MedicineSinging™

Stephen W. Emerick Ph.D., M. Div.

1. The Body and its Hungers. Our body hungers – this is something that links us all together, for good or for ill, all around the world. Our well-being depends upon the bodies’ hunger being satiated or quenched. What a wondrous gift it is to have this happen in good ways. How terrifying and destructive when those hungers cannot be satiated, nor the thirst quenched.

Watching the news always reminds us that hunger and thirst comes from famine and drought and conflicts upon the land. It feels as though there will never be peace, whether inside or out! Our very existence is threatened by the diseases, and malnutrition that bad weather and conflicts bring – conflicts among tribes, ethnicities, and countries; conflicts that bring the threat of drought or lack of food; and those very conflicts, droughts, and famines force people to flee their homes. All along the way, they are hoping to find a safer place to live and a habitat where there is enough to eat and drink. Many will die of malnutrition as well as sicknesses born by contaminated waters and disease carried by human waste. 

If we all are kin, all relatives of different colored skins, yet brothers and sisters within – think of refugees and those on migration fleeing hunger and thirst that runs rampant in their nations. Then ask: could it really be true that there is enough food in the world to feed us all? All our relations? All it would take is to see one another without skin in order to find our kin within. Feed us all? If you believe so, perhaps you should answer the call, to Feed My People.

  2.  We hunger for Medical services and the wealth of Health.

The hunger for adequate medical care, safety, and health. When these are met, we consider them signs of immense wealth! Care that is within reach financially or in terms of travel, without which our communities come all unraveled. There is a hunger for community healers and physicians, medicines, and ceremonies to be conducted to heal us and make us well. Civilizations continue to be extant (exist) when food, water, and medical healing are available. Those civilizations (yes, yours and mine) can, without those things, become extinct.

  3. Relationship Hungers

People can become sick from lack of healthy social interaction and relationships. It is one of the ways we make ourselves sick. Depression and anxiety and countless other mental health disorders are associated with this. The risks increase dramatically in war, pandemics, and many forms of abandonment and or abuse and addictions.

The author Thoreau wrote that he had three chairs in his house. He beautifully captured where relationship hungers can reside, but also where they can be healed when all three chairs are in balance. He had one chair for Solitude; two chairs for Friendship and or Love relationships; and three chairs for Community. Wellness depends on the balance of these three. 

Do you spend time in solitude? This is an ancient discipline of meditation and or prayers or ceremony on one’s own. Do you nurture love relationships? Practice daily gratitude and sharing love? Are you connected to community? If you need a new one, where can it be found. If you are in one that means a lot to you, give thanksgiving for all that you have found.

  4. Hunger for Education and Lifelong learning

Those fortunate enough to know privilege and sufficient resources to fund education often take it for granted. Those who do not have such privilege, sometimes will give their life for satiating this hunger: Afghan elementary school age girls, women in many countries oppressed by various forces usually controlled by men – sometimes bring such dreams to an end.

Those of us who can, must take the responsibility not only for our own education and lifelong learning, but also contribute to the education of those less fortunate. Missions and volunteers around the world do this every day, and you can help them keep doing so! Many missions and organizations feed both the body and the mind in their locations. Providing lunches for students is directly linked to the child being able to function at better levels involving cognition and behavioral expressions.

  5. Hunger for a Cosmology that Grounds our Lives

Many hunger and thirst for a sense of meaning and purpose in the world. For most this begins to develop within a certain religious or cultural cosmology -teachings about how the world came about, where it is headed, and where the races will end up. It is a more global belief system presented for consideration.

Often there are divided camps of believers, some more for science and some more for the God of the Bible. No need. To be afraid of exploring and learning that all is God. As Beatrice Bruteau writes: We need a new theology of the cosmos, one that is grounded in the best science of our day…so that all the world turns sacred again.

Beatrice Bruteau, God’s Ecstasy: The Creation of the Self-Creating World, Crossroad Publishing Company, 1997, Page 13.

