Sunday, September 15, 2013

FOODBANK - How Harvest Festival has changed.


FOODBANK
A different kind of Harvest Festival.


Tins, dried pasta, Tea Bags and tins and tins.
No perishables -
How Harvest Festival has changed.

Instead of fresh fruit and veg
with all it's beauty and colour
Dried products are each heaved out 
of plastic carrier bags
by kids and Mums and Dads
onto the alter steps
like frankincense and myrrh -
How Harvest Festival has changed.

Instead of a big Marrow in central place
and colourful Melons, apples, oranges, bananas
Heinz baked beans, and Instant cuppa-soup sachets
are placed down as free will offerings
NOT - 'nothing in my hands I bring .......'
How Harvest Festival has changed.

Being the sixth richest nation means little
when we have over a million humans  hungry.
And the food rolls down the isle
a longer queue than when we go for communion.
Humans reaping harvest and sharing ......
How Harvest Festival has changed.

Fresh products as colourful as they are
are not as practical as good-old-tins
(not 'so old' ones please)
The objective more important than aesthetics
like grapes, marrows, melons and shiny red apples.
Practical giving is always the best - 
not counting, of course, the ultimate giving.
How Harvest Festival has changed.

The poorest in our communities are FULL
NOT full of food
but 
SHAME.
Many too ashamed to go to a Foodbank
but maybe we can notice the signs ourselves
in our community
when we see poverty - if we have eyes that see.
Maybe, just maybe, Harvest will change me.
How Harvest Festival has changed.

Poverty is not only about food
There is a poverty that imprisons the spirit.
A poverty that wounds and hurts .......
Maybe we can
plough the the fields and scatter
good news in those places too
How Harvest Festival can change.

....and let the poor say I am rich .......


Pip Wilson15th September 2013