The Rev Dr. Rick SchlosserDear Friends:
Today starts what may be a protracted hard time for us all. No one will be immune. Tariffs are going to make food more expensive as will the forced deportation of millions of farm workers whose labor plants, tends, picks the crops.
With tariffs, many other things will become more expensive, too. Now we hear that our safety network of our own money in Social Security may be delayed, lost, gone thanks to radical staffing shortages around the country. SSDI that pays for people in nursing homes is equally at risk.
Somewhere, somehow we have to find ways to survive and to care for those who are likely to lose both SNAP and Medicaid. Then we have to take care of one another if and when Social Security is gone or delayed, when pensions may decline, when investment packages wane. Nobody will be unscathed.
This, it seems to us, is a moment requiring Radical Love and Stone Soup. The radical love is unfettered compassion for one another, and a commitment to do what we can for each other. We may need to revisit barter – you cut my hair, I mow your lawn. You alter a jacket, I bake you a casserole.
Stone Soup is sharing our resources with one another. It is ages-old practice in hard times. These are hard times coming. Make posters on skills and options you can offer others – tools you can lend, services you can perform, things you can make – then hang those in your social halls with phone numbers so people can call you and you can call people. Everyone puts something in the pot – everyone gets more of what they need: the soup.
We need to increase all we can what our congregations have in the way of non perishable food to give to the totally indigent when the EBT cards for their food no longer are filled. We have land around our buildings that could be used for community gardens. This is a great time to start one. Early planting is now. Not perfect sun? Lots of things flourish in partial to very low shade. We urge drip hoses to save water, but we can do these things. Indigenous people survived for thousands of years on the “Three Sisters” of corn, squash, beans. We can raise those and many other things – potatoes – to help us, to help others.
A volunteer crew at Stone Soup Kitchen in January 2023
(Photo credit: https://www.iowasource.com/2023/02/27/stone-soup/)
Several of our congregations throughout the state have run free clinics. They may need to start again. Use your expertise to help those in need. Don’t forget dental and vision care. Homeless and low income people need those services a lot.
Six weeks ago we had a functioning economy and government. Now we do not. The shock of this change cannot be understated. If anyone has skills in counseling, please donate them to those flailing in this new, radically different environment. The impacts will be very uneven. Not everyone will be impacted the same, and those disparities among friends and neighbors can cause personal fear and shame for some, and a chance to reclaim our common humanity in offering support.
We can’t foresee all the consequences, but we can be prepared to take action. When nothing is as it was, fall back on what has often worked: radical love and stone soup.
Godspeed.