My 24hr famine

Once a week, 24 hours... no food.
And this to me, with food being one of my major obsessions :-).
Indeed I suffer. A bit.
It started with the simple idea to include fasting in my weekly routine, to create some kind of spiritual habit I guess. Maybe to obey.
And I found it's a good thing - on other days it's a pain - that it does make me focus more on things that matter.
Sometimes communication is easier, between me and God, God and me, me and the people surrounding me... It's a lot about me.

Then I read Henri Nouwen on world hunger, thoughts written in the 70s but still highly valid today... With others he signed a petition to call on the government of the US to intervene in the areas most affected by hunger at that time. One sentence touched me:

WE ARE PREPARED TO EAT LESS IN ORDER TO FEED THE HUNGRY.

It's sometimes as simple as that...
Prepared to eat less, because I usually eat too much anyway.
Prepared to eat less meat, because where meat is "produced" to feed the rich (me!), crops could be planted to feed the local communities instead.
Prepared to eat what has been produced without exploiting labourers or the environment.
Prepared to eat what I can afford when paying a "fair" prize for it.

Now, apart from being challenged to "eat less", I asked myself how my fasting could actually help people who are starving... And I thought about the money that I am saving because I don't have to buy food for a day. I decided to give this money to a NGO working on a food programme in Sudan, a country highly vulnerable to food shortages, not because of natural disasters, but man-made tragedies.
I've found this map on bbc.com, I think it was done in 2006.

It's a small step. But I had this postcard with the old Hippie saying about the many small people and the many small steps... Right. It counts :-).