Member Meditations: Food Insecurity Is a Community Disease
Beginning in Lent, CCA is featuring a series of weekly reflections written by CCA members serving in diverse contexts, who are living the vision of the Appalachian pastoral letters within and outside the region. Today’s second contribution in this “Member Meditations” series comes from Deacon Michael Sigwalt , who invites deeper consideration and action regarding hunger.
The northwestern Illinois town I call home is modestly affluent. The US Census Bureau shows our poverty rate is only around six-percent. As director of our area food pantry, I’ve occasionally fielded questions from citizens asking, “Does our town even need a food pantry?” A question which unwittingly illustrates the seeming invisibility of the families our pantry serves.
At the same time, the pantry in our little community is remarkably well supported by the townsfolk. Nationwide, donations at food banks and food pantries are diminishing. Yet our pantry’s donations have continued to pour in. Our charitable donations – both food and money – have continued to remain reasonably strong. So in addition to the doubters, there is a sizable segment of the population wanting to help.
As with most pantries (and food banks), a person is likely to find some aspect of “fighting hunger” – or an even greater ambition – “ending hunger” lodged somewhere in the pantry’s mission statement. But charity, alone, will never “end hunger.” Charity, alone, does not “fight hunger.” Hunger is a symptom of a much more pervasive disease. The disease is poverty. Hunger, or more aptly, food-insecurity, is merely one of the byproducts of poverty.
Our town is surrounded by farmland. The entire county only boasts a population of about 50,000 citizens, on a land mass of 826 square-miles. An average of sixty people per square-mile; a tenth-of-a-person for every square-acre. Most of the empty space finds itself in the form of farmland. How can there be hunger in “America’s breadbasket?” Isn’t there an incredible irony in this dichotomy?
Yet this is the harder question we need to ask ourselves! “Why should there be any hunger when we’re surrounded by farmland?” Or more broadly, “Why should there be any poverty in our so-called ‘land of plenty?’”
We are on a new campaign at our little pantry, trying to instill a stronger sense of empathy which will surpass even the level of charity we’ve enjoyed over the years. We are trying to reestablish a strong and pervasive sense of community. A sense which will help us all realize our community is only as rich as its poorest citizen.
We may look to ourselves and our lifestyles and conclude, “I haven’t hurt anyone.” But then we remain in the cocoons we’ve created for ourselves, failing to really reach out to our neighbors. Failing to make connection. We may give those in need some of our excess to appease their immediate hunger, but never stop and ask why they might be hungry in the first place! We fail to empathize. We fail to remember Jesus’ words when he said, “. . . what you did not do for one of these least ones, you did not do for me” (Matthew 25:45).
We can see all the strife and division created throughout society as a result of “cocooning” ourselves in self-imposed bubbles. This Lent, may we break through our cocoons and learn to truly embrace our neighbors. Let’s form a truly connected community. Let us embrace Jesus in His “distressing disguise of the poor” (Mother Teresa). Then we will hear Jesus say, “Come, you who are blessed by my Father. Inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. For . . . you cared for me” (Matthew 25: 34-36).
Michael Sigwalt is the Director of the Geneseo-Atkinson Food Pantry (www.geneseofoodpantry.org) and a Roman Catholic deacon. Despite having lived in Geneseo, Illinois most of his life, he had been drawn to the Catholic Committee of Appalachia through the Pastoral letters. The need to “. . . respond to the cries of the powerless” (This Land is Home to Me) is not limited by geography, but needs to be employed throughout the country. The Spirit of the Pastoral letters helps guide his leadership in the food pantry.