The Hidden Hunger-None of this is glamorous

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/24/opinion/24kristof.html?_r=1&emc=eta1

We in the West misunderstand starvation — especially the increasing hunger caused by the global economic crisis —

The World Bank has estimated that United Nations goals for overcoming global poverty have been set back seven years by the global crisis. It calculates that increased malnutrition last year may have caused an additional 44 million children to suffer permanent physical or mental impairment.

Yet one of the great Western misconceptions is that severe malnutrition is simply about not getting enough to eat. Often it’s about not getting the right micronutrients — iron, zinc, vitamin A, iodine — and one of the most cost-effective ways outsiders can combat poverty is to fight this “hidden hunger.”

Malnutrition is not a glamorous field, and so it’s routinely neglected by everybody — donor governments, poor countries and, yes, journalists. But malnutrition is implicated in one-third to one-half of all child deaths each year; the immediate cause may be diarrhea, but lurking behind it is a deficiency of zinc.

“That image of a starving child in a famine doesn’t represent the magnitude of the problem,” notes Shawn Baker of Helen Keller International, a New York-based aid group working in this area. “For every child who is like that, you have 10 who are somewhat malnourished and many more who are deficient in micronutrients.

In my column last Sunday, I wrote about women dying in childbirth. One reason so many die of hemorrhages is that 42 percent of pregnant women worldwide have anemia, according to the World Health Organization. And here in Guinea-Bissau, 83 percent of youngsters under age 5 suffer from iron deficiency.

The general rise in food prices (in part because of American use of corn for ethanol) is leading to more micronutrient deficiencies. One study found that a 50 percent rise in food prices in poor countries leads to a 30 percent drop in iron intake.

Americans typically get micronutrients from fortified foods, and the same strategy is possible in Africa. Helen Keller International is helping Guinea’s leading flour mill fortify its products with iron, folic acid and vitamin B (zinc is coming soon). We visited the mill, and managers said that the fortification costs virtually nothing — a tiny fraction of a penny per loaf of bread — yet it will reduce anemia, maternal mortality and cognitive impairments around the country.

None of this is glamorous, but it’s hugely needed — and truly a bargain.

