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The Ministry of
Money E-zine
January 2008 |
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Your
Opinion Matters! |
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We invite you to take a brief survey
after you've read through this online
publication. We greatly appreciate your
feedback!
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Rubber Meets the Road: Musings on
the Journey |
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- by Jan Sullivan, MoM Co-Director
Not long ago I was reading and came upon
the following sentence:
"Between knowledge and appropriate
action, abyss." It jolted
me, as truth often does. I read it
again, and again.
My education, life experiences and
spiritual understandings have given me a
good deal of 'knowledge' about a number
of things. I've traveled to many parts
of the world, raised a family, met
people in all types of situations from a
variety of cultures and belief systems,
worked as both a laundress and in
management, and have experienced both
plenty and not nearly 'enough.' Through
study and dialogue I have sought to
understand how our world and its human
inhabitants operate. I've been
especially interested in how our social
systems and structures keep a very few
people steeped in wealth and abundance,
along with the power and privilege those
generate. Much of the the rest of the
world's population lives in varying
degrees of need and despair (i.e. the
50% who live on $2 or less a day),
feeling powerless and voiceless to bring
about change.
I've become acquainted with refugees who
were seeking security from unthinkable
violence and economic destitution. I've
had an opportunity to visit and stay
with families in slums and barrios
across the globe. I've shared meager
meals and dialogue in cardboard and tin
hovels that serve as homes, and sat on
the sides of cots holding war victims,
AIDS patients, lepers, rape victims and
the disabled who've been discarded by
their families and society.
I 'know' . . . have seen the suffering
of inequity with my own two eyes and
touched it with my own two hands.
And you too, through your education,
experiences and spiritual insights have
come to 'know' many things about how the
world works and what you believe the
responses of God's people could be.
And yet how easily we forget what we
know.
. . . Read the rest of Jan's article
Share your personal
insights or comments about this article! |
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Doing Justice to the Memory of MLK's
Faith and Vision |
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- By William H. Chafe,
The Seattle Times, January 16,
2008
 In
the decades since Dr. Martin Luther King
Jr.'s assassination in 1968, politicians
and commentators have honored his
birthday by celebrating his "mainstream"
values - his commitment to the American
Dream, his belief in equal opportunity
and, above all, his hope that, one day,
white and black children might be judged
by "the content of their character ...
[and not] by the color of their skin."
Yet, these celebrations fail to do
justice to King's commitment to social
justice, the complexity of his political
convictions and the profound religious
faith that enabled him to endure racism,
as well as persecution by the FBI. Only
when we understand the full scope of
King's vision of equality can we
appreciate his true legacy.
That legacy begins with the power of
King's faith, which became searingly
personal when, soon after agreeing to
become the spokesman for the Montgomery
bus boycott, he began receiving nightly
phone calls from people threatening to
kill his family.
Read the Entire Article . . .
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South African Pastor and Retreat Leader
Alan Storey's "Manna & Mercy" Retreats |
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 Manna
and Mercy is
the title of a book written by Daniel
Erlander. Using Erlander's book, South
African pastor and retreat leader, Alan
Storey, will take us on a journey from
Genesis to Revelation over the course of the
weekend, with sensitivity to the contexts in
which the scriptures were written and of our
present day.
The Bible is meant to be an instrument of
God to enable abundant life for God's
creation. Yet sadly through the ages it has
been read and interpreted in such a way that
it has been used as an instrument of human
domination and death. It has been used to
cheer on the crusades, support slavery,
advocate apartheid, glorify genocide,
sanction sexism, bless war and worship
prosperity in the face of the poor, to name
just a few horrors of our human history.
During the Manna and Mercy retreat, we will
take a fresh look at scripture through the
interpretive lens of Jesus' life, death and
resurrection and God's overall call for each
one of us to partner with God in mending
this fractured world. The hope is that after
we have done so, our interpretations and use
of the scriptures will be truly liberating
and life-enabling.
Ministry of Money has scheduled two
Money & Faith Retreats with Alan Storey,
one in Germantown, MD at the Wellspring
Conference Center and one in
collaboration with a group of pastors in
Birmingham, Alabama. The retreat
specifics are below.
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April 4-6, 2008
Wellspring Retreat Center
Germantown, Maryland
Registration will begin at 4:00 PM
Friday with dinner at 6:00 PM. The
event will last through lunch on
Sunday.
Cost: $300, which
includes all meals, 2-nights'
lodging, retreat leadership and
program materials.
Registration:
Download the retreat
brochure/registration form by
clicking here.
Complete it and mail to the Ministry
of Money OR
register online at our web site (www.ministryofmoney.org).
