Yesterday, my church had a casino fundraiser for a project that puts food in backpacks to keep children from going hungry on weekends when they’re out of school. It’s a great project and a great community building event — an all around win. In the county where this is working up to 70% of the kids qualify for free or reduced lunch. What does it mean that our children are hungry? What does it say about us as a culture, as a country?

We had great food for sale to support food for backpacks. For a little casino, we raised a lot of money. We’ve had to breathe deeply and decide to dig deeply this year. People will hunger. There are certainly political responses to that, and they may differ, although I’m not always sure why they should. But the religious response should always be to feed the hungry. The Dalai Lama holds that at the center of every religion is Compassion. Let us therefore care for one another.

It was lovely to leave that event and get invited home to new friends to meet their friends and to be fed the food of the gods… and to leave that event with a check for the first event.

Today I’ll spend at church (still cracks me up!) talking with folk who are finding their church home and later making my home homier and designing better space for eating at home. We all need food at home. Food may be part of what defines home. I’m lousy at that, yet I can work to get better. and as I do, I’ll be in prayer about ways to think about food at everyone’s house. So I invite you to spend some of this precious Sabbath thinking about food at home: yours and everyone’s. Gotta run and make breakfast before church…

Together we can be the difference in the world.