Okay……I have a confession. I have a bad habit.

I try to be discrete. When I’m in the line at the grocery store I work hard to avert my eyes to the latest tabloid headlines about which celebrity had a meltdown or what superstar gained weight. But to be honest, my attention is always closely focused on the people ahead of me or behind me...and the items they have in their grocery cart. This is a horrible habit. It is none of my business what people buy and how much they spend for food. But I’m worried about the world I live in and the possibility that we are making it worse by what we put into our grocery cart. So I admit...I’m consumed by watching what people buy and eat in our world.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not a food snob, but I often pay way too much for what I buy at the grocery store and I buy things I probably shouldn’t buy. Not any more. Our world is changing. Gas prices are unbelievable. The cost of food rises with each trip to the grocery store. Food pantries, soup kitchens, and aid agencies are unable to meet the demands made upon them. And people in my community, in our country, and in our world are going hungry. All of a sudden, what I put into my grocery cart matters in a way it didn’t matter before.

For the past 6 years the Missions and Social Concerns Committee in our church has worked to educate our Monthly Meeting about missions and peace and Christian social concerns. July through December each year the committee focuses on one Friends United Meeting mission. Then each year from January to June, the committee chooses a social concern on which to focus. That list includes (among others) the environment and conservation, an in-depth look at aid agencies in the aftermath of the Tsunami and Hurricane Katrina to encourage well-informed and intelligent giving, and a 6 month period of education and information about HIV/AIDS here in America and around the world. The first half of 2008 is focused on local and international hunger issues and ways to feed a hungry planet.

Dealing with the issue of hunger this year has been incredibly timely. The nightly news reinforces the crisis facing our nation today. A new Farm Bill is currently before the President and it deals with providing help for those who hunger in addition to helping those who grow our food. Presidential candidates are talking about the pain of gas prices and rising food costs. Food pantries and soup kitchens are crying for much needed help to meet the rising food costs and the increased demand for their services. A recent political cartoon had two thieves breaking into a house saying “Skip the money and jewelry…go straight for the pantry”. It is easy to be overwhelmed with the needs in our community and in our world. What is a Christian to do in the face of such need?

Our faith community is doing a few things that give me an opportunity to DO something to meet the needs within our community. One is our monthly Food Pantry Sunday. Several years ago a concerned friend spoke up in meeting about the power of one. If each person would bring just one food item just once a month, our church could generate an extra 1200-1400 food items per year for the food pantry. The power of that challenge has generated much more than 1200 items for the pantry. I rarely see anyone bring just one food item. I am blessed at the consistent, sacrificial giving each month to those in need. There are many within our church who know if they are going to be absent for Food Pantry Sunday will make an extra trip to the church to make sure their food gets put into the food pantry box.

In addition to the physical gift of food, 9 Friends churches in our Quarterly Meeting have joined together to participate in a fasting project. Over 125 people have agreed to fast once a month (FOAM). This project encourages Friends to forego one meal each month, offer the cost of that meal to the FOAM fund for hunger relief, advocate for compassionate public policy towards the poor and hungry, and to meditate and pray for God’s help to all who are hungry. This project has gives me another hands on opportunity to DO something for hunger, but more importantly to voluntarily feel hunger for those who feel hunger involuntarily.

Participating in the FOAM project has heightened my awareness of fasting. I read recently a newspaper article reporting fasting is gradually gaining favor as a way to cleanse the body and the soul. I recently met a Greek Orthodox woman who spent Lent religiously fasting from all meat. I’ve heard reports on the radio and television that say fasting from beef one day a week could make a huge difference in greenhouse gases. It is hard to believe a country with a fast food restaurant on almost every corner, a country where you have the ability to buy food 24 hours a day, a country that offers food delivered to your home any time of the day and night and a country that spends billions for fast food advertisements on every television program to entice us to eat their food tolerates even the thought of fasting from anything!

In the middle of a country like this, I’ve discovered the power of fasting. Fasting accomplishes something in my heart, mind, body and soul. It causes me to look for opportunities to do something to meet the needs of the hungry in our community and around the world. During my hour of fasting I write a letter to my legislator on a hunger issue. I long and pray for a world where no one goes to bed with an empty stomach. Participating in the FOAM project makes me aware that I have power over what I eat. A recent Vegetarian Times article reminded me that every time I eat, I have an opportunity to choose food that is friendly to my body, to my community and to our earth.

And given my bad habits at the grocery store, I decided it was time for a new diet. It is time that my grocery cart is a witness to what I believe is important to God, to all God’s children and to God’s planet. I am trying to place more real food in my cart; food items with very little processing or packaging. I am trying to boycott corn syrup. Organic food is expensive, but I can buy at least one thing organic from my grocery list. I am looking for ways to buy real food locally (I thank God our Farmer’s market is a block and a few weeks away). I am making more of my own bread. And I have a choice of where my meat is grown, where it is processed and who handles it (that in itself is a whole story…..) I am more serious about meatless Mondays and purposely plan meatless meals during the week. I am planting fewer flowers and more vegetables this spring in my back yard. And maybe I’ll actually break my bad habit of checking out other people’s grocery carts by paying more attention to what goes into mine...

I need to tell you what I learned a few Saturday's ago.

