What the World Eats, Or Doesn't.

This British family spend just over £260 per week on food.

This family in Chad spend about 80p


'Hungry Planet - what the world eats' has 27 snapshots from round the world of a weekly diet for different families. If you've not caught it yet, Hans Roslings superb BBC programme on ending world poverty is still available on Iplayer, and is really worth a look. It combines brilliant presentation of the stats, with simple stories of how well-targeted aid and help could transform lives.

I showed a selection of the Hungry Planet photos to a school harvest assembly today, where we were collecting for the local food bank. One little boy got it straight away: 'why don't we send all this food to Chad?'

Put your mushrooms in the sunshine

Jeremy Clarkson, mushrooms, Acts chapter 5, back stage passes. Its amazing the connections you find sometimes.

Yesterdays challenge was preaching on Acts 5, the story of Ananias and Sapphira, who conspire in secret to buy a good reputation in the early church, forgetting that God sees what we do when we think nobody is looking. Whether it was greed, or desire for the kudos which went with appearing generous whilst trousering some of the proceeds, we don't know. But they sell some property, present what they claim is the full amount to the church, whilst conniving between them to keep some back.

The result is pretty dramatic: God shows Peter the secret scheme, he confronts them with it, and they drop down dead. Be wary of what you put in the collection plate, it should carry a health warning.

Simon Walker has written some excellent leadership books, where he talks about the front and back stage. The front stage is performance, what we let others see. The back stage is private: fears, decisions, research, private crises, the things we normally keep people out of. The election campaign is all front stage: a frenzied attempt to manage what is seen and heard, and an equally frenzied attempt to keep all the 'back stage' stuff out of view. Nobody wants another Gillian Duffy moment. So, David Cameron was in my constituency yesterday, a fact I only discovered on the news later. Why? Because the only people who knew were Conservative supporters and invited journalists. God forbid he should meet a real voter.

Politicians dread the moment when the back stage mess falls through the curtain onto the front stage. Don't we all. It can be very public - Jeremy Clarkson has gone into some of the 'back stage' reasons for his well publicised blow up a few weeks ago. They don't excuse it, but a combination of divorce, bereavement, cancer and a high profile highly scrutinised job probably isn't a recipe for mental calm.

There was a recent food programme which mentioned that mushrooms, if exposed to sunlight for an hour or two, turn from nutritionally useless fungi into a rich source of Vitamin D. Something grown in the dark, when exposed to the light, becomes a health benefit rather than a mould.

Paul writes "you were once in darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Live as children of light". If Ananias and Sapphira had let someone else backstage, had brought the mushrooms out into the sunlight, they might have realised that trying to decieve God was a stupid idea, and thought again. God already knows everything we're trying to keep secret, as we try with varying degrees of anxiety to manage our front and back stages. What a gift to find someone who we can allow back stage, and who treats kindly what they see. What a gift to find someone with the integrity and character to allow some of their back stage to be visible.

The more stage managed the appearance, the more we think 'you must be hiding something'. My draft question for our local hustings next week is 'in your personal life, or in your parties policies, what are you not telling us?' Just because a politician, (or a vicar, or a TV personality, or a friend, or...) doesn't admit to having a back stage, doesn't mean it isn't there. The church should be a place where we are aware of the damage it can do to keep things in the dark, and where we find sufficient trust and grace to bring things out into the light. Put your mushrooms in the sunshine.

Why do people use Food Banks?

