“For I was hungry and you gave me food”

“For I was hungry, and you gave me food…”

(Matthew 25: 35)

There are tens of thousands of LDS children that are suffering from chronic malnutrition—leading to lifelong cognitive and physical defects, and in some cases contributing to their death. After extensive research and on the ground work for years in South and Central America, Dr. Brad Walker, who founded and operates the Liahona Children Foundation, offers these sobering numbers: “We estimate 80,000 active LDS children suffer from chronic malnutrition, and about 900 die from malnutrition each year.” While these findings may appear inconceivable to many members throughout first world countries, the everyday reality of the acute needs among children in less developed countries is known by those who live with it every day:

“Elder Walker, please go back to Salt Lake City and tell the missionaries who worked here how desperate we are for food and medicines. I have no money to help hungry children in my stake”—plea from a current Stake President in Ecuador

To grasp the magnitude of the need, Dr. Brad Walker has submitted a blog post with By Common Consent as well as a detailed article with Dialogue.

President Kimball understood the need for us to know of the suffering of others when he said: “I do not worry about the members of the Church being unresponsive when they learn of the needy as much as I worry about our being unaware of such needs.”

Fortunately, there is a non-profit organization made up of volunteers who give their time, money and resources to provide direct relief for LDS children suffering from malnutrition. The Liahona Foundation started in 2008 and works with Stake Members (member children can bring a non-member friend) to come and be screened for malnutrition. The Liahona Foundation indicates that on average 25% of the children screened are suffering from chronic malnutrition—some severe. These children (usually about 100 per stake) are then placed on a daily nutritional food supplement for an entire year. The cost for each child is only $50 a year. These vitamin rich daily supplements are critical in their development.

At this point in time, the Liahona Children Foundation has grown in the last year from seven stakes to seventeen stakes/districts. There is a need to not only make sure that the children in these stakes can continue to be funded each year, but that the Liahona Children Foundation can penetrate many other stakes that are in just as desperate need for assistance.

The Liahona Foundation does not want to sensationalize the suffering with pictures of severely malnourished children, but when they see children that attend church on Sunday who are so weak that they cannot hold up their head due to hunger, they know that something must be done now. With each passing day, week, month and year that a child’s nutritional needs are not addressed is time lost. Studies show that if you measure a child’s brain at 3 years of age that was suffering from severe malnutrition as compared to a child who was not, the size of the malnourished child’s brain is literally half the size of a normal child. Just as troubling is the reality that when a child succumbs to the many diseases facing children in less developed countries, that more often than not the primary component in their inability to overcome illness is their malnourishment. Thus, giving a child the proper nourishment is essential in cost effectively enriching and preserving life. There is no greater return dollar for life.

When we feed infants/small children we are truly helping the least among us. They cannot thank us, they cannot know, but their needs are truly the greatest and most urgent in our faith community. Some critics might suggest that if you simply feed the hungry then there is no recognizable return—you just have to keep feeding them over and over again. But there is another way to look at it. While we can and do invest in buildings, temples of granite and steel that give returns in spiritual environments, the investment in a child’s health and development is eternal long after buildings, and even temples crumble. So why invest in feeding children? Because that is what Jesus did. He fed the multitudes for He knew that one child of God is of greater value then all the riches and monuments of the world—no matter their inanimate beauty.

Through inspiration, our church has added a fourth mission of the church—Providing for the Poor. In October, President Uchtdorf in the last Priesthood Session (October 2011) highlighted the needs:

“This very hour there are many members of the church who are suffering. They are hungry, stretched financially, and struggling with all manner of physical, emotional, and spiritual distress. They pray with all the energy of their souls for succor, for relief.”

And then after emphasizing the needs, President Uchtdorf taught us that we must not wait for Salt Lake to solve these massive problems, but that we must take it upon ourselves to find solutions. President Hinckley had previously echoed the same sentiments: “I think there is a tendency among us to say, ‘Oh, the Church will take care of that. I pay my fast offering. Let the Church take care of that.’ We need as individuals…to reach down and extend a helping hand without notice…to give of that which the Lord has so generously blessed us.”

