FINALLY! - A Cup of Rice a Day for CA's India Floods Appeal: Day Five

Well, what can I say?  It is over!  People have been so very generous, and we've raised over £360 for Christian Aid.  That translates into a month's food for more than FIFTY families!  So thankyou.

The justgiving link will be active for a few more weeks.

 

https://www.justgiving.com/tomsharp

My final day was pretty weird.  To be honest, I was feeling rather ill, and finding it pretty hard to think about anything positively, apart from the impending breaking of the fast!

And so it has taken me quite a while to digest that final day.

One of the things that struck me was just how lucky I am that this...

... as if by magic, three times a day turns itself into this:

It is something so many of us take completely for granted, the idea that at regular intervals we will have somewhere safe where we will eat food and be satisfied.

And yet, the Church of England has this year opened a record number of food banks... IN THE UK!  Stories are emerging of parents going without food for days so that their children can eat.

Over the past days this is how I have been praying: for those I brush shoulders with in the street, who may even come and share at my table here at the friary, who don't know where their next meal is coming from.

Father,

Thankyou for the riches of our society.

Open our eyes to the poverty that exists within it.

To the people who subsist within it,

And show me how I can share my riches with them.

I don't even know where to start.

 

 

Yeah, it has taken a while to work out how to say that.

Very Bored Now - A Cup of Rice for CA's India Floods Appeal: Day Four

It's day four of my attempt to live on the diet of some of the world's poorest people and I am STILL very, very hungry.  On the plus side, people have now donated OVER TWO HUNDRED POUNDS to go towards Christian Aid's India Floods Appeal.

 

https://www.justgiving.com/tomsharp 

 

Day four's attempt at a positive prayer focus has completely failed.  I'm very very hungry now, and quite frankly bored of feeling hungry.

Perhaps my prayer tonight should be for people who are completely deflated, dehumanised and dejected becaused of their situation.

 

 

Still hanging in though!

 

 

Father,

Thankyou for the fact that every human life

is so full of possibility.

Help me throughout my life to bring out the possibilities

that really are there

in other people's lives,

even if no one else can see it.

 

 

 

 

 

The Joy of Serving Up a Meal... and Then Not Eating It - A Cup of Rice for India Floods Appeal: Day Three

It's day three of my attempt to live on the diet of some of the world's poorest people and I am very, very hungry.  On the plus side, people have now donated almost £180 to go towards Christian Aid's India Floods Appeal.

http://www.justgiving.com/tomsharp

It is just a short post today... as I've been in the kitchen yet again.

Sunday is kept as a feast at the friary, and by feast I mean FEAST!

For Lunch, Kerri and I turned out

• Roast Beef (from our own cow) with Herb Sausage Dressing
• New potatoes (grown in our garden)
• Carrots and beetroot roasted with Garlic and Rosemary
• Cabbage cooked with paprika in a Floridian recipe (Kerri is Floridian...ish)
• A veggy mushroom bake
• A 'Roly-Poly-Dick' - an amalgamation of Roly Poly Pudding and Spotted Dick with lots of sultanas, lemon peel and raspberry jam
• Custard

And dinner was a light option:

• Tomato and Basil Soup (with our own Basil and homemade yoghurt)
• Vegetable Bake with cheesy herb breadcrumb topping (lots of leftovers)
• Potato Salad (more leftovers)
• Green Salad
• Cheese
• A butterscotch tart that was meant for afternoon tea but took an eternity to set

I suppose that's a rather odd way to start a post relating to an emergency appeal, but as I cooked and helped cook all this fabulous food, watched 50-odd people eat it and washed up the dishes, a really funny thing happened.

I realised I was enjoying being in the kitchen a lot more than when I was trying to enjoy the food I had painstakingly produced as well.  I was actually getting joy from serving others the food in a way I didn't usually.

And then another thing happened.  I realised that I felt exactly the same in myself (bent over the sink, elbow deep in grease and suds) as I was when I had had a full meal.

Perhaps, then, maybe it wasn't having a massive Sunday lunch that made me so happy every week?  Evidently there was something else around that was the source of my joy.

I suppose this follows on from my last post about consuming only what we need.  But for Franciscans, consuming only what we need isn't meant to make us miserable.  It is meant to set us free from the worry that we might not have enough. We are free to find what truly makes us happy.

So the post today is a little more self-centred, in a way.  Living off what we need isn't actually only about everyone else's good.  It is about ours as well.

Lord,
You asked the people you met 
to give up everything to follow you.
You wanted them to have a happiness that 'stuff' couldn't give.
Help me to give up my desire for 'MORE',
And help me to discover the joy in what I have.
 

A Cup of Rice for India Floods Appeal: Day Two - Consider the Birds

I'm two days into my challenge to live of the diet of some of the world's poorest people.  And wonderful people have donated £92 thus far on http://www.justgiving.com/tomsharp to go towards Christian Aid's India Floods Appeal.

I've been in the office today folding some leaflets... and actually worrying a lot.  I'm beginning to get that light-headed, slightly woozy, feeling, that means that everything is just a little bit of an effort.  And I was beginning to think that I might have signed up for a really silly thing... Would a cup of rice and a bowl of meusli really be enough to sustain me?

And then I walked out of our community choir practice and saw this:

The baby swallows from the eaves of the sacrament chapel have flown the nest!  They're still being fed by their mother, but not quite so comfortably as they were.

And that famous saying of Jesus (no, not Monty Python) came back to me: 'Consider the birds...'

It is from a great passage (Matthew 6) in which Jesus asks people, 'Why are you worrying?'  God has provided enough for the birds to survive, and God loves you much more than the birds... so God must have provided enough for you to survive.

