Meanwhile...

by The Rev. Becca Stevens

Following the path of Jesus can drive you crazy. I pray impatience with the Gospel is not a deadly sin! While we may not necessarily want to skip the journey, and get to the destination, we at least would like to move ahead on our spiritual path. Lord, each week, inch by inch, the church doles out only a tiny snippet of the story of Jesus on the way to Jerusalem. Each week we preach and hear the Gospel a paragraph at a time. Sometimes it is excruciatingly slow.

One section of the Gospel of Luke is called, “The Journey”. It begins in the 9th chapter after the transfiguration when Jesus has “his eyes set on Jerusalem”. It continues until the 19th chapter of Luke with the triumphant entry into the Jerusalem. These 10 chapters take months to read a paragraph at a time. It took Jesus months as well, even though he could have traversed that amount of territory in a couple of weeks, easy. Months after the transfiguration we find we are still wandering with Jesus right outside Jerusalem in Jericho. He may have had his eyes set on Jerusalem but his heart is sidetracked feeding, healing, teaching, and praying. His disciples tried to keep him moving. They rebuke parents for bringing their infants to Jesus, but Jesus lets all the children come anyway. He spends time visiting Pharisees, tax collectors, healing lepers, telling parables and debating in the synagogues and streets. And those are just the events they recorded. The image of a map with a hundred dotted lines going every which way indicating all the detours gives us a picture of what on the way may mean.

On the way, he is slowly and patiently teaching his disciples. At the beginning of the 12th Chapter the very first words to his little flock are, “meanwhile”. That is the part that undoes me.

Meanwhile, while we preach a paragraph at a time, meanwhile, while we take up one more collection, meanwhile we eat a bite of bread and take a sip of wine.

Meanwhile, the world is burning for his message of radical love, the war is four and half years old, the number of people below the poverty level in America is on the rise, and the Nobel Peace Prize has been given in recognition of the crisis of global warming. Meanwhile, he is within fifty miles of Jerusalem in an occupied nation in which people are being persecuted. Meanwhile he takes his own sweet time saying, don’t worry about tomorrow, give everything away, give thanks and watch and wait.

Meanwhile, two Sudanese women walked into my office.

I had scheduled forty-five minutes for their meeting. They began the meeting by thanking me for my time, my precious time. Then they told me the journey part of their story.

They had been on a long and arduous journey from a long and bloody war that created an entire generation of refuges. They told the story of the death of most of their family, their village being ruined, being separated from their siblings and friends since their childhood in the late 1980’s, fleeing to Egypt and the brutality they faced, the process of becoming refuges and arriving in Nashville in 2000. Finally they are here and safe with their own children. They are now feeling called to return to their hometown and build a school for the orphans of war. They had their eyes set on freedom on a journey that took them 10 years; a journey that should only take a day by plane. They get here and begin to get established. But in their great humility, they were sitting in my office with beautiful thick accents saying they wanted to turn around and go back and help. They said that God had been merciful to them and this was an expression of their gratitude.

The Gospel message came flooding past my pharisaical mind and I could hear the words, “God have mercy on me, a sinner. God forgive my arrogance and impatience. God make hear the cry of others so that I don’t worry if I ever make it to Jerusalem.” These two young women wanted to go back, register themselves as a new organization and get some land for their fellow pilgrims in need. Having been given mercy from the war, they needed to make meaning out of all the suffering. The scars on their legs are reminders we can’t walk fast enough to get away from the pain. We worked on their journey and how to begin to plan for a school when they return.

We can keep moving forward on the journey only to find out we have walked round and round and found ourselves right back where we started saying, “Have mercy on me, a sinner.” I am not ready to go into Jerusalem yet. I need to stand by the side of the road with the blind man, I need to climb a sycamore tree with Zaccheus, I need to stand in the temple with the tax collector and beg for mercy.

Dr. Buttrick, a Professor at Vanderbilt Divinity School, taught us to proclaim the whole story of salvation and not be limited by the lectionary. But sometimes studying a whole paragraph might be too much. We may need to take it slower and stay at a verse long enough to feel it sink in, forgetting the journey and destination for awhile. St. Paul says the Gospel is so rich we need to sip it. Like communion, savored. Digesting slowly what it means to be humble, until we feel it sink into our thick hearts.