While we cannot solve all the hunger/malnutrition in the world, we collectively have the means to save every single LDS child from the ravages of malnutrition. If each of us even gave a little consistently we would have the ability through the Liahona Foundation to make sure that every child in our faith had the nutrition necessary to live a happy and fulfilling life. Please consider donating and then pledging (whether $5 a month or sponsoring in whole or part with others an entire stake) a consistent amount to the Liahona Foundation.1 Call or write if you want to host a meeting/presentation at your home. The contributions and those who serve with the Liahona Foundation are making a real difference in the lives of these children—we must find a way to reach all the children—and we can.

You can make donations and learn more about the Liahona foundation at http://www.liahonachildren.org/

Ron Madson/ madsonron@aol.com

---

1 The Liahona Children Foundation is a non-profit, tax deductible charity.

Occupy Wall Street/ SLC Stage 2: The Power of a Story

“The story of the Bible, and the power that it possesses, is a better story than any of the power games that we play in our world. We must tell this story, and let it exercise its power in the world. And that is the task of the whole church.”
–N.T. Wright

Church services are starting in just minutes, so I am once again prodding my fifteen year old son to finish getting ready so we will not be too late. The day before we had a brother in our ward open up his orchard to all comers, free of charge, to pick as many apples as we can use. I am waiting in the garage for my son, and seeing the stack of apples I realized that I was never going to be able to eat all those apples—“for there is enough and to spare.” I asked my son if he wanted to try out a different church today. He was more then anxious for a change, so he immediately got dressed and we took off to Pioneer Park.

I had heard rumors that “Occupation” at Pioneer Park was disintegrating, so I was surprised to see more tents than what was there two weeks earlier. The most prominent part of this Pioneer Park community is the food court where volunteers are constantly cleaning and preparing food for the next meal—food given freely to anyone with no questions asked. The food court is where all donations—monetary and in kind are given. We dropped off the apples.

Occupy Wall Street: Approaching Zion

 

                    “One of the great evils with which our own nation is menaced at the present time is the wonderful growth of wealth in the hands of a comparatively few individuals”

                                    –Proclamation on the Economy 1875 from The First

                                   Presidency of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints

                                    Resurrected on October 6, 2011

Today I joined the “Occupation.”  I heard their voices, read their signs/handouts, asked questions, listened and took notes.  There were an estimated 500 to 1,000 that marched on the downtown Salt Lake City business district before occupying Pioneer Park.  I was pleasantly surprised in speaking with four of the key organizers of Occupy Wall Street/SLC (Skylar Hawk, Kora Christensen, Ryan Kane, and Gregory Lucero) that there was what I consider a genius to their protest:  What appears on the surface to be a vague, rudderless, impromptu protest without concrete objectives or party affiliation is in fact a strategy that gives this movement its’ strength and even, ironically, its’ clarity.

What this Occupation/Protest is NOT defines it as much as what is IS.

   —It is NOT part of any political party affiliation.  It refuses to be co-opted by either the Democratic or Republican Party, or for that matter any definable political party.  It IS a movement that seeks to affiliate with the entire political spectrum.  Today at the march there were those that were Tea Partiers (the chant during the march was “Shame on the Fed”) that were stride for stride marching with liberals, progressives, and even Marxists.

—It is NOT beholden to any well funded special interest. It IS a movement that is truly operated and funded by those who are offering their last few dollars, spare jacket, and one person even offered me their half eaten meal.  This group owes no allegiance to anything but their own conscience

—It is NOT a movement centered around an icon/personality.  It IS deliberately leaderless. It seeks to be governed by “Common Consent.”  Each night, like a little Swiss Canton, they engage in direct democratic vote from the little decisions such as where they will march the next day to their collectively stated agenda/goals—and they are fluid and subject to change.  Their voice comes from those governed and not from any top down authoritarian straight-jacket.

–It is NOT a  movement that defines itself by who it excludes.  It seeks to include all humanity.  It IS a movement that wants to include everyone—even the “one percent.”  Bill Gates would fit in as well as the homeless. They are only excluding those who do not exist, namely, corporations and those who chose to exclude themselves from the suffering of humanity.

–It is NOT seeking to compel anyone through the force of authority, money or violence.  It IS using the only force that it has—persuasion.

