Water When the Well is Dry

Last week came amazing news from India, where the Constitutional Party led by Sonia Gandhi is pushing to declare a constitutional right to food. What an amazing, bold, ambitious idea that could lift millions from misery and signal that their country intends to live up to its ideals.

Here in the US, one might argue that we have implicitly made food a right. We don’t have people routinely die from starvation. We have a host of government programs, from WIC to SNAP, plus local food banks and soup kitchens that feed hungry people. But calling food a right seems unthinkable in our political climate, not because we don’t have the resources but because we don’t have the generosity. We like our poor people humble to the point of humiliation here. We want them to feel they are the ones that are wrong, not the politicians who use food stamp recipients as political punching bags so they can look fiscally responsible to their constituents.

The narrative about givers and takers in our economy continues to bubble up in ways that reveal us to be alienated, anxious, suspicious and pathologically addicted to convenience. We like to fly flags from our front porches but we don’t want to do the work citizenship requires. We claim to care about the earth but won’t give up our cars. We watch the cable news shows or read the blogs of the side that thinks the way we do and won’t listen to any serious political analysis that is not dressed up as entertainment. We say we support our troops but their salaries are so low some of their kids qualify for free school lunch.

 
And it feels like we are living in the wilderness right now, looking back to a time when our country did big things, when we stood for freedom, explored space, conquered diseases, marched for civil rights.  When we built schools, not prisons, when we were inspired by our leaders to dream and dare. The big river of our imagination and ingenuity has dwindled down to pathetic trickle. Maybe because because way upstream we failed to hear the prophetic call to let justice roll down like mighty waters?

We’re waiting for something, someone to inspire us again. Maybe we ought to take an example from India, to tie our political fortunes to those of the poorest and most vulnerable among us. What great things could we do if we decided to stop running in place on treadmills and start moving ahead toward one another, toward the place of common good?