextra staff)

One of the people we met in Lomas de San Isidro was a woman named Elena. Through a translator, she explained to us that during the spring swine flu outbreak, she and a group of women hand-sewed 5000 face masks in the space of a few days. Then they went door to door through the community handing them out, and providing information about the flu and how to prevent it. Collectively, it required hundreds of hours of work for which she and the other women received no pay. But in Lomas, no one got sick with the flu.

When asked why she did it, Elena said she wanted to help her neighbors. And she understood that success takes teamwork, and she wanted to be a model of how to do that. She wanted to encourage others to work for the community, too. She said the women’s strategy is to work together, even though it is not always easy, and some have to be convinced that it’s worth their time. But Elena believes that, together, they can improve life for everyone.

We visited Lomas because it is a community supported by Amextra, one of ELCA World Hunger’s long-standing partner organizations. It was ELCA World Hunger funds that provided the materials for the masks that Elena and her neighbors sewed, and that support the Amextra-sponsored community center where classes on health and disease prevention are taught. It was gratifying to see a first-hand example of the impact my donations are having, the good ways the money is being used, and to recognize my part in that greater whole.

But for me, far more profound was the example being set by Elena and the others we met. Relative to those living in Lomas, I am rich beyond imagination. I have lots of comforts and plenty to eat. But unlike Elena, I can’t tell you the names of the people who live three houses away from me. I’d like to say I’d stay up all night to make them face masks, but if the flu hits my neighborhood, I’m not so sure I’ll see those nameless, unknown people as my priority. Elena and the residents of Lomas de San Isidro have very little money, but they have a wealth of human connection and support that many of us Americans, for all our money, can’t buy and desperately want. In the community that the residents of Lomas de San Isidro have created, I saw God. And I felt hope.

There are lots of places in the world like Lomas de San Isidro (including here in the U.S.!), where people struggle daily to eat. To acquire needed healthcare services. To obtain information. To offer their children a hopeful future. And there are lots of places where people accomplish amazing things in the face of adversity every day. Our trip to Mexico gave a small group of us a renewed sense of hope and urgency in the fight to end hunger. May we find ways to sustain that sense of urgency and pass it on to others!

-Nancy Michaelis

During my last trip to Europe I really started thinking about the food, exercise and time usage differences between Americans and Western Europeans (in general). I don’t claim to be a nutritionist, sociologist or expert in really any field, just a regular person with an interest in healthy lifestyles. Based on food, exercise and time, here is what I have observed…

Food

• Healthy Food versus Nutritious Food

I have noticed that in US grocery stores we have lots of food that says “low fat”, “low calorie”, “no sugar”, etc. and we buy it because we think that it’s healthy. What I have found is that when I look at the ingredients in these foods I often put them back on the shelf and grab the normal ones. What I noticed in Europe was that it is so much more common to grab the normal one. Not only that, in the dairy section, American cheese singles are nearly impossible to find, instead you’re surrounded by real cheeses – the kind that I always grew up thinking were fancy, buy my boyfriend eats them for breakfast. This made me think about my time in Sweden and all the Europeans in my International House.  What I remember is real food and real meals…

• Meals versus Microwaves

Sure I saw microwaves in Europe and absolutely people use them, but what I found fascinating was the level of food quality that my fellow twenty-somethings were preparing. I lived in a dorm with about five kitchens and 100 people. As you might imagine, meal times were crazy! As one of two Americans in the house, my fellow American friend and I expected macaroni and lots of pizza. We were so surprised when we saw the beautiful and wonderful smelling meals that came out of the oven and off of the stove at every meal. I had friends who grocery shopped every day so that they could have fresh vegetables. We Americans had to step up our cooking – we emailed our moms for our favorite recipes from home.

• What is Fast Food?