A new report jointly published by Oxfam, the CofE, the Trussell Trust and Child Poverty Action Group busts some of the myths about why people use food banks. Some of the findings are very troubling: they point to a welfare state which no longer works as a safety net, relying on charities to plug the holes. We appear to be heading back to pre-Beveridge days. Here's part of the main summary:

Key findings from the research showed:

• Food banks were predominantly a last-resort, short-term measure, prompted by an 'acute income crisis' - something which had happened to completely stop or dramatically reduce their income
• Income crisis could be caused by sudden loss of earnings, change in family circumstances or housing problems. However, for between half and two thirds of the users from whom additional data was collected, the immediate trigger for food bank use was linked to problems with benefits (including waiting for benefits to be paid, sanctions, problems with ESA*) or missing tax credits
• Many food bank users were also not made aware of the various crisis payments available in different circumstances, and even fewer were receiving them
• 19-28% of users for whom additional data was collected had recently had household benefits stopped or reduced because of a sanction* and 28-34% were waiting for a benefit claim which had not been decided*
• Many food bank users faced multiple challenges, including ill-health, relationship breakdown, mental health problems or substantial caring responsibilities.  Many were unable to work or had recently lost their job.  The frequency of bereavement among food bank users was also a striking feature of this research
• Use of emergency food aid in the UK, particularly in the form of food banks, has dramatically increased over the last decade. Figures from The Trussell Trust show that numbers receiving three days' food from their food banks rose from 128,697 in 2011-12 to 913,138 in 2013-14.

Most food bank users interviewed spoke of how severe personal financial crises were often the last straw that had brought them there, only turning to food banks as a last resort when other coping strategies had failed. Deciding to accept help from a food bank was frequently described as 'embarrassing' and 'shameful' but users reported that they would have been completely bereft without it. Considerable personal strength and dignity was also shown by participants, with many displaying great resilience in spite of their circumstances.

The research showed that the very real challenges people face are too often being compounded - rather than assisted - by their experience of the social security system*.

One mum**, who had to give up work to care for her son with serious medical conditions and required intensive support, spoke about her experience when her Child Tax Credits were halved without notice and was horrified by how she was treated. "When our money was stopped, there was no compassion, there was no way to get support," she said, adding "we got behind on all our bills; everything just got swallowed up, and my direct debits were bouncing.

"I thought the system would protect me. I never thought I would be completely ignored. I feel I was let down hugely. My benefits are my safety net - if they're removed, how are families like ours meant to survive?"

The research is based on 40 in depth interviews, and data collected from another 900 users at selected food banks. Over half were there in part because of problems with state benefits.

Food banks vie with gambling as one of the boom areas of the austerity economy. (Remember how we only got hit with that EU levy after drug addiction and prostitution were counted into the GDP figures). It's all pretty depressing. This is where we need our politicians, but it's the charities and the churches who are putting the spotlight on it. Good job we don't stick to our knitting and stay out of politics.

update: links to some of the media coverage of this here, scroll down a little bit.

Make Lunch - Training in and around Yeovil

Make Lunch is a national network based on the simple idea of providing free meals during school holidays for the families who qualify for it in term-time. There are dozens of centres around the country, and we're hoping to get it established in Yeovil.

Make Lunch run 'discovery' sessions for people who want to know what it's all about, and training sessions for people ready to get started. These are running locally on 18-19th October, details are here.

Make Lunch

Such a simple, but brilliant idea

13 weeks a year when 3.5 million children who get free school meals, don't get free meals. 1000s of churches with kitchens and volunteers. Make Lunch.

For anyone wondering how to get started, the Cinnamon Network give micro grants of up to £1k to pump prime community projects like this one.

And if you're not sure about catering quantities, you're in good company, Jesus was rubbish at it. Put him in charge of the kitchen, and there's a trail of leftovers - Cana, feeding of the 5000, Emmaus,....

The Foodbank

Latest cartoon in Dave Walkers current Advent series. Puts me in mind of a line from a church urban fund chap (can't remember his name), that's it's all very well pulling people out of the river, but we also need to ask why people are falling in in the first place.

ObesiTV, New Digital Channel for a Bigger Britain

Seizing on post-Christmas-turkey guilt and news that obesity rates in the UK are rising, there are rumours that Rupert Murdoch will soon launch the first UK digital TV channel devoted entirely to British people consuming calories. Early pitches for programmes include:

Downton Flabby: the cumulative effect of sitting around chatting all day, a 7 course meal every night, and having everything done for you by servants, finally catches up with waistlines of the Grantham household.

