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Jesus and his people were on overload. They had been working day and night, healing the sick and helping whoever needed help. Read more →
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The invitations were elegant. They announced a hunger banquet. And as soon as people began receiving these invitations, I began getting calls. Read more →
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It’s possible to be surrounded by abundance and never notice. Read more →
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“You were ravenous right from birth!” This is the story I was told through my whole childhood. Read more →
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For connection? Are you looking for ways to feed your mind and heart and soul? Read more →
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If, like me, you are fortunate enough to have a refrigerator and the means to fill it, it is possible that you have a tendency to stand in front of the open fridge, staring at the contents and wondering what there is to eat. Read more →
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You can listen to audio recordings of Quest Monthly, read back issues or get electronic versions of the text to share with friends (and much more) at questformeaning.org Read more →
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Sure, there are grand cathedrals
that proclaim God’s glory to the heavens, Read more →
May 2019
There are people in the world so hungry that God cannot appear to them except in the form of bread. ―Mahatma Gandhi
There is an old and often told story of a child walking along a beach, picking up stranded starfish and throwing them back into the ocean. In this story, an adult encounters the child and proclaims, “you can’t save them all. Your work doesn’t make a difference.” Replies the child, continuing in her labor “I made a difference in this one’s life. And this one’s life. And this one’s life.”
It is a powerful story about the importance of small acts.
And.
And it is cultural cover for a big lie. If that child doesn’t look beyond the stranded starfish to the re-graded shoreline, she cannot realize that the starfish are being stranded because the new vacation development changed the inflow and outflow of the tide. She cannot see the new drainage line funneling the city’s contaminated runoff into the sea to which she is returning the starfish.
Beloveds, let us commit to looking beyond the need presented in front of us and ask “why is this happening? What is going unquestioned in the larger system that allows people to be hungry, wetland to be destroyed, water to become scarce?”
And while we feed those who are hungry, let those of us who are not hungry recognize that we, too, are benefitting from a system that creates hungry people. Let us wonder, together, why this is – and then begin to work with those who are hungry to change the system that creates hungry people.
It is time for a culture shift, beloveds.
And.
And we are called to be a part of the change. Let the organizing begin.
Quest for Meaning is a program of the Church of the Larger Fellowship (CLF).
As a Unitarian Universalist congregation with no geographical boundary, the CLF creates global spiritual community, rooted in profound love, which cultivates wonder, imagination, and the courage to act.