Inspiration:
What does it mean to be in solidarity?
How Much Do We Deserve?
Globally, we are six billion people now on this planet. According to the UN, at least two billion live on $2 a day or less. Two-thirds of those live on less than one dollar a day. Issues of covenantal commitment to the common good and to distributive justice are everywhere. On my shelf at home I keep a painted papier-maché chalice given to me by the banghi women of Ahmedabad, in India. Banghis are those who by caste custom must earn their living in the villages cleaning out other people’s latrines, and in the cities gathering refuse in the streets, as “paper-pickers.” With help from the UU Holdeen India Program, 17,000 banghi women in Ahmedabad were organized into a union – which now has a contract with the city to provide all its recycling services, and for a living wage.
I say that our support for those women illustrates the principle, “from those to whom much has been given, much is expected.” Ethicist Peter Singer, in an essay on famine, goes so far as to suggest there should be an economic formula for our responsibilities. If we really lived out a sense of social solidarity with others, then someone with $50,000 in income, he says, would have to devote more than $20,000 of that to helping the neediest. As children’s writer Shel Silverstein once said in verse:
I’ll share your toys, I’ll share your money
I’ll share your toast, I’ll share your honey,
I’ll share your milk and your cookies, too.
The hard part’s sharing mine with you.
BY JOHN BUEHRENS, MINISTER, FIRST PARISH IN NEEDHAM, MASSACHUSETTS TO READ MORE
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