One heart and mind

Friday May 22^nd, John 17: Holy Father, guard them as they pursue this life that you conferred as a gift through me, so they can be one heart and mind as we are one heart and mind. That being one heart and one mind can be a little tricky. Sometimes it even tastes like eating crow. In a world that is reeling from the effects of tax cuts for the wealthiest among us coupled by benefit cuts for the poorest among us, some signs that we, as the children of God are not yet of one heart and mind might be found in this from www.thehungersite.com. “It is estimated that one billion people in the world suffer from hunger and malnutrition. That's roughly 100 times as many as those who actually die from these causes each year. About 20,000 people die every day from hunger or hunger-related causes. This is down from 35,000 ten years ago, and 41,000 twenty years ago. Three-fourths of the deaths are children under the age of five. Famine and wars cause about 10% of hunger deaths, although these tend to be the ones you hear about most often. The majority of hunger deaths are caused by chronic malnutrition. Families facing extreme poverty are simply unable to get enough food to eat. With CEO’s getting bail out packages in the millions and the economy just now starting to recover from the tailspin the last administration put us in, more and more on the bottom of the economic ladder are trying to get by with less and less, all while the minority party in DC wants to play games saying “no” to any help they can get their hands on while many are unsure of where their next meal will come from. Across the nation federal support for food banks has been cut by 40%. If the Ryan budget gets passed that would mean a 100% cut to support for food banks at a time when the need is at an all-time high.   Justice is often seen as the blindfolded woman holding the scales that are balanced.  We still have many large corporations and military industrial complexes pushing up on the bottom of their side of scale while they fill it even higher, and no one seeming to notice.  The push from the right on the economy is the antithesis of seeing the people of God as one.