We got up early that Saturday morning to go to Indianapolis for an all day conference for Bread for the World, a Christian grass-roots organization that lobbies against hunger. The trip to Indianapolis was good. We had time to visit with friends while we traveled. We walked into the conference and the first person we saw and talked to was Art Simon, the founder of Bread for the World and keynote speaker for the day. Ron and I had the privilege of meeting him in Kampala in the 1990's when he was there visiting Christian Children's Fund projects. Both meetings were a privilege; we admire his life, his ministry and his lifelong activism on behalf of those who hunger. The day was full of opportunities for worship, for visiting with others concerned about hunger, and time for workshops to encourage involvement on behalf of those who hunger in our world. It was a great day.

We saw several videos at the conference of work being done in Africa with people suffering from AIDS and hunger. The videos were hard to watch. It was like watching 9 years of our life in Africa. Every face reminded me of people we knew, friends we've lost to AIDS, children we saw who suffered from malnutrition and starvation. More than once I felt that tug to return to Africa, to do something important to change the reality of our world and those who suffer in it.

At the end of the long day, we returned home to eat a quick supper and prepare for Earth Hour. We've been encouraging friends to join the movement across the nation and world to observe Earth Hour by turning off as many lights as possible between 8-9PM the last Saturday in March. If every American household participated, it could have saved a huge volume of coal, oil or natural gas and prevent thousands of tons of carbon dioxide from being released into the air we breathe. Even though we didn't get everyone in America to participate and even though a good friend from Minnesota sent an email with the snarky comment that “observing Earth Day must have been too much that we had to settle for an hour”……I'm still glad we stopped to turn out the lights. The hour without electricity reminded me of life in Kampala when every other night from 6 to 9 PM we had the power cut to our neighborhood. Being in the dark and reading by the light of a candle during earth hour reminded me of the luxury of nonstop electricity and the fact that we can live without it once in awhile. The hour without made me stop and be quiet, it made me listen to silence and it makes me listen to God.

That Saturday ended up being a sacred day for me.

This past month has been a difficult month. A month ago my grandfather died. I feel a bit guilty admitting the month was difficult. The reality is my grandfather was ready to be with his Savior. And I've been surrounded by a faith community and family that carried me through the time with supportive words, cards, and acts of kindness. How can that be difficult and how can I complain? When I found out my grandfather was dying, I did not want to go to Idaho to bury him. I did not want to deal with the chaos of traveling and being with people. I longed to be quiet, to stop all creaturely activity and just sit in God's presence to deal with this loss and to find healing. I wanted to take a few days off and not do anything. But it wasn't to be. The month ended up being nonstop with travel to Idaho, time with family and friends, and then right back here to a back log of responsibilities, meetings and the distractions of my life.

75 years ago last month, in March of 1933, my Grandparents became Christians in a revival service. It was such an important day and event that my Grandfather remembered everything about the day, from the men (Ed Harmon and Fred Baker) who met him at the altar and prayed for him, to the feeling he had when he got up to go home. Several years later, probably when that feeling began to fade, my grandfather told me the story of coming home from work one day feeling like things in his life weren't right; weren't as good as he thought they should be. He walked outside to the clothesline to be alone and he started to pray. He remembered every moment of that day also. He told me he hung his arms over the clothesline and poured out his heart to God. Even in his last months of life, when I reminded him of that day, he would show me how he stood there talking to God. In those moments he told God that he would take everything and anything that God could give him. He wasn't exactly sure what happened, but he said from that day on, his life changed. He did more than just meet Christ; he had an encounter with the Living God who changed his heart and motivation for life.

For me, I look at the life my grandfather lived and realize the sum of his life was measured by that encounter with God, because he lived out of that experience from that moment on. He lived a busy life, full of love and laughter, mistakes, pain and heartache. But the sum of his life is not what he did, but how he made God visible to our world, to our family and especially to me.

My Saturday became sacred as I sat in the dark and silence of Earth Hour. God spoke in those moments and taught me that God's spirit is found in the busy-ness of life. I keep waiting for the day when life slows down, when I can catch up or when I can be quiet to hear Christ's voice. But the reality is I've already heard God's voice. I need to live out of that encounter with God and make God visible through the busy-ness of my life just like the testimony of my grandfather.

I wish I had a whole lifetime to work on environmental issues, I wish I had a whole lifetime to live in Africa and work to right the wrongs of a world full of AIDS and hunger. I wish I had a whole lifetime with my Grandfather. I wish I had a whole lifetime to sit and listen for God's voice, to experience God's presence and healing. The fact is these would be like the luxury of non-stop electricity. They would become so commonplace that I would take them for granted.

God is teaching me that every light bulb I turn off is a part of the whole of living a life environmentally concerned. That I don't need a whole lifetime in Africa to make a difference, I need to live out of the experience I've already had in Africa and make what I do and how I live today matter to my African friends. I need to teach 6th graders to be aware of AIDS, I need to make food sacred, and I need to write letters to my congressmen to encourage them to make our nation's policies just. I don't need days of doing nothing to mourn the loss of my grandfather: every card, every letter, every word, every friendship, every relationship and every memory is a part of the whole healing process. I don't need to live the life of a saint to be what God wants me to be. I need to live out of the experience that I've already had with Christ and make His salvation, His presence, and His life visible in my world every day and every hour.

Earth Hour ended up being a real gift in my life. I'm already looking forward to Earth Day!