Speaking Truth to Power: 9/11 My Reflections Ten Years Later

In early 1943, hundreds of German women did the unthinkable—they confronted machine gun wielding Gestapo agents and demanded the release of their Jewish husbands who were part of Hitler’s final roundup of Jews that were to be transported to Auschwitz. Even more remarkable, their Jewish husbands (approximately 1,700 in number) were released.


This incident, now known as The Rosenstrasse Protest, was appropriately dubbed “The Day Hitler Blinked.” This story has, until recently, been largely ignored by Germans because the consensus has been and remains that the average German was powerless against their government and its anti-Semitic policies.


Such thinking appears to be confirmed, as a practical matter, when focusing on individual martyrs such as the German latter-day Saint Helmuth Hubener
 and the occasional principled monk, priest or clergyman who defied his government’s policies of war, torture and genocide. However, what set these acts of civil disobedience apart from the Rosenstrasse protest is that these latter individuals were abandoned by their own faith community, and in particular, their church leaders.  

Then again, the Helmuth Hubeners of this world were responding to a higher authority and an audience unseen in this world.

National Flagophilia

In July of 2007 one hundred words waited anxiously to see if they would be included in the latest edition of the Merriam-Webster dictionary–only twenty were inducted. Some words stood above the crowd such as “ginormous,” “perfect storm” and “smackdown” while others were a credit to our ever increasing cultural advancements–“crunk”, “speed-dating” and our latest entertainment import–“Bollywood.” As if we needed another reason to support Operation Freedom in Iraq, less than 5% of our annual national budget was spent on our Iraqi nation building exercise for which we had a whopping 10% return of the twenty new words added to our lexicon this past year thanks to our investment there— “IEDs” and “flex-cuff.” While the word and the device called “IEDs” can be found everywhere, you might think “flex-cuff” plays a second fiddle to IED’s, but just type in “flex-cuff” with the word “Iraq”on your search engine and you will find that there is a high probability that “flex-cuffs” far outnumber “IEDs”—but I digress.

The Merriam-Webster Dictionary uses the following criteria to determine if a new word should be added: “If a word shows up enough in mainstream writing, the editors consider defining it.” In a previous edition of the Mormon Worker (Volume II) I offered to provide my legal services to Blackwater by providing a novel defense to acts of aggression introduced by our Executive branch called “the one-percent doctrine.” I suggested that innovative “one percent” legal defense could be extended to gangs, domestic disputes, and criminal proceedings. I have had no takers. However, I have lowered my sights to reach what I consider a very obtainable personal benefit from the Iraq adventure that I am hoping Merriam-Webster dictionary people will provide—the introduction of a new word to the American lexicon—“Flagophilia.” I am sending a courtesy copy of the Mormon Worker—surely by now a “mainstream” writing— to the editors of the Merriam-Webster dictionary people which includes this very article you are now reading. This is a start. I would suggest the editors of Merriam-Webster also consider a companion word coined by none other than popular political commentator and television host Stephen Colbert of the “Colbert Nation” who proclaims himself as the premier “flagophile.”

“Flagophilia.” The word “philia” is a common suffix which means “an intense or higher level of love of something.” There are hundreds of words followed by “philia” such as a Francophilia which means a “love of France and French culture” (a word arguably disappearing from America during recent years) to only slightly less savory “philias” such as “necrophilia” for which I will spare the reader from my defining it here. But some things merit “philia” such as flags and nothing has been more evident in our nation the last seven years then a clear demonstration of “flagophilia” by a nation of “flagophiles.” Flagophilia has been around since mankind with the assistance of cartographers decided to divide the earth into multicolored line-divided nations.

However, the United States having a healthy dose of “nationphilia” went as far as institutionalizing a Pledge of Allegiance to our flag in our public schools during the 1950s so we could easily sort out, as recommended by the Honorable Senator Joseph McCarthy, those among us that were real patriots, and not pretenders.

