I haven't seen the ads. I didn't know about this problem or this program, but Lily did. In some parts of Africa, girls can't go to school because they don't have sanitary napkins or tampons. So there's an organization, Goods4Girls, that is providing them with re-usable "kits" to keep them in school. You can donate money or make kits to donate.
This boggles my mind and touches my heart. So much self-consciousness at that age (I assume it's universal). So much depends on being sure you won't "have an accident."
Here (no names will be mentioned) certain family members of both genders cannot be seen purchasing feminine products unless they are purchased with a quantity of other items. And come to think of it, I never bought a box of tampons without also needing a pack of gum or something to go with it. You know. In case the check-out clerk was noticing. We've got what we need in abundance and take it for granted to such an extent that we're embarrassed to buy it.
I'm not saying you should fall down on your knees in praise and jubilation when you're picking up unmentionables at the Piggly Wiggly. Assuming you still need them. But either way, some kind of gratitude is in order.
I recently wrote an article for a medical school about their students' experiences in global medicine. I interviewed umpteen students, far more than I needed. And no matter how I tried, I couldn't forget their disturbing stories. They made me want to go to medical school and save the world. Most of them planned to save the world when they finished their training. God bless them!
One young doctor needed to amputate a man's foot (a farmer who had a tractor accident) and there were no tools in his rural village that she could use for amputation. Not even a saw or a hatchet. They collected money to send him to a hospital in a bigger town. The hospital sent him back because they were full. The infection continued to spread, and when the young doctor left, he still hadn't been helped. I don't want to think about it.
Another group of young doctors was in another country when a young mother gave birth and started hemorrhaging. She needed transfusions, but there was no blood. The young doctors quickly typed themselves, and found enough matches among their group to donate enough to save her. The doctor who told me this story said it was such a strange experience to give blood, then to carry it to the patient. The patient recovered.
The stories went on and on. Stories about not having the right drugs, the right tools, the things we take for granted. Stories about children abandoned because they were imperfect. Stories about people sick from lack of food and clean water. My heart was burdened and I was and am in awe of these generous, young healers.
So much need in the world. Clean food and water, medical care and freedom are higher on my list than "reusable kits," but I think it would be a good mother-daughter project to make some and donate them.
I need to be a lot more grateful.
My father's room in assisted living has a window that looks out into an area with bird feeders and raised flower beds. The staff there knows of my father's love for gardening, and last week when they were planting summer flowers in their gazillion raised flower beds they did something different for the one my father can see from his room. They planted it with tomato plants.
One of the staff came to him and said, "Mr. C., do you see what they're doing?"
"What?"
"Look out of your window. Do you see what they're planting?"
He looked. "Tomatoes," he said. Then he went outside, dragging his oxygen with him. He watched for a minute, then asked the lady planting the tomatoes, "Where's your lime?" he said.
She looked at him strangely. "I don't have any. What do I need lime for?"
"Blossom end rot," he said.
I wish he had said things such as, "pretty plants," "good job," "thank you." But no. It was "Where's your lime?" You're doing it wrong. Oh well. He is who is he. The lady managed to change the subject to her divorce problems. From here on I'm pretty fuzzy about what happened. My parents have been married for 72 years and a stranger confessing things about her divorce was more surprising to him than planting the tomatoes without lime.
Honestly, I think it was hard for him to perceive the kindness behind this act of planting tomatoes where he could watch them from his room. Or maybe he did perceive the kindness, and was lost on how to respond. Plus, he just planted 150 tomato plants in his garden in the country (with much help and all the right ingredients). What does a man who get three meals a day in assisted living need with a giant garden? Gives him something to do. A place to go. Life bursting with life.
He planted 150 tomato plants and he doesn't even like tomatoes. Seriously. Won't eat them.
I am touched that the people who care for my parents are that insightful and kind. Lime or no lime, I think it is beautiful.
The Baptists are way ahead of everybody. There are more of them, and it looks like they're smarter, too. They've always got something going on, and they make it look like as much fun as you can have without alcohol.
We're Presbyterian and there's a Southern Baptist church across the street from our church. Every Sunday night the youth groups gather at their respective churches for pizza and salvation, or at least to keep them from their weekly gang meeting or whatever menace is out there.
This past Sunday night our youth group was having a lively game of rubber chicken on the small lawn in front of the church. (No, I don't know how you play rubber chicken but you also have to have a basket.) Across the street the Baptists had a carnival -- complete with rides!
So here are our kids on a scrawny patch of grass playing with a rubber chicken, and there are the Baptists and all their friends -- and a whole carnival spread out on their large campus.
One of the adult leaders of the youth complained last night at a meeting, "All I had was a basket and a rubber chicken. They had a carnival. How are we supposed to compete with that?"
Maybe get two rubber chickens?
One day when Lily was several years younger we went to Mr. Bunky's for supper. Now, Mr. Bunky's is kind of different. You can get rat poison, freshly made sausage, baby formula, deer licks, saddles, boiled peanuts, used-to-be fresh produce, farming and plumbing supplies, etc. -- or you can eat in the restaurant. Now, there are all sorts of people in this restaurant, from F-16 pilots just back from Iraq to millionaires who don't look like it to dirt-poor farmers who don't look like it either.
So, there I was sitting with my young daughter when a man in hunting gear strolls up. His pick-up line was, "Where's your Old Man?" By which I assumed he was inquiring whether or not I had a husband.
"In jail," I said. He did a double-take.
"I'm sorry to hear that," he said, not sure whether to proceed or turn around.
