Category: Theology of Hunger & Poverty

by Drew Rindfleisch

In September of 2012, I began serving as the chaplain in the Community Kitchen for staff, volunteers, and guests joining A Just Harvest for daily dinners.  Through the Urban Clinical Pastoral Education program, chaplains are placed in Chicago outside of the standard hospital to face issues of life and death in community and neighborhood settings.  In the Community Kitchen, I provide spiritual care for our sisters and brothers in times of joy and stress; many who struggle to find adequate and affordable housing, jobs that pay living wages, and healthy food to sustain their lives.

During my first month at the kitchen, I sat with a woman who had been quietly and patiently waiting to speak with me.  Though the kitchen was closing, we ended up speaking with one another for an hour.  She had held a job for over twenty years, but then hit several hardships during the Great Recession.   She was recently homeless, and felt more alone than ever.  At one point she broke down and said, “I am so tired of hearing everyone say that they will pray for me.  What good will that do? Prayers won’t help.  At this point, prayers won’t give me money or work.  Prayers won’t help pay my bills, or put food on the table.  Prayers won’t provide me a warm, safe place to sleep at night.  I need something more than prayers right now.”  I struggled to find any words to respond.  But there were no words—my sister was hurting; mentally, physically, spiritually, and economically.  Hearing her story and the raw, human pain stirred my soul.

(Drew Rindfleisch speaks at a public action calling on Senator Durbin to preserves Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and other economic safety net programs in “fiscal cliff” budget negotations in December 2012.)

While we hadn’t known each other until that day, she taught me something no seminary education could sell.  Her words, which at first glance seemed to be dismissing the power of prayer, in fact invoked the longest prayer tradition we know as People of God.  She prayed through her tears: lamenting for she had once helped those in her exact spot, and now feels no one will help her in her time of need.  Lament is healthy and good.  Her lament is holy, even if it pains us to hear.  But that is also why A Just Harvest is here—to hear the laments of those struggling on the streets and in our communities, and move people to collectively cry out and organize for justice.

Through organizing with Northside P.O.W.E.R. staff, volunteers, and community members remind us that laments are not in vain.  God calls us to be actors who not only hear the cries and laments of sisters and brothers by serving a meal to feed those left hungry, but to demand changes to the structures that make people poor and prevent communities from flourishing.  By working on issues that address the causes of hunger and poverty, Northside P.O.W.E.R. has provided a prophetic voice with the most vulnerable among us.

Working in coalition with other groups from across Chicago, we privately met with and publicly pressured Senator Dick Durbin to take Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid off the chopping block this December.  The budget deal made back in 2011 between Congress and the President could have made devastating cuts to our schools, nutrition and Head Start programs, and other critical public services.

We also went to the state legislature to lobby for a corporate transparency bill which passed in the State Senate but stalled in the State House Revenue Committee.  This bill would require corporations to disclose how much they pay in tax to the State of Illinois so that we can better determine who pays their fair share of taxes.  Northside P.O.W.E.R. will continue to follow this bill into the next legislative session as we fight locally, state-wide, and across the nation to make sure Wall Street and other corporations pay their fair share, so that we all can get a fair shake in life.

Editor’s note: We invite you to learn more about Northside P.O.W.E.R. by attending it’s next public meeting on Sunday, March 10 from 6:30 to 8 p.m. at the Willye White Field House, 1610 W. Howard St.  To volunteer in our Community Kitchen, contact Mary Frohna, volunteer coordinator, at 773-262-2297 x24.

By Rev. James Findlay

For those of us who seek to follow Christ by doing justice, loving mercy, and walking humbly before God, the sacred season of the Forty Days and Forty Nights of Lent is a wonderful opportunity provided by two millennia of faith tradition to savor our lives anew. And if we take up this gracious opportunity, we can see our work, our relationships, our ministries, and the deeper aspects of our existence in the light of God’s divine love.

One fruitful form of Lenten meditation, especially for those of us touched by A Just Harvest’s ministry, is to consider our sacred connection to food. In fact, food is the ideal focus for our exploration, since bread is vital to life, to ministry, and to traditions of Lenten paths of spiritual growth.

In the past, many have seen Lent as a time for “giving up something.” By refraining from some activity or not eating a certain type of food, the change in our habits was intended to move us from the limitations of “the usual” to greater open-ness and awareness. And many Lenten disciplines, including restraint, contemplation, devotion, or even fasting, can provide us with “empty space” – which we then leave open, to be “filled up with God.” In addition, we can see Lent as a time of growth; though winter lingers, the days lengthen and the Light increases. By pruning our busy-ness and doing a bit less, we open ourselves to God’s care, our perception of God grows – and we can see and sense more of the sacred, in ourselves, in others, and in the world.