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April 11-13, 2008
Woodlawn United
Methodist Church
Birmingham,
Alabama
Registration will begin at
4:00 PM Friday with dinner
at 6:00 PM. The event will
last through lunch on
Sunday.
Cost: $50,
which includes 3 light
meals, retreat leadership
and program materials.This
is a non-residential, UMC
Conference subsidized event.
Dormitory-style beds are
available at the church for
an additional cost.
Registration:
Download the retreat
brochure/registration form
by
clicking here.
Complete it and mail to the
Community Church Without
Walls, 1229 Cotton Ave. SW,
Birmingham, AL 35311
OR register
online by
clicking here.
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Scholarships: There
may be scholarship funds
available for people needing
financial assistance to
participate. Contact Harriet
at the Ministry of Money
office for more information:
(301) 428-9560 or by email
at
harriet@ministryofmoney.org.
Retreat Leadership: Rev.
Alan Storey will facilitate these
retreats, with other leadership
provided by MoM staff and/or board
members.
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Practical Applications:
Cook One Meal, Eat For A Week
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 How
to get a week's worth of delicious, diverse
dinnertime meals in exchange for only one
night of cooking.
When the Betz-Essinger family sits down
for dinner in Birmingham, AL, it doesn't
take the children long to identify the
provenance of their meal. "Is this a
Caroline?" they ask, "or a Leigh Fran?"
Caroline and Leigh Fran are not
brands of frozen dinners-they are the
two friends with whom Ruthann Betz-Essinger
has shared the preparation of weeknight
meals for more than a decade. Ruthann's
children "know how each of us cooks,"
she laughs.
Through an arrangement known as
"cooperative cooking," the friends each
prepare a single, large meal that will
feed all three families, and package it
up. One share goes into their own
refrigerators, and on Sundays, the women
meet at Betz-Essinger's house to give
each other the other two shares. So in
exchange for cooking one meal, each
family gets three meals-which, with
leftovers, is often enough to provide
dinner for every weeknight.
Read The Entire Article . . . |
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Reflections from Dr. Martin Luther
King, Jr. |
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 "A
nation that continues year after year to
spend more money on military defense
than on programs of social uplift is
approaching spiritual death."
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"A genuine revolution of
values means in the final analysis that our
loyalties must become ecumenical rather than
sectional. Every nation must now develop an
overriding loyalty to mankind as a whole in
order to preserve the best in their
individual societies.
This call for a worldwide fellowship
that lifts neighborly concern beyond one's
tribe, race, class, and nation is in reality
a call for an all-embracing and
unconditional love for all mankind. This oft
misunderstood, this oft misinterpreted
concept, so readily dismissed by the
Nietzsches of the world as a weak and
cowardly force, has now become an absolute
necessity for the survival of man. When I
speak of love I am not speaking of some
sentimental and weak response. I am not
speaking of that force which is just
emotional bosh. I am speaking of that force
which all of the great religions have seen
as the supreme unifying principle of life.
Love is somehow the key that unlocks the
door which leads to ultimate reality. This
Hindu-Muslim-Christian-Jewish-Buddhist
belief about ultimate reality is beautifully
summed up in the first epistle of Saint
John: "Let us love one another, for love is
God. And every one that loveth is born of
God and knoweth God. He that loveth not
knoweth not God, for God is love." "If we
love one another, God dwelleth in us and his
love is perfected in us." Let us hope that
this spirit will become the order of the
day."
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"I am convinced that if we are to
get on the right side of the world
revolution, we as a nation must undergo
a radical revolution of values. We must
rapidly begin...we must rapidly begin
the shift from a thing-oriented society
to a person-oriented society. When
machines and computers, profit motives
and property rights, are considered more
important than people, the giant
triplets of racism, extreme materialism,
and militarism are incapable of being
conquered."
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Foreclosed: State Of The Dream 2008 |
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from the United
for a Fair Economy report, Foreclosed:
State of the Dream 2008
For tens
of millions of people in the US, owning
a home is the essence of the American
dream, representing as it does economic
achievement and some measure of
security. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.,
would undoubtedly agree, and he aspired
to make the dream more broadly
available-to people of color as well as
Whites, to poor people as well as rich .
. .
At the beginning of the
twenty-first century, millions of people
at the lower end of the economic
spectrum face a new obstacle, one that
has spread its tentacles across the
country and across the globe.
The subprime lending crisis has occurred
because a financial product intended for
limited use by a limited number of
people has been parlayed into another
ill-fated bubble by some mortgage
lenders lacking in integrity, foresight,
and any vestige of civic concern. The
crisis has ruined many economic lives
and many communities. It has cost the
financial institutions that underwrote
massive numbers of shaky subprime loans
hundreds of billions of dollars. There
is talk of a government bail-out. These
losses in turn triggered an ongoing
global economic crisis, the end of which
we have not yet seen. And the next
chapter in the subprime crisis could
well be a deep US economic recession.
