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We pledge 0.07% of our Budget to development work on behalf of the Millennium Development Goals.
A task-force is coordiating our parish's support of a hands-on project in Belize. More info about that is available at http://www.peacework.org/uabelize/
Here is an article from task force chair Bob McMath about MDG's and Lent:
ANTICIPATING LENT:
HOSPITALITY AND THE MILLENNIUM DEVELOPMENT GOALS
Bob McMath
Over the years the brothers of the Society of St. John the Evangelist, an Anglican community in Cambridge, Massachusetts,
have offered the hospitality of their monastery to thousands of visitors. I am fortunate to be among those who have been
blessed by their welcome. So now I am especially pleased to learn that my friends at SSJE have extended their hospitality
around the world to Kenya, receiving as a guest on sabbatical Elphas Wambani, who teaches at an Anglican seminary in Maseno,
and dispatching Brother David Vryhof to express our oneness with sisters and brothers in Kenya and to remind us in the United
States of the great gap between our abundance and their poverty.
“It’s possible,” Brother David writes, “to turn away from this awareness of the disparity between
the rich and the poor in our world. Many of us feel overwhelmed by the widespread poverty, disease, and violence so prevalent
in our world; some of us find it difficult to watch the nightly news. But it’s also possible to turn toward the problem
and to resolve to act.” The community in Cambridge believes that the Millennium Development Goals offer a powerful
way for us to focus our intentions to help the one-fifth of the world’s people who are struggling to live on less than
one dollar per day lift themselves out of poverty.
Episcopalians across the United States agree. In 2003 the General Convention endorses the Goals and made a significant financial
commitment. Later this month Rev. Mike Kinman, executive director of Episcopalians for Global Reconciliation, will lead a
discussion of the MDGs at our own diocesan convention. And here at St. Paul’s discussions of the goals last fall led
some individuals and families within the parish to engage in financial support and of public advocacy for implementation of
the goals, which our government and many others endorsed in 2000. Like the brothers of SSJE, we understand that we must “dream
big” but “start small” if we are to make headway against these seemingly intractable problems.
Here’s a suggestion for some small but meaningful steps. What if in this Lenten season our personal disciplines were
to include weekly reflections on the Millennium Development Goals. (There are seven specific goals and a more global one
that might be considered at the end.) What if those reflections led us to speak to our fellow citizens and ask our elected
representatives to honor the national commitment already made? And what if in our fasting, whatever form it takes, we were
to redirect the modest sums saved toward reliable agencies that are now tackling one or more of the goals?
Then we might hear the lesson from Isaiah appointed for Ash Wednesday in a new light:
Is this not the fast that I choose?
to loose the bonds of injustice,
to undo the thongs of the yoke,
to let the oppressed to free
and to break every yoke?
Is it not to share your bread with the hungry
and bring the homeless poor into your house?
(For information about the Millennium Development Goals as well as thoughts about incorporating the Goals into your own spiritual
practice see the website of Episcopalians for Global Reconciliation at www.e4gr.org.)
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