8 out of 10 Fats: don't know your sub-cutaneous from your polyunsaturates? Don't worry, neither do we, so we'll settle for Jimmy Carr insulting overweight people instead. Remember, offence is never given, only taken, at least that's what the comedians union said.

MidSomerfield Murders: things turn nasty in the biscuit aisle as stocks run low on cut price chocolate digestives.

Coronation Chicken Street: The Rovers Return is taken over by a multinational chain of sandwich bars.

Constipation Sweet: educational programme in the guise of a soap opera, suggesting some pioneering forms of weight loss.

Feastenders: The food runs out in Albert Square, so everyone is miserable. Actually, to be honest, they were miserable already.

Doctor Who Ate All the Pies?: the 'souffle' story arc reaches its climax as the Doctor saves the universe by turning the TARDIS into a giant oven and cooking all the Daleks. There is talk of a new spin-off series based in Rotherham, Time Lard.

Total Pigout: Contestants eat their way through obstacles made entirely of food, whilst Richard Hammond makes fun of them from a studio 7000 miles away.

Top Beer: the presenters are trapped by rising floodwater in a Devon pub, but a local finds a solution in The Hobbit - each one of them must drink an entire barrel of ale, then they can each be sealed into an empty barrel and floated off downstream to freedom. As they float away, the presenters are sure they can hear the sound of raucous laughter behind them followed by a speedboat going in the opposite direction.

Top of the Pop Tarts Not sure this is a food programme?

Dragons Bun: brave entrepreneurs try to persuade Duncan Bannatyne to give them a free cake from one of his front-of-gym cafes.

You have consumed 8.2 calories by simply reading this post, round it up to 10 by suggesting more shows...... Or enter our 'guess the weight of the blogger' competition!

background reading.

Gutsy Faith

The BBC has a piece today about the role of the stomach in emotions and mood

all those neurons lining our digestive system allow it to keep in close contact with the brain in your skull, via the vagus nerves, which often influence our emotional state.

For instance when we experience "butterflies in the stomach", this really is the brain in the stomach talking to the brain in your head. As we get nervous or fearful, blood gets diverted from our gut to our muscles and this is the stomach's way of protesting.

Which suggests that the Greeks were right to locate the emotions in the bowels. About the only word I stil remember from learning New Testament Greek at college is splanchnathizomai (or something like that), meaning 'his bowels turned over'. It's translated as 'moved with compassion' in modern Bibles, but that's a pale shadow of the visceral and literally gut-wrenching emotions experienced by Jesus, among others.

Thinking more about sport and peak performance, the stomach seems more and more important: control of diet and of mood are vital. And I'm now thinking back over large parts of my Christian formation which seemed to assume that the brain was the only organ we had. Enough knowledge, enough truth, and behavioural change and Christlikeness would automatically follow. That now seems like the pastoral equivalent of Quantitative Easing. The Bank of England's pumping of money into the economy to stimulate growth has been described as 'pushing string' - yes you're doing something, but the link between cause and effect is very weak.

Legend speaks of a new vicar, who preached a very good sermon on his first foray into the pulpit. The congregation made approving noises afterwards. The following week he preached....exactly the same sermon. And again the week after that. Finally someone plucked up the courage to ask him why he was preaching the same sermon every week and he replied "as soon as people start doing the things I encouraged them to do in this sermon, I'll come up with something else." Our knowledge is way out of proportion to our obedience, and obedience is what counts: "we know that we have come to know him if we obey his commands...this is how we know we are in him: whoever claims to live in him must walk as Jesus did." (1 John 2:3-6)

One of our biggest local discipleship groups is Weight Watchers, a fellowship which meets to learn, encourage, hold one another to account, and be motivated to fight the good fight against the flab. It works. Why? because it pays close attention to behaviour, to the body, to how people feel about their bodies, and assumes that people are there because they want to change. The accountability is also key.

