Food for the heart. And mind.

Understanding the normal world is more than just numbers and sympathy.

Having a dollar a day for food doesn't go very far here or anywhere else in the world.
Food in the developing world costs much the same as it does here if you have to buy it and if there's a store. Raising your own along with a flock of goats is perhaps an option for some but not for most without help. All they want, these precious folks, is a life with hope and perhaps a better chance for their children.

Feel like making a difference for a family?  You can, and it's easy and inexpensive.  World Vision does it better than most if you're interested in a quick option.  For the brave, we have projects in Kenya and in western Africa if you'd like to join the fun.

Global First

Anote Tong, President of the Republic of Kiribati, addresses
the general debate of the sixty-seventh session of the
 United Nations General Assembly.

The first country to be erased by changing climate - The Gilbert Islands, known now as the Pacific island nation of Kiribati.  They have about thirty years remaining.

With a population of just over 100,000 they expend their limited resources protecting their homes and increasingly fragile land against the rising ocean.  Seawalls and levees have proved inadequate. Planning has begun for when the population must be evacuated.

Speaking at the U.N., Kiribati's President Anote Tong details the impact of climate change and sea level rise on the survival of his country.  He characterizes the unsustainable use of the planet’s resources as the greatest moral challenge of our time. “Economic growth at all costs must not be our mantra.”

The island region has been inhabited for perhaps a few thousand years by the Micronesian peoples and others. Christmas Island to Tarawa and beyond, more than a million square miles ... Tarawa Atoll and others of the group were occupied by Japan during World War II. Tarawa was the site of one of the bloodiest battles in US Marine Corps history. Marines landed in November 1943; the Battle of Tarawa was fought at Kiribati's former capital Betio on Tarawa Atoll.

The name Kiribati is the local pronunciation of Gilberts, from the Gilbert Islands named after the British explorer who sailed through in 1788. The capital, South Tarawa, consists of a number of islets connected through a series of causeways, located in the Tarawa archipelago. Kiribati became independent in 1979. It is a member of the Commonwealth of Nations, the IMF and the World Bank, and became a full member of the United Nations in 1999.

While Kiribati is today taking measures to ensure it remains inhabitable for as long as possible, the island nation is also preparing for the day when the island can  no longer sustain its population. Kiribati is looking to improve its people’s job skills, so they might compete on the global market and migrate with dignity.

There is no justice in some people benefiting from the unsustainable exploitation of resources, while others pay the ultimate price. 

If the international community is to provide a secure, peaceful and prosperous future for its children, then it must go beyond “business as usual” and deliver now.

Where did Jesus go?

It's been awhile since Jesus walked as a man among us. Given the chance, many would gladly invite him in and maybe serve him a meal or wash his feet like that woman did at the Pharisee's house.

If he was here today, where would we find him?

Then there's the sheep and goat thing. At the end of a string of parables, Jesus talks about those who cared and helped; feeding the hungry, making a place for the homeless ... and he told them they'd done it to him. Stunned, they actually protested his recognition of their good hearted lives; they hadn't known it was him they were caring for, hidden in with the poor and needy of their world.

Too, we could perhaps remember that when he came to live with us, it wasn't as a rich guy.

Note to self -

Of the two, one has a good end ...

... the other passes the time avoiding difficult questions while keeping to the preapproved path.

A classic dilemma.  

One advantage of the passing years; you care less about the expectations of others and more about what good you might do.

Happiness is for pigs.

At least, that was my father's observation.  He was raised on a farm and perhaps his pig encounters lacked the nobility he hoped to find in life.

Joy, he observed, was a grand ballroom, filled with music and meaning.  It came not from getting but from giving.  Not from talking about things but from doing well those things which made the world a perhaps more beautiful place.

As a musician, he had an uncommon bent among the classicists of his generation.  He reached not for perfection but for the magic that music could work in the souls of the performers and the hearers.  With choirs and orchestra, he would paint a musical masterpiece that would persist in your memory for years, change your worldview, your theology, and your life's goals.

From 1960 with one of his college

choirs.  A capella, if I recall this one.

Now decades after his passing, I still remember.  It still brings tears to my eyes as the extraordinary beauty of it and the nobility of it rises up yet again in me.

I'm forever blessed and encouraged by it all.  So are the many who walked that path with him and with mom in those years.  More than fifty years have passed, and folks from those days still call from time to time, students most of them, and they still shine with the glow of what touched them then, and that's joy.

Response to Syria

16 hours ago ...

Should the civilized world respond to the slaughter in Syria? (NC-17)

 

Of course we should.  

More than a hundred-thousand have died. We must intervene and bring the violence to an end.

Innocents have been driven from their homes, their towns leveled and burned; more than a million are in refugee camps.  They've lost everything.

12 hours ago ...

Now in addition to bullets and bombs, there are chemical weapons being used, and the associated extraordinary suffering is upon us.

Should the world step in?  Yes!  Absolutely. 

Is a military strike by the US likely to be helpful?  That's the question in the news.  But what is the likelihood that limited strikes will accomplish what's needed...  an end to the violence...

We need a solution not unlike an elementary school's handling of bullies.  The offending children need to be dragged off the playground, weapons confiscated, and taken to the principles office.  Shooting up the playground isn't likely to help much. 

The question of whether or not to execute a limited military strike doesn't begin to address the circumstance.  While the last two years in Syria appear to be of a military nature, the truth perhaps is that the individual events are murder and the perpetrators are criminals.

The pope has called us to prayer for peace in the nation.  An end to the violence is his concern.  I don't think he's looking for a surgical slap on the hand for using bad weapons.  The list of crimes begins with a hundred thousand people having been killed, and a million have been driven from their homes to suffer for years, having lost everything.  Inexcusable.  Yes, the chemical weapons were also an inexcusable escalation of the inexcusable violence.  Should the world step in? Yes!  Absolutely.