Religious Education Update: November 25, 2007
Thanksgiving and Stone Soup
I didn’t cook a turkey this Thanksgiving, for the first time in decades. Instead of my usual tradition of chopping onions and celery and peeling potatoes all Thanksgiving morning, my husband and I hiked in the Mayacamas Mountains in balmy sunshine. In the afternoon, I sat down to a traditional feast cooked by my middle child, now the chef at the Mountain Home Ranch retreat center near Calistoga. The owners of Mountain Home Ranch, John and Suzanne Fouts, welcomed Dan, Lara and myself as the newest members of the Mountain Home family. I felt welcomed and honored.
Like many Americans, I sat down to a bountiful feast. The kitchen crew had prepared four 20 pound turkeys, multiple pies, and many pounds of potatoes. Other families less fortunate than mine also ate turkey last Thursday, but provided by charitable organizations that depend on volunteer contributions and labor. One UUP family spent Thanksgiving helping others. David Dodd and Diana Spaulding and their children Rosemary and Alex, helped served the hungry crowd at the Petaluma Kitchen. Rosemary and Alex learned that some of Petaluma’s hungry are homeless and unemployed, but others just don’t earn enough to be able to buy groceries by the end of the month.
As we learn in the Stone Soup stories, sharing our resources is
one way to prevent hunger. We will share vegetables with each other in today’s lunch. We can contribute to the Redwood Empire Food Bank in our Share the Plate offering, and help the hungry in Sonoma County. These are ways we can help immediately. In the long term, we can work towards changing our social structure so that families are able to be self sufficient. If we, as a society, worked towards providing affordable housing, universal health care, living wages and educational opportunities for all, we wouldn’t have over 50,000 people needing assistance from the Redwood Empire Food Bank. If a village can make soup from a stone, couldn’t we as a country raise healthy, educated children who never go to bed hungry?
Marlene Abel
Director of Religious Education
I didn’t cook a turkey this Thanksgiving, for the first time in decades. Instead of my usual tradition of chopping onions and celery and peeling potatoes all Thanksgiving morning, my husband and I hiked in the Mayacamas Mountains in balmy sunshine. In the afternoon, I sat down to a traditional feast cooked by my middle child, now the chef at the Mountain Home Ranch retreat center near Calistoga. The owners of Mountain Home Ranch, John and Suzanne Fouts, welcomed Dan, Lara and myself as the newest members of the Mountain Home family. I felt welcomed and honored.
Like many Americans, I sat down to a bountiful feast. The kitchen crew had prepared four 20 pound turkeys, multiple pies, and many pounds of potatoes. Other families less fortunate than mine also ate turkey last Thursday, but provided by charitable organizations that depend on volunteer contributions and labor. One UUP family spent Thanksgiving helping others. David Dodd and Diana Spaulding and their children Rosemary and Alex, helped served the hungry crowd at the Petaluma Kitchen. Rosemary and Alex learned that some of Petaluma’s hungry are homeless and unemployed, but others just don’t earn enough to be able to buy groceries by the end of the month.
As we learn in the Stone Soup stories, sharing our resources is
one way to prevent hunger. We will share vegetables with each other in today’s lunch. We can contribute to the Redwood Empire Food Bank in our Share the Plate offering, and help the hungry in Sonoma County. These are ways we can help immediately. In the long term, we can work towards changing our social structure so that families are able to be self sufficient. If we, as a society, worked towards providing affordable housing, universal health care, living wages and educational opportunities for all, we wouldn’t have over 50,000 people needing assistance from the Redwood Empire Food Bank. If a village can make soup from a stone, couldn’t we as a country raise healthy, educated children who never go to bed hungry?
Marlene Abel
Director of Religious Education
Labels: Religious Education Updates (Weekly), Social Justice
posted by Unitarian Universalists of Petaluma @ 10:10 PM
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