Sept. 25 Pray Fast Witness

I live in a comfortable home with choices of food to eat each day. In fact, I have choices of food to eat many times throughout the day - every day.

When I was a child, the adults in my life encouraged me to "join the clean plate club." I was told to remember the starving children of (fill in the blank with China, India, Africa, Armenia...) if I did not want to join the club. I was not nervy enough to retort, "So, send this to them." I don't even remember imagining sending my food to someone else as an option.

In 1975, I traveled outside the U.S. for the first time. In Bogotá, Colombia, I saw little children selling Chiclets gum. Then I saw those children going home for the night. Home was a large cardboard carton, carefully folded and stashed during the day, set up on the sidewalk as shelter from the mountain air during the night. Maybe mom or dad was the adult with them, I just assumed it was. In Cali, Colombia, I came face-to-face with the starving children my family threatened me with when I didn't clean my plate. Beautiful children, with big brown eyes, thrust their hands through the fence of the outdoor restaurant wanting my left-overs. The children in Colombia have haunted my dreams for years.

The summer of 2000 was my first mission trip to the Dominican Republic. There, I have been privileged to become friends with beautiful, brown-eyed children - children who do not have the expectations of three meals per day or a decent and free education. These children do not haunt my dreams, they enrich my life with their love. They also challenge me to do more than "join the clean plate club."

The United Nations Millennium Summit, held in 2000, developed eight Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). World leaders from 189 countries pledged to meet the goals by 2015. This link goes to the UN site explaining the MDGs and how you can help: End Poverty

Episcopalians for Global Reconciliation has this invitation:

In solidarity with people of faith throughout the world and in response to the Anglican Communion's call, Episcopalians for Global Reconciliation invites you to commit on Thursday, September 25 to:

+Pray. Say prayers with special intention for the extreme poor throughout the world.

+Fast. Skip at least one meal in solidarity with the nearly 1 billion people who go to bed hungry each night. (As possible depending on health ... consult your doctor if in doubt)

+Witness. Participate in an online advocacy action promoting our government's fulfilling its promises to achieve the Millennium Development Goals.

The motto of EGR is "What One Can Do." Will YOU be one more? The goals are clear:

1. Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger.
2. Achieve universal primary education.
3. Promote gender equality and empower women.
4. Reduce child mortality.
5. Improve maternal health.
6. Combat HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases.
7. Ensure environmental sustainability.
8. Create a global partnership for development with targets for aid, trade and debt relief.

Isn't this what Christ called us to do for each other?

From Micah 6:8 we read:

He has told you, O mortal, what is good;
and what does the Lord require of you
but to do justice, and to love kindness,
and to walk humbly with your God?

I thank God for my young Dominican friends and how they have helped me walk more humbly with my God. I believe that using the MDGs as a framework will help me do more justice in this world.

Happy Autumn!

Fall is my favorite time of year. I love the abundance of harvest, the crispness of the mornings, the chilly football games & marching band shows, the urge to make soup.

Here in Virginia, we are lucky enough to have a mixed hardwood forest that yields a leaf color change ranging from yellow to red with all the variations in between. One of my favorite neighborhood trees is a huge maple with almost black bark whose leaves turn a peachy orange.

For me, fall tastes like apples. Here's my recipe (copied from my mom's recipe box) for...

Apple Crisp

6 - 8 apples, peeled and sliced
(I used 4 HUGE jonagold apples)
1 c brown sugar

1/2 c flour

1 tsp cinnamon

1/2 c butter (1 stick)

3/4 c quick cooking oats

In a bowl, combine the sugar, flour and cinnamon. Cut in the butter. Stir in the oatmeal. Topping should be crumbly.

Put apples in pan - I used a 10x7 inch pyrex pan.

Crumble topping over apples.

Bake at 350 for 45 minutes.

YUM! It's fall!

Seven Years Later

The flags flew at half-staff. Otherwise, the day was just another Thursday. Seven years ago, September 11 was just another beautiful fall Tuesday. A friend asked me, “Where was I when we heard?” Actually, I told him, you were standing almost where you’re standing now. My desk was on the other side of the room, we had a TV on a file cabinet in the corner. The phone rang and a friend at home with her new baby said, “Turn on the TV! A plane just hit the World Trade Center!” So we sat in the school office and watched the second plane hit the second tower. An hour later, American Airlines flight 77 hit the Pentagon and first wave of parents hit the front door of the school to take their children home.

We turned off the TV in the office. We depended on internet news to keep us informed of the events in New York City, Washington and then in a small Pennsylvania town. There were urgent conversations with teachers as normalcy turned to anxiety. “What’s happening now?,” we asked each other. Teachers kept the kids occupied but it became more and more difficult to dodge questions from students who watched their classmates leave for home. “Why is everyone leaving?”

For hours we didn’t know where the husband of a staff member was. Turns out he had been in the central courtyard of the Pentagon when the jet broke the outer walls of the building. He was unhurt, his wife sobbed with relief when he finally got a phone call through to her.

Planes stopped flying all over the country. Airports closed. Travelers would eventually rent cars to drive home from their business trips.

Parents picked up their own children and offered to take the children of their neighbors. The overwhelming sense was that people just wanted to hug their families. Some folks were headed home to watch the continuous television coverage. Others had packed the car and were heading out of the DC metro area. “We’re going west,” said one mom, “maybe to Ohio.” I got a call from the church… a service would be held at 7.

By the end of the school day, about half of our 700 students had been checked out early. We closed the office and staggered home to watch the news, to see what we’d been hearing about all day.

By 6:30, I’d seen enough. I headed up to church where I sat with people who had gathered to look at the day’s events through the lens of faith. The priest passed around a microphone and people shared their stories. The flight attendant who had switched shifts and was not on Flight 77. The father whose best friend had been in a World Trade Center office that morning. The mom whose firefighter son was going to be at the Pentagon for days, working the site of one tragedy while grieving the firefighters who died in New York.

We prayed. We sang. We sang America the Beautiful… every verse. But we cried when we sang:

O beautiful for patriot dream
That sees beyond the years
Thine alabaster cities gleam
Undimmed by human tears!

I still cry when we sing that verse.

In the days that followed, the skies stayed quiet except for the military jets patrolling the nation’s capital area. Children missed school because their mothers could not stand with them at the bus stop without being cursed for wearing the hijab. People returned from their westward evacuations. And everywhere, the American flag flew as a symbol of solidarity in the face of attack.

So here we are, seven years later on September 11. My husband was not stranded in New Mexico, I picked him up at the airport where the giant flag flew at half-staff.

We need to remember. We need to be proud Americans who stand for compassion and social justice, not just military power and missions "accomplished." Yes, we need to be aware of safety and security, but the lesson I hope we remember most often is the need for reaching out to each other. Let’s reach out even further as we remember to love each other as God loves all of us.

Grammy X 2

Hannah's a big sister! Baby Leah was born in the wee hours of Sept. 2. As you can see from the photo, Hannah's a little confused about just what this person wants in the world. I would guess that Leah actually feels the same way! I'm looking forward to a weekend visit and my introduction to the newest member of our clan.