It is enough to read, “God, be merciful to me, a sinner”, be changed by the words, and the deeds these words provoke, so if we ever get to Jerusalem, we are ready.

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My Night-Time Prayer for Tennessee

In a Cumberland cove by the old Oaks you can hear in the hollow the whispering of our mothers. Near a black willow shaking by the Tennessee River you can hear in the current the laughter of our children. In a field with Pecans and Basswood old enough to trace their ancestors like DARs you can hear the delight of our fathers. Under a hawk perched in a sugar maple limb afire in fall you can hear old farmers’ whistles.

We have found magic in the trees, shelter under a canopy of green, and reverence for their silent witness. We have walked on parched trails with unmoving roots and thin seedlings and prayed for rain and survival. We have buried our beloved in their shade, praying they find some solace.

We live in a land that beholds trees that have clapped their hands like the fulfillment of Isaiah’s vision:

Hemlocks shed cones like tears for the seasons gone by. Sycamores tell the story of the tornado of ‘98 in their bark. Chinquapin Oaks exhale poetry, Catalpas drip with ornamental pods, and Ginkgos put us in our humble place. Poplars call us to passion that comes only from loving the woods.

We live on a limestone foundation, in moon light and bow our heads in thanksgiving. In this prayer we feel the dusty voices of our ancestors rising from the chert to join our thanksgiving for these sacred woods:

God give us vision to preserve these woods. Let the moonlight carry our meager prayers to your heart. Fill our heart with love like this heavenly host that holds us all as your children. Knit us close to these trees so that we teach another to love these woods, and they will be saved.

Amen.

The Rev. Becca Stevens is a priest, author, rector of St. Augustine's Church in Nashville, TN and founder of Magdalene House. She has also worked with St. Augustine's to found a school in Ecuador. Read her bio here.

Tomorrow: The Rev. Devon Anderson

Step by Step: Finding the blessings in the slums of Nairobi

by Reynolds Whalen

As I walked through the streets of Nairobi’s poorest area, the police were pulling electricity out of people’s homes. Local gangs had tapped it illegally from nearby power lines and charged residents to use it. My friend, Fred, advised me to hide my camera as we passed a dump truck full of wires surrounded by a dozen officers donning sleek sunglasses and brandishing fully automatic weapons. The air pulsed with a dangerous tension.

Several minutes after we passed this scene, gunfire erupted behind us, popping like the firecrackers I had watched serenely on a grassy hill in St. Louis weeks earlier for the Fourth of July. Startled, I turned to my friend Fupi for a plan of action and was surprised to find him and Fred laughing.

“Shouldn’t we get out of here?” I asked frantically. They just smiled reassuringly and replied:

“Don’t worry, they’re not aiming at people, they’re shooting into the air.”

“How do you know?” I asked.

“I can tell by the way it sounds,” replied Fupi.

My immediate thought, and one that still haunts me, was that no one should have to know the difference between the sound of bullets being fired into the air and the sound of bullets being fired into a human body.

Mathare is one of the most neglected areas in Kenya. It is the second largest slum in the country with 700,000 people living on about four or five square miles of land. Like many condensed informal urban settlements in this part of the world, problems of HIV/AIDS, drug abuse, violence, prostitution, early pregnancies, and poor sanitation plague its inhabitants. Visitors to this harsh and violent area often balk with disgust and lament the hopeless conditions of its inhabitants. Over the past year, I have learned to think differently.

During a study abroad program last fall and while conducting research this summer, I worked with a group called Haba na Haba, which means “step by step” in Kiswahili. This is a development agency run entirely by people in the community that empowers youth to change their own difficult situations, using a broad spectrum of performing and visual arts. As an Acting major at Washington University, I found particular interest in the drama group and their stunning community outreaches.

Every weekend, groups of young performing artists pile into vans and drive to nearby informal settlements. Upon arrival, they identify an open area such as a field or courtyard and set up drums. Soon, the air is filled with powerful rhythms and a crowd of hundreds has gathered within 10 or 15 minutes. Then, a group of acrobats performs, creating impressive human structures, doing rope-skipping tricks, and swallowing fire. A team of dancers follows, merging aspects of many Kenyan cultures into one poignant routine that uses specific movements to address important issues in the community. Finally, the drama group enters the space and performs an original short play about a concern affecting that particular area. These topics are carefully selected in weekly rehearsals where members of the drama group brainstorm and use improvisation exercises to form their plays. The actors live in these areas, and thus understand which issues are most important at the time. Due to a high level of illiteracy, education through drama is the most effective way to teach about HIV/AIDS prevention, violence, and drug abuse. Haba na Haba reaches nearly 100,000 people a year with its community outreach program.