In Belgium I had this realization: it’s not that people don’t eat fast food, I saw a busy McDonald’s whenever I went into town, what is more common however, is a different type of fast food. Bread shops which whip up cheese and meat baguette sandwiches in a minute, fry shops (well, those can’t be good for you) and kebabs on every corner. What’s different? No drive-thru windows. Imagine if we walked to McDonald’s whenever we ate it? And even more, if we decided to go to the scrumptious bread shop instead.

Exercise

• What is different about our daily 30 minutes of exercise?

After living in the Los Angeles suburbs for four years and Chicago for a summer, I have gotten used to lots of gyms all around. I had this realization during my last trip abroad…where are all the gyms? I know that people go to them, I had friends in Sweden who went daily, but the air around the idea was different. Instead of going to the gym for your daily dose of exercise, the gym was the place you went for that bit of extra. Toning, lifting, etc. because your daily exercise was riding your bike to class or walking to a friend’s apartment, it was walking to the town centre or playing soccer at the park with your buddies. Exercise had a whole different mentality around it – it was simply part of everyday life. And the interesting thing was how much difference that daily portion did make.

Time

• Vacations and Work

While every country is different, there are a couple of things that I noticed abroad. Swedes take the end of the work day seriously. They work really hard during the day and then go home and tune into their families. Their work/family line is quite clear.  Also, even the hardest working Europeans take time to go on vacation, and this reminds me that God built vacation into the world, the Sabbath.

• That Little Unknown…Le Je Ne Sais Quoi

The other thing that I continually notice is that when I return to American soil I feel stress right away. (Not because I just came back from vacation – the majority of my time abroad has been study experiences or I have been working remotely.) The US is a fast-paced and intense culture, and that’s okay. I just remember to walk places when I can, eat real food, and give myself a Sabbath.

The point of this blog is not to make one way better than another, but simply to put out there some observations that I have made during my journeys. As a young woman I have realized that simple changes make big differences. Things like bicycling instead of driving, eating foods with real ingredients, and taking time for myself make me feel so different. Every time I am in a new culture I try to pick out things to learn (even within the US!) and these are my findings. I hope that you will find them interesting too, and that they will help you to think about experiences that you have had, and ways to make your life healthier, happier and more wholistic.

Cheers,

Lana

“You’re going to have to buy a car.”

That’s what everyone told me when they heard I was returning to the west coast. Sure, they said–it’s easy to live without a car in Chicago, surrounded by trains, buses, taxis, and car-sharing companies. But how can you do it out west?

To compensate for the embarrassing carbon footprint I stamped by moving 2300 miles in a low-mileage UHaul, I’ve gotten around Seattle and Portland, from Seattle to the town of Mt. Vernon 60 miles away, and from Mt. Vernon all the way to Sacramento on a combination of city and county buses, streetcars, light rail, and Amtrak. Figuring out routes and prices took a lot of research and asking questions, which, as a traveler, I was happy to do. But for people who drive every day, public transportation is like a second language. Convincing someone to learn it is work!

We’re glad to do it in Europe or New York City, consulting guidebooks and websites that translate the mysteries into vocabulary and gestures we comprehend. In our own hometowns, we’re more suspicious: Where do buses go? Who rides them? Are they safe? Don’t they take longer?

Tom Hampson of Church World Service answered these questions in Modesto, California. Twice a week, he gets to his office by bus, only five minutes later than he would in his car. The two buses I took between Seattle and Mt. Vernon were crowded with commuters who had done the legwork required to leave their cars at home. In Portland, the mayor wants 25 percent of commuters to use bicycles and buses; the one-two punch of Portland’s fine public transportation system and enlightened populace will help him succeed.

Learning the language and practice of public transportation could narrow the gap between the carbon dioxide humans emit every year (7 billion tons) and the CO2 that the earth’s natural processes can absorb (about 4 billion tons). Roughly 1.5 billion tons come from transportation; changes in our behavior can be significant.

In Everything Belongs, Father Richard Rohr says “We do not think ourselves into new ways of living; we live ourselves into new ways of thinking.” Take the bus, and see what happens!

Anne Basye

“Sustaining Simplicity: A Journal”