19 December 2012
Ralph Bunche Park
Manhattan, New York
Filed under Advent, New York, Photo, United Nations
Thanksgiving is over. Black Friday has happened.
Cyber Monday looms around the corner.
But first, on December 1, the Christian season of Advent begins again.
“Advent” means “coming” or “arrival.” It is a time of preparation for Christmas. As the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) notes, “the four weeks of Advent present an opportunity for communal discernment and personal examination, as the church prepares to celebrate the Nativity of the Lord and looks with hope for Christ’s return.”
Different individuals and communities prepare in different ways. Special events are held. Special songs sung. Gifts are planned, purchased, and shared. Some people add prayer, scripture reading, and meditation to their lives.
This year, I plan to join in the Advent photo-a-day challenge posed by Rethink Church. Here are the details:
As we did with Lent last February, we’re inviting you once again to enter this season of Advent with intention and awareness. As we prepare, watch and wait for that wonderful something God is sending our way not just at Christmas, but every single day.
Whatever your practices this season, will you join this photo-a-day practice and share with the community how you perceive each word or phrase for the day? No explanation needed, unless you want to. After all, a picture is worth a thousand words. Tag us on your instagram photos with @rethinkchurch or on twitter [@umrethinkchurch] with #rethinkchurch and #rethinkchristmas. We’d also love for you to share your photos on our Pinterest board!
You don’t have to be a great photographer. This project is hopefully more about the practice of paying attention and being intentional, than it is being the best photographer [though we encourage you to get creative!]. If you don’t have instagram or twitter, we’d still love for you to share your photos. Just share them on your facebook page and tag us.
So, will you join us by opening your eyes [and your cameras] to witness the hope that is already springing up around you? Will you open your hearts for Immanuel, God with us?
Connect with this project online:
- Twitter [#rethinkchurch and/or #RethinkChristmas]
- Instagram [#rethinkchurch and/or #RethinkChristmas]
- Tumblr
Sign up for daily text or email reminders for the word phrase of the day [with a verse if you want something to reflect on throughout the day]. Text Advent to 75309 to receive daily reminders via text.
Add our Google calender
I will post here and will tweet the posts at @wmkoenig. I may link to the posts on Instagram and Facebook. In Lent, I primarily used photographs I had taken in the past. I will probably do so again. It will prove interesting to learn how this challenge plays out.
See you along the Trail.
That’s vegetarian stuffing.
I heard the words over the soft, smooshing plop the big scoop of stuffing made as it landed on my plate.
That’s vegetarian stuffing.
That certainly explained all the green stuff among the bread.
That’s vegetarian stuffing. The two over here are oyster.
Vegetarian stuffing? As in filled with vegetables. With no oysters. My mind spun quickly as I pondered my options.
“Vegetarian?” I said.
Vegetarian. And oyster over here.
“Really? Vegetarian?”
Really. You look like it does not excite you.
I recalled a moment at a buffet involving a friend of my grandmother, pickled pig’s feet placed unwanted on a plate, and a subtle return to the buffet table to replace them in the serving dish.
“It would not be my first choice. Especially with the oyster option,” I moved the plate toward the pan as I spoke.
Go ahead. You can put it back.
I quickly scrapped the vegetarian stuffing back into the pan. And even more quickly moved to the oyster stuffing and filled the now empty spot on my plate.
As I did, a new definition flitted across my mind:
Home is where you can put the food back with everyone watching and no one will criticize you.
Silently giving thanks for having options in a world where so many do not, I went in search of more food. As I did, I heard the repeated explanation:
That’s vegetarian stuffing.
See you along the Trail.
Purple they are;
flowers they are not.
29 November 2013
Goochland, Virginia
Filed under Photo
Among my friends who participated in the PC(USA) SNAP/Food Stamp Challenge, Rebecca Barnes wrote some compelling reflections. Here are a few quotes to encourage you to read and ponder her material:
Reflections preparing for the SNAP/Food Stamp Challenge next week
Another worry comes to me: What if I want to offer to take food to someone sick or grieving that week? And it hits me: it is a privilege to have food to be generous with. To tell church to keep me on the list of people to call, that is a privilege. I have enough money and resources to be a helper (even as I have been one of the helped). What would it feel like if I could only ever assume the role of “the helped?” Ouch.
First day of the Food Stamp Challenge
7) I have a church that is open, that I’ve been embraced in all my life, and frequently has hot coffee, after church meals, and Sunday School snacks for kids, no questions asked… Not sure what we would do without a community (other than be hungrier, and lonelier.)
