The Senate Foreign Relations Committee passed the Global Food Security Act yesterday (Thursday). Our friends at Bread for the World, the General Board of Church and Society of the United Methodist Church, and 65 other organizations endorse this bill. Why? More than 800 million people worldwide suffer from chronic hunger. The Global Food Security Act makes into law: …
Category: poverty
‘We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality…’
Interconnected. Mutual. "What affects one directly, affects us all indirectly." Issues overlap. We've talked about this a number of times at my church. For instance, I've been known to say something like this, "If we want to talk about ending homelessness, we have to talk about the lack of affordable housing. If we want to …
Continue reading ‘We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality…’
Sometimes it works
Here's a little something that got sucked into my black hole of non-blogging during the last [gulp] half of 2015: That is a picture of the results of the Offering of Letters we collected in October. Apparently, it wasn't as memorable as I would have liked. When I asked our church's Administrative Council what the …
Sleep Out Saturday
Gonna try live blogging Sleep Out Saturday. Haven't done that before so bear with me... 2:00pm Home preparing to go on a bike ride with our kids. Being away from them is the hardest part of any overnight youth event. In the next day or two, I'll share more SOS insights from WUMC teenagers in …
A true must-read
Given that: 1. As followers of God in the Way of Jesus, my congregation (Woodridge United Methodist Church) strives to love God and love our neighbors. Which, as Jesus put it, means everybody. 2. A vital piece of loving our neighbors - and of UMC membership vows - is striving to fight evil, injustice, and …
Changes for the Holidays
"One word can bring you round" To say that change is difficult is no kind of insight. We know this is true. Yet change comes to us all and sometimes even proves to be a Good Thing. This fall our wonderful partners at the West Suburban Community Pantry changed how they distribute food boxes at Thanksgiving …
SOS aftermath
We participate in Sleep Out Saturday to raise awareness about homelessness in DuPage County - and to raise funds to help end it. As I wrote recently (here and here), SOS is a way to be in solidarity with our homeless population. SOS creates visceral evidence that those who are homeless are included in that …
Sleep Out (in solidarity) Saturday
"Everybody belongs," I said on Sunday. That phrase comes from a teaching by Father Richard Rohr, but also, once again, calls to mind MLK's brilliant, under-valued recapitulation of the gospel: "We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality... Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly." Lots of ways to express that thought: We are …
Setting out on an SOS
Frequently of late I've been talking and writing how striving to follow God in the Way of Jesus compels me to try to end hunger and poverty. And I will continue to do so. For instance, I'm with Bread for the World: Now that the shutdown is over, it is time to end sequestration. But with our …
Mourning, and yet…
It has been rough week. It's been a week of mourning. It has been a week of mourning with Miriam, all the Cabanas family and friends, and our congregation over Ernie's sudden death. Just a few days ago Miriam and Ernie hugged me on their way out of church after our worship service, all smiles …
All That I Can't Leave Unsaid 