Bible Study meets regularly at noon on Fridays in Pastor Bev's office.  All are welcome, and you are invited to bring your lunch. If you are new to studying the Bible, join us! This week our texts are Psalm 121 and John 3:1-17.

Please come join the SHPC Green Team and help our church become good stewards of the earth's resources! We are making good strides. The church was just awarded a $500 grant from the Interfaith Sustainable Food Collaborative to put in an organic garden, we have switched "Deep Green" with Marin Clean Energy, and we are making plans to reduce waste and to conserve water and energy. We are also investigating options for supporting a local farm through a Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) program. Please grab a cup of coffee after worship this Sunday and head to Pastor Bev's office. We welcome your ideas and your participation.  

Doug Eisinger

Green Team Chair

The San Francisco Theological Seminary invites you to pray as a part of the SFTS community this Lenten season, with and through the SFTS Lenten devotionals. Each Advent and Lent, the broader SFTS community enters into a season of prayer with devotions written by members of the community - students, faculty, staff, trustees, and alumni. The devotions are sent out by email every morning, and we have the opportunity to pray together - wherever we are - grounded in a shared scripture and a shared devotion.

If you would like to receive the Lenten devotions each morning by email, you can sign up on the SFTS website here. You can also find the devotions each day by following us on Twitter or by liking us on Facebook. We hope that you will be a part of this community of prayer. 

The "40 Days for Food Justice" project is a free, online Lenten resource for use in teaching, worship, or devotional practice, in which forty different voices speak out on behalf of food justice.

Each day one individual will offer their perspective on food justice: what food justice means to them and where they see people and communities at work to promote greater food justice. To sign up for the program, click here. To get a taste of what folks are writing about, enjoy this first entry by Rev. Margaret Anne Overstreet, a Presbyterian Minister and Food Justice Advocate. 

Because It Matters

by Rev. Margaret Anne Overstreet

I've been teaching classes and workshops about food, and the global implications of our daily food choices, for several years. Over the course of those teaching opportunities, I've discovered a pair of questions that really gets a lively discussion started.

The first question is: What are your values?

In other words, what are the ideals by which you live your life, by which you decide right or wrong, by which you choose to go left or right? This question evokes a variety of responses: compassion, equality, kindness, justice, respect for others, joy, connection, doing unto others as you would have them do unto you.

The second question is: What are your food values?

In other words, what are the criteria by which you make your food choices, three times a day, every day? Again the responses are varied, but are almost always very different than the answers to the first question: price, convenience,  speed, taste, health.

As people of faith, we try to live by a moral compass, espousing those values that our faith teaches us are the foundation of a life that reflects our belief system. When we make choices with great awareness, those choices reflect our values. When we make choices with less awareness, sometimes even unconsciously, our choices are less likely to reflect our values.

Like so many of us, much of my life has been spent eating unconsciously, making food choices with little or no awareness of the way my food choices affect my body, my brothers and sisters around the corner and around the world, or the planet. The road to more conscious eating, and to bringing my food values more in line with the values of my faith, has not been quick or easy.

So, why do I do it?

Because it matters.

There are seven billion people on earth and they all need to eat. These food choices are all connected and they have cumulative effects on the environment, the farmer, the farmworker, food policy, and much more.

Wendell Berry wrote, "Eaters, that is, must understand that eating takes place inescapably in the world, that it is inescapably an agricultural act, and how we eat determines, to a considerable extent, how the world is used."

I care about how the world is used. I care about those who grow and transport food. I care about those who do not have access to enough food or to healthy food choices. Those are my food values. And eating with ever-increasing awareness of the implications of my food choices helps me live out those values.