However, since “9/11”—a word that also should be “hung in the rafters” of any dictionary—“flagophilia” has reached a zenith of societal approbation. Since 9/11 the “Red, White and Blue” can be seen everywhere from sport’s apparel to bumper stickers to creative tattoos, and every size from “ginormous” flags at “ginormous” retail stores to the tiny but fashionable flag pin worn on suits by all real patriots. In fact, flag pins have become such a reliable indicator of love of nation that this year when it was noticed that one of the dozens of Presidential Candidates had not been spotted wearing a flag pin there has been an unrelenting “smackdown” as to his faux pas—and every time I see him it is hard to concentrate on the substance of what he is saying when he is not wearing a flag pin.

I became a resident of Alpine, Utah in 2001. On nearly every recognizable holiday if you drive through this small but growing town of 12,000 you will find almost every home with an American Flag neatly placed along the street by the local scout troops. It is quite a sight. Like the politician flag pin, the only homes that stick out are those without a flag. Some quacky psychiatrist might characterize the need to have every home show their flag as community, obsessive compulsive disorder—but I would prefer to call it “flagophilia.”

If ever a word deserves to be placed permanently in our national lexicon it is “flagophilia.” What I wrote above will be sent to the Board of Editors for Merriam- Webster, but since the Mormon Worker addresses “Mormon” matters, I will address two issues that arise among Mormon “flagophiles”: First, do we have a choice as to which flag to adore and secondly, given our polygamous roots, is it possible to love more than one flag at the same time, and if so which flag should be given the highest place on our flag poles?

Honoring our War Dead/The Day After

HONORING OUR WAR DEAD/THE DAY AFTER 

“Die like a man—like your brother did”

–mother in Harlan, Kentucky 

            I am increasingly concerned that we as a nation are not doing all that we can to honor our war dead and those that currently serve in the military, and that we are further failing to make sure that their sacrifice means something that transcends the conflict in which they were/are each engaged.

I have waited to write this the day after Memorial Day. I did not want to interfere with  anyone’s celebration, flag ceremony, or their particular national narrative/platitudes.  But I do want to honor those who have given their service, and sometimes even their health and life for something they believed greater then themselves.

I thought of engaging in my past attempts of satire/parody to make my point (http://themormonworker.wordpress.com/2008/12/13/in-defense-of-blackwater-gangs-neocons/ or (http://themormonworker.net/past-issues/mw-issue-4/national-“floagophilia”)  but this is too important for those lives it affects to trifle with anything but plain language.

Environmentalists say the “Craziest Things.”

Environmentalists say the “Craziest Things”

“Global warming is malarkey…the idea that we human beings have any power over nature is absolute absurdity.”   Rush Limbaugh Show, 9/9/2004

It is high time that we expose the lunatic fringe environmentalists in our nation who have the belief that nature can be affected by our exercising our right to consume the bounty of this world that God has given us as his chosen nation.   Some of these wackos claim that our fast food chains result in intensive demand for meat which in turn leads to deforestation.  Our children can’t even enjoy their Happy Meal without guilt!  They claim we are polluting our atmosphere leading to global warming and consequential flooding—but I ask have they ever watched ice in a glass melt?  Has anyone ever seen it rise and spill over the glass?  They have the arrogance to actually believe that our ever accelerating consumerism such as spending more on such things as cosmetics (or pet food, perfumes, X boxes, etc) each year in the U.S. then most third world nations do on food consumption leads to depletion of “limited” natural resources and pollutions at an irreversible rate. Then socialist organizations like the World Health Organization make irresponsible claims that 3 million people are killed worldwide annually from outdoor air pollution. Yet can they produce even one certified death certificate stating the cause of death being “outdoor air pollution”?   Then there is the offshore oil drilling leading to oil spills.   Everyone was in a panic during the Gulf of Mexico “disaster” but there has not been even one cruise ship cancellation since the spill, and as one leading expert informed us:  “The ocean will take care of this on its own.  It’s  (the oil) as natural as the ocean water is.”  Then there is the whole extinction of species thing.  What is a few species lost compared to the tens of millions that remain?

It is incredibly arrogant for us puny little humans to think that we can destroy the ozone, deplete natural resources, pollute massive oceans, and harm the plant and animal kingdoms.   To believe that our acts of consumerism or mismanagement could affect nature is like making claims that a BB gun could take down an elephant.  All I can say after reviewing all the evidence is that for environmentalists and social progressives to even suggest that us humans and our behavior affects nature is just illogical.  And yet they have no hesitation in saying  the craziest things to promote their agenda.