So maybe our preaching team needs a few weeks observing Weight Watchers, to see if there's a better route to discipleship and obedience than simply 'exhorting', and speaking only to the brain. Talk to the bowels, 'cause the brain's full.

Jesus Christ, Masterchef

Considering he spent most of his working life in the building trade, Jesus seems to have turned out as a decent cook. I'm not sure his judgement of quantities was quite so good - perhaps that's why he needed people like Matthew and Judas around, with an eye for detail and cost.

Wedding at Cana - great wine, but late on in the feast, and far too much for the guests to get through.

Feeding of the 5000 - 'they all ate and were satisfied' and there were still 12 baskets of leftovers.

Breakfast by the lake in John 21 - Jesus cooks breakfast for the disciples, invites them to come and join him, but still needs 'some of the fish that you've caught'.

This cavalier attitude to food spills over into the parables: banquets are ordered and prepared before the guest list is fully known, fatted calves are slaughtered for waster relatives. And, like the Tiger Who Came to Tea, Jesus didn't have a problem inviting himself to people's houses for dinner (Zaccheus) or inviting the disciples to turn up with no food in strange places on his account and expect to be fed (Luke 10).

All completely irresponsible. Doesn't he know there's a recession on?

The Big Lunch, Sunday 3rd June: What Will You Bring?

The Big Lunch. Our local one is Sunday 3rd June, from 12.15pm at Abbey Manor Community centre. Bring food, entertainments, drink, yourselves, your neighbours, whatever. And a tin of something for the Lords Larder foodbank.

By the way, if you're thinking 'it's getting a bit late to organise something', we only got into gear a week ago...

Queens Diamond Jubilee: Say Thankyou and Tuck In

A couple of simple, but very good ideas for local churches to mark the Diamond Jubilee later this year:

The Big Jubilee Thankyou - neat twist on the book of condolence concept, but instead you have churches and cathedrals open all round the country with a thankyou letter to the Queen, and the chance for people to add their own words.

The Big Jubilee Lunch Sunday 3rd June, during the Jubilee weekend. Basically a big community party with lots of food. Around 2m went to a Big Lunch last year, and in the light of what I posted yesterday about community and belonging, it sounds like an ideal way to bring a neighbourhood together.

Ht Start the Week

church on the streets

What would happen if the church went out onto the streets on a Sunday morning, and gave stuff away....? One church in East Anglia set up a tab behind the counter at the local Greggs bakery, and gave away 'free hugs' to passers by....

While we are merrily hugging people on Sunday morning, people also encounter a grace gift as they stand at the till ready to pay for their food at the bakery just behind us. Some people (but not a lot) come out to express their thanks. Others decline the offer and ask that the gift is used for people who need it more than they do. The ladies working in Greggs do a great job as evangelists. “would you like the Church to pay this for you?” I hear the assistant manager ask people as one after the other people come to pay.


After a couple of hours I take a break from hugging and call in at the local tattoo shop to catch up with the staff and they ask what I’ve been up to. The owner, a loving young man is touched by the simplicity of showing love to people that he thrusts £20 into my hand to refresh the money supply behind the counter of Greggs.

After giving more dosh to the staff to use to offer people a free gift I direct some guys off the streets who are homeless to choose their lunch. They express their gratitude as they leave Greggs with a hearty lunch each… Courtesy of a man who owns a tattoo shop and served by Greggs staff who explain that their lunch is a gift from the church.

more at be the light

apologies to anyone who read this before 9.30 and couldn't make sense of it, the paragraphs are now in the right order!!

A Different Kind of Banking

A couple of great community initiatives worth highlighting:

Streetbank: what Dave Walker describes sounds like the way neighbourhoods used to operate (maybe some still do?), but 'Streetbank' sounds a bit funkier than 'organised sharing'. It's a local website for lending things to one another, so slightly different from Freecycle, which is a local website for giving things away instead of throwing them away.

