Mondays with Laudato Si'- 12/30/19

21. Account must also be taken of the pollution produced by residue, including dangerous waste present in different areas. Each year hundreds of millions of tons of waste are generated, much of it non-biodegradable, highly toxic and radioactive, from homes and businesses, from construction and demolition sites, from clinical, electronic and industrial sources. The earth, our home, is beginning to look more and more like an immense pile of filth. In many parts of the planet, the elderly lament that once beautiful landscapes are now covered with rubbish. Industrial waste and chemical products utilized in cities and agricultural areas can lead to bioaccumulation in the organisms of the local population, even when levels of toxins in those places are low. Frequently no measures are taken until after people’s health has been irreversibly affected.

Mondays with Laudato Si' - 12/23/19

I. POLLUTION AND CLIMATE CHANGE

Pollution, waste and the throwaway culture

20. Some forms of pollution are part of people’s daily experience. Exposure to atmospheric pollutants produces a broad spectrum of health hazards, especially for the poor, and causes millions of premature deaths. People take sick, for example, from breathing high levels of smoke from fuels used in cooking or heating. There is also pollution that affects everyone, caused by transport, industrial fumes, substances which contribute to the acidification of soil and water, fertilizers, insecticides, fungicides, herbicides and agrotoxins in general. Technology, which, linked to business interests, is presented as the only way of solving these problems, in fact proves incapable of seeing the mysterious network of relations between things and so sometimes solves one problem only to create others.

Mondays with Laudato Si' (a day late!) 12/17/19

19. Following a period of irrational confidence in progress and human abilities, some sectors of society are now adopting a more critical approach. We see increasing sensitivity to the environment and the need to protect nature, along with a growing concern, both genuine and distressing, for what is happening to our planet. Let us review, however cursorily, those questions which are troubling us today and which we can no longer sweep under the carpet. Our goal is not to amass information or to satisfy curiosity, but rather to become painfully aware, to dare to turn what is happening to the world into our own personal suffering and thus to discover what each of us can do about it.

Mondays with Laudato Si' - 12/9/19

WHAT IS HAPPENING TO OUR COMMON HOME

17. Theological and philosophical reflections on the situation of humanity and the world can sound tiresome and abstract, unless they are grounded in a fresh analysis of our present situation, which is in many ways unprecedented in the history of humanity. So, before considering how faith brings new incentives and requirements with regard to the world of which we are a part, I will briefly turn to what is happening to our common home.

18. The continued acceleration of changes affecting humanity and the planet is coupled today with a more intensified pace of life and work which might be called “rapidification”. Although change is part of the working of complex systems, the speed with which human activity has developed contrasts with the naturally slow pace of biological evolution. Moreover, the goals of this rapid and constant change are not necessarily geared to the common good or to integral and sustainable human development. Change is something desirable, yet it becomes a source of anxiety when it causes harm to the world and to the quality of life of much of humanity.

Mondays with Laudato Si' - 12/2/19

16. Although each chapter will have its own subject and specific approach, it will also take up and re-examine important questions previously dealt with. This is particularly the case with a number of themes which will reappear as the Encyclical unfolds. As examples, I will point to the intimate relationship between the poor and the fragility of the planet, the conviction that everything in the world is connected, the critique of new paradigms and forms of power derived from technology, the call to seek other ways of understanding the economy and progress, the value proper to each creature, the human meaning of ecology, the need for forthright and honest debate, the serious responsibility of international and local policy, the throwaway culture and the proposal of a new lifestyle. These questions will not be dealt with once and for all, but reframed and enriched again and again.

Mondays with Laudato Si' - 11/25/19

15. It is my hope that this Encyclical Letter, which is now added to the body of the Church’s social teaching, can help us to acknowledge the appeal, immensity and urgency of the challenge we face. I will begin by briefly reviewing several aspects of the present ecological crisis, with the aim of drawing on the results of the best scientific research available today, letting them touch us deeply and provide a concrete foundation for the ethical and spiritual itinerary that follows. I will then consider some principles drawn from the Judaeo-Christian tradition which can render our commitment to the environment more coherent. I will then attempt to get to the roots of the present situation, so as to consider not only its symptoms but also its deepest causes. This will help to provide an approach to ecology which respects our unique place as human beings in this world and our relationship to our surroundings. In light of this reflection, I will advance some broader proposals for dialogue and action which would involve each of us as individuals, and also affect international policy. Finally, convinced as I am that change is impossible without motivation and a process of education, I will offer some inspired guidelines for human development to be found in the treasure of Christian spiritual experience.

