God is great and God is good
And we thank Him for our food
By His hand must all be fed
Give us Lord our daily bread

This was the table blessing that I learned as a child. It was easy to remember because the words were passed down to us children in a sing-song fashion. We sang it whenever one of the grown-ups called upon one of us children to say the blessing over the food. We sang it as we all held hands before large family meals.

I catch myself singing this childhood blessing a lot whenever I stop by the supermarket or farmer’s market these days. Divine intervention is just what’s needed to end the food crisis that has ripped across the globe over the last year. Gas is not the only thing that we’re paying more for. Prices for almost every staple food — rice, wheat, corn, sugar, milk — are soaring at rates of inflation not seen on such a global scale in a generation. In poor countries where families spend nearly 70% of their income on food, hoarding, widespread food shortages and fears of outright famine are the order of the day.

You don’t have to be a prophet to know that we’re in a food crisis. Someone you know is probably worrying about how she’s going to eat or feed her family this week. With rising unemployment figures, families losing their homes in record numbers, and food and gas prices spiking out of control, it’s no suprise that agencies that receive food are reporting an increase of 20% in the number of people being served and food banks are running short of donations.  More than 41% of those on food stamps came from working families in 2006, up from 30% a decade earlier, according to the latest Agriculture Department data.

Of course, we don’t come to a blog like this expecting to talk about the price of food. Not to mention the fact that as professional women we don’t like talking much about our not being able to do as good a job as our mothers at getting a meal on the table. But food is a universal issue. It’s something we all gotta have. And the rising cost of food effects us all. Even those of us who don’t cook. Who boast that eating out is our favorite pasttime. Who brag that we don’t know how to cook.

Thou can not live on Starbucks caramel macchiatos alone.

Headlines about food and going hungry get my attention. I went to bed hungry many nights as a child praying that there was flour, lard, and milk enough in the house for Mama to make her famous biscuits for us kids before heading off to work the next morning.

Women have for centuries been the ones responsible for food. We notice little things like there not being enough food to go around. We do the preparing, the cooking, and the storing, for the most part, of all that’s eaten in the family.  Unlike the savvy women who read and leave comments on the blog, however, women in the rest of world grow more than half of the food that is grown. Women feed the world, you might say. 

Which means that if we don’t talk about hunger, poverty, and the rising cost of food, who will? 

Certainly not Barack Obama and John McCain. Neither will men like Pastor Rick Warren and others who host presidential debates care or notice that the price of milk, bread, and rice has risen considerably. They won’t notice until their wives (or housekeepers) bring it to their attention.

The Food Marketing Institute says 71 percent of Americans are eating out less and 48 percent are buying fewer groceries, and people tend to be buying more off-brand and lower-quality foods (think Spam instead of hamburger) as they try to make their dollars stretch. Sure, we eat too much of the wrong food. Sure, the average American still eats out six times a week. And, of course, Americans waste an astounding amount of food — an estimated 27 percent of the food available for consumption, according to a government study.  We’ve got to do better folks. But don’t think that just because your food buying habits haven’t changed much since the economy started sinking that it’s the same for everyone.

My father-in-law keeps offering to come over and get me started on growing some tomatoes in my backyard. I may just take him up on his offer. I’ve been testing how green my thumb is by growing mint and thyme all summer outside my window. Let’s just say that I’d better wait a little longer before I take him up on his offer.

From Genesis to Revelation, food plays a vital role in the Bible. From the moment Eve was seduced to bite the apple to stories of important feasts, food preparation and mealtime were often a time of learning and sharing . It’s amazing how often Jesus used food/eating in his interactions with people. From feeding the 4000/5000 and turning water into wine through to his interaction with Zacchaeus who turns his whole life around in a pretty staggering way simply because Jesus invited himself to dinner, to his interaction with Mary and Martha at their home, to his final lesson on community and oneness there at the Passover Meal when he opened with the words, “I have earnestly desired to eat this Passover Meal with you before I suffer (Luke 22:15).

My uber-religious colleagues complain that when prayer was taken out of the schools this country started falling apart. I won’t go that far. But I can say that not eating together enough as a family has a way of sending us careening off into chaos. Of course, I resent the fact that the onus seems always to fall on me to get us together for a meal. I yell at my husband about scheduling meetings at the church ever night of the week. And I complain to my kid that swinging through the drive thru-on the way home for someone to hand you a bag of chicken nuggets, fries, and soft drink out a window is not what I have in mind when I say we need to eat together. 

Ok, so I’m not the gourmet cook I wish I were, despite my many lessons from Emeril, the Barefoot Contessa, and Paula Deen.  Sure, there are days when take-out and eating out are all any of us can manage (although there’s not as much of that this year as there was last year). But thank God for the few staples that I can manage and that don’t cost too much to prepare. Stir fry.  Fajitas. Fish stew. Chicken salad (I mean strips of chicken over a salad, my friend.) And of course, there’s always Renita’s tried and true home-made spaghetti (partially made from scratch). A dab of this. A dab of that. A jar of this here. It’s not fancy, but it’s a feast if you’re hungry for food and for fellowship. And wouldn’t you know it:  spaghetti sauce always taste better the next day.  That with some bread (and a lot of love) will see us through.

