5/16/09 askcherlock wrote:

As we in America worry about the possible loss of homes, melting banks and disappearing jobs in the face of a global recession, there is a crisis of an even more dramatic proportion. World-wide, more than a billion people are starving. They have no food. They had no food yesterday and they will not have food tomorrow. With the richest nations now dealing with economic recession, donations to food banks for third world nations have diminished. And there is a holocaust of hunger.
In times of crisis we often cannot think beyond our own immediate needs and problems. True enough, there are those in our nation who will be hit hard and may face hunger themselves. It is improbable, however, that we will see starvation as it exists in third world countries. Our children will not be eating mud cookies. Over time we will once again rise from the ashes. In the interim, children and adults in Africa, the Dominican Republic, Haiti and other nations will die of starvation. Few of us will be aware of their plight. Peripheral vision can sometimes be blurred.
I came to know a clergyman many years ago. He was “a radical priest come to get me released” after I had been asked to leave a school board meeting. Okay, I was tossed out. We had both been there to bluster about an issue on the agenda that evening. He was there for the impact it would have on the community; I for the impact it would have on my young children. He followed me as I stormed off to my car whereby he stopped me. We stood there talking for quite a long time about this issue, life’s unfair twists, and a just a bit about my anger. He invited me to help out at his shelter for the homeless. This was the last thing I wanted to do. I had kids, a job, and not much time.
Several days later I found myself at the shelter. It was culture shock. The people there had no home, little if any family, few possessions and were The Lost. Soon I was no longer thinking of my own problems.
During the next several years of volunteering, I learned that if I thought outside of self, most problems resolved themselves. Those I was meant to resolve were done with more ease because I was not so self-centered. Anger dissipated and the world seemed larger. That was my lesson. If you can reach out to others when you are at a low ebb, your perspective on life becomes healthier.
With all the crises in our country, perhaps we need to remember that no matter how bad things seem, there are others who have so very little. Let us reach out our hands to those in third world nations and share a bit of whatever we may have so that tonight one less person will die of starvation; one less child will not know the physical pain of hunger; and one anguished cry will be stilled. In doing so, we will be fed and the wreckage of global hunger may be altered. I learned this from a wise and radical priest.