Whether one is religious, spiritual or no faith at all, the challenge remains. Finding your Cosmology that can be planted and grown in the earth upon which we stand.

  6. Meaning and Purpose: My Personal Part in the Plan of the Planet

On a more personal aspect, our cosmology may include a sense of meaning and purpose – where we fit into the nature of things. Stories, ceremonies, and rituals bring additional focus on who we are and why we are here on this planet. Even more meaning and purpose comes as we are linked to the stories of ancestors and the ancients. Stories serve to link us through space and time to the infinite and timeless, generation after generation.

Finding what our part is in ongoing creation, we can set our intentions upon the sacred path illuminated by the Arc of the Star of Bethlehem as we follow the will of God. Our intention becomes set on the retention of sacred story and sacred sites, and sacred species of which we are a part. Our expression of the meaning and purpose in our lives and those of our kin and world, leads us to actions that move us ever closer to the fullness of Divine Love that remains steady even when the world comes unfurled.

  7. Peace: Inside, Out, and All About

When all the other hungers are satiated, and even when they are not, the world hungers for peace. Internal peace with ourselves and our beliefs and understandings, memories, and traumas. Peace inside and out and all about, peace with others, along with the longing for the absence of armed conflicts and religious wars or racial discrimination. We long for peace with our relationship with the earth and the heavens as well as one another, and peace among nations.

These days peace seems elusive, even intentionally reclusive. We search and surrender and sigh with lungs full of pain. And sometimes in the night, starving for the bread of hope, parched for peace, praying for relief, the famine of faith is too much to bear. And when all is lost, I find Hope standing there.

Famine of Faith

Stephen W Emerick

Sometimes in my night’s sleep

Storms from faraway places

Bring billowing dust

To the breathing of my dreams.

And I see people suffering

The famine of faith,

Living lives of listless meaning –

No longer hallowed but hollow.

And pulling on my

Last string of faith

I pull open 

The seams of heavens garment

And see the spilling out of its

Abundant grace.

And the entire world

Is adorned

In faiths radiant wonder,

And upon awakening I vow to fast –

To call faith from afar…

And when it arrives

I will feast as never before,

And from the fabric of newfound faith

I will clothe the forlorn…

   Wrap their wounds and…

      Weave new dreams –

         Binding all my hopes

Into sheaves of Spirit’s

Harvest if inspiration

For all the nations.

But can just one or two people do anything about this?

Ask Mother Teresa, one person who gave bread and water to her kin: If you are kind, people may accuse you of selfish, ulterior motives: Be kind anyway. If you are successful you will win some false friends and true enemies: Succeed anyway. If you are honest and frank people will try to cheat you: Be honest anyway. What you spend years building, someone could destroy overnight: Build anyway. If you find serenity and happiness, they may be jealous of you: Be happy anyway. The good you do today, will often be forgotten by tomorrow: Do good anyway. Give the world the best you have, and it may never be enough: Give your best anyway.

Resources Related to Food Hunger: Show me the money!

National and International Programs

• No One Hungryfl.org. I have the privilege of being in a collaborative relationship with No One  Hungry. Originally located in Titusville Florida, where you will find its food pantry, this organization has branched out for the feeding of children in Belize and other countries. If you come from a place of privilege, you may think of Belize as a grand vacation spot. And it is. At the same time there are elements of the population that go hungry every day. No One Hungry has their Mission Hope Belize participating in addressing the problem of hunger.

Are you interested in seeing how all the factors I have listed here all fold into one manifestation of faith’s cosmology? Do this experiment: google “food pantries in my area” and see what your list shows.  My list is profoundly impacted by organizations whose cosmology and faith calls them to “Feed my people”.  In fact, many Christian’s consider it part of the “Great Commission” to serve others in the world in the name of their Lord, Jesus Christ.

You can google your area for a list of food pantries available to all in need. Whether the need is for food, or the need is heart hunger, desiring to donate to those in need.

In my town, Dayton Ohio, the following pantries pop up when I google for Food Pantries: