In this Sentinel Watch podcast, adapted for print, David Brown talks with Margaret Rogers, a Christian Science practitioner and teacher from Berkeley, California. To hear the podcast, visit sentinel.christianscience.com/helpingthehungry.
David Brown: Right now, there are many people who are concerned about the issue of hunger, with rising food prices, supply disruptions, concerns about the effects of climate change, food waste, and food insecurity making headlines. Various advocacy groups say that the world produces enough food to feed the billions of people on Earth. Yet despite this, they say one in nine people around the world go hungry each day. So what can we do about it?
For a number of years, Margaret Rogers volunteered with social service organizations to improve conditions for the poor. Her thinking about this led her to eventually enter the field of spiritual healing. She became a practitioner and teacher of Christian Science. That’s an approach based on the teachings of the Bible and explained in detail in a book called Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy, the Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science.
So Margaret, tell us a little bit about how your interest in this issue first started.
Margaret Rogers: I was about 13 years old and lived in the Sacramento Valley in California, one of the state’s breadbaskets. We had migrant laborers come in from Mexico every summer to work in the fields. It was the first time I’d really been exposed to a different culture from my own. I heard that a community church near where I lived was providing day care for the children of the workers while they were out in the fields, and they were looking for volunteers.
So I thought, “Well, that’s something I can do.” I volunteered and it was just such an eye-opener for me because I really never lived around people that had to work in such difficult conditions. They slept in metal shelters in the dry fields, where it was so hot in the summer and there was just one spigot of water for a hundred people. They were working long hours out in the sun each day, with no air conditioning of any kind to take a break in. It felt so wrong to me based on principles I’d learned about taking care of one’s neighbors, and it awakened an interest in me to do something about it.
I continued to find volunteer positions where I could make some kind of a difference. And when I got to college, I began thinking about how to prepare my life to better serve and help people out of such bad conditions.
When you wrote about your experience for the Christian Science Sentinel, you mentioned that, even though you loved this work, you often found that you were sort of frustrated by it, too (see “What can God do about hunger?” May 21, 2001). Why?
Because you often feel like you’re doing so little in the face of the urgent situations that need to be improved in this world.
It seemed like you were looking for something that would provide a permanent and lasting solution to the issues that a lot of these folks were facing every day.
Yes, I began to learn there is a deep spirituality that pervades all cultures. People look to a higher power to sustain them in trouble. And to help to strengthen the understanding of an ever-present God—a compassionate and just intelligence that does guide us to solutions to suffering—is crucial to the world.
You had an opportunity to put the way that you were thinking about this into practice. One morning, a couple that you knew called to ask for your help as a Christian Science practitioner. Could you say a little bit about this?
Yes. I had begun in the full-time practice of Christian Science healing. People were calling on me for prayer, to help them see how knowing God can resolve difficult conditions in their lives. One day, a woman called and said her family had zero food in the house. They had a small child and her husband had not been able to find work. Of course, that just wrenches your heart. She was asking me to pray for them.
I said I would. But when I hung up the phone, I just couldn’t think of anything except, How can I get food to them? At that time—this was decades ago—there wasn’t the simple option of ordering food online and sending it to somebody. And I didn’t have the means to get to where they were. So I struggled for some time, being unable to pray and just trying to figure out how to meet their need in a material way. I couldn’t get serene about it.
And so finally I just reached out for direction from God. The thought that came to me was, “She did not ask you for money. She did not ask you for food. She asked you for prayer. Can you do that?” And I thought, “Well, yes, that I can do.” I really turned to that consciousness that Jesus so amply demonstrated, that there is an omnipotent Love we call God that does meet human needs. I felt confident that this higher intelligence and divine Love was present with this family and would bring about a solution to their need. I got calm about that and really trusted it.
I didn’t hear back from the couple that day. But the next day, as I recall, the woman called back and there was awe in her voice. She said that soon after we’d talked, a neighbor had knocked on their door and asked if her husband was available to paint his house. (He’d seen her husband out painting before.) He said he would give them some money in advance. They were able to buy food that day.
When I heard her gratitude for this outcome, I thought I wouldn’t have stolen that experience from her for anything! I wouldn’t have deprived her of that awareness that there’s an ever-present God or power or intelligence that supplies our needs.
Some people say today, “Oh, that’s just ‘thoughts and prayers,’ ” as if it doesn’t make any difference. But no, prayer is accessing the ever-present power of Love that heals. And that’s what this woman had experienced.
What a terrific experience. You know, I think that what you’re touching on here is something that a lot of people recognize; you got this call from someone who believed that a spiritual approach would be effective, and yet for the first bit, you were struggling with, How can I be most helpful here? In a way, you had to put your foot down and say, “I’m going to have confidence that there is a spiritual answer here.” And that began opening up doors for you. Is that right?
That’s right. And we have these examples in the Scriptures. We have Jesus saying, “You shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free” (John 8:32, New King James Version). What truth is he talking about? Is it the “truth” that there’s a material world and we only have so much food available? Or is it the genuine truth that there is an all-powerful Love that can provide in a way that human beings can understand?
