NEWS FOCUS: A day’s path to hunger’s end

MAY 28, 2015 is World Hunger Day.

Its aim is not simply to feed the hungry: World Hunger Day ‘seeks to highlight the positive actions taken by those existing on less than £1 ($1.50) per day, to end their own hunger.’

It’s the old saw about giving someone a fish vs. teaching them to fish.

And both are crucial.

Basic

Hunger and thirst are two of the most basic human experiences.

We have all been hungry or thirsty at times, but the suffering caused by long exposure to hunger and thirst is intense.

Yet in a world of plenty, there are many who go thirsty, many who are malnourished, many who starve to death.

The facts are simple enough, as described by The Hunger Project UK, sponsors of World Hunger Day:

‘805 million, one eighth of the world’s population live in chronic hunger globally and exist on less than £1 a day. Hunger kills more people than AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis combined. 

Of the millions of people who live in hunger and poverty, 10 percent are suffering from famine or from the high profile emergency crises that we are sadly all too familiar with.

However, particularly whilst the focus of the world is on high profile crises, it is vital that we recognise that, even today, the 90 percent majority of those sufferingwith hunger and poverty are living in other parts of the world, not affected by famine, earthquake or flood, but because of the chronic persistent hunger that exists in the developing world, in particular, Africa, South Asia and Latin America.

Chronic, persistent hunger is not due merely to lack of food. It occurs when people lack opportunity to earn enough income, to be educated and gain skills, to meet basic health needs and have a voice in the decisions that affect their community.’

The numbers are staggering but calculable.

The suffering involved cannot be calculated – though where there is suffering, there is also the possibility of its relief.

Celebration

The Hunger Project continues:

‘World Hunger Day is about raising awareness of this situation. It is also about celebrating the achievements of millions of people who are already ending their own hunger and meeting their basic needs.’

The joys of providing, giving, and receiving food are not to be discounted.

The urge to serve others -- to bring them food, and no less important, to foster their efforts to provide food for themselves, is also among the basic human experiences.

While one can serve those needs out of simple human kindness, as the Dalai Lama would say, such help is also encouraged, often in a behind-the-scenes way, by the world’s religions.

Religions

In her 2011 Reith Lectures, Aung San Suu Kyi only mentioned Buddhism once, but her comment was revealing:

‘When the Buddhist monks of Burma went on a Metta - that isloving kindness - march in 2007, they were protesting against the sudden steep rise in the price of fuel that had led to a devastating rise in food prices. They were using the spiritual authority to move for the basic right of the people to affordable food.’

What’s interesting – and easily missed here – is the intimate relationship between spirituality and the provision of food.

It is easy to think of the spiritual as somehow the opposite of the material.

But the spiritual realm is not just a realm of prayer, monasteries, icons, temples, altars and offerings.

Twist

By a strange twist of logic which shatters our easy distinction between the sacred and the mundane, this material world is the place where spiritual activity takes place.

In Judaism for instance, there is a proverb quoted by the philosopher Emmanuel Levinas:

‘The other's material needs are my spiritual needs’

And nowhere is this more apparent than in situations of real hunger and thirst.

The teachings of Christ embody that same idea.

Nowhere in the Christian gospels does it say, ‘Blessed are they who hunger and thirst after food and water’.

On the contrary, it says ‘Blessed are they who hunger and thirst after righteousness’.

And righteousness is defined further in the Gospel of Matthew (25.35), in terms of social service.

Christ says that those who ‘inherit the kingdom’ will do so because ‘I was hungry, and you gave me food: I was thirsty, and you gave me drink: I was a stranger, and you took me in.’

To give food to the hungry, and drink to the thirsty – it is these actions in this world that open the doors to “the kingdom of heaven”.

And in the oldest and highest rituals of Judaism and Christianity alike, at Passover and during the Eucharist, it is the sharing of a common meal, bread and wine, that brings the participants together into communion.

Gift

Hunger, then, is the great lack, the great emptiness, while food and the skills to cultivate it are the great necessities, the great gift.