Hungry hangry and justice

HUNGER
Hangry.  I love the term hangry.  It is a perfect term for a feeling I am deeply familiar with.  A word for that

mean streak that spills out of my lips without regard for any mature sympathy I should display.  The word of the day however was hungry not hangry.  As I entered my daily internet word search I ws prepared to be thrown back in sad bitterness, expecting s screen full of diets and skinny taste concoctions.  What a surprise I received...the page that a appeared was all about injustice, real hunger, real need.  And the Hunger Games.

One of the more pleasant surprises of the last few years has been that Hollywood understood the truth that the Hunger Games trilogy was seeking to tell.  Well except for Maybelline, who clearly hoped we were dumb and missed the evident criticism of lavish body makeup and alteration enough to buy their capitol games line of toxic colorful crap.  The metaphor of the Hunger Games is a reality.   The truth is the odds are never in our favor.  We sacrifice our children to brutal rabbit wheels of achievement and self-esteem.  Fostered by economic powers that be and our own twisted comprehension of the desired life these wheels pound away at all of us, well at least 47% of us.  In some ways the realm of the Districts is much more clear cut, the evil center much more omnipresent in President Snow. 

The control of calories is a common battle-zone in dystopian fiction.  It cuts to the core, it is our greatest failure and the easiest way to manipulate us.  Hunger matters. 

JUSTICE
While the search for hungry was surprisingly relevant to my Lenten Pin A Day challenge, justice was a terrible search.  Pages of pink and glitter and Capitol Games ready clothing for young girls.  Who the heck thought the word justice, a word charged with morality and divinity, who thought that made a good tween store name???  Probably the same numb-skulls who fostered the Maybelline line. Another example of the crushing perversion of the powers that be. If justice is truly 'moral rightness based on ethics, reason, law, religion and equity' then we have a long way to go.  The Lord works righteousness, does justice for all who are oppressed. (Ps 103.6)  Thank goodness that the search for justice quotes was more plentiful and aligned with God doing justice.

However I did notice an imbalance in gender representation in the quotes.  Apparently only fella are quote worthy.  And Oprah, and Mrs. Roosevelt and Mrs. King.  So fine friends, time to make some justice quote pins authored by women. I am blessed to practice the Christian way in a tradition that includes justice in our promises of Baptism.  We are imperfect servants of this holy ideal, however the imperfection is far better than ignoring it completely.

I was reminded of all of this earlier this week.  I seem to be the only woman in an occasional gathering of local youth workers.  Most of the flavors of Church represented are not mainline.  I like to think of myself as an excellent ecumenical, however, I find it is easier to play along with other WCC partners than the flavor the year congregation.  Anyways, I was hungry, as I frequently am.  Then this stranger, stranger from a traditions with a weak record on gender equality, the this stranger treated me like a stupid little woman.  I should have been silly or polite or smart in my comeback.  However I was hangry.  I snapped back at him.  I do not know enough about this stranger to assume anything, and my snap showed that.  I was reminded ever so clearly of how rare and lovely my traditions is. It is imperfect, but we seem to get equality.   Do I experience similar nonsense in my own flavor of Church?  Sure.  Pick an area of critique: petite or young looking or a gal or a youth worker.   Diminishment always chafes, and I am more often than not, hangry.  So I am sorry for what I said, when I was hangry.

So I pray with you for a better sense of decorum as I strive for justice, in a constant reality of hunger.