Eastern Africa: Drought and Famine

Part 2

Proper 13A

When it was evening, the disciples came to him and said, ‘This is a deserted place, and the hour is now late; send the crowds away so that they may go into the villages and buy food for themselves.’ Jesus said to them, ‘They need not go away; you give them something to eat.’

Our Sunday Gospel reading (Matthew 14:13-21) is Matthew’s version of the story we read from Mark on Tuesday. Both accounts include Jesus’ clear instructions for the disciples: “You give them something to eat.” I posted Part I of this reflection about the drought and famine in Eastern Africa on Tuesday, talking about conditions in the refugee camps, the need for immediate aid, and the work that Episcopal Relief and Development is supporting there. The need is urgent; any compassionate response to the situation must include giving what we can to alleviate the terrible hunger and suffering in that part of the world.

But the size of this crisis in terms of both the number of people in need and the degree of the food crisis means that we need to do much more than send money in order to give our sisters and brothers in Eastern Africa something to eat. This week the Episcopal Public Policy Network (EPPN) called on Episcopalians to send a message to our representatives in Congress asking them to protect famine and drought aid to Africa. Noting that UNICEF has “called this the most severe humanitarian emergency in the world and the worst drought the region has experienced in 60 years”, EPPN reports that the House Appropriations Committee has proposed reducing humanitarian aid by 12% and food assistance programs by 18%. Along with sending our own dollars to aid agencies, we can advocate for compassion to remain as a priority in our national budget. A template making it easy to contact Congress is available from EPPN here.

Given that large-scale and long-term droughts are predicted to become more frequent as our climate warms, there are two more things people of faith are called to do in relation to drought and famine. First, we must continue to do all we can to curb global warming, working to reduce the amount of greenhouse gases emitted into the atmosphere and being willing to make changes in our own lives so that others might live.

However, with 393 ppm of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and 350 ppm being the safe limit for human life, warming will continue for a significant time even if the nations were to put policies in place that would limit greenhouse gas emissions to a safe level. And so there is one more thing for people of faith to do: pray, reflect, and develop policies to meet the need for humanitarian aid that is expected to grow as the effects of climate change – droughts, floods and disappearing coastal lands, windstorms, and loss of fish populations – become greater.

Our plans must include even more than the traditional aid response of food, supplies, and aid workers. As these needs increase, and especially as the number of climate refugees grows, there may well be a temptation by some in wealthier nations like ours to tighten our borders and hold tightly onto what we have. Christian compassion and Christian service may be in short supply. Our plans should perhaps include ways to prepare ourselves spiritually to remain compassionate to those in need, to be welcoming to strangers, and to be certain in our hearts that God cares for all of God’s children and all of God’s creation.

Eastern Africa: Drought and Famine

^{Part I}

"Give them something to eat."

³⁵When it grew late, his disciples came to him and said, ‘This is a deserted place, and the hour is now very late; ³⁶send them away so that they may go into the surrounding country and villages and buy something for themselves to eat.’ ³⁷But he answered them, ‘You give them something to eat.’ (Mark 6:35-37)

Jesus’ instructions to the disciples no doubt resonated with many of us reading today’s Gospel lesson as stories and pictures from Somalia and other parts of Eastern Africa are in our news. We have been seeing television reports such as this one from NBC News:

While the root cause of the famine in Somalia is drought, it is complicated by the political situation there. Hundreds of thousands of people have become refugees, going to centers in neighboring Kenya, Ethiopia, and in the Somalian capital, Mogadishu. This report from Episcopal Relief and Development tells about the refugee situation, as does this update from the UN Refugee Agency.

This video from the UN Refugee Agency shows the Daadab refugee camp in Kenya and tells the story of one woman’s journey with her children to the camp:

In an op-ed piece in the Los Angeles Times this week, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon helps us understand the severity of the situation:

This is a wake-up call we cannot ignore. Every day I hear the harrowing reports from our U.N. teams on the ground. Somali refugees, their cattle and goats dead from thirst, walking for weeks to find help in Kenya and Ethiopia. Children who arrive alone, terrified and malnourished, their parents dead, in a foreign land.

From within Somalia, we hear terrible stories of families who watched helplessly as their children died, one by one. One woman recently arrived at a U.N. displacement camp 87 miles southwest of Mogadishu after a three-week trek. Halima Omar, from the region of Lower Shabelle, was once considered well-off. Today, after three years of drought, she barely survives. Four of her six children are dead.

Episcopal Relief and Development is providing aid to Somali refugees in Kenya through Episcopal and Anglican partners working with local agencies. Donations to Episcopal Relief and Development may be made here. Donations to the ERD Disaster Relief fund at this time are being directed to an ecumenical agency working with refugees in Kenya.

