As the stewardship director, I found it easy to incorporate their collective wisdom into my own understanding of stewardship, and to believe that those who are committed to the peace and justice cause find it easy to relate to stewardship as a way of life. I don’t believe the word "stewardship" was even mentioned during the day, but it was alive during the day. However, it is not uncommon for me to attach some notion of stewardship to the topic at hand because I believe that everything going on around us is stewardship of one kind or another.

The typical response by some that have not chosen to give this stewardship idea a fair shake is that some poorly conceived concept of money and guilt is about to be cast forcefully upon them and they want no part of the idea. Often times, we have not taken time to consider that the peace and justice issues discussed that day— the value of life, the problem of poverty, racism -- equal justice, war and peace, and the interdependence of the human community, are challenges we all have the responsibility to face each and every day of our lives. There is no need to distinguish these responsibilities as a part of our life of stewardship. There is no need to distinguish these responsibilities based on our religious preference. The truth is that each of us, Jew or Protestant or Catholic, are all called by God to play a common role in making peace and justice a reality in the world we live in. We might think of stewardship as only about money, but we must think of stewardship in a broader sense, the way we live our lives and the things we do each day that affect those around us.

During one of the sessions, one of the presenters suggested that we as a society have evolved from Homo sapiens into Homo economists or Homo consumerists. The idea, as I understood it, was that we are all caught up in the material world we live in and that we have bought into the idea that consuming and accumulating all we can is what is most important. This idea of fending for ourselves without considering the needs of others is not the way peace and justice issues can best be addressed. Rather, living our lives with the needs of others in mind as well as an understanding of those gifts God has loaned each of us will help us address the many peace and justice issues confronting our world today.

The saying "One for all, and all for one" keeps coming to mind as I write this column. I guess what this is saying to me is that I need to try to recognize my responsibility to take away the blinders and look more carefully at the needs of those around me. Each of us has something to offer another person, and there are people around us who have something we are lacking but need. The problem is that we don’t often work enough to match our gifts and charisms with the needs of those around us. Again, we might not relate this action to the concept of stewardship or for that matter as a peace and justice issue, but it is.

As we continue our journey through this Lenten season, it is my hope that each of us will reflect on the peace and justice issues— that common ground that we can all look to in helping make the society we live in more Godlike and resolve to do something about it. One of the presenters suggested at one point during his remarks that it is not his churches’ goal to make the soup kitchens better, or nicer, or to feed more people. Their goal is to put the soup kitchens out of business. Each of us can and will make a difference if we will only give it a try. What better time than now to take that first step?