Letter to the editor:

Monsignor,
After thirty years of faithfully attending mass and listening to your homilies I realize that I cannot remember a one of them, consider it a waste of time, and will be spending my time going forward doing things with more tangible reward and benefit. I thank you for your well-intentioned investment in me but I see no value in it.

One response the following week:

Monsignor,
I too after thirty years of faithfully attending mass and listening to your homilies realize that I cannot remember one of them. I also have been enjoying my wife's cooking each day for the last 30 years of our marriage and cannot remember the specific ingredients of many of them, but had I not partaken, I would long ago be dead. I thank you for your well-intentioned investment in me and its value in bringing me closer to my eternal reward. As importantly, thank you for increasing my understanding and helping navigate this wonderfully imperfect condition we call our human life. I am who I am today in significant part because of my interaction with you. While I cannot upon demand remember one of your homilies, I recognize them and the teaching of our faith as situations come up at work, with my children and my grandchildren. I see value in it and thank you.

Current Scenario/Context

In today’s society, there is an explosion of options and decisions facing those in a developing mode. There also is much less margin for error than previous generations. The combination of the current legal environment, instantaneous communication, increasing transparency, and advanced technology give permanence to events and mistakes have a greater chance of doing permanent damage. Previously used toolboxes seem to becoming increasingly obsolete. There is less and less shame associated with improper behavior. Our young adults increasingly view asking for help as a sign of weakness. Discipline and Values are not looked up to as they had been in the past. Amplification of non-traditional behaviors seems more newsworthy and acceptable than amplification of traditional values, particularly in our public schools. Parents who are willing to be high involvement parents in raising their children are facing increasing and more diverse challenges and need to be increasingly informed.

The Results

Larger percentages of our society are missing opportunities and not growing to the extent that they can in areas of character, leadership, spirituality, and interpersonal relationships. The stream of media marketing that dominates our attention is self-serving in nature, effective, and often focused on short-term gratification. The increase effectiveness of marketing almost exclusively to the consumption side of people’s natural desires leaves voids and gaps in the development process. People are increasingly experiencing things at younger and younger ages. They increasingly are making meaningful decisions with permanent consequences at times in their lives that they don’t know what they don’t know, rather than acting based on informed assessment and discernment.

The Opportunity

We have opportunity to step up servicing those in a seeking mode that are exhibiting the following characteristics:

• They are ready to recognize their own limitations as a single human being, at a single time, and at a single place and see interacting with those with experience as a potential growth opportunity.

• They are at a point in their lives when they both need and are willing to trust someone to help them discern right and wrong, particularly those that have more experience than they do.

• They are asking the hard questions about what gives them joy in their lives and what they were created for in this life.

• They are humbled in realizing that people have been at this for thousands of years, and that there is wisdom that they are not going to be able to obtain by themselves.

Having an available “library” of media allows our youth, parents, and our line level leaders to experience incremental, positive, meaningful, and insightful content. A site that proactively collects and organizes high quality media has opportunity to create a pull toward spiritually based formation.

The Answer

Food4thought is partnering and seeking content contributions from top Spiritual leaders, musicians, and other experts in the community to help individuals improve their ability to discern. Food4thought will provide incremental access to individuals and insights that most would not have access to at any reasonable cost.

We have created and are expanding an easily accessible media library in the form of a website of sermons, music, and interviews which is offered free of charge to any person seeking meaningful content on the Internet.

Food4thought Is:

“You don’t choose your family. They are God’s gift to you, as you are to them” – Desmond Tutu

• Charles Cornell – President, Multi Media Communications Internet Services.

• Ken Lard - CFO, Bradford Mortgage

• Rev Nicholas Lombardi S.J. Ph.D – Director of Online Academic Services, Fordham University

• Kevin D. Martz - SVP, Morgan Stanley.

• John Martz - Financial Accountant

• Jay O’Meara – broadcast media editing, CrewCuts

• Msgr. Stephen McHenry Ph.D. - Pastor of St, Anthony of Padua Catholic Church in Ambler PA

• Christopher Spendley - CFO/SVP Landover Division of KHovnanian.

• Lucy Worth – Director of Development and Administration, Duke University Chapel.

If you have feedback on how we can improve feel free to contact us at: info@food4thought.tv