through Church World Service/CROP
published by Iron Horse Free Press
or email for more info
5-1/2" x 8", 72 pages, appendix, saddle stitched.
All proceeds benefit Church World Service/CROP. The book's appendix gives statistics on world hunger and the history and services of CROP. Organizations wishing to use this book to raise money to combat hunger are encouraged to contact us for special arrangements.
CROP captured the imagination of America's heartland. Soon friendship Trains were roaring across the country, picking up commodities such as corn, wheat, rice, and beans to be shared around the world. The experience of the trains led to Friendship Food Ships. And, a multi-denominational program called One Great Hour of Sharing was formed to raise in-church gifts to fill these ships. CROP continued to provide community-wide opportunities for sharing.
Church World Service, PO Box 968, Elkhart, IN 46515, was born in the aftermath of World War II. A number of denominations came together to form an agency "to do in partnership what none of us could hope to do as well alone!" Their mission was clear: Feed the hungry, clothe the naked, heal the sick, comfort the aged, shelter the homeless.
Some fifty years later the mission remains, though where and how it is accomplished has changed dramatically. In 1946-1947, U.S. churches opened their hearts and provided more than 11 million pounds of food, clothing, and medical supplies to war-torn Europe. Protestants and Catholics pooled talent and resources to meet a staggering refugee crisis. Today the immigration and Refugee Program of Church World Service is a vital, internationally-lauded ministry, having resettled some 400,000 people since its inception. They have championed peace and justice and self-sufficiency around the world.
Author's Note: After I had decided to write about someone dedicated to the humane compaign against hunger, my imagination fell under the sway of stories drawn from the folklore of Baltic peoples. Those stories concern various prodigies of forestry and the hunt. Besides magnifying the strength and skill of their central figures, the stories often tell of a profound struggle with nature, with mythic adversaries, and with fate. Thus the robust and often wily protagonist might meet a tragic end.
A certain weeping-rock alongside the Daugava River, for instance, is said to be transformed from a beautiful girl who was the lover of a powerful bear-slayer. He had also succeeded in combining some of his people's clans into tribes and improving their modes of government and defense. His strength was supposed to derive from the fact that his ears were the ears of a bear. Like the biblical Sampson, he suffered from an enemy who sought to take away that strength at the source - by cutting off his ears. The two grappled and fell into the dark waters of the river from which, it is said, he will one day rise and free his people.
So I very freely reconceived elements of that story.
Author George Kelsey Dreher was born in Wisconsin and lived his last 30 years in Connecticut, the period that bore his major research and writing, where he was minister of the Mystic Congregational Church. He graduated from Dartmouth, a major in English Honors, in 1941, then earned degrees from Oberlin Graduate School of Theology and Yale Divinity School. He wrote many pieces for church periodicals. 1961-1964 he lectured in religion and philosophy at Wichita University. Following an interest in the impact of the Bible on later literature, he presented papers to small groups on Fulke Greville, Girodoux' JUDITH and Peele's THE LOVE OF DAVID AND FAIR BETHSABE. It was the latter which led to the study of EDWARD I. He was a recognized scholar of the American Revolution and Elizabethan drama. This novella was started in the fifties in Wichita as a play. It was never performed on stage and by the late sixties he was converting it to prose in hopes it could be used to raise money for Church World Service/CROP to combat hunger.
PO Box 10746
Midland, TX 79702
432-686-0397, fax 432-0397
ihfp@aol.com
|
Powered By OpenWorld
© Copyright 1999 OpenWorld All rights reserved. |
