Sodium city will end today ... for the participants in this challenge anyway.  I hope Pathway to Potential and others will share ways that we can help lobby for an increase to social assistance and the recommendations made by those who rely on foodbanks.  How do we establish more community gardens in Windsor?  How do we create subsidies for farmers so they can donate fresh produce to the poor?  I can very easily ask members of my congregation and the other Anglican churches to donate money or fresh food to foodbanks instead of soup, beans, and Kraft Dinner wanna-be's.  How do we end the need for foodbanks in the first place?  Notice I said 'need' not simply end the food banks! 

  The gospel story about Jesus feeding hundreds from a couple of fish and some bread transforms our understanding of what's mine and what's yours.  God has given us an abundant region of the world in which to create a life - individuall lives and community life.  Sometimes the lives we create and allow to exist systemically are simply mean and selfish pretending not to notice the vulnerable, those the bible identified as the 'widow and the orphan'.  Still here, but today they eat unhealthy food.  You know, I've always loved the painting of the women picking up grains from a field.  Scripture (Hebrew scriptures) teach farmers to leave bits of the crop on the fields so the poor can gather them.  Do not pull down every plant and remove every scrap from the land.  Sets a precedence for a more just sharing.  I hope those with influence and decision-makers are encouraged to review the ways our society provides a vehicle for healthy living for those who lack the ability to sustain themselves.

  This morning I am tempted not to eat anything rather than eat something that remains from the foodbank.  I just sick of it.

  Archdeacon Kim Van Allen
All Saints' Anglican Church
Downtown Windsor

'Faith, hope, and love ... and the greatest of these is love.'