Cardiff Food Bank set up a year ago to provide food to people who'd otherwise go without (a recent visiting speaker told us of a home visit to a family where all the food in the house was a tub of margarine and a bottle of ketchup). There's something similar in Yeovil, the Lords Larder, which works by collecting food from collection points around the town (churches, businesses etc. ) and then giving out food parcels to local households (nearly 2000 people last year). The Cardiff setup does something similar, but also goes straight to the supermarkets, and quite succesfully too.

World Fat Map

This is a redrawn global map based on food consumption. It's not quite as bad as the one below, based on military spending, though the top bloaters are pretty much the same suspects.

Shallowfrozenwater explains more.

"In 2006, the World Food Program produced, but never publicly released, a map charting food consumption. Dubbed the “Fat Map,” it shows where the world’s calories go. Nations grow or shrink based on how much the average person eats. Depending on your perspective, it maps starvation or overeating.

The mis-distribution of food goes deeper than even the “Fat Map” implies. In India, for example, more than 300 million overweight people coexist with another 300 million who starve. Chronic diseases like diabetes and heart disease that often stem from overeating are growing at a far faster rate in developing countries than in the more prosperous West.

I take it everyone is ok with this?

Store Wars

In case you missed it (suddenly lots of interest following the X Factor) here's my post on Robbie Williams latest offering 'Bodies', and all the religious stuff in the lyrics. Meanwhile...




"Search your peelings Cuke"

If this doesn't get your kids eating organic veg, nothing will. Love what they've done with Chewbacca and Yoda.

Review of Marcus Brigstocke's 'God Collar' show later today, saw him last night in Yeovil. V good and v provocative.

Fridgehenge

Just down the road from Stonehenge, a new 'monument' made from 30 recycled (i.e. second hand) fridges, put up for the Equinox as a monument to organic farming. No, I couldn't see the connection either. Full story here.

It will be taken down on 29th September, presumably to stop absent minded bulls doing themselves an injury if they try to mate with it.

Harvest Resources

If you're after some resources for Harvest assemblies, services etc., there's a good collection at farming matters. Or try the Arthur Rank Centre, who have lots of stuff. This reflection is from the farming matters site:

Harvest Dreams
Tread softly because you tread on farmers' dreams.

Of what does a farmer dream?
In the U. K.Of a rich harvest?
Of a good price for the crop, covering costs with something left over.
Of enough capital to see him through the bad times.
Of security - for himself and his family.
Of a good well-managed farm to pass on to his children, as his father passed it to him.

It may be easier to ask ‘what does a farmer fear?’
Because fear of failure is ever present!
Fear of too little rain - or too much.
Fear of rain and wind spoiling a good crop.
Fear of low prices for his produce, falling bank balances and an overdraft refused.
Fear of sickness or injury - how will my family cope without me?

And all these apply in the world wide farming communityalong with other fears:
-Fear of total crop failure.
Fear of an invasion of locusts, leaving just bare earth where there was a green field.
Fear of drought - lasting for months not just a few weeks.
Fear of ‘picky’ buyers for the crop - refusal could mean disaster.
Fear of starvation:- no rain, no grass, no cattle, no crop, no sales.
Nothing for tomorrow.

And for the the ‘consumer’?
Do you remember the fuel shortage in September 2000?
Have you ever seen a Supermarket with no food on its shelves?
Our food supply appears secure.
If the buyer does not like one farmer or country he can make a deal elsewhere.
And it is so easy for us with our own ‘dream’ of cheap food to tread on the dreams of others!

The prophet Isaiah expressed God’s indignation
when he spoke of ‘Grinding the face of the poor’. (Isaiah 3 v. 15)
Love for our neighbour can be expressed
in treading very softly and carefully in our choice of food.
A wise choice will mean fewer ‘food miles’,
‘Fair Traded’ imports
and a fair return for the primary producer where-ever they may be.
An unwise choice can cause irreversible damage to God’s world and farmers everywhere.
In buying food - ‘Tread softly for you tread on farmers’ dreams!’

