Are You Hungry?

Today on page 5A of our Charleston Post and Courier newspaper reads a headline, “1 billion suffering from hunger”. It lies next to a ¾ color advertisement from one of the 2 most expensive furniture stores in the region announcing “Casual Lifetime Furniture” and a picture of a dining room set selling for $2999. I read this while I sat in my modest but comfortable home in a safe neighborhood enjoying my central air conditioning as I ate my breakfast of cornflakes, juice and cold milk.

I wondered then if I was the only person struck by the irony of the placement of these two items.

Yesterday I talked with Dr. Charlene Pope at the Medical University of SC’s College of Nursing about what direction I should take as I think about trying to enter the PhD program at that school. My interest has evolved into healthcare institution communication among caregivers and I don’t want to focus on America but on a more global scale. Perhaps that’s why my attention went to the headline and I stayed on to read the article.

Are we so calloused to headlines that we don’t take time to read the content? Does anyone give any pause when they are exposed to situations very foreign to our existence? And if we do take a minute, does anyone do something more than ‘cluck’ their tongue and move on? What if we sent one penny to an agency to buy food and distribute it. What if everyone in the world with any disposable income donated one penny to an agency we trusted to feed children and women and men who were dying, DYING, because they couldn’t have a breakfast. Couldn’t have a meal for days and weeks and then…

Would it feed our souls if we fed someone else?

Are you hungry today?