A Bit on Hunger....Words from the Director of the World Food Program - and Bob Marley

The article, "Across the Globe, Empty Bellies Bring Rising Anger " - in the New York Times today - took me to contemplations of hunger in our world:

Why are there empty bellies on this planet?
What is the relationship between hunger and poverty?
What is at the heart of poverty?
How can we not have enough? How are the problems of people in Haiti, Cairo, Burkina Faso, Malaysia, the problems of me in St. Paul, Minnesota?
What is it like to go to bed without food? What is it like to be constantly full?
How is hunger related to war?
How is hunger related to love?
How can we know a sustainable and peaceful response to such questions?
Where is Jesus, God, Jah, Love in this?
What are we invited to examine with such stories?
What wealth do I possess?
What privilege am I privy to?
What is my poverty? Where is my hunger? How am I called?
How is this all gift?
What do such stories inspire me to create?
What do we need to be able to hold in order to respond?
How does this call us to some greater consciousness and action?

Okay. Some questions. Here, then, are a line of text from the New York Times article, and a song of Bob Marley's -- as one kind of response to all that is coming forward in my own prayer and contemplation on Hunger and Love.

"Why are these riots happening?" asked Arif Husain, senior food security analyst at the World Food Program, which has issued urgent appeals for donations. "The human instinct is to survive, and people are going to do no matter what to survive. And if you're hungry you get angry quicker."

Bob Marley - Them Belly Full (But We Hungry) Lyrics

Them belly full but we hungry
A hungry mob is an angry mob
A rain a fall but the dirt it tough
A pot a cook but the food no 'nough

You're gonna dance to jah music, dance,
We're gonna dance to jah music, dance,

Forget your troubles and dance,
Forget your sorrows and dance,
Forget your sickness and dance,
Forget your weakness and dance

Cost of livin' gets so high
Rich and poor they start to cry
Now the weak must get strong
They say oh, what a tribulation
Them belly full but we hungry
A hungry mob is an angry mob
A rain a fall but the dirt it tough
A pot a cook but you no 'nough

We're gonna chuck to jah music chuckin'
We're chuckin' to jah music, we're chuckin'

Belly full but them hungry.
A hungry mob is an angry mob
A rain a fall but the dirt it tough
A pot a cook but the food no 'nough
A hungry mob is an angry mob