God is great and God is good
And we thank Him for our food
By His hand must all be fed
Give us Lord our daily bread

That does it.

In the middle of a sermon I couldn’t remember the rest of the scripture I was quoting.

That does it.

Woke up in the middle of the night at a hotel the other week to my three favorite questions: what city am I in? is the speech over yet?  what direction is the bathroom?

That does it.

Two hour airport delays in both direction this past weekend.

That does it.

Open my computer every morning praying not to find an email from my editor about the book article that was due over a month ago.

That does it.

Bluetooth doesn’t work on my Treo. Dropped my digital camera and broke it. Constantly being knocked off the wireless server every few minutes here at the house. Virus protection says my subscription has expired when it hasn’t. Went to my favorite day spa earlier this week and heard myself snoring in the middle of my facial. Can’t find the remote for the TV right now. The date on the milk carton tells me that I won’t be having milk with my cereal this morning. 

That does it.

Got in the shower this morning and discovered that we’re out of of soap.

That does it. Stop world. I’m getting off.

I’m taking the rest of the week off.

See ya’ on Monday. I think.

While we’re talking about God, sex, and marriage, let’s talk about…um…er…same-sex marriage.

Here’s a poll (or at least part of a poll) that came in the mail recently to my house.

If you had three choices regarding the laws governing same-sex marriage, what would you choose?

1. Same-sex couples should be allowed legally to marry.
2. Same-sex couples should be allowed legally to form civil unions but not marry.
3. Same-sex couples should not be allowed to obtain legal recognition of their relationships.

Now as you all know, this summer California became the second state, after Massachusetts, to make marriage licenses available to same-sex couples. And if you’ve been following the campaign news closely you’ll notice that neither Barack Obama nor John McCain seem particularly comfortable talking about gay marriage as a campaign issue. NPR aired a story this past Monday containing statements made by each candidate, in public forums.

In the past Obama has said  that he opposes gay marriage but that every state should be allowed to decide the issue on its own. He has changed his mind in recent months saying that while he opposes same-sex marriage, he supports civil unions and domestic partnerships between same-sex couples.

As for McCain, well after receiving lots of pressure from big guns like James Dobbs of “Focus on the Family” and other leading conservative evangelicals who complain that McCain has been reticent about talking about issues that motivates grassroot conservatives (you guessed it, abortion and homosexuality), McCain sent a short statement back in June to the “Protect Marriage” campaign, one of the conservative groups spearheading an effort to amend the state Constitution in November and define marriage as between a man and a woman saying that he supported the efforts of the people of California to recognize marriage as a unique institution between a man and a woman. 

What folks on this blog probably don’t know is that the great untold story of the 2004 presidential elections was the black evangelical vote. Conservative Republicans figured out in 2004 that to get their man George Bush back into the White House they needed to inflame black’s anti-gay bias. Although black evangelicals still voted overwhelmingly for Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry, blacks gave Bush the cushion he needed to bag Ohio and win the White House. What did it? Opposition to gay marriage. A national coalition of religious conservative groups, which included Focus on the Family, Concerned Women for America, and the Family Research Council, formed in early 2004 to defend traditional marriage. Conservative blacks were key to their strategy.

In case you failed to get the memo, word has it that in 2008 a new younger crop of evangelicals has come on the scene. Young evangelicals who can not be easily pegged by pollsters nor easily manipulated by politicans. Young evangelicals who are passionate about a broad platform of issues, and not just the grassroots moral issues of their parents, abortion and homosexuality. Conservative icons like Jerry Falwell and James Dobson are being replaced with kindler, gentler faces like those of Rick Warren and Brian McLaren who, though socially conservative, are determined to market themselves as compassionate and generously involved in lots of issues (HIV/AIDS, poverty, the environment), and have shown that they are willing to engage in conversation with people with think and believe differently. Both McCain and Obama are glad for friends like Rick Warren who give them the chance to bypass the old guard of conservative leaders and speak directly to “open minds” of young evangelicals. That’s young, white evangelicals, in case you were wondering. 

