If You Eat Each Day

I am a member of the local Catholic church's JustFaith program. JustFaith is a program intended to “empower people of faith to develop a passion and thirst for justice.” I'm not a Catholic, but I am willing, even eager, to get Christian teaching, and perhaps especially Christian social teaching, anyplace I can get it. And the Catholic Church is a good place to go for that!

As part of the JustFaith program, we read books, have discussions on what we read, have guest speakers, visit homeless shelters, and so on. Occasionally we listen to a song. A few weeks ago we listened to Bryan Sirchio's song, "If You Eat Each Day."

It seems Bryan was working in a clinic in Haiti, and was assigned to cut the hair of clinic patients. Well, you know how barbers are, they get to talking with their clients while they're cutting their hair, and just about any subject can come up. Bryan asked the man whose hair he was cutting, “Do you think I'm rich?” And the man responded, “How many days a week do you eat?” Seeing that Bryan was speechless, he asked, “You mean you eat every day? If you eat every day, you are rich.”

Does that affect you the way it affects me? Two-thirds of Americans are overweight. We eat at least three times each day, and many of us are eating much more than we need to. Myself, I am carrying around with me about 35 extra pounds. And here's a man who doesn't eat everyday, because he is too poor to eat every day. Ouch. That doesn't make me feel too good. But, I am inspired to do something about it.

Jesus said, “He that hath two coats, let him impart to him that hath none; and he that hath food, let him do likewise.” Clearly, we have more food than we need – most of us are overweight. Now, there's no way that I can give the excess food that I don't need to be eating anyway to this man in Haiti, but surely I can do more to see that he is fed every day. I can give to relief agencies who feed the poor. I can work with agencies who work to eliminate the root causes of poverty. And I can encourage you to do the same.

You may think, “What can I do? There's so much to be done, and I am just one person.” Well, you don't have to take on the whole job yourself. Find some small thing that you can do, and do that. As Mother Teresa said, “If you can’t feed a hundred people, then feed just one.” And if you can't feed even one person, then provide one person with one meal when you can.

Here are the lyrics to Bryan Sirchio'ssong, ”If You Eat Each Day”:

Bryan Sirchio
Songs For Justice Walkers
"If You Eat Each Day"

Haiti is the poorest country in this hemisphere
I go there now and then to get my vision clear
Sometimes it gets so hazy in this land of
I consume therefore I am

I was working in this clinic for the dying & diseased
Living skeletons with AIDS and TB
Organized and run by Mother Teresa and her sisters of Charity
I asked the nun in charge, Sister, what should I do?
She smiled and said I've got a job for you
Then she gave me a pair of scissors, and said,
See that man right there
He'd like for you to cut his hair
I said, oh, Sister are you sure?...

I mean its not like I have given
many haircuts in my day
But I was there to help, so I just smiled and said, OK
So there I was, this natural born Vidal Sassoon
just snipping that hair away

We struck up conversation as best we could
His English was broken, my Creole's not too good
But we managed to communicate enough for him to say
Something I never will forget

You see I asked him, do you think I'm rich?
And this was his response to me
He said, well how many times a week do you eat?
Well his question took my voice away
And then he said, you mean you eat every day?
And I said, yeah, and he just said this
Well if you eat each day, you're rich

Somehow that moment felt to me like Holy Ground
I finished his haircut and when I turned around
There was a whole line of customers
who kinda like the way I cut that one man's hair!

So I gave them haircuts but they gave me so much more
They gave me the perspective of the poorest of the poor
And I know I'll spend the rest of my life
trying to somehow respond

'Cause if its true as we often say that wealth is relative
It just might take the dying poor in a place like Port au Prince
To help us see this relativity from God's point of view
To cut through our first world denial with gospel Truth
And as for me, I know I need to receive this paradigm shift
That in a hungry world, if we eat each day...
We're rich

Haiti is the poorest country in this hemisphere
I go there now and then to get my vision clear
Sometimes it gets so hazy in this land of
I consume therefore I am.