Donations to ERD or other established aid organizations are the way we can respond to Christ’s words “You give them something to eat.” This immediate response is essential.

Ban Ki-Moon also said this in his LA Times piece:

Even as we respond to this immediate crisis, we need to find ways to deal with underlying causes. Today's drought may be the worst in decades. But with the effects of climate change being increasingly felt throughout the world, it surely will not be the last. This means practical measures: drought-resistant seeds, irrigation, rural infrastructure, livestock programs.

The assistance program supported by ERD includes preparing the land to grow crops in the next rainy season. That is the next step once food has been provided.

With further droughts on the horizon, the church needs to think about how we insure food for God’s children in the longer term. Some thoughts on that in the next post.

God's Earth: Tar Sands

Are we so complacent that we are willing to risk the economic future of our state and the land that feeds the nation and the world because we don’t want to pay more for gas? Are we so delusional that we don’t think a major spill will occur? Have we become so egocentric and short sighted that we can’t look down the road and see what we are risking for the sake cheaper fuel in the short term?

Fr. Don Huber asked these questions in a Keystone XL Pipeline post on his Agrestic Father blog yesterday. Fr. Huber laid aside some of the more typical questions about the proposed pipeline to ask some pointed questions about how we in Nebraska are responding to the possibility of having a pipeline bringing tar sands through our state. In particular, he addressed this question to people of faith:

Where are the voices of Christians, the people of God, who are entrusted to be the tillers and caretakers of the earth, the people who, according to Scripture, are the stewards of creation?

Related questions are raised in today’s meditation in Forward Day by Day. Reflecting on Psalm 50:12 – For the whole world is mine and all that is in it – this meditation asks what the world would look like today had we acted on the assertion that the earth belongs to God. What would our world be like if we really understood that God created and owns everything?

The proposed pipeline has the potential to do severe damage to Nebraska’s economy and ecosystem should it leak its contents into the Ogallala aquifer. The environmental damage where the tar sands are being mined in the Boreal Forest of Canada is already devastating. A report put together by environmental organizations, Tar Sands Invasion, describes some of its effects. First Nations people have been fighting back against the loss of fishing grounds, forest, and clean water. A rare form of cancer has appeared among these people that they suspect is connected to the pollution from the mining operation. Some of us in Nebraska were dismayed to learn that Kentucky is considering allowing hunting of sandhill cranes. Of more concern for bird lovers should be the effects of the tar sands mining operation on birds in the Boreal Forest. According to the Tar Sand Invasion report, 30% of North American songbirds and 40% of North American waterfowl rely on habitat in the Boreal Forest.

What sort of response do we give to this as people of faith? Where are our priorities? As Fr. Huber writes:

We cannot serve God and mammon, we cannot serve two masters. Doing the right thing is not always the cheapest way to solve a problem nor is it always the easiest. Which master will we serve? Our choice will have a dramatic effect on our future both here and at the judgment.

St. Stephen’s, Grand Island, is planning an evening to help us learn more about the Keystone XL pipeline on September 22. Watch the diocesan Ministry Memo or contact St. Stephen’s to find out more about this event as the date approaches. Nebraska Interfaith Power and Light is working on a response to the pipeline. In the meantime, it’s good to prayerfully read Fr. Huber’s post in its entirety and take a look at the Tar Sands Invasion report. If you are so moved, let our political leaders know that people of faith have deep concerns about this sort of project; encourage them to insist at the least on more safeguards, more research, and a route that avoids the Ogallala aquifer and the Sandhills ecosystem before allowing it to go forward.

For all the beasts of the forest are mine, the herds in their thousands upon the hills. I know every bird in the sky, and the creatures of the fields are in my sight…the whole world is mine and all that is in it. (Psalm 50)

Hope and the Work at Hand

Proper 11A

Today’s lectionary readings include the passage from Romans (Romans 8:12-25) in which Paul talks about hope and how the whole of creation is waiting to be set free from its bondage to decay. One of last July’s posts, Hope,talked about this passage in light of two very different experiences: the peaceful experience of sitting outside on a summer morning for prayer, study, and contemplation, and the experience of feeling helpless and discouraged hearing news about pollution and climate change.

More recently, a post about Innate Optimism, Bad News, and Hope from the end of May talked about this passage in relation to even more discouraging news about the climate than we had a year ago. That post asked a couple of questions and offered a couple of general ideas about the particular contributions Christians might make as we face the realities of climate change:

One of the questions the church might be asking is what form our hope should take: What are our specific hopes in relationship to the realities of climate change? That we won’t face hardship? That our leaders will get it together at the last possible moment to avert the worst of the disasters that await us if we continue doing little or nothing? That we will simply find a way to live with dignity and meaning in the midst of all of this?

