BREAD MONEY – SOME SCATTERED THOUGHTS
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Every Sunday afternoon about 4:30
I drive to the Sunshine Bakery in Philomath to buy a loaf of whole grain organic
bread. Bill’s bakery is only open on Sunday. He’s figured out how to make
his business and life get along on one day a week. He rides a bicycle with
trailer to the bakery. He takes his unsold loaves back to Corvallis to sell
at the CoOp.
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I pay $4 a loaf. It’s a price that will
surely change as Bill’s costs for flour rise. “They’re trying to turn
your bread into ethanol.” I noticed on the pump that our gas is 20% ethanol.
And my gas costs close to $4. The fight is on between world food security
and national energy security. If one is to have priority, which is it? Some
scientists are saying, “We need to feed our stomach before we need to
feed our cars.” We don’t like the choices.
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There’s a great verse in Isaiah
(55:2) that asks, “Why do you spend your money for that which
is not bread?”
Let me pause to remind us that any use of an isolated quote, whether
from Jesus or a politician, or a politician’s pastor, is likely to misrepresent
the intended thought. I admit that this text is a sound bite from a larger
segment with a different meaning from the point I am making. I’ll try to
come back to it.
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Many people are no longer saying
“fill ‘er up!” (In Oregon we don’t pump our own gas). They have rent or
a mortgage. They have groceries. They have utilities. So they ask for $10
worth. Sometimes only $5. How high can it go before there’s not money enough
for bread?
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Our county has the lowest unemployment
rate in the state, yet the food banks are almost totally emptied every
week. It’s not getting better and won’t. I talked to a man loading the back
of his pick-up with the left-over bread from a major grocery store. He picks
up bread twice a week from this and other stores. He delivers it to the food
bank. He said it all gets used. “There’s lots of hungry people out there,”
he said. “And around the world,” I thought. People are having to make
choices they don’t want to make.
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I wonder whether we know how to stop
spending for things we don’t need. Do we know the difference between
what we actually need and what we don’t? Could my grandchildren, or any children
these days, live without a cell phone or an iPod or a computer? Or a CD player
or TV or a special sound system for their car? Even for one day! Is there
any thought given to saving or contributing a bit to others? What if they
were in the part of the world that has to choose between bread and gas?
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My Los Angeles years allowed times
to interact with people “across the tracks.” One of the organizations I was
involved with was the Watts Urban Redevelopment Corporation. I think it originated
in the small 92nd Street Christian Church. Our mission was to find old houses
to refurbish and sell to low income people. I met some low income people
and once asked the pastor of that church what the biggest problem for his
people was. He didn’t pause a second before saying “Inflation.” What
if the price of bread doubles?
Inflation squeezes the poor like a boa
constrictor. The same money has to do more. Choices have to be made. Gas
may be out of the question, unless it is absolutely required to get to a
job. If it’s out of the question at $4 what will it be like at $10?
The squeeze
gets tighter.
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My parents felt the squeeze during
the Great Depression. We had a house in the Mt Baker District of Seattle,
looking out over Lake Washington toward Mercer Island. I was only a toddler,
but I remember the hardwood floors and nice back yard and long stairs down
to the street. It was my parent’s first house. A day came when dad’s job was
terminated. Another day came and we moved out of that house. They call it
foreclosure. It hurts and many shared that plight. It apparently was a choice
between owning a house and having bread.
I know that we ate bread. That need
was met. I can remember living in eight different houses during my first
ten years. It wasn’t until that eighth house that our family had a house
we weren’t renting. I wonder whether very many today would think it possible
to live without a refrigerator or washer and dryer or a telephone? In the
last 100 years luxuries have become necessities. And energy security
trumps food security.
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Another quick look at the context
of Isaiah’s words shows us that he’s talking about another hunger.
“Ho, everyone who thirsts, come to the waters; and he who has no money,
come, buy and eat!
Come, buy
wine and milk without money and without price.
Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread, and your labor for
that which does not satisfy?...Incline your ear, and come to me; hear, that
your soul may live…”
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Could it
be that our gas problem and bread problem is actually a soul problem? Don’t
our life-style choices that have no thought for consequences diminish our
souls?
─ Art Morgan, May 1, 2008
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