9-27-13 - Mind the Gap

We’ve been heavy on “social justice” this week. With readings that deal so explicitly with poverty and wealth, it’s hard to just be “spiritual.” In addition to Jesus’ parable about the rich man and Lazarus, Sunday gives us Amos’ prophetic judgment on those who “lie on beds of ivory, and lounge on their couches… who drink wine from bowls, and anoint themselves with the finest oils…” and Paul writing about the pitfalls of wealth: “For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil, and in their eagerness to be rich some have wandered away from the faith and pierced themselves with many pains.”

Actually, more than pains, I worry about the numbness that can accompany having wealth – and in global terms, I’m a 1-percenter. The disjoint between having so much when many others have so little can tempt one to look away, to not see. Numbness and blindness, not seeing the beggars at our gates, might be the biggest issue we face. And the consequences of not seeing can be heartbreaking.

This week I saw a notice for a program on the politics of food, and read: According to the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization, enough food is produced globally to feed 12 billion people. Global population now stands at 6.3 billion. So why is it that 800 million people suffer from malnutrition and 1.8 billion from obesity, and diabetes and cardiovascular disease are on the rise worldwide?

That’s a lot of “not seeing” the hungry. That's a lot of hanging on to way more than we need. That's a lot of wasteful policy and discarding food someone else could eat. How long will we tolerate that kind of disparity? What can we do? Here are some practical ideas, from the personal to the communal:

• We can become more mindful about the ways we plan, shop, cook and eat - especially when we eat out.
• We can take action in feeding the hungry, from providing meals to collecting food to volunteering for a “food rescue” operation, which picks up food leftover from big events and delivers it to food kitchens and shelters. (Community Plates is such an organization in my area...)
• We can advocate for better food policies that cut down on waste and wasteful subsidies. (For a somewhat humorous look at the unfunny Big Business of patenting seeds and harassing farmers, here’s a clip from The Daily Show…)

And here’s a more spiritual strategy: How about we interject prayer into our consumption every day – not only our consumption of food, but gas, entertainment, purchases, everything. Praying before we shop, while we cook, as we eat might make us more mindful and ultimately change our choices. Praying before we make a casual purchase – both in thanksgiving and for discernment – might lead us to change our priorities. Cultivating a greater awareness of people around us who are in need of resources might open up new avenues of relationship and ministry. I would love to hear what practices you dream up and adopt.

Paul’s advice to those who are rich in this world is to be generous, and to “take hold of the life that really is life.” That’s a place we can find ourselves, not mistaking our wealth for life. Our wealth is a means to life, not an end.

When we take hold of the life that really is life, we want others to know that life – those whom we already love, and those whom we pass coming in and going out of our gates. Sharing our wealth with them, we might find ourselves coming to love them too.