Other institutions are or will be working on other aspects -- economic, engineering, agricultural, military, political, etc. -- of adaptation to a warming world. Along with our traditional roles of disaster relief, perhaps the church should be thinking and praying about the deeper adaptation, the spiritual adaptation, to a world of increasing challenges and hardships. Christian love, our values of charity and kindness and care for our neighbors, will be an essential part of humankind’s adaptation to these new challenges. The sort of deep resilience that is rooted in faith is something else that might allow us to face our future with dignity and real hope.

This morning’s Gospel lesson (Matthew 13:24-30, 36-43) can give us some more insight into what our work might be at this time. The parable of the wheat and the weeds (formerly known as tares) makes it clear that it’s not our job to figure out who’s in and who’s out in God’s kingdom. Even if we could discern the wheat from the weeds, the web of interconnections that make up humankind and all of creation make it impossible to exclude others without ultimately excluding ourselves. But there is plenty of work for us to do; Jesus is clear about what our work is: the greatest commandment is the commandment to love. That love takes the form of serving one another: healing the sick, feeding the hungry, doing whatever we can to tend to “the least of these, the people in our world who are easily ignored or overlooked, the people who might look like weeds to us but might very well look like saints to God. The Gospel tells us that when our brothers and sisters are suffering because of environmental degradation, love calls us to do something to lessen that suffering and bring healing where there is brokenness.

Paul’s passage about hope seems to spring up in the Sunday lectionary or the Daily Office readings around the time there is some sort of especially discouraging news about the environment. This week was no exception.

Most obvious to Nebraskans would be the recent heat and humidity. This particular episode of heat and any one incredible dewpoint reading cannot be directly ascribed to climate change (this is the proviso we always need to make about any particular weather event), but it does fit the pattern of increasingly warm temperatures over time and also gives us a taste of what we can expect to be the norm in the years ahead. This heat wave has hit the entire central United States – e.g. as I write this the heat index in Bismarck, North Dakota is 112 degrees --and has spread east.

Also close to home for those of us on the Great Plains are tornado statistics for the year. The Weather Channel has a concise chart comparing the number and severity of this year’s tornadoes to those in an average year. So far this year, 537 people in the United States have been killed by tornadoes; the average number of deaths for an entire year is 56.

But perhaps the most discouraging news of the week has not been noticed much in this part of the country. Even though its effects on our climate will be huge, the accelerated melting of the Arctic ice seems too remote to be of much concern to many folks here. Melting at the Arctic – taking into consideration both the extent of sea ice and its thickness – is happening faster than predicted. (If you follow such things, you know this isn’t the first time that acceleration has been noted.) Joe Romm, who reports on some of the most recent findings in a July 16 post, says that he and some other scientists believe that the Arctic will have “virtually ice-free summers within a decade”. The loss of Arctic ice will accelerate warming for the rest of the planet. To learn about its immediate effects on the land and people near the Arctic coast, read this Icelights report from the National Snow and Ice Data Center in Boulder.

The parable of the wheat and weeds acknowledges the existence of evil in the world. Part of the point of the parable is that ultimately, evil doesn’t threaten the reign of God. Paul reminds us that even when things seem most desperate, Christians live in hope. We don’t hope because we can see good things happening; we hope for what we can’t yet see. God is in charge. We don’t need to see everything; we don’t even need to know everything. What we do need to do is the work Christ has given us to do: lessen the suffering, bring healing, and have care and compassion for our brothers and sisters and for our planet that sustains life and whose wonders can give us so much joy.

Sowing the Seeds

Proper 10A

Some gardeners carefully space seeds out in straight rows in their vegetable gardens. That had long been my method, but this year I got interested in the idea of polyculture (see Hope: Planting and Prayer 4/11/11) which involves a method of sowing that is closer to that described in the Gospel lesson for this Sunday (Matthew 13:1-9, 18-23). While scattering seeds instead of placing them took some adjustment on my part, it was worth it; the garden has done well so far this summer. I have lost fewer plants than usual to bunnies, there are fewer weeds to pull, and there’s an abundance of produce in my small garden space.