©2005 T.W. Brighton You are free to use this but please acknowledge copyright

The Work Experiencer Speaks!

Today is a historic day. St. Aidan to Abbey Manor has its first guest blogger.............


Well good morning all it is a pleasure to be David's First guest blogger.

I'll introduce my self first I am another David and i am on my work experience with David it the first day of my second week and I'm feeling rather good about it as i have a rather interesting week ahead and last week never went to timetable so who know what could happen!!!

I chose to go round with David for my two weeks as everybody else was going off to school and major business and i thought to myself:
'David you need to go and do something that you will never get the chance to experience'
So i look on the work experience list and there was nothing that interested me that would give this once in a lifetime opportunity then i decide to think out side the box and i came up with following around a vicar then all i had to do was decide which one to ask. I came up with a list of vicars who i know worked the walking distant then chose the closest!
'JOKE'
I choice the vicar that i thought i get on best with and the one that i felt would be the most varied in day to day life so i chose David!

So far the job has been very interesting and i am enjoying it i have had a range of task to do which is quite enjoyable and have meet numerous people all equal interesting. But i found it hard to wake up early on the Saturday for an 8am leader breakfast but the food was good and i enjoyed the opportunity to pray with older members of my church so so the breakfast was good but tiring.

Also i had the opportunity to help David do some assembles in schools which was interesting as it gave me an opportunity to witness how the younger generation accepts faith. Also later in the week we did a Q & A session with the year 6's and the question they where coming out with quite amazing these kids had spent a long time considering these question and after the session 3 or 4 of them stayed behind for another half hour asking more question about faith and Christianity and how to find God. I was stunned and i just felt Gods presence around these kids.

Well they where the highlights so far an i hope to have a just as exciting second week!

What Kind of Fete Awaits Us?

A couple of local summer fetes coming up, if you're in the Yeovil area:

Friday, 3.30pm, Preston Primary School Fete. I'm on the 'More Tea Vicar?' stall with Ian Green the local baptist minister. No typecasting then. Weather forecast: interesting!

Saturday 10.30 - 1, Holy Trinity Church, Lysander rd. Weather forecast: better, but gusty. Gazebo Health and Safety Warning level 5.

'Make Me a Muslim' Part 2

How nice it was to see the familiar scenery of the Dark Peak as the backdrop to part 2 of this Channel 4 series. You couldn't think of a nicer place to fast and wear a headscarf.

There was slightly less culture clash in this episode, mainly because people were being taken away from their home settings for a weekend retreat in Derbyshire. It was quite an interesting episode on the effects of fasting per se, whatever religious background you come from. The brief summary from the imam: that fasting heightens your senses, opens you to God and brings hidden things to the surface, is something most Christian writers on fasting would agree with.

And there was one moment of great insight from one of the participants: "you don't take on a religion, like some extra bit of yourself, it takes you, it's all-embracing", or something like that, I didn't have the presence of mind to write it down.

There were some very funny bits, like the taxi driver fed up at having a mere jacket potato to break his fast with, so he marched off down to the local pub and found it had stopped serving food. Less funny was the freedom with which the adults swore in front of the children present, and how reluctant they were to simply do what they were asked. I was reminded of my 2 year old refusing to get into his car seat - there comes a point where there ceases to be a point to the struggle, and it's just a battle of wills, the independence of the child against the will of the parent. Not for nothing is it called Islam - 'submission', something which crashes right into the independent spirit of the age.

Another issue which keeps cropping up is clothing for the women. The programme shows a mirror to how much we rely on our clothes to express our personality and to communicate with people. And if 'image conscious' can slide over into an unhealthy obsession with how we look (see the fashion industry, the burgeoning cosmetic surgery sector etc.) then how far do we go for concealment, and hide our 'image' in public, in order to save the fuller part of ourselves for our most intimate relationships? Good question to wrestle with. From infancy our kids are targeted with sexualised fashions - see the Bratz brand for pre-school girls - toxic stuff, and we don't realise it.