What could create not only compassion and empathy, but justice, for those living in poverty? What would really change those with power to change this system? Would personal experience, would stories from others, would public policy advocacy, would civil disobedience? What would it take for our nation to be outraged—and to refuse to let it happen—when Congress cuts $40 billion from SNAP benefits? When will we make sure that our insatiable hunger for justice is only satisfied with: justice for all?
1) The Food Stamp Challenge isn’t a game. It’s not winnable. It shouldn’t be used, by those of us with full cupboards and freezers and the possibility to go “back to normal” tomorrow, to congratulate ourselves even if we can possibly eek through the week. Being on a SNAP benefit food budget is challenging, absolutely. But the goal is not to see if I can get enough to eat this week. The Challenge is actually to advocate for the benefits available to people in our nation. The Challenge is to transform my own heart and mind enough and hope that I can then use my own power and privilege and experience to change myself. To re-invigorate my advocacy. And maybe, somehow, affect the systems of economic injustice because I will keep trying with my words, my vote, and my privilege, to get the message across: there is something really wrong with the income disparity, wage inequality, lack of access to food, and massive economic injustice in our nation and it must change.
May the God we prepare to welcome on Christmas morning, a God who was born poor, be a God who convicts us of the need to act and advocate and subvert systems that prevent people from experiencing God’s love lived out in human form. May God guide us as we seek to strengthen local food economies, to create resilient communities, to empower those in need, and to demand justice in our food policies.
Food Stamps and the Environment? Note: Rebecca is the Associate for Environmental Ministries at the PC(USA)
The thing is, a ruined earth is both an “equal opportunity” destroyer for humanity and it strikes the poor, hungry, and marginalized most heavily. Think of any natural or environmental disaster.
Thanks Rebecca for your words and your witness!
See you along the Trail.
Filed under Current Events, Food, Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.)
I believe that part of the point of the SNAP/Food Stamp Challenge is to challenge our thinking and to start conversations. This happened to me as I participated in the challenge during the week of November 17. I talked to a number of people about the challenge, the SNAP program, and working to end poverty. I had Twitter exchanges including one with Meagan Dosher Hansen who reminded me of the importance of access to fresh and local food and an exchange with Leanne Masters who raised the obvious and important question of “Why aren’t the lived experiences of others enough to foster conversation?” I continue to ponder that question. I also read a number of blogs and some articles. These included material from people who participated in the challenge and people who did not; people who supported participating in the challenge and people who did not.
Sharon Astyk wrote a post that stays with me as well: Why I Won’t Do the Food Stamp Challenge. The experience of two of her former foster sons who lived on food stamps for their family’s primary source of income informs her writing. She observes:
I know for a fact that the reality of living on food stamps is rather different than making a week or a month long shift.
She notes the compound challenges that people who depend on food stamps face: such as the stamps not lasting until the end of the month and the deficit that creates as the next month begins and what food stamps do not purchase and what one has to do to obtain some of those items: “tampons, soap, shoes, toilet paper, cleaning fluid, roach killer, school supplies”.
She also highlights the privileges, advantages, and resources that those who choose to take the challenge have. I had all these and more:
Ms Astyk rightly identifies other limits of the challenge:
Doing the food stamp diet for a week or a month won’t give you a sense of how depressing, humiliating, exhausting and frustrating it is to be poor in our society. It won’t let you experience the ways poor diet and the grinding suffering of poverty degrade your health and your energy to keep going. It won’t give you a sense of what it is like to live on food stamps month after month, what it is like to be ashamed of yourself and your inability to give your children and family what they need. It won’t let you experience what it is like to feel that you can never catch up, so what’s the point of even trying?
Not everyone who receives food stamps starts as far back as my kids do – but the truth is for the one in four children in America who depends on food stamps for their family’s basic food security, the conversations we are having about cutting the food stamp budget, about the farm bill and about poverty don’t even begin to cover critical ground.
Doing the SNAP/Food Stamp Challenge opened me to voices and questions and conversations in new ways. I am grateful for that. But I recognize that there are many voices I need to hear, the questions still remain, and the conversations I had only opened the topics of providing food security and ending poverty. I will have to go deeper. We all will have to go deeper. May we do so. May I do so.
See you along the Trail.
Filed under Current Events, Food, Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.)
Leaders of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) have written to Congress asking them not to cut SNAP benefits.
You can do the same. The PC(USA) Office of Public witness makes it easy to share your thinking on how we care for our sisters and brothers.
I have done so. I hope you join me.
See you along the Trail.
Filed under Current Events, Food, Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.)