This Sunday’s Gospel lesson touches on the work of environmental stewardship in a couple of ways. The passage begins with Jesus leaving the house where he had been and sitting beside the sea; when he speaks, he tells a story about seeds and thorns and different types of soil. In our theological wanderings, we may sometimes drift into the sort of dualistic thinking that divides spiritual things from physical things (and then almost always goes on to state that the spiritual things are superior to the physical things). Jesus comes along, though, goes outside and walks down to the sea, and speaks about seeds and soil, or fig trees, or birds and lilies. It’s hard to be convinced of this sort of dualism when Jesus goes down to the sea or up a mountain or into a garden, and when Jesus speaks so frequently about the created physical world, the world that God so loves.

Then we have the example of the sower. The sower sows generously, flinging seed around so profligately that some of it lands in places where it can’t grow. This method assures, however, that any place where there is deep, fertile soil will have a seed planted. The sower in the parable isn’t concerned with holding onto the seed (which will have a lower germination rate anyway if it’s saved for another growing season) but with growing as much as possible. If the sower focused on the seed that doesn’t grow, discouragement might set in; there would be a temptation to quit sowing so much seed, maybe to give up the whole task.

Our efforts as individuals and parishes to conserve energy and water, to reduce waste and recycle the waste we do produce, to advocate for the environment can begin to seem insignificant and futile when we look at the enormity of the task of restoring a healthy, sustainable environment and at the weak response from most governments. In a week in which oil spilled into the Yellowstone River, an unusually big dust storm swallowed up Phoenix, a report came out about the amount of plastic debris found in fish in the North Pacific, and the implications of the State of the Climate report continued to be realized (e.g. every month since 1985 has been warmer than the twentieth century average for that month), it’s difficult to see how or whether our efforts will make any difference.

But each effort we make is like planting a seed. Some efforts may not make a difference and some may. We usually won’t know one from the other. That doesn’t mean that our efforts are futile, though; it simply means that our job is similar to the sower’s job. God calls us to be faithful, to keep making the effort, as generous and extravagant an effort as we possibly can. Not every effort will take root and make a huge difference, but this method does ensure that a variety of efforts will be made in a variety of ways. If anything is going to take root and give results in the long run, the faithful efforts of God’s people to care for creation can plant the seeds, make the initial efforts, for the sorts of initiatives that take hold and help heal and sustain our environment.

Prayer for High Summer

Gracious God, creator of the world and giver of all good things, we thank you for the beauty of high summer: for flowers and fruits, for birds and crickets, for sunny days, starry nights, and sudden rains. Help us in the warmth and abundance of these days to remember how fragile our future summers are. Help us through our love for you and for your summertime creation to find the wisdom and will to so order our lives that the delights of high summer might remain with us for generations to come; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

The old-fashioned phrase “high summer” came to mind as I sat outside this beautiful morning in central Nebraska enjoying the quieter sounds of birds and chattering squirrels after yesterday’s Fourth of July celebrations. I was praying in gratitude for the beauty of the morning, all the while aware of the need to continue praying for all the living things of the earth as global temperatures continue to rise.

While a few of the prayers in The Book of Common Prayer are close to what I was praying this morning, we lack prayers for the occasions of specific seasons. The prayer of thanksgiving For the Beauty of the Earth (p. 840) comes closest to what I was praying; it captures the gratitude for the beauty of this sort of morning and this time of year, and then turns to praying “that we may safeguard [these good gifts] for our posterity”. The idea of safeguarding something brings to mind a picture of keeping out external forces that would bring harm. In 2011, we know that the forces that threaten the gifts of summer are both internal and external; our own habits threaten the very things we love. Furthermore, we know how close we are to losing what we love; we know that the future of the environment we know and love is fragile. Praying that we can safeguard the gifts of summer sounds a little like praying for continued good health for someone who is terminally ill.

Slate.com has posted an essay Walking Home from Walden from journalist Wen Stephenson. In Part Two of the essay, Stephenson writes about walking along a favorite place, a “sacred spot”, and coming to this realization:

As these realities sank in, it felt like a turning point of some kind had been reached. That day at Stone's Pond, I could no longer pretend, and I knew, with a kind of visceral force: This place is already condemned. In the blink of an eye, it will no longer exist. Not like this. Not the way I know it. And not because some future builder and bulldozer will destroy it, but because they—we—I—already have, by what we've already done. Walking through a hayfield on a cold, bright, and gusty New England morning, it can be hard to believe that the Arctic is melting, the oceans acidifying, the great forests dying, ancient glaciers disappearing. But I knew that all of it was true, and that this sanctuary, this refuge, was a private delusion, a self-indulgent fantasy. There was no refuge. There was no sanctuary. Not for me, not for anyone.

I hope this prayer for high summer helps give words to that tension so many of us are experiencing between our continuing joy in the beauty and wonder we still experience outdoors and the knowledge that the things we love so much are in grave danger of being lost forever; I hope it helps us hold the earth in prayer.