"That's all right," I said. "He gets out Sunday night. He's there on a prison ministry."
Paul loves the Kairos prison ministry. He's there right now. As these things usually go, he does it because he gets more out of it than the prisoners do. He says. I went once for the closing ceremony. I didn't like being locked in with murderers and rapists, though I did make an effort to see them as God's children. It was odd holding hands and singing praise music with them. But I loved their shy smiles and their shining love of God. I was still happy to be let out and Paul is not allowed to bring them home, the ones that eventually get out. Obviously I am not cut out for this ministry.
But Paul is. He comes back laughing, crying, deeply touched and happy. He comes back refreshed and filled with hope. Some of the people who are now his friends will never get out of prison, yet they've found joy and purpose. Paul says they're not really very different from us.
Drugs have put many of them behind bars. Not from illegal trafficking so much as from doing terrible things while high or in order to get high.
The prison tries to accommodate the ministry because it changes people. In a good way. I could tell you stories and might one day. The prison also has services for Muslims, Rastafarians and Buddhists. Paul said that there were no services for Jews. I thought that was interesting -- must not be any Jews in S.C.'s worst prison. Or at least not any practicing ones.
There's a Muslim guy participating in this Kairos weekend. The food is good, which brings in a lot of unlikely folks. (Plus everyone in the prison, whether or not they are participating, gets a bag of cookies every day.) The Muslim guy will stand up from time to time and ululate something unintelligible about Allah. One of the other prisoners says he does it all the time. He laughed and said, "He's saying 'Allah says kill the white boys.'" There's a lot of unlikely humor in the prisons. I guess you create it where you can find it.
One time Paul was giving out cookies in the "mentally challenged" dorm when he ran out of cookies and one of the very large scary-looking inmates got upset. The guard had to intervene. Paul made sure everybody got cookies, though I think it may have taken a year off of his life.
Some of the prisoners tell their stories. One who hadn't spoken for the 11 years he'd been there began to speak, finding his voice after being shut down for so long that everyone assumed he was mute. Miracles do happen. Sometimes all you have to do is show up.
My Old Man's in prison. He gets out tomorrow. Then he needs to mow the grass.
I've just written my second campaign for a Christian organization that's working to end world hunger. Actually, it wasn't my campaign. It is God's campaign and I was blessed to be chosen to write it.
In researching for this work, I came across some disturbing information. I don't even listen anymore when I hear the news that Americans are fat. A trip to Wal-Mart will confirm that report. What I didn't know is that the weight-loss industry brings in $40 billion dollars a year. Think of how many people that could feed!
And I also didn't know that every day 24,000 people in the world die of hunger-related causes. Or that every year 300,000-400,000 Americans die of obesity related causes.
Do you find this as disturbing as I do? Too bad we can't do a Great Fat Transfer. We weigh in and send the excess to Somalia.
Gluttony used to be one of the Seven Deadly Sins. Now it's the virtue of the covered dish supper.
Do you remember the movie "Black Hawk Down"? One of the most disturbing things about that movie to me is that the Americans called the people who were attacking us "The Skinnies." And they were. (This is not to say I wasn't disturbed by the rest of the movie -- I was. It was the language I found haunting.) I don't think the world should be divided into Skinnies and Fatties. But it is.
In our culture, fat people know they are fat, invisible and given lower status. I don't want to beat up on fat people, in part because I have a sweet tooth that's working against me and struggle with my weight, going up and down and up and down and mostly up again.
And I hate showy, one-shot spectacles designed to "raise awareness." You know. You have a church supper where you pay to eat gruel and the money goes to a shelter. These are dangerous because they make you think you did something, when you didn't really. Yet you feel good about yourself and are relieved of anxiety and guilt. "I ate gruel one time so all the babies in India would be fed." No you didn't.
As the Republican that I am, I think part of the problem is that the government has taken our money from us and told us that they are using it to feed the hungry and take care of the poor. (And after tax day, I must say that they've got to be feeding an awful lot of people for that amount.) We're relieved of responsibility to care for others without being given the gift of choosing to do it ourselves -- and feeling good about it. Others aren't personally responsible for themselves, and we're not responsible for them -- the government is. (And why is it that the less money you have, the heavier you are in America?)
And I also know that wars and repressive governments in poor countries starve their own people. That doesn't get us off the hook for helping starving people in other countries (or the war-torn countries, though that can't be fixed just by sending over food. All I'm talking about here is sending over food.)
I wonder if it isn't time for churches to develop comprehensive programs to help their members lose weight, get healthier and use the money not spent on unhealthy foods to feed The Skinnies elsewhere in the world? Here's an idea: a group within the church decides that they want to eat healthy food and save money. So they form a group that buys food in bulk, the members take turns cooking it in large quantities (but healthy portions) and group members get healthy meals every night of the week but only have to cook once. The savings from buying in bulk go to a hunger program. Over time the group loses weight, gets healthier -- and some Skinnies get fed, too. (In fact, while they're cooking they could cook healthy meals for the poor Fatties in the community.)
I can see all the reasons this won't work. People are busy. Johnny has a basketball game and I can't cook tonight or pick up the meal. Little Amanda won't eat food with specks (in this case, thyme) in it. Who thought it was a good idea to cook 40 lbs. of beets?
But something needs to work. Surely we can think of something. BooMama is on the same wavelength, because she just returned from Africa, and she's got an interesting post that's led to the "adoption" of orphans for a year. To read it, go here.
We can do something. We're killing ourselves. And they're dying.
Photo from here.