Where do young black evangelicals figure in all of this? Who cares? No one, from what I can tell. That’s probably because everyone assumes that young black evangelicals are an uncomplicated lot. Even if they oppose same sex unions, as many assume they do, race trumps theology which means Obama can count on their vote. But is that true? How much does homosexuality and same sex marriage matter to this generation of African American churchgoers?  What say you who admit here on the blog to playing hooky from bible study to get home to watch “Sex and the City”? You’re a pretty complicated lot to me. Like me, you wring your hands over the risky sexual behavior of our teens. Some of you say that it doesn’t make sense to teach abstinence, and that protection and good judgement is the better church curriculum for teens. A few of you even share some of my old-fashioned notions of marriage, at least the notion that what we are witnessing is a generation of young people gone wild from being raised in an environment that believes sex is a god, being sexually satisfied is an inalienable right, getting pregnant outside of marriage is unfortunate, but not a calamity, and that marriage is optional.  So, do your broad, generous attitudes toward heterosexual marriage and sex extend to homosexual unions and the efforts by lesbians and gays to see to it that their unions enjoy the same protection and rights of as heterosexual unions?

Knock. Knock. Who’s there? The conservative white evangelicals who will surely try to figure out a way to corral just enough Blacks this Fall to swing the presidential vote in the direction they want and get religious conservative black folks to join them, their nominee, and God in their campaign to save America from gays, unwed mothers, and all those who have sex any way other than the way God intended. Whatever way that is.

I am stupefied (is that a word?).

A recent government study, focusing on teens aged 14 to 19, found that 1 out of 4 teen girls in the U.S. is infected with a sexually transmitted disease. What’s really sad is that 50% of African-American teen girls (compared to 20% of their white counterparts) live daily with one of the following STDs:  HPV, herpes, chlamydia, genital warts or trichomoniasis.

I admit that my first response as a mother and minister is to say “Close your legs.”

According to recent reports, 1 out of 2 HIV patients in the U.S. is African American!  In fact, AIDS is the leading cause of death among black women between 25 and 34, and the second-leading cause of death in black men from 35 to 44, according to a report released Tuesday.

That does it. I’m mailing back my card; I’m not the sex-positive feminist I thought I was.

Excuse me while I SCREAM!

Close your legs!

I preach abstinence to my own teen and to the ones at my church, but I get the feeling that I’m spitting at the wind on this one. They listen respectfully, more or less, but who wearing “sweet thing” on the seat of their pants and panties pays any mind to the warnings and godly admonishments of an old woman.

I try to talk to the young women I mentor about the topic, but I may as well try sweeping the sea with a broom. 

“Come on, Dr. Weems, getting pregnant is not the worst thing that can happen to a young woman.” And this comes from my young single women advisees who are in graduate school working on advanced degrees. They’ve managed to avoid pregnancy, but it’s not because they think having a baby outside of marriage is wrong. Getting pregnant would simply be a terrible inconvenience right now for young women with career goals like the ones they’ve set for themselves.

Humans like to talk a lot about love, but perhaps we need to strip it back to its fundamental and call it what it is, which is to say that there is no reasoning with the animal urge to mate and reproduce. Mating is what animals do. Male animals will gnarl through wire to get to a female animal who’s in heat. Female animals preen and prance, and pine for the attention of what they perceive as their species’ high-status males.

In the past what kept more young people from getting pregnant, and what convinced couples wanting children that children had the best chance for success when they are raised in wedded unions, were values and norms passed down and modeled by family, society, and venerable social institutions (e.g., church and school). But times have changed, and so have the norms.

In the U.S., 65% of all births to African American women are to single, never married, mothers. Marriage is fast becoming obsolete, while lust and the urge to reproduce have remained steady.

“Be fruitful and multiply the earth.” Back when this particular little moral injunction was thought up a girl of fourteen was looking forward to packing up her dowry and heading off to live in her husband’s compound and a boy of eighteen was dreaming of soon pitching a tent, bedding a wife and starting a family.

This past weekend I was listening as two young women in my church were chatting and exchanging news about mutual friends as we all stood around sorting clothes for our annual church yard sale. One of them, a young mother and school teacher said to other as they folded the clothes donated for our children’s boutique, “And then there’s Jessica. We thought she was never going to get pregnant; but she finally did.” I couldn’t resist butting into the conversation. Yelling from the other side of the room, I inquired, “Is that “we never thought she would get pregnant after being married so long?” or is that “we never thought she was going to get pregnant because having a baby is what you do by the time you’re our age, regardless of whether the father is worth marrying or not.”

“Oh Rev. Renita, close your ears. We know you’re from another era.” She doesn’t see the connection between raising fatherless children and the black teen incarceration, the connection between casual sex and sexual transmitted diseases, single parent households and families. She wasn’t a bit ashamed of a minister overhearing this conversation about her single girlfriend who’s just had a baby.

Perhaps she’s right. Perhaps I’m wrong. Perhaps I’ve lost sight of the one thing Blacks have never had a short supply of: HOPE. Perhaps I’m the one being pessimistic. (Beam me up, Scotty.)

Close your legs. Keep your pants zipped. Are not working with this generation. If ever they did before.

Perhaps Mother Nature knows something we theologians and cultural observers do not. In the end, biology trumps theology. Is it time for a new theology?