Food for the hungry

Today there were a couple of hundred people who gathered at the college because we were invited to work together to fill small 400 gm food bags for hungry people. While we were scooping rice, soy, dried veggies and this odd sort of bullion disc into plastic bags there were sporadic announcements made over the PA system. Things like, 'yay! we have reached the 20,000 meal milestone!' or, 'be sure your apron doesn't touch the floor'. or 'thanks for coming'.

And then there was this sort of jolting announcement made that cut right through the table conversation. Worded something like this, '40,000 people die every day from hunger. That's right, like in every 2 seconds someone dies because they haven't eaten.' It was a painfully electric moment. My inner speech conversation was meditating on the idea that my skimpy two pancake breakfast had evaporated and what was I going to eat for lunch, since I had a pretty wide choice. And then I was forced to meditate on the thought of how long would it take for me to die of hunger. And does it hurt? In those hungry places, if you saw someone who was no longer eating, what would it be like to hoard your own food, or share your insufficient meal with them and then with how many before none of you had enough. I cannot wrap my mind around it. To postpone buying stuff because money is short is one thing.

To postpone eating because there is no food is another.

I am glad that all of us well fed people spend hours today filling bags of food for someone else. But all of a sudden it seems grossly inadequate.