Eradicating Hunger

mouth), it is a short prayer (around six to eight syllables) that you can pray in time with your breathing. Praying it repeatedly and slowly with each breath helps to centre the mind, body, heart and spirit on one thing, silencing inner noise and distractions so that God’s Spirit can speak and bring peace. The content of a breath prayer can come from any words or phrase that is meaningful for you, whether it be your own or from Scripture or from tradition. However, author Ruth Haley Barton in her book Sacred Rhythms has a method for writing your own breath prayer that I found extremely meaningful. In it she invites us to be in touch with our deepest desire so that our breath prayer cuts to the heart of who we are while being in the heart of who God is. If you are interested in trying this, you can click here. As we go through this season of unknowns and social distancing, I pray that we all are able to receive God’s gift of peace, and that we all come through this more compassionate, more secure in who God made us, and more in love with Jesus.

If you are struggling with anxiety, depression or grief, please do not hesitate to reach out to us, a trusted friend, or a counsellor. Here are a few links that I have found helpful myself: Coping with Stress and Anxiety Resource from CAMH https://www.camh.ca/en/health-info/mental-health-and-covid-19#coping Understanding the Grief you may be feeling https://hbr.org/2020/03/that-discomfort-youre-feeling-is-grief?fbclid=IwAR09jt R5AwGIWGYcCTmzj87IVJIz4upS-jJWp569MsLd7bA5-vkko4hc8Tc Reflecting on what God might be up to in this time https://transformingcenter.org/2020/03/that-the-works-of-god-might-be-revea led/?fbclid=IwAR2xRsdWYtiKdoAY59_EJKPCE_PIXsvTrlMxtLRjysS4lIbYGvRYcinOVzI The place of Christianity and Lament in a time of COVID19 https://time.com/5808495/coronavirus-christianity/

7 Last month we looked at the first United Nations Sustainability goal: Ending Poverty. As the world becomes more unfamiliar every day, the second UN Sustainability goal feels a lot more relevant than it might have done a month ago: "To end hunger, achieve food security and improved nutrition and promote sustainable agriculture". In the last week we have been faced with the unfamiliar sight of empty store shelves and the, hopefully temporary, closure of local businesses especially restaurants. Suddenly the fragility of our food supply has become more real and the livelihood of people in our communities has been put at risk but there are practical things we can do in our everyday lives to help both the immediate concerns and the larger issues of the sustainability of life on the planet. Wait, what does eradicating hunger have to do with sustainability? Right now, our soils, freshwater, oceans, forests and biodiversity are being rapidly degraded. Climate change is putting even more pressure on the resources we depend on, increasing risks associated with disasters, such as droughts and floods. Many rural

women and men can no longer make ends meet on their land, forcing them to migrate to cities in search of opportunities. Poor food security is also causing millions of children to be stunted, or too short for their ages, due to severe malnutrition. A profound change of the global food and agriculture system is needed if we are to nourish the 821 million people who are hungry today and the additional 2 billion people expected to be undernourished by 2050. Investments in agriculture are crucial to increasing the capacity for agricultural productivity and sustainable food production systems are necessary to help alleviate the perils of hunger. (from the UN SDG website) There are passages throughout the Bible about how those who feed the hungry will be blessed, Isaiah 58:7, Isaiah 58:10, Proverbs 22:9, and of course Matthew 25:34-40. So, as we saw with the first goal, this goal devised by years of research by the UN is aligned with the Bible's direction on how we should behave. Hunger and your daily food choices are tied to sustainability for several reasons: • some foods (like beef and heavily processed foods) have much higher carbon footprint than others. Think of the processing and transportation of food for livestock, their water requirements, the forests cut down for grazing / growing the food that livestock need compared to the resources required to grow the same consumable quantity of beans. • food waste in landfills creates methane which is a significantly more damaging greenhouse gas than the carbon dioxide that would be created by the same food if it were composted. • buying organic is healthier for you, farm workers, the water and soil in the farms, and the local wildlife • buying local reduces the carbon footprint of transporting

Here are some links for more information: On actions you can take: https://davidsuzuki.org/queen-of-green/ food-climate-change/ On the carbon footprint of various foods: https://www. businessinsider.com/the-top-10-foods-with-the-biggestenvironmental-footprint-2015-9