Whose responsibility should it be to end hunger?

It’s my responsibility, my neighbor’s responsibility, my legislative representatives’ responsibility. We all must work together to make food shelves more accessible, individual medical expenses more affordable, wages more fair, taxes more progressive, and early childhood education more ubiquitous.

Whose responsibilty is it to end hunger? Who do you see when you look in a mirror? Responsibilty starts there, and ends with each of us. The UN estimates that 29,000 CHILDREN die each day of preventable diseases and hunger. This is unacceptable to me and, I believe, the God I worship.

O brother man, fold to thy heart thy brother;

Where pity dwells, the peace of God is there;

To worship rightly is to love each other,

Each smile a hymn, each kindly deed a prayer.

For he whom Jesus loved has truly spoken:

The holier worship which He deigns to bless

Restores the lost, and binds the spirit broken,

And feeds the widow and the fatherless.

Follow with reverent steps the great example

Of Him whose holy work was doing good;

So shall the wide earth seem our Father’s temple,

Each loving life a psalm of gratitude.

Then shall all shackles fall; the stormy clangor

Of wild war music o’er the earth shall cease;

Love shall tread out the baleful fire of anger,

And in its ashes plant the tree of peace.

We are are all responsible and that responsibility begins first with yourself. Can you feed a child? No, then don’t have one.

We all must realize, with out population control, we will face a world wide epidemic of hunger when the unsustainable input intensive farming practices we depend on fail. In that sense we are again all responsible and need to start realizing that we can’t keep using those practices to support population growth when the result will will be a giant population crash.

So here’s my solution: Learn to farm sustainably or support someone who does, Don’t have more than one child, help others realize the same truth.

Patrick and Tim: The question is asking about hunger here in Minnesota, not in some country far, far away. Can you honestly look at Minnesota and say we have hungry people because too many kids are being born?

More and more, people in Minnesota are going hungry because of a change in circumstance, because they were laid off at work and are struggling to make ends meet, or because they are a senior citizen living longer than expected on a fixed income. It’s our neighbors that are struggling to put food on the table, not some anonymous face.

We as a community to remove the stigma of asking for help. We need to make food shelves more accessible, and we need to make state and federal aid programs easier to access. And once someone starts using a program, we can’t accuse them of “abusing” the system.

Theoretically, at least in America and generally in third world countries, the responsibility to end hunger falls on the individual. Realistically, it takes four institutions to do it, government to create opportunities for sustainable job growth, businesses – whether corporate, private, or self proprietary, to be the place where labor translates into pay (or in rural countries good crop and animal yields), education (and in the 21st century, that’s definitely college and at least 2 years of a trade or apprenticeship), and then the hopeful individual who also can see that his efforts and these three institutions will lead to a better way of life. Often, countries and regions like Latin America, North Africa, Southern Asia, lack the top 3 institutions; therefore, the individual loses faith in his own country. If they still have hope, they will immigrate to places like, the United States of America, where those 3 insitutions often do help people end hunger.

I have looked in the mirror and chosen to give. It is my responsibility. If you look in the mirror and ask the question – I hope you will choose to give too. It doesn’t take much – just an open heart and the change that sits on top of your dresser. It does make a difference.

Am I my brothers’ keeper?

There is this amazing state program for youth which has been educating urban and rural students about agriculture, home care, engineering, science, and citizenship. It’s called 4-H. The extension service has been there for families; teaching about growing food and keeping food for several generations.

We might as well learn how to take care of ourselves, and reach out to a neighbor or two along the way.

When you are an able-bodied adult it is your own responsibility to feed yourself. If you are a child or a disabled adult then it is society’s place to step in and help you with getting food. We also must remember parents should be taking more responsibility for their own children but if all other options have been exausted then parents should be going to others (government) for help with their grocery bills.

“Am I my brothers’ keeper?”

. . . asked Cain the murderer, in the Genesis story, when God confronted him about his missing brother, Abel. Though Cain intended it to be a rhetorical question implying that he bore no responsibility for his brother, the reader is given to understand that the correct answer to the question is, “Yes.”

The person who is committed to feed herself or himself, and the person who feels committed to feed another.

I do pray but perhaps not in the way I was taught as a child in Sunday School or at night as my mom or dad sat listening. My prayers fill my hours and my days as I acknowledge the love of God for all of God’s creation and as I give thanks for the broadening and strengthening of my faith. I lament as did the prophets, I rail against injustice and I sing through all the circumstances that challenge me each day! I listen, as well, for the still small voice that moves mefrom contemplation to compassionate action in God’s world!