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Column Offer up a missed snack for worlds hungry
By KRIS BERGGREN
Lent begins. I fast on Ash Wednesday
in the officially sanctioned but kind of wimpy way, simply not eating more than
one regular meal. I skip breakfast and lunch, but drink all the coffee I want
-- OK, OK, I even have a latte from a coffee shop that morning. I have a bowl
of soup and some bread for dinner. I have a hard time imagining only drinking
water for a whole day. Id certainly get a caffeine withdrawal headache. I
cant even fathom doing a hunger strike. Still, my meager efforts connect
me with other Catholics around the world for a day, and I do contemplate how it
might feel to be truly hungry, and not by choice.
My children are all too young to be obliged to fast, but
weve experienced a taste, if youll forgive me, of hunger, however
inadvertently. To appreciate my story, you must first understand our morning
routine, which consists largely of me barking off checklists of things my three
kids will need for school and after-school activities: Do you have your
swimming stuff/gym shoes/flute/piano books/overdue books/mittens/permission
slips/lunches/props for the play/Valentines/and oh, yeah, homework? I
turn into what they call me behind my back, and occasionally to my face, Mean
Mom.
OK. Were all assembled in the car to more barking on my part
-- Seatbelts, now! -- and were careening off to
school. Glancing in the rearview mirror, I notice the kids faces are
frozen in neutral, as if theyre holding their breath and silently saying
their acts of contrition. (I dont think any of them actually know that
prayer, but lets assume whats going through their minds is
something comparable.) God forbid the guy in front of me should have to
turn.
When I pick them up for after-school activities, I try to make up
for being Mean Mom by remembering to bring snacks -- an apple or some yogurt,
or when the cupboards are looking a little bare, a box of crackers. One day I
actually planned ahead and added an extra item to the lunchboxes of the two who
had piano lessons that afternoon. Now, kids, save one item from your
lunch to have for snack today. Since I eyeballed each one as they nodded
earnestly, I thought we had an understanding.
My best-laid plan, however, was foiled: One piano player was
simply too hungry and ate everything at lunchtime. The other gave her yogurt to
a friend whod forgotten her lunch. They were hungry, and we had nothing
to eat. The piano players began to whine, and I agreed to stop en route at a
bakery to pick up a cookie. Then it dawned on me that Id left my wallet
at home. No money, no food. Time for an object lesson -- that Catholic classic
-- the one about the starving children in other lands. This would test my
parenting IQ. And, yes, I had an ulterior motive: Could I get them to stop
whining?
OK, kids, I said. Im sorry youre hungry. Thats
not a good feeling. Im sorry I didnt bring a snack. But think of
all the children in the world who not only dont get a snack after school,
but havent eaten anything all day because their parents dont have
any food to give them and dont have any money to buy food. And
furthermore, I continued, this is Lent, and theres something you can do,
right here, right now.
You can, I told them conspiratorially, offer
it up.
I then experienced a kind of anamnesis in which I heard the voices
of adults in my Catholic school past encouraging the offering up of
our small, professed Lenten sacrifices of giving up candy, being mean to
brother/sister, talking back to mom/dad, meat on Fridays. Doubt flickered. Was
this the sort of anachronistic fallacy any self-respecting, post-Vatican II
parent would disavow? I felt, momentarily, as if I were admitting that I slept
in curlers or wore a girdle. But this was no time for equivocation, it was now
or never. I forged ahead, explaining that our hunger wasnt going to cause
those children not to be hungry, but we could think of it as kind of a prayer.
We experience a little bit of hunger and if we offer it up and ask God to
accept our small suffering and bless those other children who have lots of
hunger, maybe somehow it helps.
My older children fell silent, pondering the injustice of children
like them with nothing to eat. Smooth, I thought, patting myself on the
back.
But that doesnt make me stop being hungry, piped
up the 6-year-old in the backseat, tears streaming down her face. Ah. The rub
indeed.
No, honey, it doesnt. But that is what Lent is all about. We
consider that some of us are uncomfortably hungry and others uncomfortably full
-- and it becomes clear that in our broken world we are all starved for
justice. And perhaps the inner act of imagination in which we offer
up our petty sacrifices does indeed contain a kind of mystical logic, a
cosmic purpose that doesnt make sense but that does make meaning, leading
us ultimately to recognize, too, our common human hunger for God.
Kris Berggren lives in Minneapolis.
National Catholic Reporter, March 8,
2002
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