Mondays with Laudato Si' - 11/18/19

14. I urgently appeal, then, for a new dialogue about how we are shaping the future of our planet. We need a conversation which includes everyone, since the environmental challenge we are undergoing, and its human roots, concern and affect us all. The worldwide ecological movement has already made considerable progress and led to the establishment of numerous organizations committed to raising awareness of these challenges. Regrettably, many efforts to seek concrete solutions to the environmental crisis have proved ineffective, not only because of powerful opposition but also because of a more general lack of interest. Obstructionist attitudes, even on the part of believers, can range from denial of the problem to indifference, nonchalant resignation or blind confidence in technical solutions. We require a new and universal solidarity. As the bishops of Southern Africa have stated: “Everyone’s talents and involvement are needed to redress the damage caused by human abuse of God’s creation”. [22] All of us can cooperate as instruments of God for the care of creation, each according to his or her own culture, experience, involvements and talents.

Mondays with Laudato Si' - 11/11/19

My appeal

13. The urgent challenge to protect our common home includes a concern to bring the whole human family together to seek a sustainable and integral development, for we know that things can change. The Creator does not abandon us; he never forsakes his loving plan or repents of having created us. Humanity still has the ability to work together in building our common home. Here I want to recognize, encourage and thank all those striving in countless ways to guarantee the protection of the home which we share. Particular appreciation is owed to those who tirelessly seek to resolve the tragic effects of environmental degradation on the lives of the world’s poorest. Young people demand change. They wonder how anyone can claim to be building a better future without thinking of the environmental crisis and the sufferings of the excluded.

Mondays with Laudato Si' - 11/4/19

12. What is more, Saint Francis, faithful to Scripture, invites us to see nature as a magnificent book in which God speaks to us and grants us a glimpse of his infinite beauty and goodness. “Through the greatness and the beauty of creatures one comes to know by analogy their maker” (Wis 13:5); indeed, “his eternal power and divinity have been made known through his works since the creation of the world” (Rom 1:20). For this reason, Francis asked that part of the friary garden always be left untouched, so that wild flowers and herbs could grow there, and those who saw them could raise their minds to God, the Creator of such beauty.[21] Rather than a problem to be solved, the world is a joyful mystery to be contemplated with gladness and praise.

Mondays with Laudato Si' - 10/28/19

11. Francis helps us to see that an integral ecology calls for openness to categories which transcend the language of mathematics and biology, and take us to the heart of what it is to be human. Just as happens when we fall in love with someone, whenever he would gaze at the sun, the moon or the smallest of animals, he burst into song, drawing all other creatures into his praise. He communed with all creation, even preaching to the flowers, inviting them “to praise the Lord, just as if they were endowed with reason”.[19] His response to the world around him was so much more than intellectual appreciation or economic calculus, for to him each and every creature was a sister united to him by bonds of affection. That is why he felt called to care for all that exists. His disciple Saint Bonaventure tells us that, “from a reflection on the primary source of all things, filled with even more abundant piety, he would call creatures, no matter how small, by the name of ‘brother’ or ‘sister’”.[20] Such a conviction cannot be written off as naive romanticism, for it affects the choices which determine our behaviour. If we approach nature and the environment without this openness to awe and wonder, if we no longer speak the language of fraternity and beauty in our relationship with the world, our attitude will be that of masters, consumers, ruthless exploiters, unable to set limits on their immediate needs. By contrast, if we feel intimately united with all that exists, then sobriety and care will well up spontaneously. The poverty and austerity of Saint Francis were no mere veneer of asceticism, but something much more radical: a refusal to turn reality into an object simply to be used and controlled.

