Missing

What don’t I do if I have to ride the bus from here to the train and catch another bus on the other end? Do I skip the early worship or sacrifice a good night’s sleep? Do I go places that mean another transfer, another route, another line or another walk? What do I miss when I’ve already spent fifteen hours on buses and trains and just want to sit and be still for a day. Maybe the groceries wait until tomorrow or we never get to the library. If I make it to the market, it’ll be the one closest to me, even if that means I can’t buy as much. But even if the prices are okay, what don’t I buy when I have to carry my bags? When the backs of my legs ache and my fingers cramp from trekking through the cold?

And what do I miss when I adopt the vacant look and stare out the window or bury my nose in my book instead of smiling and saying hello or talking to the person behind me in line? Smiles break open our masks of anonymity and of otherness. “Hello.” “Good morning.” “Thank you.” What does it cost me? If you were going to rob me, it would have happened already. Instead you pull the line for the stop ahead and help me find my way. You laugh with me as we begin a new day. At night, on the way home, we’re quieter, more weary and maybe more wary because the darkness envelops us as night falls and we’re still not home. 

And even when I get home, when I am a mama or a daddy, what do I miss? Excited stories about the school day or playground, anguished teenage narratives and dinner table conversations because we’re sapped from bobbing and weaving through the city streets. 

Part of my reflections of a two-week experience living in Chicago's Hyde Park, studying urban pastoral education and riding Chicago Transit everywhere.

We are a nation living with choices

Bishop Ntambo from the Democratic Republic of Congo opened the 2011 Lake Junaluska Peace Conference telling us stories.  While he told his stories with humor and grace, he poignantly illustrated how in the U.S., we have abundance we don’t even recognize because it is so woven into the fabric of our lives.

Sparkling or flat, bottled or tap, filtered or not, flavored or not, with ice or not. Here we can rattle off a half-dozen choices of what kind of water we may want to drink while in Niger “80 percent of child deaths are linked to lack of access to clean water and sanitation.” (2011 Hunger Report, Bread for the World, 19)

Cardiologist, internist, orthopedist, pediatrician, obstetrician, surgeon, oncologist, psychiatrist, dentist…In the U.S., at least the insured have opportunities to choose the doctor whose specialty will best address their needs; Bishop Ntambo related that people in his country may walk 20 – 50 miles to find aspirin and students who complete high school may be doctors because there are so few treatments and so little medicine to learn.

Private, charter, public, preschool, home school, tutors, colleges, universities, community colleges, trade schools, online degree programs, in-state, out-of-state, full-time, part-time, evening, commuter, residential, distance…in the U.S., our children have choices about what kind of education they want to pursue and where they want to study.  In sub-Saharan Africa, only 70 percent of school-age children attend primary school.

And these are the big choices we make every day: food and water, healthcare, education.  Walk down a grocery store aisle and survey the array of cereal boxes, brands of toothpaste or flavors of salad dressings.  Have you read through a Starbucks or Dunkin' Donuts' menu recently?  Surely we can recognize how we are blessed when we have sixteen choices for even the most trivial items.

God’s promise to Abraham in Genesis 12 reminds us that blessing is both a gift and a responsibility:

I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you, and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing.

What blinds us to seeing how we are blessed? 

How are we being called to be a blessing in return?

Are you being called to take action?
This week, senators likely will be voting on State and Foreign Operations budget. Senate State and Foreign Operations Appropriations Subcommittee Ranking Member Lindsey Graham (R-SC) has argued strongly for a fully-funded foreign aid budget: “At a time when we’re broke at home, it remains important to remain engaged in the world and provide assistance to those who would live in peace with us.”  This is funding for programs that alleviate poverty and hunger in developing countries and for programs that fight HIV/AIDS, malaria and chronic hunger - programs that are saving lives today.  If you'd like to know more about how you can become involved, visit Bread for the World.

Empty Bowls

As I think about how to involve congregations in solutions that address the poverty and hunger in our community, I am taking opportunities to participate in different kinds of events and organizations that are helping hungry people in our region.

Tonight was MANNA FoodBank's 10th annual Empty Bowls event in Asheville. Apparently several hundred early birds came out at lunchtime for the traditional midday event, but my daughters and I joined another three hundred folks gathered for dinner at Manna's first evening event.

If you aren't familiar with it, Empty Bowls began more than twenty years ago. Local artists contribute more than 7,000 hours and their pottery to the Asheville event to provide guests with a bowl to take home as a reminder of all the bowls that remain empty throughout the world. Children are invited to help pack rice bags that go into the backpacks distributed to at-risk families for the weekends. 

Asheville's Mountain Xpress article explains how tonight's event kept local flavor in the event, featuring soups by area eateries like Travinia, Roux, Grove Park Inn and Swallow Soup. AB Tech's Baking and Pastry Arts program provided delicious breads and desserts from the French Broad Chocolate Lounge, Mosaic Cafe', Cold Stone Creamery and Deerpark on the Biltmore Estate were the final tastes of the evening. Throughout the night, music from "The Porch Dragons" could be heard from the "Collector's Corner" where additional bowls were for sale.

One of the things I liked about tonight was that families could participate. In addition to including children in packing the MANNA Packs, children as small as first or second grade were there and children had donated some of the bowls that were for sale. Including children reminds us all that hunger and poverty isn't just a problem for adults. 1 in 4 children in our community doesn't have enough to eat and, on average, 58 youth spend the night on the streets every night in our county.

I don't like the statistics, but something else I did like was that tonight's event was local, sponsored by local businesses, supported by local people and the proceeds will benefit individuals and families here in western North Carolina.  While Empty Bowls events happen all over the country and even internationally, ours was uniquely Asheville. The traditional craftsmanship of western North Carolina, local musicians and generous spirit of local activists all contribute to keep it that way.

There are still far too many empty bowls and events like tonight's cannot eradicate hunger and poverty, but somewhere in letting an eleven year old pick out a bowl to take home, pack a dozen bags of rice for a hungry classmate, share a soup supper, crusty bread and too many desserts, that child hears about other kids just like her except that they don't have enough to eat.  Their bowls are empty.  And hopefully then, each of us can be a little more grateful for what we have and be a little more ready to share, to speak and to act.