Fortunately, some of the wisest among us who have pointed out the foolishness of even considering that we can affect nature through consumption, drilling and pollutions, have been able to tell us what we do that REALLY causes nature to harm us:   Hurricane Katrina—abortions and too many not believing in God;  Indonesian Tsunami—clearly this was caused by their bad behavior because nearly every faith had cited several reasons why God chose to destroy 250,000 people all at once: Christian leaders claimed it was to punish “pleasure seekers”; those who “broke the Sabbath”; “tourists having unlawful sex”; and the Indonesian’s failure to convert to Christianity; while an official statement from a leading Muslim Inman recognized the failure of the Muslim communities there to “pray five times a day” as bringing up that nation God’s wrath.  And while God may be slow at times in sending a message through natural disasters, he does not forget— we learned from Pat Robertson that the devastating earthquake in Haiti was connected to a “pact with the devil” that the Haitians made in the 1800s when they revolted against the French colonialism.  So how could we also not see God’s hand in the Japanese Tsunami?  Glenn Beck, global warming debunker, morality savant, and one having the common sense to know that we humans cannot through consumption or pollutions affect the planet,  knew that there was a connection between the Japanese tsunami and what he called the “stuff  we’re doing.”  He articulated the causation of the tsunami so clearly, that we need to cite his very words:

“Whether you call it Gaia, or whether you call it Jesus, there’s a message being sent and that is, “Hey, you know that stuff we’re doing?  Not really working out real well.  Maybe we should stop doing some of it.”

DC 98: The Immutable ‘Rejected’ Covenant

Here is my lecture at Claremont.  My thesis is that we have once again in our generation (as was done in Missouri in 1838)  rejected the Covenant of Peace revelation found in Section 98.  I also argue that like the saints in the primitive church, there came a time when we, like them, pledged our allegiance to our nation and in so doing, our nation’s “enemies” became our enemies.  They deeded their allegiance to the Roman Empire and we have to the American empire. In my opinion my lecture ties directly into the questions posed to Elder Wickham later that night:

and here is the q & a follow up questions

That evening Elder Wickham gave the keynote speech.  He is an emeritus general authority who while serving as a General Authority was the church’s General Counsel.  He is officially emeritus but has retained his position as the church’s general counsel.  He asked that his remarks and the follow up questions not be recorded.  In my opinion two highly pertinent questions were asked and one person pushed back as to the responses to the two questions.   Frankly, I could not tell whether Elder Wickham was speaking on behalf of the church or just expressing his personal opinion in that even though he indicated at times he was speaking personally, at times the statements came across in tone as declarative statements as to our church position/doctrine as to our approach to our nation’s wars–past and present.  Having said that, one question I know was asked was the one I posed in that I had it written down:  ”Elder Wickham in 1095 at the Council of Claremont (amazing coincident that it was held at “Claremont”) Pope Urban II, in an effort to justify the current crusades issued a edict that Christians of their faith were under duty to support their nation in their wars AND that if the soldier engaged in such wars that they (the soldier) were free from sin (War Indulgence).  My question is whether in our mormon faith today we have adopted the same approach to war?”   The answer was from Elder Wickham:  ”Yes.”   Then another conference attendee asked essentially:  ”Do we have any doctrine or teachings, like the Anabaptist/Quaker tradition, that can be used to inform or even influence our decision as to whether to “renounce” any particular type of war?”   The answer was essentially that we are not like those  faith traditions—we are different and do not follow those traditions.  We have a different mission.  Okay.  The push back was from an attendee that took exception to the suggestion that those that are conscientious objectors are NOT following the law, ie, constitutional law.  The attendee emphatically countered that such statement is not true in that CO status is not only legal but constitutional.   The take away for me is that, at least in Elder Wickham’s opinion, the duty to support our nation’s wars overrides any doctrine that we might have.  And that those that do their duty in supporting any of their nation’s wars (no matter whether they are “just” or not) are not  morally responsible in doing their duty to their nation. Of course, Elder Wickham said that we should pursue peace and we desire it–whatever that means as a practical matter I have no clue in that the formula of DC 98 seems to be irrelevant to the policy he stated. My paper and lecture takes the position that if we abdicate that decision to our government then our doctrine is by definition whatever our sovereign defines it to be.  In the case of current hostilities (Iraq and Afghanistan) it is therefore the Bush doctrine articulated in September of 2002 that states that “We” our nation have the right to engage in pre-emptive strikes against any other nation that we believe might harm us in the future to “prevent” their attacking us.   In my opinion the “Constantine Shift” occurred in our faith when we became a state and remains today.  And that Elder Wickham’s position is the position as stated so clearly by President Hinckley in his speech “War and Peace” in April 2003 and is the predominant view in our faith.   There it is.   Elder Wickham did give accounts of great heroic acts in war that he witnessed and goodness in the crucible of conflict.  More on that in the final summary given by Richard Bushman that I will address in another post.

