It's not likely you actually would have found this headline in any of the newspapers around the world concerning the events of September 11, 2001 but you could have. According to the United Nations Food & Agriculture Organization (FAO), this is indeed approximately how many children died from conditions of starvation that day (Utne Reader, Nov. 2001, page 112 and Alternatives for Simple Living Update Fall 2001, page 3).

About the time I began this newsletter (early March 2002), I caught part of an interview Dan Rather was doing on one of the news magazine shows on TV. The fellow he was interviewing had a number of viewpoints I didn't care for at all, but one illustration he used really caught my attention. Basically he said -- suppose you took all the savings you had worked hard to set aside and went and purchased a very expensive luxury car you had always wanted. On the way home you stopped the car on a railroad track to get some fresh air (forget about the logic of this and just listen to the rest). As you walked a while along the track you spotted a train coming. You were only a short distance from your car but the train was coming too fast for you to get there and move it. Yet, as providence would have it you are stranding right next to a track switch. If you throw the switch, the train will be diverted to the adjacent track and miss your brand new luxury car entirely. There's only one problem. A small child from Bangladesh is sitting on the other track whom you can also not reach. This child will most certainly die if you choose that the train will miss your car. What would you decide to do? Will you save the thing you have worked hard, dreamed, and scrimped for, or will you spare the life of the child?

As indicated in the interview, most certainly all but a few truly hard hearted souls would declare that they would sacrifice the car, sparing the life. Yet we make this decision every day, as Americans, utilizing far more of the world's resources for our desires, and sometimes just whims, than our proportional population would justify. Simply because we are powerful enough to do it.

"For every person in the world to reach American levels of consumption would require four more planet Earths." (Edward O. Wilson, How To Save Biodiversity, quoted in the Nature Conservancy magazine, Spring 2002 issue.)

Now, I am not in any way suggesting even the slightest justification for the murderous acts which took place on September 11, 2001. There is none. But before we take the journey of cowboys and Indians again, putting on our white hats, and charging our cavalry all around the world so certain of our righteousness, we may want to consider a bigger picture. Allowing the past to teach us as well. Remember the Cherokee history lesson from the last newsletter? And how about a world history which teaches that though we may be the biggest and strongest guy on the block right now, nobody remains so forever.

Is it not in our own best interest to try to create a world in which a Harmony Ethic is the norm? Where fairness and sharing are rules of the day. Rather than continue on a road which only waits for the day when somebody else becomes bigger and stronger than we. But we cannot play pretend that this is the way we already function.

If you are among those who attend a church, it is quite likely you have spoken the words "by what we have done, and by what we have left undone," and/or "we have not loved our neighbors as ourselves," as a part of a confession of sins. Do we hear what we are saying? We have been incredibly blessed. Our egos would try to convince us that whatever we want is OK, we have done it all ourselves, we've earned it. But I don't recall earning the right to be born an American, at this time in history, any more than you likely do. Many people around the world will work every bit as hard, or harder, and never come close to being able to do what we do -- have what we have. We cannot even claim we walked through a war torn homeland, on our own as youngsters to get here, as the Lost Boys of Africa could. Yet today we are clearly positioned to lead. And all real leadership is by example. Which road? Which track will we really choose? The choice is yours -- the choice is mine -- every day!

When we, all of us, get caught up in the details of our everyday lives, we tend to lose the perspective of the bigger picture. Jesus personally spoke about whatever we do to the "least" we are doing to him. But, even beyond that. Can we not be mindful that all creation is God's creation. He didn't just make you and I, and the rest simply showed up by chance. All people, all creatures, all things, are created by God, not just some. And whether you subscribe to a biblical model or scientific model, God had already done a whole lot of creating before He did man. The self-centered ego says God made me and all the rest is adornment. The fear centered ego says look at what the other guy is doing. I recently had someone tell me, genuinely believing, that "those" people (Muslims) are being trained from childhood to kill. Even if that were true (which as an across the board statement it isn't), how would that change what Jesus said for us to do? Person or beast, plant or mineral, anything that is, God made. He loves it all. Should we do any less? Is there any other real answer?