It is a really sobering thought.  And it is what Christian Aid's IF campaign and this month's rally in London was about.

Feeding the hungry and clothing the naked is really complicated... and yet it is also laughably simple.  God has provided enough resources in this world for us all.  But if we consume 100 times more than others then, of course, many will go without.

So my prayer today is that we will all (starting with me) learn a bit more about what it means to need... rather than want.  And that we will learn to give up some of the things that we only want, so that others can have what they need.

In the words of the Franciscan grace:

Thankyou for these wonderful gifts.

Teach us to live simply,

So that others may simply live;

In Jesus' name.

http://www.justgiving.com/tomsharp

Cup of Rice: Day One - Consuming what others produce

So, today I am in the kitchen, which makes starting the one-cup-of-rice-a-day regime all the more challenging.  I have had 2/3 cup for lunch... and I am still bloody hungry.  1/3 at dinner is not going to cut the mustard, methinks.

For everyone else's lunch I turned out a venison soup, a swede soup and a carrot and coriander soup, and Mike produced ciabatta and white loaves made with a home-made elderflower yeast.

And just as I was adding some left-over rice to the venison soup, a massive glob of rice fell into the pan and splashed hot soup all over my face.  And I was instantly very cranky, thinking that I wasn't even going to be eating it.

So this afternoon I will be praying for all those people who prepare things for us, people who grow food, who prepare food, who mine minerals, who make products, who sew fabrics and shoes...

... and who never get to enjoy as much of what they produce as we do.

Father, 

thankyou for the richness of the material gifts

and the richness of brothers and sisters

you have given us.

Give us the grace to appreciate them fully

and to share those gifts with each other.

We ask this in Jesus' name.

Support the Christian Aid India Floods Appeal on http://www.justgiving.com/tomsharp

Hunger for Justice

So, for the next five days I will be eating a bowl of meusli for breakfast, and then nothing else for the rest of the day.

Wtf?

I am raising money for the Christian Aid India Floods Appeal (http://www.christianaid.org.uk/emergencies/current/india-floods/index.aspx), by trying to live off the diet that some of the poorest people in the world survive on - a cup of rice a day.

But since I am a woosy westerner, I am adding a bowl of meusli to that - and giving up my week's wages (already donated) as a forfeit.

You can support me by following my progress on this blog, with your prayers and also with your donations, on the JustGiving link.

http://www.justgiving.com/tomsharp

From the Christian Aid website:

India Floods Appeal

At least 20,000 people remain missing following landslides and flooding in northern India. The state of Uttarakhand has been affected most.
Latest reports indicate that over 600 people have lost their lives, with the death toll likely to rise to 5,000 according to government officials.

Stranded

Heavy and incessant rains in the upper Himalayas - that began Friday 14 June – damaged roads, collapsed bridges and left stranded over 60,000 pilgrims headed for various shrines in the region.
The number now stranded is 10,000 however further rescue operations are being hindered due to fresh rains and further landslides. 
Over 100 villages have borne the brunt of the floods in the worst affected districts of Rudraprayag, Chamoli and Uttarkashi with up to a 1,000 homes damaged if not completely washed away.

 

Our response

In response, Christian Aid has launched the India Floods Appeal. Our partners are already responding with immediate relief; providing emergency items such as food and shelter, blankets and medicines.
Christian Aid partner CASA intends to help 5,000 of the most affected households – 25,000 people –with food rations such as rice, lentils, tea and sugar.
They are also providing cooking utensils and portable stoves. Plastic sheeting, blankets, torches and vital medical kits will also be provided.
Anand Kumar, Christian Aid’s India country manager said: ‘When a disaster strikes, poor families have few assets to fall back on and face extreme difficulty in meeting basic needs.

£21 could provide a month's emergency food for three families.

£40 could buy essentials for a family whose home has been washed away, including a tarpaulin and blankets, medicine, cooking equipment, buckets, candles and a torch.

£100 could help towards the cost of repairing a damaged house.  

Pray for Opium

Well, I only have about ten more weeks left at Hilfield.  This has gone scarily quickly... though at times it has felt scarily slow.

Whilst I'm still here, I am going to blog once a week on something that has captivated me, and on Fridays I am going to do an additional blog on something I have felt particularly called to pray about because I have been here.

WEEK ONE: OPIUM POPPIES

Pretty little things aren't they.  They grow as a weed in many English gardens.  When they are small they are just a tuft of little silvery-white leaves.  But when they get bigger they are absolutely beautiful.

I was digging up a series of poppies yesterday, and a tonne of other weeds as well, when it suddenly struck me: yes, it was a wonderful thing that the poppies were beginning to bloom, that they looked so pretty.  

But as our poppies are coming into season, billions of opium poppies are coming into bloom on commercial plantations around the world.  Most of these will be used to produce medical opiates and other by-products.  Some of this year's crop will however be turned into drugs that will harm and kill tens of thousands.

And that wasn't all.  I was perhaps a little tired and achey digging up the vegetable beds, but thousands of people harvesting poppies live in terrifying poverty, trapped in cycles of debt and addiction themselves and ruled by corrupt governments who aid the drug-lords that enslave them.

Perhaps it isn't so pretty.

So this afternoon I will be praying:

• For those whose task it is to secure a good opium crop for legitimate purposes
• For those who will grow, harvest and consume illegal opiates
• And for the governments that assist the cycles of slavery that are required to grow illegal opiates.

Father, 
give us the grace to treasure the gifts you have given us,
to use those gifts for good,
and to love and care for those who deliver them to us;
In Jesus' name, Amen.

Common poppies in the vegetable garden