I think of that great example in the Gospels of Jesus feeding the multitudes. In the book of John, the multitudes come to Jesus in the wilderness to hear his preaching. But at a certain point they were hungry and there was no food. And Jesus asked one of his disciples where they could buy bread for them all. There were thousands of people. Another of his disciples said there was a boy there who had five loaves of bread and two fish, but what is that among so many? (See John 6:1–14.)
Something that I think each of us has to work on every day is to pray to better express God’s love and not be self-absorbed.
One thing that really strikes me about that is, how did the disciples know this? Maybe because the boy offered what he had. And just to have one child say, “OK, there’s lots of people here that are hungry, but I’ve got this much.” The boy’s compassion—his generosity and willingness to share—was unlimited. Then Jesus multiplied those loaves until everyone in the crowd had something to eat. To me, that means Jesus had such an understanding that the substance there was Love, and Love was not limited, and this would meet the human need. Jesus did that over and over again in so many different situations, proving that there is an intelligence, a Truth, we can know that will take care of human conditions.
That’s terrific. I think it’s worth noting here that when we talk about hunger, we’re talking about what we often see as chronic conditions in which there is food out there somewhere, but hundreds of millions of people don’t have access to that support. That’s the argument.
You mentioned what Jesus did. And you talked about when he said, “You shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.” So in that situation, what is the truth about those who are experiencing hunger right now and in need of sustenance? How do you get at that truth?
The truth is that everyone has direct access to the guidance of God. God is not a “respecter of persons” (Acts 10:34); He doesn’t play favorites. God isn’t limited to any place, or only available if you follow a particular religious teaching. The book of Jeremiah in the Bible has this to say about God’s promise: “But this shall be the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel; After those days, saith the Lord, I will put my law in their inward parts, and write it in their hearts; and will be their God, and they shall be my people” (31:33).
Everyone truly has spiritual sense. That conviction that God is with everyone can reach and help people wherever they are. I find it so helpful to realize how many wonderful ideas are coming to humanity about how to alleviate hunger. Much more still needs to be done. But there are so many people that are working towards solutions.
I find a great source of brilliant ideas in The Christian Science Monitor. They have a section in the newspaper called “Points of Progress.” It highlights places all over the world where people are making a difference by coming with an idea and helping the people to implement that idea. One example is about people in cities who found it difficult to access fresh food. And so a system was established for how to bring food from the country into the city. They’d had an access issue and a solution was found.
People may say, “Well, how do you know people were praying about that?” Prayer isn’t confined to a certain form. There was a desire to meet a need and a way was found. “Desire is prayer.” Mary Baker Eddy writes that in Science and Health on page 1. I love knowing that desire is prayer! So where there’s a desire to help, a desire to be unselfish, to serve others’ needs, that’s prayer. And it has an effect.
That takes a load off. You don’t have to have a certain combination of words when you’re thinking about prayer. It’s that earnest, sincere desire to help. And that in and of itself has spiritual power.
When we approach this issue of food insecurity or hunger, what is it exactly we are trying to heal? Is it the condition? Is it an individual’s experience?
I’d go again right to Jesus’ teachings. “You shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.” And what was that truth that he was referring to? His whole life and his ministry proved that there is an omnipotent, all-loving Father-Mother, God, that loves His creation, that loves every one of us, and has not made us vulnerable material beings. God has made us in the image of Spirit, in the image of Love, and that’s our substance. Therefore healing is always possible because our substance is actually spiritual. Understanding this, as Jesus proved over and over again, does meet the human need.
There is a deep spirituality that pervades all cultures. People look to a higher power to sustain them in trouble.
In addition to prayer, I think it’s very important to stay alert to how we, individually and as a society, can be more generous. Behind the condition of poverty there is an injustice. There are many people that have more than they need and many people that don’t have enough. The basis then becomes, How do we become more unselfish? How do we really care about our neighbor? And that’s something that I think each of us has to work on every day, to pray to better express God’s love and not be self-absorbed. That’s an ongoing challenge, but an ongoing blessing too, because it blesses the giver certainly as much as the receiver.
Margaret, a little bit earlier you mentioned how some people say thoughts and prayers don’t seem to have much efficacy, at least in the way that a lot of people think of that. And I think about someone who might be listening right now and thinking, “Well, if someone’s hungry, find them food. Just give them food.” But as you noted, your approach in the situation you mentioned with that family that called you for prayer was strikingly different. What do you say to someone who says, “Well, food is practical; I know that I can give someone some food and they’re not hungry anymore.”
You know, it’s interesting, you reminded me of something I heard years ago in a news broadcast during a famine in Ethiopia. They were interviewing an impoverished woman there, and she said into the camera, “Our gods are dying and so we are dying too.” And it just rent my heart. There was this sense that there wasn’t any greater power that could save them. I remember entering this mental protest: “No, that is not true! There is a universal intelligence and Love that is there. And there is a way to make that practical.”
We see this with the kind of courage people express today in helping war-torn areas or putting themselves in danger to help others. It shows they have faith in something higher than their personal interests.
It’s Spirit, divine Love, that gives people the desire and courage to be unselfish. Love will heal the world’s hunger.
