bread alone

The other day at our kitchen table a friend said that rice prices are rising- rice, the staple of so many, including those of us who are not so poor but have taken refuge in our ability to eat rice and beans. There are riots, he said, and Wal-Mart is now limiting how many bags of rice a customer can buy.

My eyebrows raised. Wal-Mart? I sang "the times, they are a-changing." I wondered how soon, and how hard, the price of rice and wheat would impact me.

For the time being, the reality of food prices is made most accessible to me as I consider what brothers and sisters in Egypt are facing, as I can picture their meals and their neighborhoods and their bakeries. The venerable Egyptian English-version weekly Al Ahram considers how the government should respond to the crisis.

As what seems like it should be certain becomes more unsteady, I consider the words of my favorite nun: "The poor may know that God loves them. But how can the very poor know this, if they do not even have enough to live?"