In addition to the theatre activities, Haba na Haba has a program called Shootback. This initiative started nearly ten years ago when an American photography student equipped about a dozen Mathare youth with cameras and asked them to take pictures of their daily lives. The result was stunning and produced a beautiful book and photography exhibit that traveled the world for years. Last year, Shootback underwent a similar project where they educated ten local young people about the Millenium Development Goals, then asked them to take pictures of them in the community. The resulting book has raised a considerable amount of money for Haba na Haba and increased international exposure.

The Shootback that exists today is run entirely by the original youth and seeks to capture a life that is horribly misrepresented in the national and international media. Journalists and reporters only venture to Mathare when something terrible happens. Therefore, we get the image with which we are all so familiar: starving babies, crumbling homes, uncontrollable violence, towering trash heaps, etc. We never hear about the talented football team that won an international tournament in Norway, the local furniture business that successfully put a bright student through college, the thousands of Mathare residents commuting six hours a day to central Nairobi, or the Mathare kid who became an important United Nations consultant. These stories are not told, so Shootback makes it their mission to tell them.

Recently, Shootback developed a program called Slum T.V. where they spend all week in the community, interviewing people about their businesses and shooting footage of important events. On selected weekends, they have a showing on a large screen in a popular Mathare field, highlighting slum life and the significant contributions of its residents. These bright young adults have reacted to a life of extreme poverty and marginalization by re-claiming agency and changing the community from the inside.

Supporting the MDGs should be central to our lives as Americans and Christians. But when you plan on giving, carefully consider why you are doing it and where your money is going. Resist the temptation to feel you are somehow solving “third world” problems or saving helpless African children. Our role as the church and as a global community is not to “save” anyone. Our role is to share the love of Christ by offering all that we can, while thanking God for the innumerable blessings granted to us.

When you donate 0.7% of your income, know that your money does not have to go to huge organizations like the United Nations or USAID. There are countless movements and groups like Haba na Haba doing incredible work every day. Be creative. Think locally. Find someone who has traveled in developing countries and ask how you can be involved. Participating in the MDGs should not be a passive activity. Take ownership of your ministry and seek to be like Christ, constantly seeking the best way to serve others and share a message of undying love.

Reynolds Whalen is a senior at Washington University in St. Louis, has traveled extensively in Kenya, Uganda, and Sudan. He spent fall semester 2006 in Kenya working with Haba na Haba in Mathare -- read his blog on it here and is working on a documentary film on that experience.

Tomorrow: The Rev. Becca Stevens

An Age of Hope And Promise. A Time to Say "Yes" to God's Mission.

by the Rev. Jay Lawlor

We live in an age of tremendous hope and promise. You may not feel it when you look at our world – but we live in a time of grace and we only need to realize grace’s full potential.

Bono, lead singer of the rock group U2, once commented that if the sleeping giant – which is the Church – would wake up to the reality of the new leprosy which is AIDS; it could bring tremendous healing to the world. If it did not, it would be irrelevant. A stinging comment, to be sure, but one that is spoken in truth, with love. Bono’s comment is a reminder of not only the influence that people of faith can still have in our world, but of our responsibility as people who should be committed to God’s vision of how the world should be. Bono is holding the church’s feet to the fire and challenging us to BE THE CHURCH.

Well, the good news is that the sleeping giant has awoken…and is even beginning to stir.

This is important because it matters what people of faith say. It matters even more what people of faith DO…reconciliation requires a change of attitude in relationship with others. The concept of reconciliation is primarily relational and its being relational is rooted in conversion, forgiveness and making whole that which is broken.

Reconciliation calls us to bear one another’s burdens across the divides of culture, religion, gender, socio-economic status, geography and every other barrier that humanity constructs in keeping us from being in right relationship with God, each other and our environment.

Engaging reconciliation is engagement with none other than God’s Mission in the world. The mission of restoring everyone to right relationship with God, each other and all of creation.