Mondays with Laudato Si' - 10/21/19

Saint Francis of Assisi

10. I do not want to write this Encyclical without turning to that attractive and compelling figure, whose name I took as my guide and inspiration when I was elected Bishop of Rome. I believe that Saint Francis is the example par excellence of care for the vulnerable and of an integral ecology lived out joyfully and authentically. He is the patron saint of all who study and work in the area of ecology, and he is also much loved by non-Christians. He was particularly concerned for God’s creation and for the poor and outcast. He loved, and was deeply loved for his joy, his generous self-giving, his openheartedness. He was a mystic and a pilgrim who lived in simplicity and in wonderful harmony with God, with others, with nature and with himself. He shows us just how inseparable the bond is between concern for nature, justice for the poor, commitment to society, and interior peace.

All Souls Day - November 2nd

The last holy day of the three day triumvirate of Halloween, All Saints and All Souls, this day focuses on those faithful departed who might not yet be in heaven with all the saints.  Catholics believe that those who are destined for heaven but still need to be cleansed of venial sins or, for justice' sake, need to make up for harm they've done on earth, no matter how repentant, must be purged before they can be in the presence of pure good, God.  There can be no sin in heaven. 

So we have the idea of Purgatory, a place of waiting and purification so that those who are saved can enter heaven.  This idea actually has Jewish roots, as it is the ancient custom to pray for the dead.  If you have ever prayed the Mourner's Kaddish at a Jewish ceremony, many of the prayers ring true for Catholics. 

The way the Church now does things is to call for a day of commemorating the dead, praying for them, and attending Mass for them.  It is not a holy day of obligation, but it is a lovely way to remember this feast.  My parish has a Mass for all those members of the parish who died that year.  I don't attend regularly, but I have attended in years when I have lost family members.  It is quite moving. 

I am lucky in that I live only 20 minutes from my family's grave site.  November 2nd was also my mother's birthday.  So I have made it my custom for the last many years to visit the family grave, put flowers on the tombstones and pray a rosary there for them all. 

One custom that seems to be gaining popularity is celebrating the Day of the Dead. One year we did make sugar skulls and read about the practice.  Since it is not of my own culture (largely Irish Catholic) I don't really focus on this custom.  And right now as a zero waster and a no-sugar advocate, the plastic molds for the skulls and the bags of sugar in plastic don't appeal to me whatsoever!

However, I do think it is a meaningful practice to set up an altar someone in the house, with photos of beloved family members who have passed on, and maybe decorate the area with candles, flowers, mini-pumpkins, mementos that remind you of the persons.  Including a crucifix, a statue of Our Lday or a rosary or two, etc reinforces the spiritual meaning behind it all.

My parish dedicates the month of November to praying for the dead.  We have a book we can enter names into and this book is kept on the altar throughout the month. 

Some other suggestions for enriching this holy day:

You might join the clergy in praying the Office of the Dead, a litany of prayers especially for All Souls Day.

Read Dante's Purgatio in the month of November.  He was hugely influential in captivating the imagination of our beliefs in the afterlife.  His epic is profoundly religious.

Read (now Saint!) John Henry Newman's famous poem, The Dream of Gerontius (much shorter than Purgatio but along the same lines).

Watch the Disney movie, Coco and then read Steve Greydanus' review of the film.  This would be best to do with middle to high schoolers. 

Mondays with Laudato Si' - 10/14/19

9. At the same time, Bartholomew has drawn attention to the ethical and spiritual roots of environmental problems, which require that we look for solutions not only in technology but in a change of humanity; otherwise we would be dealing merely with symptoms. He asks us to replace consumption with sacrifice, greed with generosity, wastefulness with a spirit of sharing, an asceticism which “entails learning to give, and not simply to give up. It is a way of loving, of moving gradually away from what I want to what God’s world needs. It is liberation from fear, greed and compulsion”.[17] As Christians, we are also called “to accept the world as a sacrament of communion, as a way of sharing with God and our neighbours on a global scale. It is our humble conviction that the divine and the human meet in the slightest detail in the seamless garment of God’s creation, in the last speck of dust of our planet”.[18]

All Saints Day - the reason for the season!