Crimes against Humanity: Epidemic Rape in Congo

Below is a New York Times Article with some ways to begin interceding.. Perhaps we’ve heard so little about them because the crimes are so unspeakable, the evil so profound. if (acm.rc) acm.rc.write();For years now, in the Democratic Republic of Congo, marauding bands of soldiers and militias have been waging a war of rape and destruction against women. This sustained campaign of mind-bending atrocities, mostly in the eastern part of the country, has been one of the strategic tools in a wider war that has continued, with varying degrees of intensity, since the 1990s. Millions have been killed. Women and girls of all ages, from old women to very young children, have been gang-raped, and in many cases their sexual organs have been mutilated. The victims number in the hundreds of thousands. But the world, for the most part, has remained indifferent to their suffering. “These women are raped in front of their husbands, in front of their children, in front of their parents, in front of their neighbors,” said Dr. Denis Mukwege, a gynecologist who runs a hospital in Bukavu that treats only the women who have sustained the most severe injuries. In some cases, the rapists have violated their victims with loaded guns and pulled the triggers. Other women have had their organs deliberately destroyed by knives or other weapons. Sons have been forced at gunpoint to rape their mothers. Many women and girls have been abducted and sexually enslaved. It is as if, in these particular instances, some window to what we think of as our common humanity had been closed. As The Times’s Jeffrey Gettleman, on assignment in Congo, wrote last fall: “Many of these rapes have been marked by a level of brutality that is shocking even by the twisted standards of a place riven by civil war and haunted by warlords and drug-crazed child soldiers.” Dr. Mukwege visited me at The Times last week. He was accompanied by the playwright, Eve Ensler, who has been passionate in her efforts to bring attention and assistance to the women of Congo. I asked Dr. Mukwege to explain how it was in the strategic interest of the various armed groups to rape and otherwise brutalize women. He described some of the ramifications of such atrocities and the ways in which they undermine the entire society in which the women live. “Once they have raped these women in such a public way,” he said, “sometimes maiming them, destroying their sexual organs — and with everybody watching — the women themselves are destroyed, or virtually destroyed. They are traumatized and humiliated on every level, physical and psychological. That’s the first consequence. “The second consequence is that the whole family and the entire neighborhood is traumatized by what they have seen. The ordinary sense of family and community is lost after a man has been forced to watch his wife being raped, or parents are forced to watch the rape of their daughters, or children see their mothers raped. “Neighbors are witnesses to this. Many flee. Families are dislocated. Social relationships are lost. There is no more social network, village network. Not only the victims have been destroyed; the whole village is destroyed.” The devastating injuries treated by Dr. Mukwege at his hospital can all but stun the imagination. There is no need to detail them further here. AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases are commonplace. Often the ability to bear children is destroyed. In many other cases, women end up giving birth to the children of their rapists. “The hospital can take care of 3,600 women every year,” said Dr. Mukwege. “That is our maximum capacity. We can’t take any more.” He spoke of ambulance teams that would drive into villages and be besieged by rape victims desperately seeking treatment. “It is awful to see 300 women in need of help,” he said, “and you have to take 10 because the ambulance can only take 10.” Ms. Ensler spoke of her encounter with an 8-year-old girl during one of her trips to Congo. The girl’s father had been killed in an attack, her mother was raped, and the girl herself was abducted. The child was raped by groups of soldiers over a two-week period and then abandoned. The girl felt too ashamed to allow herself to be held, Ms. Ensler said, because her injuries had left her incontinent. After explaining how she persuaded the child to accept an embrace, to be hugged, Ms. Ensler said, “If we’re living in a century when an 8-year-old girl is incontinent because that many soldiers have raped her, then something has gone terribly wrong.” Despite the presence in the region of the largest U.N. peacekeeping mission in the world, no one has been able to stop the systematic rape of the Congolese women. If these are not war crimes, crimes against humanity, then nothing is. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/21/opinion/21herbert.html?_r=1&emc=eta1 Some ways to begin praying: - for God to intervene in the lives of those who are being brutalized and also those who are wantonly brutalizing others. -for God to raise up leaders that can bring justice to the region -that Jesus can be lifted up, that hearts can be regenerated and lives changed. Pray for God’s spirit to be at work in those who have been brutalized and shamed.

Prayer for Swat, Pakistan

Today’s New York Times has a report on the situation in Swat.  There the
Taliban have taken over control and are intimidating, beating, gunning
down, even beheading all those who in any way differ from their policy of
instituting strict rules that they call “Islam.”  The article says “they
are enforcing a strict interpretation of Islam with cruelty, bringing
public beheadings, assassinations, social and cultural repression and
persecution of women to what was once an independent, relatively secular
region.”  In the mean time the Pakistani government seems paralyzed,
unable even to decide what ought to be done about the spread of the
repressive version of Islam promoted by the Taliban.

Pray that God will give relief to the Pakistani people; that the promise
of the love and forgiveness of God will become known; that those who
suffer and are terrified will find hope in the promises of Jesus and be
delivered from fear by the confidence that God will establish a new world
in which righteousness dwells.

Robert L. Canfield
See my concerns for the world:
http://artsci.wustl.edu/~canfrobt/Concerns.html
My website:  http://artsci.wustl.edu/~canfrobt/home.html
Blog:  http://rcanfield.blogspot.com/

Gifts we thought we didn’t need

This season I met every night with friends to read through meditations on Advent. One of these, “The God we Hardly Knew” by William Willimon has refused to leave me alone-convicting and delighting me alternately throughout the season. Willimon writes:

“…We love Christmas because, as we say, Christmas brings out the best in us. Everyone gives on Christmas, even the stingiest among us, even the Ebenezer Scrooges…Dickens suggests that down deep, even the worst of us can become generous, giving people. Yet I suggest we are better givers than getters, not because we are generous people but because we are proud, arrogant people. The Christmas story-the one according to Luke not Dickens-is not about how blessed it is to be givers but how essential it is to see ourselves as receivers.