Imagination

“Almighty and eternal God, so draw our hearts to you, so guide our minds, so fill our imaginations, so control our wills, that we may be wholly yours, utterly dedicated to you…” [Prayer of Self-Dedication, The Book of Common Prayer, p. 832]

A couple of things that have happened this week have me thinking about imagination. It’s good that we pray for full imaginations; well-developed imaginations are helpful to people who want to care for the earth.

A penguin story

Last week an emperor penguin appeared on a beach in New Zealand. The last time an emperor penguin was spotted in New Zealand was 1967, so this is a rare occurrence. At first the penguin was left alone, giving it an opportunity to swim back out to sea. But it became apparent that the penguin wasn’t going anywhere and soon didn’t appear to be well. People were concerned; as the title of an Earthweek article about the penguin puts it: Wayward Penguin Captures New Zealand Hearts. The bird was given the name Happy Feet and taken to the Wellington Zoo for veterinary treatment. When penguins get warm or dehydrated, they eat ice and snow. Finding itself on a sandy beach rather than a frozen beach, the penguin had eaten sand and driftwood. According to the New Zealand Herald, Happy Feet’s stomach was pumped again today.

Most people are compassionate when they know of an individual – a human being or another sort of animal – in need. With x-rays, air conditioning, and medical procedures, Happy Feet’s stay at the zoo isn’t cheap, but people are willing to help out in this sort of case. A Google search of “happy feet penguin” resulted in a row of images of the cute cartoon film penguin by the same name followed by three results for the film. Then comes a link to “Happy Feet’s stomach to be pumped again”. A particular individual case of an animal in need, something concrete, helps people to care; it also helps when the animal in need is associated with a cute cartoon creature!

It takes more imagination to care about the emperor penguins we don’t see, the ones that aren’t named or experienced as individuals or identified with a cute fictional character. A press release from ECO (the Environment and Conservation Organisations of NZ) points out that emperor penguins are “at grave risk of extinction from climate change by the end of the century”. Not only do emperor penguins need ice, but they breed only in the Antarctic winter and they feed on krill, which is itself impacted negatively by climate change. To feel the same level of compassion for these unseen birds as people do for Happy Feet, we need to be able not only to understand the facts about warming temperatures, melting ice, and dying animals, but also to be able to picture this future scenario in our imaginations.

In all aspects of environmental stewardship, it takes imagination to step from the science to compassion and the will to act. It also takes imagination to figure out the best ways to address climate change and other forms of environmental degradation. Climate change on the scale we are experiencing it is an entirely new problem; its solution may very well involve the breaking of some paradigms. Certainly we have seen that treating climate change like any other social issue doesn’t work; we don’t have the luxury of time. The laws of physics and chemistry don’t allow for gradual social change or political compromise.

Maps and Charts

Gardeners are familiar with maps of hardiness zones that help us figure out what varieties of plants can thrive where we live. These hardiness zones are changing, as some Nebraskans may have guessed from our own gardening experience. To help us imagine this on a national scale, an animated map of the changes in hardiness zones is helpful. Seen in this form, the changes from 1990 to 2006 are obvious.

The State of the Climate report for 2010 from the American Meteorological Association has been published. (See a summary here . NOAA summarizes some highlights of the report on this webpage.) The summary report of long-term trends – rising greenhouse gas emissions, rising global surface temperatures, and a sharply shrinking Greenland ice mass – includes helpful graphs of these climate indicators, making it easy to picture these trends on one level. But here again, it takes some imagination to begin to grasp the reality of these trends well enough to cause us to see the necessity for action.

The limits of our imaginations

Our limited imaginations can keep us from understanding our situation and from seeing how to best address the challenges we face. May God fill our imaginations so that we can be better stewards of the earth!

But realizing the limits of our imaginations can also be a blessing, because we know that no matter how good we get at imagining the possibilities for the future of our planet, we can never fully understand the bigger picture. In The Book of Common Prayer, one of our options for concluding Morning Prayer begins “Glory to God, whose power, working in us, can do infinitely more than we can ask or imagine…” Remembering that God can do more than we can ask or imagine gives us hope. When we can’t imagine how we will live into our future, our prayers of self-dedication, of asking God to equip us with the hearts, minds, imaginations, and wills to do God’s work, may be answered in ways we cannot ask or imagine. The Prayer of Self-Dedication asks for God to equip us so that we can be wholly God’s and so that God might then use us to God’s glory “and to the welfare of your people”.

We very much need the gift of imagination at this time; we are also blessed to know the limits of our imaginations.