Operation Rice Bowl 2009 Calendar Home Guide

Operation Rice Bowl Integrated Activity

Audience: Upper middleclass, suburban Catholic high school seniors in Northwest Pennsylvania

Activity

I will be using the 2009 Operation Rice Bowl Home Calendar Guide as an Opening prayer for Sunday evening Religious Education class sessions. We will follow the directives from the Calendar for each Sunday of Lent. The directive for March 1st is:

Visit our brothers & sisters in Egypt
• Using a computer with an internet connection, visit the Interactive Map at http://orb.crs.org and look for Egypt.
• Pray for women working to transform their families’ lives by establishing small businesses. (We will pray for these women by praying the Lenten Prayer printed on the front of the Calendar.)
• Learn about Amal, an Egyptian woman who benefited from a Catholic Relief Services microfinance project small business loan by reading her story from the 2009 Home Calendar Guide.

Summary

Annually, Catholic Relief Services publishes a Home Calendar Guide with daily reflections, prayers and activities based on Catholic Social Teaching, hunger issues, Sacred Scripture and The Stations of the Cross. Six different countries and recipes are featured, one for each week. The story of a recipient of CRS services and support from each of these countries is shared.

Review

This Calendar is designed to grow your spiritual life during Lent. It is meant to teach about our brothers and sisters in need around the world. It is also meant to solicit contributions for Catholic Relief Services. Operation Rice Bowl has been a Lenten tradition for more than 30 years. The 2009 Home Calendar Guide is accompanied by a cardboard Rice Bowl meant to hold alms. Each young person in the “audience” has a Calendar and a Rice Bowl at home and is encouraged to use them daily .

Both the Calendar and the Rice Bowl exhibit extremely high production values, which is an indication that it takes its audience and its mission of “prayer, fasting, learning and giving” (Calendar) very seriously.

ORB’s audience is multi-generational & intergenerational. While I am utilizing it on Sunday evenings with high school seniors, it’s been distributed to my entire Religious Education program of over 600 families with the hope that it will be used by families together. Again, see http://crs.org And also, it can be used by families with young children, or families with teenage children, or it can be used by single young adults or senior citizens living at home alone—hence, multi-generational and intergenerational.

The Calendar is full of websites inviting the participant to learn ever more. In addition, it tells engaging witness stories of those beneficiaries of CRS funding. It provides specific alms giving dollar amounts to the participants. It educates and strongly encourages work toward social justice.

Interestingly, while it the Guide does refer to “brothers and sisters around the world”, not once in the daily activities, or the recipes, nor in the stories does the 2009 Home Calendar Guide refer to the audience participant’s own father or mother, sister or brother, or even guardian. Once, it uses the word “sibling.” The Guide very much holds the participants themselves at more than an arm’s length: In the welcome it says: “Just as we celebrate the Eucharist on Sundays, we can use ORB as a way to ‘break bread’ together with family and loved ones…Prepare simple meatless meals enjoyed by our neighbors in other countries with the weekly recipes.” ORB shies away from saying that the participants themselves can break bread together with their own families. And that they can prepare simple meatless meals together with their own families. Are we no longer allowed to identify who constitutes our family members?

I see this as a contradiction . On one hand, CRS distributes ORB to parishes, schools and religious education programs as a family activity, but, on the other hand, it does not use family based language. Apropos to our discussion, by failing to draw parents into this activity, ORB is missing out on an opportunity that many teenagers would like to have: that is “ a chance to be closer to their parents. “James Heft, S.M., and others, in Passing on the Faith, Transforming Traditions for the Next Generation of Jews, Christians, and Muslims, Fordham University Press: New York, 2006, p.59

Heft also says that the religious faith of most teenagers today can be summed up as Moralistic Therapeutic Deism with the following as hallmarks:

1. “A God exists who created and orders the world and watches over human life on earth.
2. God wants people to be good, nice, and fair to each others, as taught in the Bible and most world religions.
3. The central goal of life is to be happy and to feel good about oneself.
4. God doesn’t need to be particularly involved in one’s life except when he is needed to resolve a problem.
5. Good people go to heaven when they die.” (p.64)

In applying this description to the witness stories as told in the Guide, they all may be described by at least 2, 3 & 4. Applying them to Martin of Honduras’ story:

• Martin “prayed for the day when [he] could make [his] small farm more productive. My prayers were answered when CRS came to the region….” #4
• Martin and “some other farmers and I formed a local co-op.” #2
• [Martin’s] income has increased and his life has changed….today [he is]the president of the local co-op and a member of the Fair Trade network in Honduras. #3.

The other stories may be broken down similarly, although Martin’s story is the only one which mentions prayer. All of the stories read like “happily ever afters” once CRS enters their lives. None of the witness stories mention a belief in God or any religious belief at all.

Overall, however, the 2009 Home Calendar Guide and Rice Bowl are a worthwhile Lenten activity. “It nurtures regular religious practices in the lives of youth” (p.71) and helps to “focus attention on strengthening parents’ religious and spiritual lives.” (p.69) I believe that it will lead my target audience along a growth filled spiritual journey.
" Oh loving Lord,
during this Lenten season I lift up my voice to you.
Instill in my heart the desire to hear your voice
in the voices of the poor, your people.
May I find in their example the path to my conversion.
Bless my Prayer, Fasting, Learning, and Giving
in this season of grace.
May these actions answer the call
to transform our world.
Amen." (Guide)