If we choose a path of open and perceptive discernment for Lent, rather than “giving up” food for Lent, we might instead lift into God’s hand our relationships to food. When we consider food from a spiritual point of view, we know that it sustains all life. Without food, our relationships, work, and growth are not possible. Truly, our Food is Our Life. In addition, we also know that our food and our life come from “the Earth and everything in it,” which is “the Lord’s.” [Ps 24:1] But where on the Earth does come from? Near our homes or far away? Was the Soil which birthed it nurtured in producing this food before us? Or was the food manufactured, packaged, marketed, and processed? As the world’s systems shift in our times, we can also see with a spiritual eye that the politics of food production and consumption can be the politics of human empowerment – or the power of corporately-produced food. As we eat, we can ponder how the food on our table came forth from the bosom of God, and which hands (or machines!) blessed it and carried it on its path to becoming a blessing for us.

Thus, as our food nurtures each of our bodies, we do not receive it in solitude, but as a gift from God and a host of God’s people. In addition, most of us rarely eat alone. In fact, what we do when we eat and the times and place of our meals are among the most holy experiences of our lives. Many of our most wondrous moments, whether as lovers, families, or communities, are times of preparing and sharing food. When we eat together, we create sacred space as we gather. Are we side by side at the table? Are we face to face? Is the table a circle, a square, a long rectangle, or a small and intimate space? As followers of Jesus, we find the greatest holiness in the most human act of sharing: the Mighty Acts of God are clearest to us in eating and drinking, breaking bread together and sharing a cup filled with the fruit of the vine.

As we continue our Life Journey, may we savor Lent as God’s gift of time and space, with food at its center. Not so much a “renouncing” of food, as attentiveness to the health we receive and the blessed quality of our food. Perhaps it can also be a time of questions and discernment. How is community and family shaped by the food we eat and the rituals surrounding it? Is the food before us the fruit of justice, or injustice? Did it reach us fresh from Mother Earth – or by mechanical and managed means? Is it shared in love? Are we experiencing God’s grace as we eat and drink?

May all of us have a Holy Lent – fed by God’s love and care, blessed by the beauty and life in the food which gives us life, nurtured by the food we eat and the fellowship it creates for us.

Rev. Dr. James D. Findlay has his doctoral training in Hebrew Bible/Old Testament, but his skills and interests are wide ranging. He has taught college and graduate level courses in the History of Christianity, both Testaments of the Bible, World Religions, Mysticism, and Logic and Critical Thinking, as well as courses in methodology related to the study of Religion. In addition he has led retreats and provided spiritual support for persons and groups of various ages and backgrounds.

Editor’s Note: You’re invited to attend The Genesis Project’s Open House on Saturday, February 23, from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. to learn about our work to create internships and leadership development opportunities for young adults via sustainable food production in Rogers Park. RSVP to Anthony@ajustharvest.org.

By Rev. Marilyn Pagán-Banks, Executive Director of A Just Harvest

The Henri Nouwen Society recently tweeted a quote by Mother Theresa that read, “The most terrible poverty is loneliness, and the feeling of being unloved.”

After reading this, my first reaction was—YES! We get this at A Just Harvest!  This is why we intentionally create and maintain an atmosphere of community, dignity and respect in our Community Kitchen.  This is why each and every person that comes through our doors is welcomed—no “proof of need” required.  It does not matter to us whether they walked over or drove up, are without an address or live in the suburbs, are college students or never finished 8^th grade, panhandled for change all day or just got off of work—they are greeted with warmth and acknowledged as guests.

It has long been our understanding that humans hunger for community, to be seen and heard, for a sense of belonging and to be known.  Our humanity depends on it.  This understanding is at the core of how we engage in the work against hunger and poverty.

Upon my second reading of the quote, a concern rose out of my gut for how poverty is taken and used outside of a socio-economic and political context.  As an ordained Christian minister, I know the Bible speaks of the woes of being spiritually poor.  As a former struggling single mother, I know firsthand that you can be dirt poor and rich in love, family and faith.  However, my concern comes from how these interpretations are too often used to do nothing about ending poverty.

For millions of people in this country—poverty is tangible and concrete.  Children go to bed hungry and attend overcrowded and underfunded schools.  Seniors are forced to work past retirement age in order to afford the cost of lifesaving prescription medicine and keep a roof over their heads.  Families work day and night and still don’t earn enough to maintain quality housing, the rising cost of food and health insurance.

This is terrible!

This poverty and the poverty felt across the world—the poverty witnessed by Mother Theresa in her ministry—reflected by swollen bellies, people dying of curable illness and disease, the lack of clean water—exits! And it exits because of greed, hubris and apathy.

These very different reactions cause me to pause and to pray.  I pray I never get so spiritual as to ignore the call to put my body on the line—so that everyone has access to God’s promise of life and life more abundant.  I pray I never get so caught up in the struggle that I loose opportunities to see how we are all interconnected and that the well-being of our spirits depends on our willingness to be so.