Crossing Nebraska

The world is broken. From the terrorist attack on the offices of Charlie Hebdo in Paris, to police and citizens battling in the streets of Ferguson, the world is broken. From the inhumane and exploitative factory farming practices that put cheap food on our tables, to the murderous rampages of the drug cartels down in Mexico, the world is broken. From the actions of those with money and power who use them both to keep them both, to our dependence on cheap fossil fuels that is driving climate change and the likely extinction of numerous species, the world is broken. Nonetheless, I’m hopeful. I think this brokenness can be fixed, as long as we come to understand its nature. The nature of the world’s brokenness is that we all too often think that the brokenness is somewhere else, or in someone else. We rarely grasp the fact that the brokenness is in each and every one of us. Ah, but don’t we all behave like little despots much of the time! It’s just that when we wield whatever power...

I suspect that most readers of this third piece in my Live Below the Line series will not have all that much experience with going hungry. Sure, we’ve all gotten to the point where we’re just dying for lunch or dinner only to have it superseded by some fairly rare event – we’re in the middle of a project, for instance, or we’re travelling in between towns. And so we become ravenous – feeling as though we could “eat a horse”! Thankfully enough, though, the moment soon arrives when we simply go get something to eat. End of story.   If you’ve ever fasted, you have a little bit more realistic view of hunger. As dinnertime comes around you do indeed feel as though you could eat a horse. But as the karma of your dinnertime subsides so do your hunger pangs, and in their place is that low blood sugar sensation of lightheadedness, weakness, headachiness, and whatever other sensations you might associate with your body tapping into its stored fuel and starting to burn it. If you’ve...