And at the heart of reconciliation – as proclaimed by all the world’s religions – is justice for the world’s poor…caring for the sick, the hungry, the homeless, and all those left vulnerable by the pride and greed of our world.

The poor and vulnerable are suffering greatly in the absence of true reconciliation:

The scourge of extreme poverty in our world today is more than a tragedy…it is a sin. In a world abundant in wealth, resources and technical know-how – enough so that all may have abundant life – millions die needlessly each year.

What does God say to us? How are we to respond?

There are over 2,000 references to poverty in the Bible – God, obviously, has a lot to say on the matter.

The Gospel According to Matthew gives a clear message in the scene of the final judgment as Jesus call to feed the hungry, give drink to the thirsty, welcome the stranger, clothe the naked, take care of the sick, and visit those in prison. Jesus tells his disciples that in caring for those in need we are caring for Christ himself. These passages from Matthew are also the only place where Jesus is explicitly judgmental with respect to how we respond -- or don’t respond -- to the needs of the poor.

Jesus is following in the great Jewish tradition of the prophets and the Jewish scriptures where the central message of the Hebrew texts is on distributive justice. This is justice rooted in communal obligation and generosity toward those in need.

Our Muslim brothers and sisters have similar teachings in the Koran where one is to give away wealth out of love for the near of kin, and the orphans, and the needy, and the wayfarer, and the beggars, and for the emancipation of the captives.

In fact, all the world’s religions share in common the care for the poor and vulnerable – no matter whom they are or where they live.

It is in our scriptures and in our lives of worship and prayer. The term for the Christian liturgy comes from leitourgeia in Greek which first meant for the sake of the public good. Liturgy serves as both adoration of God and service to the world that is distorted by pride and greed – especially in the midst of extreme poverty -- where we sustain the comfort of the prosperous few at the cost of God’s common resources and life for the poorest people on the planet.

For Anglicans – and many other Christians – the liturgy of the Mass / The Holy Eucharist / Holy Communion is central to our lives of faith. It is not only participation in Christ’s presence that spiritually nourishes the participant, but is for the sake of making God known in the world. One of the Eucharistic prayers from the Episcopal Book of Common Prayer reminds worshipers that they come to receive Holy Communion not for solace only, but for strength; not for pardon only, but for renewal.

Each of us are called by God to be renewed so that can then send us into the world to carry out God’s Mission of reconciliation…It is mine, it is yours, it is ours together.

It matters what people of faith say because we are God’s ambassadors; God’s voice on behalf of the poor and oppressed. It matters what we do because we are God’s workers. And we are called to the work of reconciliation in the world to bring an end the scourges of extreme poverty.

I do believe that we live in an age of hope, and of promise, and of grace. We have not lived up to grace’s full potential, but we can. For the first time in human history we have the resources, the knowledge, and the technology to actually end extreme poverty.

We live in an age of hope, promise and grace because of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). Projects successfully implementing the MDGs are bringing life to villages in Africa and some of the other poorest regions on our planet. They are bringing the age of hope, promise and grace to the poorest people on our planet as they bring more clearly into focus God’s vision of abundant life for all.

Yet our wealth, resources and technology are not being shared generously enough. The Millennium Development Goals offer a concrete plan. The MDGs have established a covenant for action to end the scourges of extreme poverty. But to fully honor the covenant; to fully implement the plan, we need to provide the resources. There is more than enough – if we care to share just a little of the abundant wealth and resources with our brothers and sisters in need…our brothers and sisters who are pushed over the edge of life into death because of their poverty…and our wealth.

This is an age of hope and promise. This is an age of grace. We are called to realize grace’s full potential. It is up to us. We can do nothing, or we can embrace God’s Mission and literally and measurably make this a more just world where extreme poverty no longer brings death from hunger and preventable & treatable disease.

A world where clean water flows for all;
A world where education is available for all;
A world where we become better stewards of our environment;
A world where every person’s dignity is respected;
A world where new global partnerships replace division and strife.

A world where hope and promise and grace abound and there is life abundant for all people, for all of God’s creation. We can do this, if we are willing to say ‘Yes’ to joining God’s Mission of reconciliation.

The Rev. Jay Lawlor is a priest and economist who has worked with Jeffery Sachs and the Earth Institute on the MDGs. He is currently living in North Carolina and founding an interfaith nonprofit aimed at getting faith communities involved in the Millennium Villages Project.

Tomorrow: Reynolds Whalen

How are we as Christians engaged in the world?

by Abbie Coburn

I struggle with being an Episcopalian.

I struggle with the priorities of what seems to me to too often be an antiquated, hierarchal structure where who’s rubbing elbows with whom is the most discussed topic. I struggle with faith being separated from daily life in such a way that ‘following in Christ’s footsteps’ becomes a diluted phrase, rather than a way of transforming one’s life.

How’s that for an introduction?

This past weekend there was international mobilization against the current U.S. occupation in Iraq. All across the country (and various parts of the world) there were marches, demonstrations and teach-ins. I hope that some of you reading this were able to participate in your local community.

As I marched in San Francisco I chose to join the contingency from the War Tax Resisters. These are people who choose to resist paying varying percentages of their taxes as a protest against the absurd amount of federal funds being used for the purposes of war. As there wasn’t a large contingency of folks of faith marching together, I chose instead to align myself with war tax resisters, a lifestyle I choose to lead as well.

It seems to me appropriate to be a person of faith and a tax resister. Would Jesus not be a tax resister as well. Or that he would at least not be paying taxes to our current US government. If our government is doing so little to address issues such as the Millennium Development Goals, but rather is continuing to be responsible for the killing of thousands daily, is it not my duty to stand up and say ‘NO’? For all our banner-bearing, petition-signing, email-sending that goes on, is it not our faith that really pulls at us when injustice is occurring? When we can see with our own eyes that we are directly responsible for such atrocities throughout the world, why in God’s name do we continue to be herded?

Marching with thousands on Saturday, however, was a touching experience. A highlight of how disjointed the peace movement(s) is, as well as a testimony to diversity in the exhaustion with our current state of affairs. In front of me marched Palestinian women pushing their strollers and holding the hands of their small children, chanting for an end to the US-funded occupation of Palestine. As 10,000 of us fell to the ground in a symbolic die-in along Market Street a mother of a young Marine lay next to me loudly reciting her Hail Marys. I found it comforting that someone was calling upon God to be present as we lay there in protest to the injustices done in our names.

Yes, it is important to divert 0.7% of funds to the MDGs. But isn’t it also important to make sure that the 99.3% of funds is not used to support killing and suffering throughout the world. And when we find out facts such as 51% of the federal budget going towards military expenses (which obviously is not getting to the military families), how can we continue, in good conscious, to pay that money? I find that there is immense amounts of fear involved with standing up – fear of the government, fear of jail, fear of alienation. Aren’t these all fears that Jesus and his disciples faced as well? And fears that they in turn cast aside in order to live a life more meaningful.

The time for action has come. The repercussions are but blips on the screen. The injustices have reached a cataclysmic roar and we must not turn a deaf ear. We must not sit idly by debating, as Christians with immense privilege, the best ways to move forward. But, rather we must charge. With the convictions that Christ has showed us. Casting aside fear and living fully with faith in a life more meaningful.

Abbie Coburn is a 23-year old from San Francisco who has lived in Zimbabwe, attended the international school, Friends World Program, and has worked in Palestine with Birthright Unplugged. Currently traveling around the U.S. with Wheels of Justice -- which organizes education and nonviolent action for justice and human rights, especially in Iraq and Palestine.

Tomorrow: The Rev. Jay Lawlor

Pharoah's dream and hungers physical & spiritual

The Rev. Dr. Sabina Alkire kicks off the re-launch of the EGR blog with a reflection on the story of Joseph interpreting Pharaoh's dream in Genesis 41 and God's mission of global reconciliation.

It was diplomacy from the soul and diplomacy at its best. By a single encounter Joseph comforted a troubled Pharoah, averted a national famine, and provoked his stellar professional rise. Yet it was all, somehow, so inadvertent. Almost accidental. Particular to that occasion amongst those people. What of God – or of a holy response to hunger – can we glean?

The story involves Joseph – Joseph of the coat of many colours, whose brothers sell him into slavery because he is their father’s favourite, who rises to head his slavemaster Potiphar’s household only to be imprisoned when Potiphar’s wife tries unsuccessfully to seduce him. It might be worth mentioning that Joseph alone of Old Testament males is described as having the double accolades of a “fine figure and a handsome face.”

