Yesterday, my twenty one year old daughter got a call from the local WIC office (the nutritional program for Women, Infants and Children) letting her know that due to funding cuts she will no longer be receiving supplemental food assistance for herself and her family; and that the amount of baby formula her six month old son is eligible  to receive will be lowered. We were standing in our kitchen when she told me the news, and I’ll confess, the moment our shocked and bewildering exchange ended … the moment I was alone … I found myself physically shaken with a raging grief. (For those who don’t know me, this is not my usual response to unwelcome news.) Hot tears and an intense growl; a rising roar of anger rose in my chest. Not just for her — not just for my daughter who, along with her partner and children, lives with us. But for the millions of women who don’t have the safety net of an extended family to rely on in these sparse years of obscene food prices and unlivable wages. 

I have been incredibly proud of my daughter as she’s become a young mother; first to her four-year-old step son, and now with her own baby boy. Amazed at how carefully, each week, she counts up and parcels out her scarce budget for nutritious ingredients; stocking her fridge with planned meals like a seasoned pro. Serving up food like love. Last night as we sat out in the garden she began to recite to us, from memory, the food benefits she’s lost … 

1lb cheese or tofu
1qt of yogurt
4 gallons of 1% milk
16oz whole wheat (bread, pasta, tortillas or oats)
10oz canned fish
A dozen eggs
$43 of fruit and vegetables
16 oz of peanut butter or beans
64oz of juice
(I asked her to write this list down for me — these amounts are for one month) 

“What”, I wondered —baffled by the absurdity of it all— “Could these precious few dollars … these dollars which translate into actual morsels of food in the mouths of my daughter’s family … these dollars which have provided a much needed supplement to her partner’s low-wage income … What could these few dollars possibly mean to the already over-wealthy oligarchs who will now receive them as tax breaks? Could even one of them recite a list of the benefits —their family’s sacred needs— which these few dollars might provide?”

Only a parent who has lived in poverty can truly appreciate how vital those few supplemental dollars per week might be. 

How can the nutrition of a young couple —their daily portion of dairy and vegetables— be labeled “fraud, waste and abuse”, yet an already over-bloated military machine receives a parade, a “golden dome”, and billions of our tax dollars to hunt down, separate and incarcerate those it deems “illegal”? 

In the video to my song above there is a photograph of a Sudanese woman feeding her infant (minute 1:42). That child is at “emergency level malnutrition”. The high-calorie paste he is being fed can bring him back from the brink of starvation. US AID once provided that sustenance which cost the US public one percent of our total US federal budget per year. Isn’t this child and the millions like him worth that much of an offering to our neighbors around the world? 

How is cruelty piled upon cruelty, food taken from the mouths of children, become the daily norm while worship rings through the White House in praise for a so-called “golden age”? 

“Away with the noise of your songs,
I will not listen to them any longer!
But let justice roll down like a river
And righteousness, like a never-failing stream”
– Amos 5:23 

This scripture from the Old Testament is one I learned by heart thirty years ago when my husband and I were young worship leaders in a fast-growing southern church. Each week as I stood on stage, performing at an ever increasing number of stylized services, I experienced a heartsick awareness that the distance between “church” as I knew it, and real-life justice for the oppressed, was growing wider and wider before my very eyes. 

Ultimately my husband and I left the mega-church scene in search of a more authentic spirituality (a journey which would take us a lifetime) but this scripture always stayed with me; a siren’s warning, a song for those of us who like to brandish the spectacle of spiritual authenticity, but who often “forget the poor”. 

“The only thing they (the apostles James, Peter and John) asked us to do was to remember the poor” – Galatians 2:10

I know it breaks the rules of “christian” practice to question the sincerity or sanctity of another’s personal worship, but yesterday as I thought about the millions of mothers who, like my daughter, would be receiving the news that their precious few dollars of supplemental nutrition have been taken away in order to supplement the bloated pockets of the already rich … yesterday as I felt that deep growl, a grandmother’s matriarchal rage awaken inside me … yesterday, I finally understood the angry words of the prophet Amos. I understood his disappointment, his heartsick grief at a nation which “deprives the poor of justice”. 

My grandson is only six months old, so I’m a novice Granny, but I think perhaps the roar of holy rage which grasped my gut and sent tears down my face was my own tiny glimpse into the mighty mother-heart of Divine Love as she grieves with righteous anger those who steal food from the struggling and oppress those already in need. 

And finally … yesterday, as I sang this song, and worked to carve my anger into something resembling creative action, I felt relief as I remembered that God, like a grandmother, is not a tyrant parceling out vengeance; but she is Love, pouring out justice like a river, and righteousness like a never failing stream. 

“America has the resources to provide for everyone’s needs,
and we know what policies could provide access to healthcare
and a living wage for all Americans.”
– Rev. Dr. William J. Barber, II