| by Greg Sellnow
Post Bulletin When
Sister Iria Miller takes part in the CROP Walk on Oct 14
she'll be walking for the hungry, but not necessarily
the poor.
Poor, she learned while spending 71/2 years teaching in
the poverty stricken Appalachian region of Kentucky, is
a relative term.
"The more I got to be with these people, the more I
respected them," said Sister Iria, a Franciscan nun at
Assisi Heights in Rochester. "I asked a woman there who
had five children how she got by and she said, 'As long
as I've got flour and lard and beans, we can make do.'"
Sister Iria, who grew up on a farm near Waseca, said
people in Appalachia seldom complained about being
hungry. To put supper on the table, they tended gardens,
gathered wild greens that grew along the roadside and
picked blackberries in the woods.
"They were so sincere and prayerful, and yet they had so
little," she says.
She didn't feel sorry for them, because they didn't feel
sorry for themselves. That mid-life experience is one of
the things that motivated Sister !ria to get involved in
the CROP (Communities Responding to Overcome Poverty)
fundraising effort in 1998 when she was living in
Winona.
She said it helped her to appreciate what she had and
the importance of sharing wealth.
This is the 50th anniversary of CROP, which started out
as an interdenominational Christian program to help feed
the hungry in post-war Europe and Asia. In those first
years, CROP organizers primarily shipped grain to
starving and hungry people abroad.
Since then CROP has grown into a program that includes
all religions and contributes to those in need of help
not only abroad but also in the United States. Local
organizers say that 25 percent of the money from this
year's fundraiser will go to the Channel One food shelf.
Another 25 percent of the total will be used to help
those affected by flooding in Rushford and other
southeastern Minnesota communities.
The remaining 50 percent of the proceeds will be
contributed to Church World Service, which works with
organizations in 80 countries to address the causes of
hunger.
|
I could go on and
on about how well most of us have it in this country and
in this community. I could talk about how kids - mine
included - throwaway more food on their plates in a day
than some children in parts of Africa eat in a week. I
couldspout statistics on how much food just $5 would buy
for a nursing mother in Darfur. But you know all that
because you're educated and informed. In fact, you're
very rich, really, by Third World standards.
Instead, I'll just ask you to think about all of the
exercise most of us make for ourselves in this overfed
nation to keep us from gaining weight.
"People walk a lot these days anyway," Sister Iria
points out. "Why not walk for a good cause."
Greg Sellnow's columns appear Tuesdays and Satrudays.
He can be reached at 2857703 or bye-mail at
sellnow@postbullletin.com. Check out his blog, "Losin'it,"
on postbulletin.com
Used with Permission |
