Gordon Clay here. Happy Thanksgiving. If you're hearing this, chances are you're inside where it's dry and nice and warm. Today, you'll most likely eat until you're stuffed and then have a second piece of pie for dessert. Give thanks for you're good fortune.

In Curry County, over 36% of our neighbors live in poverty, which includes over 24% of all children under 19. Over 20 million Americans live in extreme poverty earning less than $11,000 a year for a family of 4. They don't get three meals today, or even two. On this Thanksgiving Day, over a billion people in the world are starving and may not get ANY food today. Many of them will die today, 16,000 of them children.

If the billions of dollars that were spent on the recent election were spent instead to feed this starving population, it could have eliminated world hunger for over three months. That's equal to the cost to build but not maintain 3 B2 bombers that have been deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan. Just 3.

Pope John Paul II urged us to "embrace the immense multitudes of the hungry, the needy, the homeless, those without medical care and, above all, those without hope of a better future...To ignore them would mean becoming like the 'rich man' who pretended not to know the beggar Lazarus lying at his gate"

Pope Paul VI said "It involves building a human community where everyone can live truly human lives, free from discrimination...free from servitude to others or to natural forces which they cannot control.

Remember that by being in solidarity with the poor and marginalized, we are in solidarity with God and honor our covenant responsibility.