To Diet Or To Fast Is Not To Starve

I'm starving.

We have all said it at one time or another. Maybe we were delayed in having a meal on our normal time schedule. Maybe because of time pressures we skipped a meal or ate a light one. Maybe we were dieting, trying to lose a few pounds. Maybe we were fasting, and were at a moment of focusing on our physical needs as opposed to our spiritual enrichment and enlightenment.

I have dieted, I have fasted. But I have never starved. Most likely, neither have you. Whatever you were doing or not doing, be honest, food was probably no more than a step or two away.

None of us know the hopelessness of living in conditions where food is a faraway country, a life to be imagined but not experienced on a day to day basis.

It is not something I have done much about, preferring to focus on my own needs, to my shame as I think about what this day represents. I need to look inside myself so that i do more outside myself going forward.

Are you doing enough about it?

Are you doing anything about it?

Bloggers Unite

Please remember to check ou this event in a few days, read the participants and consider blogging yourself!

A New Bloggers Unite Event : Unite For Hunger and Hope

I will be blogging on April 29, 2009 in a Bloggers Unite event, Unite For Hunger And Hope. I hope you read my blog post, but more importantly, if you blog I hope you participate in and promote this event as well.



The number of blogs participating is growing daily.


DO NOT BE LEFT BEHIND!!!

The Even Darker Side of the Refugee Issue

I have to admit that until I signed up for the current Bloggers Unite event I was not all that familiar with the refugee problem.

Shame on me.

I asked a friend and staff member at my church what information she could share with me about our efforts as a church. We are planning to devote some church resources and energy around the theme of social justice in the world. I am quite glad that the people in my church are more knowledgeable than me, and are al;ready jumping into this.

As I read information about refugees in Cambodia, Rwanda, Darfur just to name a few locations, certain words keep coming up:


Human trafficking.

AIDS.

Starvation.

Disease.

Genocide.

Civil war.

It is horrifying as you look at what is causing refugee situations across the globe, and what these poor people are being subject to.

It almost makes the term refugee become a way of glossing over the real horrors, of making the situation palatable for prime time U.S. news coverage. Of letting us feel good about helping without really understanding the depth of human depravity that drives this behavior to other people, and the depths of human suffering endured as a result. This is not making little or light of what the refugee problem is, this is more about me not understanding the depth of the root causes behind the refugee problem. And wondering how many others are in a similar position (one of ignorant obliviousness) as I.

I am glad my church will get involved in some way to help in trying to alleviate this staggering problem.

I pray your church does as well. I pray that you do as well. But most of all, I pray that I get more involved going forward. Because I have not been doing anything up to now.

And we do it in a way that focuses on the bare, naked, brutal truth of the matter at hand. That we not hide behind any attempt to make it a more palatable issue to see and deal with around the dinner table. For there are so many who have no table to sit around and discuss the issue, they are fighting for their lives everyday.

In Blog We Must

Starting tomorrow I am participating in The Great Blogoff.
I pray I remember the rules. I pray I remember to play. I have no idea
what I will do with any points that accrue to and on my account.

It will be interesting to see if this inspires me to write for my blog,
whether the posts become longer and/or deeper as a result. Or if I will
just skim along the surface as I have been pretty much been doing since
the end of June.

In any event, it will be a focus and a discipline brought to my blogging that I have not had before, so I thank Caffeinated Thoughts for setting that up.

Let's see what the month of November has in store for me. Let's see if I am still blogging at the end of it.

For those of you who blog, I hope you have noticed the Bloggers Unite badge for their November 10th event near the top of the page on the right. I hope you post in it as well.