The War Continues

I've been reading up on Wal-Mart lately, and have found some interesting things.

The New York Times printed an article about a leaked memo from the offices of Wal-Mart here about how to cut healthcare costs, "including discouraging unhealthy job applicants" (but you have to be an NYTimes member; hey--it's free).

I can't find this article on the Washington Post's website, but here it is from a different (and admittedly biased) site. It's about how Wal-Mart is calling for a higher minimum wage to correct problems they have contributed to. (Why can't they just raise wages?)

Watch the Big Box Mart movie on JibJab.com! Notice any similarities?

And I thought this was interesting. A new movie called Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price. You might even be able to attend a screening in your city!

Life on Skid Row

Last weekend my parents and I attended the somewhat conservative church that I was part of for about half of my college career. Many of the faces have changed and it seems to have gotten a little more conservative, but I learned a very important lesson there.

A guy who's getting his Masters of Divinity taught our bible class on Mark 7, and we had some lively discussion about the comments Jesus made to the Syrophoenician woman, etc., etc. Jesus also heals a deaf and mute man and lambastes the Pharisees in this passage; it's classic Jesus.

But at the end of the class time, the teacher made a wonderful speech about how Jesus cared about those who were marginalized in his day, and how we should do the same. And all of a sudden I was blown away by a realization.

I thought that taking care of the poor in real, effective ways was not high on our agenda as The Church because no one was talking about it. Apparently I was wrong. Perhaps it is because people in The Church don't really understand what a huge problem it is, that it is not always a choice, that most of the poor don't WANT to be poor, but are stuck in a cycle of poverty that they do not have the power to break.

Last night in small group a nasty comment was made about the people who chose to stay in New Orleans even after a mandatory evacuation order was issued. It was at that point that I explained that the majority of those people stayed because they didn't have the resources to get out. They couldn't afford bus tickets and they don't own cars. Most of their family members are in the same predicament.

One of the "hurricane refugees" that just stole my heart is an 84-year-old woman named Muriel. She is paralyzed from the waist down because of polio, and spent two and a half days stuck on the freeway, waiting to be rescued. She didn't go to the bathroom all that time because she needs special help to do so. Did she want to be stuck in that situation? Was it her fault that she ended up on a freeway? No, but she doesn't have any family who could help her or the resources to leave, so she had to stay put.

I'm slowly reading a great book called Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger, by Ronald Sider, and I'm learning a lot of things I didn't want to know, like the fact that 34,000 children die every day of hunger and preventable diseases in countries all around the world. Sider does a remarkably horrifying job of painting a picture of real poverty outside of America. It's heartbreaking.

I'm told that Tony Campolo used to get up to talk in front of a group of Christians and mention the 34,000 children dying statistic. And then he'd say the word shit. And he'd pause for a second and ask, "Now what bothers you more, the fact that 34,000 children die every day or that I just said shit?"

Good question, Tony.

I was once told that it was great that one of my priorities was caring for the poor, but that didn't have to be EVERY Christian's priority. I disagree. I don't believe fighting abortion or homosexuality was high on Jesus' To Do list, but it's very obvious (and if you don't believe me, Ron Sider does a great job of proving this) that he cared about the poor and that God does, too.

Steve Lopez paints another grim picture of the realities of poverty in his series for the LA Times called Skid Row. I think you should check it out.

Glorious Food

"Bread is as spiritual as human life gets. Rumi wrote, ‘Be a well-baked loaf.’ Loaves are made to be eaten, to be buttered, and shared. Rumi is saying to be of service, to be delicious and give life." ~Anne Lamott

Not only am I an emotional eater, I am an emotional baker as well. When I was really stressed in college I would bake chocolate pies (I can remember making two during one particularly stressful week). The day I decided to break up with my boyfriend I made a loaf of cheddar cheese bread. Last summer when I was living at home my parents were surprised to come back to the house one day and find that I had baked a loaf of bread; I needed to bake that bread. I don’t know what it is, but there is something comforting about the measuring and the stirring and the sifting that demands my full attention and allows me to relax.

I also like the fact that when I’m baking, I get to do things my way. (My college roommates called me the "Kitchen Nazi.") I love to make messes, and I have been known to make some huge ones in the kitchen (while mentally sorting out some colossal ones in my life). I also cook by smell. I don’t depend as much on a timer to tell me when something is done as by the smell coming out of the kitchen. Hey, it usually works.

I love food, too. I love the making and the presentation and especially the eating of it. I love that you can take some pretty run-of-the-mill ingredients and come up with something completely different. There is something spiritual about getting something great out of some things that aren’t at all special.

I love that food conveys emotion, can say something romantic or comforting or just that you care. In the South, when someone dies, we go sit with the family and we take a casserole. When my Mom is sick, she only wants to eat the foods her mother used to cook for her when she was sick as a child: beans and rice and red Jell-O.

I love the history passed down in certain dishes. When I make peach cobbler, I want to make it like my great-grandmother did. (Of course she didn’t use a recipe, but my grandmother and I have found one that we think is pretty close.) When I make tortillas, I want to make them like my best friend’s mom does, not from some white woman’s "well researched" recipe.

It occurs to me now that I also might find baking comforting because it allows me to have control. I get to choose how much of what goes in where and when the thing comes out of the oven. I get to have the ultimate say in something, regardless of how out of control the rest of my life feels.

So I think I’ll make some bread tonight. Probably a nice white loaf (my dad won’t eat wheat). And then I think I’ll make Peach French Toast out of it. Or maybe I’ll make some fried pies. I found a pretty good recipe for them in the family cookbook. Actually, I’ll probably end up making all of the above. Hungry?