Lutheran Peace Fellowship: Hunger

Showing posts with label Hunger. Show all posts

Thursday, February 03, 2011

Thoughts While Fasting

by Bonnie Block

I went hungry today,

So I remembered of the men at Guantanamo

who’ve been on hunger strikes protesting their unjust imprisonment.

I went hungry today,

So I thought of the people of Gaza and Haiti

who are hungry every day.

I drank only liquids today,

So I was reminded of all the women

who carry their family’s water for miles day after day.

I drank only liquids today,

So I prayed for all the children

who get sick and may die from drinking polluted water.

I had no food today,

So I mourned for the tens of thousands of people in our world

who die from hunger year after year.

I had no food today,

So I considered the families here in Wisconsin

Who have to rely on food pantries that may be empty.

I’ve fasted for twelve days – voluntarily and temporarily

So I know how immensely privileged I am.

Tomorrow thankfully, I’ll eat again

But please oh God,

Keep me hungry for justice,

Make me thirsty for peace.

I wrote this on Jan 21, 2011, the night before the end of a 12 day liquids only Fast for Justice called by Witness Against Torture to get Guantanamo closed, to insure transparency so we know if this monstrous practice continues, and to demand accountability for all those complicit in torture. (www.witnesstorture.org)

Monday, October 11, 2010

LPF Peace Art Contest

We are doing a makeover of the main homepage of the LPF website and want to include pictures of people involved in a variety of peacemaking activities and other images and artwork to illustrate the work of LPF.

Please send us action shots of you and other peacemakers in action and images or artwork of what peacemaking means to you. The best entries will be featured on the LPF website.

Ideas include:

Take action photos of peace related events/activities in your congregation or community.
Sunday school art projects: draw a picture of what peace means to you.
Pick out your favorite peace related bible verse to illustrate.
Download LPF´s Peace Deck and create original artwork based on your favorite quote.
Illustrate the concepts of active nonviolence and conflict resolution in photos or drawings.
Take pictures at your local foodbank or feeding program of people helping people in need.

Please submit entries by email to lutheranpeace@gmail.com (5 mb max per email) along with the author´s name so we can give them credit.

World Food Day

Saturday, October 16th

The theme of this year’s observance is United against hunger, chosen to recognize the efforts made in the fight against world hunger at national, regional and international levels.

Resources:

LPF Hunger Resources

World Food Day USA

World Food Day UN website
World Food Day - Wikipedia

People's Coalition on Food Sovereignty (PCFS)

Indigenous Food Systems Network - Food Sovereignty

La Via Campesina

Tierra Viva Bolivia

Organisations working on Food Sovereignty issues

Friday, July 02, 2010

Simplicity Day

“As you simplify your life, the laws of the universe will be simpler; solitude will not be solitude, poverty will not be poverty, nor weakness weakness.”
-- Henry David Thoreau

Simplicity Day on July 12th celebrates the birthday of Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862) who encouraged us to simplify our lives.

Check out the following videos and resources about this remarkable movement:

AFFLUENZA - Soundtrack to VOLUNTARY SIMPLICITY The Poetic Alternative to Consumer Culture.

This video clip is a collage of scenes from the documentary posted next below

Watch the entire documentary:

VOLUNTARY SIMPLICITY: The Poetic Alternative to Consumer Culture documentary explores the philosophy behind Voluntary Simplicity, what potential or significance it has as a quietly emerging social movement and what its limitations might be.

Global Pandemy in its entirety - a 15-year-old documentary about what began as a trend in the US but now has spread all over the world. We are not considered to be citizens any more, we've been turned into simple consumers, with no other rights than the ones that corporations let us have, if so. There's no space for humanitarian behavior or for critical thinking. The greeding controlling minorities have deceived most of us to believe that we're free to choose a better life, and that the so called better life is measured in terms of properties, of things that we own. No matter if we don't have enough money, that's what Credit's been made for. If other people are suffering, we've been trained to ignore it because «That's not our business». Everything is business, and so, that way, we want to reach happiness. But the fact is that there's no happiness in material belongings. That's why we always are looking for more. And it's never enough. When we have reached to that point, then we are doomed, for we have been infected and controlled by this selfish way of surviving. We are not living anymore, we're just surviving, because we're sick. We suffer AFFLUENZA. And man... we DO SUFFER...

Adventures in Simplicity - A video montage created specifically to accompany an audio Plunderphonics track, created in 2008 on the topic of voluntary simplicity.