Over the week of March 3-7, some members of the Canadian Foodgrains Bank staff and board will be fasting for one day about climate change and hunger.
They are joining in solidarity with Yeb Saño, lead United Nations climate change negotiator from the Philippines. Saño spoke passionately to the UN assembly about the effects of climate change on his country in the immediate aftermath of Typhoon Haiyan. For more background information on the fast, read this story on the Foodgrains Bank website.
The following is a personal reflection by Don Peters, Executive Director of Mennonite Central Committee Canada and the chair of the Foodgrains Bank board, on why he is choosing to fast.
What am I accomplishing with a fast?
Fasting for a day — I’ll choose a 24 hour period, from, say 6:30 pm through to 6:30 pm — is a minor inconvenience for me. I know it is temporary.
As I fast I become more conscious than I normally am that I can, and will, break this fast after 24 hours, while millions of people in the world don’t have that option.
A deliberate act of fasting underscores the difference between the privilege that I live and the lack of privilege that others live every day. Fasting will help alert me to that. It will remind me of that difference throughout the day by adding physical discomfort to what I already know intellectually.
I can walk all day long with a stone in my shoe, but I’ll never walk that day without thinking about it. I can work on hunger issues during the day, in my office or as the CFGB Executive meets, but I can’t avoid thinking about hunger when I’m hungry myself.
As chair of the Foodgrains Bank board and as executive director of MCC Canada, I participate in many events where food is a social connection. When I fast, I may find such occasions awkward. I may need to offer an explanation.
So, minor inconvenience that it is, fasting has the effect of raising my consciousness on the hunger issues that I’m privileged to be able to address.
