"Take This, all of you, and Eat"
Mary Steiner- Whelan
Sunday, September 25th 2005

Hello! My name is Mary. As accustomed as I am to public speaking – I have great respect for the people of St. Joan’s and am honored, and a bit nervous, to be speaking here today.

All I can do is tell the truth of my story and hope that it resonates in some places with each of yours. In 1998, because the time seemed right and there was an opportunity, my daughter Shawn and I(pictured right) packed up our apartment, quit our jobs and headed off to volunteer in Kenya and Uganda for nine months.

To our dismay, we discovered after a brief time there that the group we had come to work with was corrupt. The programs did not exist; the money was not going to the people. Having some pronounced activist tendencies, we first tried to change the organization from within. As sometimes happens, our efforts were not successful.

So, Shawn and I broke from the organization and continued to travel on our own. People invited us into their homes and villages. We lived with them, ate with them, collected their stories. As we listened we heard our own stories.

We had gone to Africa to meet poverty but we met people. People like us with many of the same struggle and hopes, depressions and strengths. But without the same resources. We met James, age 14, living in doorway in an alley. He told us that he had not eaten anything but a chicken foot in two days – his family was all dead – his really wanted to go to school –he had loved school but he thought he would probably die in the alley instead. We met Prisca on the street, shivering with fever with her lethargic baby bound to her, she asked for bus fare. The little money she had bought medicine for the baby but she was chased from the hospital because she had no money for her own care. We took her to the dismal hospital. The next day we visited. She said, “I thought I was in a dream. No one has ever helped me before-I didn’t know there were people like that. Now I have hope that I might live.”

We met women who when we gave them small pieces of soap began dancing and shouting “No rats, no rats!” Tonight they would wash, and sleep because they would be clean so the rats would not come to chew what nutrition they could get by eating filth adhering to the women’s bodies.

We were in a village the night the last man living there died of AIDS. The wails continued through out the night. “Mom, who will help these people,’ Shawn asked as we huddled in the dark. “People, Shawn, people like you and me.”

We went home we told our friends what we had seen. We also told them that we did not see anyone helping people in so many places, in what we call the forgotten villages. We saw no one staying with the people long term-in few places a group may have come and put in a few wells or given immunizations for a day but then they left-and left behind often starving, mostly sick, hardworking people with no hope to overcome poverty’s devastations.

Our friends responded. Give Us Wings was born.

Our name comes from Elijah, a young Kenyan man. We were with Elijah one day when a child thrust his blind mothers’ hand in front of us – begging for a few shillings. As I put some money in her hand. Elijah said, “It is nice to give us a few shillings or a little food. But what we need is access to information and education. We need someone to Give Us Wings.”

What we learn each time we return, dozens of times now to Africa to work is that the people give us wings. Our model is one of mutual learning. We are purposely not religious in our mission. An Anglican bishop in Uganda asked us once, “Are you here to SAVE my people.” No, we nodded. “Good,” he said, “Because the only thing my people need to be saved from is poverty.”

We meet with small groups of people and ask what they think the solutions to their problems could be. What are their goals for their families –for their children. As Elijah advised, do not as work simply as a charity. We do not give a loaf of bread or a pencil and then walk away. Everything that we and the people do is aimed at self sufficiency. Indeed we sometimes feed and clothe people and provide medical care but all in the context of helping people to be strong enough to work in their gardens, to start small businesses, to get the education they need to be successful. We are there for the long term working holistically to nurture wings that will get strong enough so that people can fly on their own.

I learn again and again and am often startled by my own ignorance. One of the most startling lessons I learned was one day when I was walking down a red clay streets of a small town in Uganda.

I was going to meet with a group of women – mothers, grandmothers in a nasty slum. Women and children living with raw sewage. No power, no water, nights filled with terrors from violence and disease. On my way, I passed a church. Its doors were flung open on a sweltering sub-Saharan day.

Out of the church came, booming it seemed to me, the words of Consecration, “Take this all of you and eat” These had always been some of my favorite words of the mass. I realize now because, in part, I had some self righteousness about my level of understanding them. I would listen and think to myself in which ever liberal church I was attending at the time, all of you – those of colors different from mine, those whose sexual orientation is different tan mine, all of those people that I am so accepting of because of my staunch liberalism.

But that day as I walked by, I understood in a new way what Jesus meant. ALL of you, and eat. All –the people I am going to meet the hundreds of thousands I pass on the road who are starving dying of malnutrition, of diseases that can slay their weakened states suddenly and painfully –All of you. Eat-literally eat- you should be able to eat-you have the right to eat –

And the flood gates opened.

