How Was Church?

I'm glad you asked! The choir, (read Pink Floyd), sang through a rousing rendition of the album Animals and then proceeded to call down heaven, as they say, with a glorious romp through Dark Side Of The Moon.

I sat comfortably enthroned, (or is that entombed), on my pew, i.e. coffee house easy chair. The sacraments went down easy this morning, double espresso and a sensible bran muffin, less guilt, less repentance than that ever-tempting cinnamon roll.

The sermon, a disjointed ramble through the day's headlines- the miseries and malfeasances of the night before, until the Spirit Himself gave voice to the Father's heart. Let's just say, there wasn't a dry eye in the house.

What was on the Father's mind this morning? The famine in Somalia apparently....

Above, an internally displaced Somali woman attends to her malnourished son at the Banadir hospital in Mogadishu. Photo by Ismail Taxta / Reuters. Below, Relatives of Hassan Abdulkadir Adan, third from left (rear), help to lower the body of his 7-year-old son into a grave in a refugee camp in Mogadishu. Photo by Farah Abdi Warsameh / AP. Photo text courtesy MSNBC.com.

Above, Aden Salaad, 2, looks up at his mother as she bathes him in a tub at a Doctors Without Borders hospital, where Aden is receiving treatment for malnutrition, in Dagahaley Camp, outside Dadaab. Photo by Rebecca Blackwell / AP. Below, a mother mourns the death of her son at the Banadir hospital. Photo by John Moore / Getty Images. Photo text courtesy MSNBC.com.

Above, a malnourished child from southern Somalia is weighed in Banadir hospital in Mogadishu. Photo by Farah Abdi Warsameh / AP. Below, a doctor examines Mihag Gedi Farah, a seven-month-old child with a weight of 7.5lbs (the average weight of a first world newborn), in a field hospital of the International Rescue Committee. Photo by Schalk Van Zuydam / AP. Photo text courtesy MSNBC.com.

Osman Ali Aliyow Mursal digs a burial plot for his four-year-old son, Aden Ibrahim, as men prepare to pray over the boy's body, wrapped in a plastic mat. Doctors were unable to save Aden, who died of diarrhea-related dehydration after four days of inpatient care. U.N. Refugee Chief Antonio Guterres says that drought-ridden Somalia is the "worst humanitarian disaster" in the world. Photo by Rebecca Blackwell / AP. Below, A woman from southern Somalia builds a makeshift shelter from tree branches at a refugee camp in Mogadishu, Somalia. Photo by Mohamed Sheikh Nor / AP. Photo text courtesy of MSNBC.com.

Mulmillo closes the eyes of her two-year-old son Mahmud moments after he died from malnutrition and related complications at a local hospital in Mogadishu. Photo by Roberto Schmidt / AFP - Getty Images, text by MSNBC.com.

So political BS aside, and no religious posturing needed. There will be no altar call this morning, the Christian response to hunger is explicitly mandated in scripture. Here's how we can help.

Whatever we haven't done for the least of these...

God Please Kill Me.

For all the girls who have shared their story with me...

We stayed late

To stack the chairs

And sweep the floor

And you were hungry

So we spread out a choir robe

On the altar

And picnicked on the butt ends

Of the unfinished French bread

Of the broken body of Christ

And you, chewing, said you knew

That God loved you

But thought He might oughtta

Raise His standards

And I said, self-loathing

Was kinda hot

And you shot the grape juice

Of the blood of

The new covenant

Right out your nose

And then you cried right through

Everything your dad ever did to you

As the gathering shadows

Further emaciated

The Son of sorrows

On the large brass crucifix

Above the baptismal pool

And you wept

The most honest prayer

That had been prayed

In that place all day

God please kill me

God hears your broken hearts, your healing is in His arms.