Comments?  Thoughts?  Did anyone that was there interpret the “take away” from Elder Wickham’s words differently?

Could You Qualify as a “Conscientious Objector”?

My father was a WWII veteran that served in Patton’s infantry in the European theatre.  It wasn’t until he was 91 years old before he told me the details of his war experiences—and I am not aware if he told anyone else.  My father was the most Christ-like person I have ever known.  In the fall of 2002 I sat with my father listening to the war rhetoric seeking to justify our nation’s invasion of Iraq.  This man, who rarely showed emotion and spoke seldom, emotionally told me that he did not believe that there was any scripture or Christian principle that would allow us to attack another country as we did in Afghanistan and were about to do in Iraq.  He was certain that in our anger, fear and pride we, like the Nephites of old, were abandoning our covenant with the Lord by being the aggressor. He was hopeful that as a people we would surely denounce these wars.   Knowing his character I am certain that if he were magically young again, he would have applied for conscientious objector status as to our current wars— as he would have in Viet Nam.

Could he have qualified as a conscientious objector?   In 1971, the U.S. Supreme Court addressed the issue as to whether someone could decide which wars were just and, thus, “selectively’ qualify as a conscientious objector.1 The court focused on section 6(j) of the Military Service Act, which provided that “no person shall be subject to service in the armed forces of the United States who, by religious training and beliefs, is conscientiously opposed to participation in war in any form.” Interpreting this statute, the Court ruled that one could not pick and chose which wars were just or not just.  In other words, one’s objection could not be selective (there is proposed legislation seeking to allow “selective” objection).  Therefore, if my father was not also opposed to our involvement in WWII, then he could not qualify as a conscientious objector to Viet Nam, Iraq or Afghanistan.  Then addressing the issue of “religious training and belief,” the Court, while recognizing that some faiths have well developed traditions, teachings, training and beliefs that sustain conscientious objection to “war in any form,” determined that one is required to qualify individually in order to obtain a CO status.   Undoubtedly, if someone, to name a few, is Amish, Jehovah Witness or Seventh-Day Adventist, it is already presumed that they have a well established “religious training and belief” system that they can point to in order to establish their conscientious objector status.

Gabrielle Gifford and the Scapegoat Mechanism

Saturday I spent most of the day with my youngest son—stacking firewood, snow shoeing and working on his English paper on Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet—I was with my son most of the day, but my mind was elsewhere. During the first part of the day I could not stop thinking of the theological significance of the moving and thoughtful post by Tristan Call entitled “My Family is Illegal.” Then when I heard the news of the shooting of Congresswoman Gabrielle Gifford and the incendiary rhetoric that had been directed towards her before this shooting, a melancholy set in.  Maybe it is only for my own therapy, but I feel a need to write something to try to make sense of “all of this.”  Having posting privileges with the Mormon Worker I have an outlet to share what may be jumbled thoughts—so bear with me—I am doing this even before it has time to settle in my mind….

I first watched Franco Zefirilli’s Romeo and Juliet when I was in ninth grade.  I was taken with the movie and Shakespeare.  Since then I watched that movie several times during the last forty years and each time I still tense up just irrationally hoping that this time that somehow, something will happen to allow Romeo and Juliet to not be the victims of their family’s enmity.   But the scourge of hate led inexorably to the loss of both family’s greatest joys for which “all are punished.”