I like many of you had many years of Catholic education eighteen mostly from the sisters of St. Joseph of Carondolet who taught me the social justice message of Jesus. Since those days I, like many of you, have had my ups and downs with the church, have gone from place to place –am sometimes not even sure who Jesus is or was-but his messages live in me.

And so the flood gates opened as I continued to walk - if you have two coats give one to someone who has none…wow what if he really meant that two - we could be in deep trouble-maybe he also means, pairs of shoes, purses, computers, jeans, cars, homes, telephones, books, art, parties, maybe he really meant it –if you have more than one..of whatever it is you must give the other away… blessed are the poor of spirit..the mandate with a loophole, oh if I just don’t let my possessions mean too much to me I can have them..it is the spririt that matters, yes, I suddenly understood it is the spirit..that if it truly empathisizes with the poor can not keep justifying owning, doing so much when our sisters and brothers and Jesus calls people, not members of the third world, not those people, not not American, but our sisters and brothers, feed them, clothe them - the least of brethren, what so ever you do unto them you do unto me…really? Unto you…really… Oh my God.

And I thought, I really did, that someday I wanted to come here and to tell you, the people of St. Joan’s what I was learning. Because I had sat in these chairs for years and I didn’t know before that moment that I had to radically change my life. Oh, I debated and raged over the unequal distribution of wealth. I marched. I signed petitions about loan forgiveness. I blamed the government. The corporations. But I had not understood that I needed to redistribute my wealth – teacher married to a social worker – I had not even faced the fact that I was wealthy and that part of the reason that the people of Africa, many of whom I now love, do not have what they need is because I have it. I had convinced myself that it was okay to have so much more than I need, As long as I am responsible and can afford it of course, and give some money away. Because why, how had I done that …there is enough abundance in the world…yes there certainly is but not if I have more than my share of it…it is too overwhelming…one coat just give away that one coat if that’s all you have really have…we can tell ourselves it is good for my family or the universe because we will be happier or something if we to have the boat, eat meals out, put an addition on the house, to pamper our bodies, wear the right clothes…whatever. Did I give up everything I absolutely don’t need – no but I did examine my life and gave a lot of it up - not up but to - to those to whom it rightly belongs and I am still learning…listening

This is my body…eat… my body, he said, the one I leave behind, you and me, will help you the starving to eat…suddenly wealth takes on different dimensions, $25 isn’t Just $25 it is-a matter of life and death for millions…millions of individuals, people, people like you and me…

like Christine…

She will tell you her story herself through one of my books: The quote preceding the story is from Ann Reed.

"There are days when I think I may drown in this constant sea of sorrow.” -Ann Reed, from the book: This Year I Sing -366 Women’s Stories from Three Generations; Written by: Jean Steiner, Mary Steiner Whelan, Shawn Whelan; Includes Ann Reed’s single This Year I Sing; Available at Amazon.com or call: 651-642-5116

Hello, My name is Christine. I want you to know that I have a name. Because when you hear about my life, you may think that I don’t have a name like you do. I live in hell’s slums. Stench from human waste and wasted humans fills my nostrils. I went to school until I was eight. Then my father died of typhoid, we think. We never know for sure in hell. I have AIDS. My six-year-old son has AIDS. I married at thirteen. Was widowed at eighteen. My husband died of AIDS. Neither of us knew what it was. I pick in the garbage. Grow scraggly plants in the filth. Caress my child’s rattling body when he coughs. I can’t drown in this sorrow. Not until my son does. I keep swimming in the back waters. I do not feel sorry for myself. Just so sad, so out of breath.

My name is Christine. What is yours?

Today, with you good people as my witness, I humbly renew my promise to continue to say to Christine, “My name is Mary and I will work to try to bring equity to you.”

As I look at you I am empowered, just as I thought I would be that morning in front of the church in Africa. to believe that Christine’s dreams - her rights to have medicine instead of fear, a business instead of poverty, shelter instead of shame, education instead of exhaustion, and some clean water and vegetables to make a pot of soup for her son Will come be realized. Given courage by her I dare to ask you I ask you to take the risk, right now, in your heart, with your eyes closed if that helps, to tell Christine your name and to promise her that you will make the world a more equitable place.

Thank you - because of your commitment perhaps she and her brethren everywhere will all eat.