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The Poor Get Diabetes, The Rich Get Local
and Organic |
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From the War on
Poverty to new farmers' markets,
a food expert tackles America's
dangerous dietary split.
- by Mark Winne, posted on
Alternet,
January 9, 2008
The following is an excerpt from
Mark Winne's new book,
Closing the Food Gap: Resetting
the Table in the Land of Plenty.
As a class, lower income
people have been well
represented in some of the
best-covered food stories of our
day, particularly hunger,
obesity, and diabetes. As these
issues have faded in and out of
the public's eye over the last
25 years, another food trend was
rapidly becoming a national
obsession -- namely, local and
organic.
 At
about the same time that Berkeley
diva Alice Waters was first showing
us how to bestow style and grace on
something as ordinary as a local
tomato, the Reagan administration's
anti-poor policies were driving an
unprecedented number of people into
soup kitchens and food banks. And as
organic food advocates were putting
the finishing touches on what was to
become the first national standard
for organic food, supermarket chains
were nailing plywood across their
city store windows bidding farewell
to lower income America.
Organic food and agriculture had
barely climbed out of the bassinet
in 1989 when 60 Minutes ran
its now famous Alar story. The
exposure it received before 40
million television viewers ignited a
firestorm of consumer reaction that
eventually made organic food the
fastest growing segment of the U.S.
food industry.
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Keeping the Dream
Alive on the Border |
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by Father Michael Seifert,
AlterNet, January 16, 2008.
Texas
produces more wealth than entire
nations,
yet it neglects its own.
If Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. were alive
today, he'd be marching in the Rio Grande
Valley. Forty years after his death, it is
here that his lovely dream of equality for
all God's children is suffering to be born.
King rightly named poverty as a blight on
the American Dream. And it would test the
imagination to find an area of our country
poorer than the Valley. We fail every social
indicator of well being: access to medical
care, employment, affordable housing and
high school graduation rate. My own
community, Cameron Park, has a per capita
income of $4,135 -- less than that of
Guatemala.
Yet we live in Texas, one of the
wealthiest entities in the world. Texas
produces more wealth than entire nations.
But Texas doesn't take care of its own. The
heartbreaker is that most of those forced to
suffer the stingy misery of Texas' poverty
are children.
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Ministry of Money Calendar of Events |
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January 25-26, 2008
Money & Faith Retreat
First Presbyterian Church, Lancaster, PA
Ministry of Money Board
Meeting
Wellspring Conference
Center, Germantown, MD
March 28-April 11, 2008
Pilgrimage of Reverse
Mission to
ISRAEL/PALESTINE
Trip Leader: Harriet
Taylor
Registration:
NOW!!!!
Cost: $TBD
Contact: Harriet Taylor
(301) 428-9560 · email:
harriet@ministryofmoney.org
Download
Trip Flier
April 3-4,
2008
Ministry of Money Board Meeting
April 4-6, 2008
Manna &
Mercy with
South
African
pastor and
retreat
leader Alan
Storey
Wellspring
Conference
Center,
Germantown,
MD
Cost: $300
Contact: Harriet
Taylor
(301) 428-9560 ·
email:
harriet@ministryofmoney.org
April 11-13,
2008
Manna & Mercy with South African pastor and retreat leader Alan Storey
Woodlawn United Methodist Church, Birmingham, AL
Cost: $50 (non-residential and UMC Conference subsidized event)
Contact:
Harriet
Taylor
(301)
428-9560
·
email:harriet@ministryofmoney.org
June 13-27, 2008
Pilgrimage of Reverse Mission to KENYA
for Georgetown University Faculty & Staff
Trip Leaders: Jan Sullivan and Shari Bitney
CLOSED EVENT
August 2008
Pilgrimage to HAITI
Trip Leader: Jan Sullivan
Cost: $TBD
Contact: Harriet Taylor
(301) 428-9560 · email: harriet@ministryofmoney.org
Retreat Brochure & Dates Coming Soon!
October, 2008
What Does Sabbath Economics Mean for Your Household?
with retreat leader Ched Myers
Seattle, Washington
Cost: $TBD
Contact: Harriet Taylor
(301) 428-9560 · email:harriet@ministryofmoney.org
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$cholarships May Be
Available |
There may
be scholarship funds available for
people needing financial assistance to
participate in Ministry of Money
Retreats and Pilgrimages. Contact
Harriet at the Ministry of Money office
for more information: (301) 428-9560 or
by email at
harriet@ministryofmoney.org
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Ministry of Money | 11315 Neelsville Church Rd. |
Germantown | MD | 20876
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