We prefer to think of ourselves as givers-powerful, competent, self-sufficient, capable people whose goodness motivates us to employ some of our power, competence and gifts to benefit the less fortunate. …[In the account of the first Christmas] we are portrayed not as the givers we wish we were but as the receivers we are.

…This strange story tells us how to be receivers. The first word of the church, a people born out of so odd a nativity, is that we are receivers before we are givers. Discipleship teaches us the art of seeing our lives as gifts. That’s tough, because I would rather see myself as a giver. I want power-to stand on my own, take charge, set things to rights, perhaps to help those who have nothing. I don’t like picturing myself as dependent, needy, empty-handed… This is often the way God loves us: with gifts we thought we didn’t need, which transform us into people we don’t necessarily want to be.”

Why do I post this on our cross-cultural blog? While Willimon is writing primarily about our relationship with God, this same sin of self-sufficient pride is present in our relationships with others. Throw in the fact that these relationships might involve those from different economic, social, or ethnic backgrounds-the physically poor and needy- and it gets even more complex. John Wesley said “Nothing is more repugnant to capable, reasonable people than grace” As people who seem to have everything together, receiving from those whom you assume had nothing to offer is incredibly humbling and convicting.

Receiving from others is risky because it intertwines us in an uncomfortable close way, suddenly we are not longer in complete control of the relationship; we are no longer setting the terms and establishing the boundaries. Suddenly we are vulnerable and exposed, forced to acknowledge our own poverty. Yet it is only here that we begin to experience the messy reality of true relationship.

Let someone you are used to serving, serve you. Allow yourself to graciously accept what is offered and be transformed.

The people I must literally look over every day…

What have you been learning the last few days? Please share your insight.

“KYN has opened my eyes to the diversity around me. I live in a suburb and admittedly tend to think everyone is the same –married, parents, white, middle class, etc. After reading and praying, I started to look around more. I evaluated what was around me, talking to my neighbors on my block. Across the street are two college kids working and going to school; a single man in his 60’s three doors down with a dog that is seemingly his main companion; a single woman in her 30’s next door with a desire to be married and have kids; a Mormon couple with 3 kids living here briefly from out of state; and this was just my street. I now go on runs and take a look at the buildings and businesses that I mindlessly passed before. I noticed a Baha’i Center that I had never noticed before. Coincidentally, I had just met a woman in the city who practices the Baha’i faith. Weeks ago I would have never thought about the center or the woman. My curiosity made me look into the faith more and understand it. Again I admit, I tend to assume everyone must be protestant or catholic in my neighborhood. It makes me want to know more about the people that surround me, especially the people I must literally look over every day. The girls that just moved in on the corner, the single mom with 3 kids that I met while voting and the man that walks on a street nearby to his job at Schnucks. I made the connection watching him bag my groceries. Next time I will offer him a ride. All of them are made in the image of Christ, all broken in some way, all needing to know the message of the Gospel. The KYN has been inspiring to me.”

Ashley

Welcome

Welcome to Beyond Knowing, a gathering place for Journey folks who are learning what the gospel is, but not stopping there. We are a community discovering how to go beyond merely knowing Jesus’ message and mission; a community learning how to live Jesus’ message and mission.

We know that Jesus inhabited a specific time and place in history. He learned the intricacies of 1^st century Jewish culture, but transcended it. He broke through ethnic, national, political, and religious divisions. The last thing he told his followers was to take the message (that there was a way for authentic life with God) with them into their city, their region, and to the ends of the earth (Matthew 28 & Acts 1)

So here we are, a community of Jesus-followers living in the Midwest, and what does this mean for us? Is it: Staying current on world events? Getting to know the neighbors? Ensuring justice for refugees? Listening to the worldview of others? Using our talents to serve in another part of the world?

That’s a broad list, and we weren’t meant to figure this out alone. So what do you have to say? Let’s start talking and doing so we can get beyond knowing together.