In the story, Pharoah has a troubling dream. His butler hears of it, remembers Joseph, and fetches him from prison. Joseph has time only to shave his beard and change his outer clothes before rushing to the Pharoah, who mentions Joseph’s reputation for interpreting dreams. With considerable insensitivity, Joseph’s first words are to correct the Supreme Ruler of Egypt, protesting that God alone interprets dreams. Such effrontery is overlooked, and the discussion proceeds.

Having interpreted the dreams as predicting seven years of plenty, followed by seven years of drought, Joseph then suggests a constructive response. In the sentence that follows today’s reading, Pharoah appoints Joseph to oversee famine prevention throughout Egypt because of his wisdom and discernment. Thus Joseph’s fate changes from prisoner to prime minister. He is given a signet ring, dressed in fine linen, paraded through the streets in a chariot, and given the daughter of an Egyptian priest as his wife – all within three verses, and at the age of thirty. Just a tiny bit surreal.

But two aspects of this story are real and relevant to us – one is the issue of physical hunger. The other is the need for us to become so attuned to God that God can summon us suddenly - at a whim or whisper - to do holy work.

Biblical concern for hunger was real. In the drought-prone geography out of which our faiths came, food insecurity was part of people’s stories and lived experience. The Iraqi father of our faith, Abraham, had voluntarily moved from Iraq to Canaan, but it was famine that drove Abram and Sarah on into Egypt. Wide-ranging hunger appears in the biblical stories of Isaac, David, Ruth’s father-in-law, Elijah and Elisha. Poor Jeremiah was thrown into a cistern when there was no bread in Jerusalem, shortly before the city fell. In Jesus’ parables, it was famine that drove the prodigal son back to work when he had used up his inheritance. Given people’s experience, it was natural that addressing physical hunger was part of faithfulness, part of loving your neighbours. Indeed not only did Jesus feed the hungry, and the early Church send food aid, but from the earliest Christian writers – Barnabas, Justin Martyr, Irenaeus, Clement of Alexandria – to the present, the Church addresses destitution.

It may be a bit odd that at present spiritual people and the Church are not engaging this task with the even a fraction of the enthusiasm with which we swarm to other topics. A good number of our brothers and sisters across the Anglican communion are deeply affected by hunger and destitution, yet it is not this that we discuss with them. In 2004, we have 6 billion of God’s children on our planet. Around 842 million of us – one in seven – are hungry today and every day. If we temporarily suspended ourselves from the British isles and invited hungry people into our homes and hotel rooms, they would fill Britain thirteen times over. Put differently, the hungry outnumber three Europes. In fact, if you combine all the high income countries in the world our total population is 830 million. The population of those who hunger – 842 million – is greater. Although ten million of the hungry live in high income countries. And, what many people do not realize is that although some countries have dramatically improved nutrition, world hunger has been rising since 1995.

However ancient hunger’s history, it still aches. Ethiopians call the ones who are always hungry, Wuha Anfari – those who cook water. If you sit by kitchen fires in India, which alone has more hungry people than the continent of Africa, you will notice women and girls carefully spooning minute portions onto their plates so that their husbands and sons have a bit more to eat. And hunger entails tragic choices. In Zambia, a widow and mother of two entered the sex trade in order to feed her children. When interviewed, she observed a sobering truth, “I find hunger more deadly than AIDS. AIDS kills in years. But hunger kills within days."

We cannot hear these stories and watch these cold numerical trends, as food-secure Christians, without being somewhat unsettled. Perhaps that is apt. For even the soft spoken Nobel laureate in economics, Amartya Sen wrote that he wished that informed people like us would be less “coolly accustomed” to hunger, and would “rage and holler” a little bit more, because reducing hunger, though complex, is not rocket science. It requires a basic set of capabilities in agriculture, school, health care, social protection, and political stability. In fact the United Nations, the US, the UK, indeed 189 governments have pledged to achieve eight millennium development goals to reduce poverty and halve hunger by 2015. Why? Because, perhaps for the first time in history, we actually could.

As many outside the Church now recognise, if a few million persons of good will did our bit as individuals and citizens – and what we will do be different for each of us but we can each do something – then in this age where we are globally connected and democratically empowered, our momentum would make a real, unprecedented impact on poverty and hunger.

But will we? Martin Luther King Jr. preached, “Somewhere we must come to see that human progress never rolls in on the wheels of inevitability. It comes through the tireless efforts and the persistent work of … individuals who are willing to be co-workers with God.”
The story of Joseph and Pharoah has a further theme, which is attentiveness to God.

Joseph’s first words to Pharoah were: “It is not I; God will give Pharaoh a favorable answer.” Joseph’s actions were not at all beyond reproach – just as ours will not be beyond reproach to future generation. Nor did he act singlehandedly – one presumes hundreds of women and men were involved. But the moment of diplomacy in this story did set in motion a chain of events, such as we need today in Darfur, or in our corporate world, or indeed in the WTO. How can we become so attuned to God that God can summon us at a whim or whisper to do holy work?

The Welch poet R.S. Thomas refers to, “the empty silence within” - where God dwells. And when we act from that place, our actions are mingled with God’s action, our fragile love with God’s love.

Oddly, or perhaps aptly, a common metaphor for this empty silence, this holy listening, is hunger. And such spiritual hunger is greatly to be cherished. As John of the Cross wrote, “if the person is seeking God, much more is her believed seeking her.” In the Psalms, God yearns for his people to be hungry and to open their mouths.“Prove your love…in actual deeds”. But we cannot neglect the interior hunger either. For eventually, gradually, we may be transformed into people God can use in ways we do not now anticipate.
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The Rev. Dr. Sabina Alkire is an Anglican priest, development economist, EGR board member, founder of the Oxford Poverty & Human Development Initiative and co-author of What Can One Person Do: Faith to Heal a Broken World. Her writing appears on this blog on the first of each month.

Tomorrow: Abbie Coburn.

Wars in Africa wipe out aid gains

Thanks to Jan Burroughs (EGR contact in Missouri) for sending this article from the BBC our way. Food for thought about how our work and the work of organizations like Episcopal Peace Fellowship is bound together.

A report on armed conflict in Africa has shown that the cost to the continent's development over a 15-year period was nearly $300bn (£146bn).

The research was undertaken by a number of non-governmental organisations, including Oxfam.

It says the cost of conflict was equal to the amount of money received in aid during the same period.

This is the first time analysts have calculated the overall effects of armed violence on development.

The report says that between 1990 and 2005, 23 African nations were involved in conflict, and on average this cost African economies $18bn a year.

It concludes that African governments have taken encouraging steps at a regional level to control arms transfers, but that what is needed is a global, legally-binding arms trade treaty.

The president of Liberia, which is just starting to recover from a long civil war, Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, also wrote the preface to the report.

She told the BBC "the proliferation of weapons is a key driver in armed conflicts".

"We need to restrict the supply of guns to African conflict zones - and an arms trade treaty is a vital way to do this", she said.


Read the whole story here.

Fair Trade in Bloom

By Andrew Downie of The New York Times

VARGINHA, Brazil — Rafael de Paiva was skeptical at first. If he wanted a “fair trade” certification for his coffee crop, the Brazilian farmer would have to adhere to a long list of rules on pesticides, farming techniques, recycling and other matters. He even had to show that his children were enrolled in school.

“I thought, ‘This is difficult,’” recalled the humble farmer. But the 20 percent premium he recently received for his first fair trade harvest made the effort worthwhile, Mr. Paiva said, adding, it “helped us create a decent living.”

More farmers are likely to receive such offers, as importers and retailers rush to meet a growing demand from consumers and activists to adhere to stricter environmental and social standards.

Mr. Paiva’s beans will be in the store-brand coffee sold by Sam’s Club, the warehouse chain of Wal-Mart Stores. Dunkin’ Donuts, McDonald’s and Starbucks already sell some fair trade coffee.

“We see a real momentum now with big companies and institutions switching to fair trade,” said Paul Rice, president and chief executive of TransFair USA, the only independent fair trade certifier in the United States.

The International Fair Trade Association, an umbrella group of organizations in more than 70 countries, defines fair trade as reflecting “concern for the social, economic and environmental well-being of marginalized small producers” and does “not maximize profit at their expense.”

According to Fairtrade Labelling Organizations International, a group of fair trade certifiers, consumers spent approximately $2.2 billion on certified products in 2006, a 42 percent increase over the previous year, benefiting over seven million people in developing countries.

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