The Church Triumphant!

This feast day is actually the highest in the three day sequence of holidays that starts with Halloween.  It is a Holy Day of Obligation, so we are obligated to attend Mass on that day.  It is to celebrate the Church Triumphant.  Here's some suggestions for how to celebrate this feast:

• Go to Mass, of course!
• Attend or host an All Saints party for your children - complete with costumes and games (as low waste as possible!)
• Eat your Halloween candy as part of the celebration
• Learn about your patron saint, your confirmation saint, a saint you are curious about by doing a little research.
• Read saint stories out loud to your children or anybody else who lives with you or is willing to listen!
• Have your kids and yourself give an informal presentation on a saint around the dinner table
• Sing a hymn together that is appropriate for this day or listen to hymns.  For All the Saints is a classic!  Or Holy, Holy, Holy!
• Pray the litany of the saints
• Play saints bingo!  (use recycled printer paper!  Print it out once and save it for next year.)

All Saints Day doesn't present the worldliness problems that Halloween has acquired.  That's probably why it gets forgotten in the rush.  But the focus on the spiritual instead of the world is a nice refresher after the more raucous Halloween.  Make it a real focus in your family.  The joy of celebrating the saints is a profound one that makes one contemplate the important things, like eternal life, the meaning of life here on earth,  what it is to be holy and what it is to love and glorify God.    

Mondays with Laudato Si' - 10/7/19

8. Patriarch Bartholomew has spoken in particular of the need for each of us to repent of the ways we have harmed the planet, for “inasmuch as we all generate small ecological damage”, we are called to acknowledge “our contribution, smaller or greater, to the disfigurement and destruction of creation”.[14] He has repeatedly stated this firmly and persuasively, challenging us to acknowledge our sins against creation: “For human beings… to destroy the biological diversity of God’s creation; for human beings to degrade the integrity of the earth by causing changes in its climate, by stripping the earth of its natural forests or destroying its wetlands; for human beings to contaminate the earth’s waters, its land, its air, and its life – these are sins”.[15] For “to commit a crime against the natural world is a sin against ourselves and a sin against God”.[16]

Feast of St. Francis of Assisi - October 4, 2019

ST. FRANCIS OF ASSISI, PRAY FOR US!

Image from Trinitystores.com

Put the "Hallow" Back in Hallowe'en!

Image from Catholic.org

Catholics!  Let's take back Halloween!  Let's make it about holiness again!

Hallowe'en is an archaic name for holy eve.  What is the holy eve it celebrates?  All Saints Day of course!

The fact that the secular world focuses more on Halloween than the reason for Halloween shows just how skewed things have gotten.

How to Be a Better Catholic celebrating the triumvirate holidays of Halloween, All Saints Day and All Souls Day:

Halloween has morphed into a commercial holiday that is based on exploitation in one form or another.  Let's not go along with this!  We can still have fun but keep our priorities straight.

Decorations:
Avoid all the cheap, low grade, plastic tchotchke that is pumped out at a frightening and excessive rate so we can decorate our homes, lawns, classrooms, etc.  A lot this stuff is Made in China under horrific working conditions, creating tons of pollution along the way.   It's an extremely destructive and ultimately meaningless production of junk.  We don't need it to enjoy life and we shouldn't let pressure from corporations and misguided commercial practices take away from our beloved holiday.

What's nice though is at this time of year, nature, at least in the northern hemisphere, provides a lot of natural ways to decorate.  So paint your pumpkins, carve your Jack O' Lanterns, stuff your own scarecrows using straw and old ratty clothes, line your driveway with reusable lanterns or candle holders.  Make your own front door wreath or sign or buy from a local artist.  Go to your local corn maze, bonfire, apple picking event.  Make Halloween and all things Autumnal more about nature than commercial excess.

Costumes
Don't buy chintzy, plastic or polyester costumes for your kids.  Instead have a real dress up box of second hand clothes or items made from natural fibers that the kids can turn into whatever they want.  Or if you are good at sewing, make your own.   For instance, one brown robe can be the basis for many different costumes.  You want various articles of clothing that are versatile and can used to make all sorts of different costumes.  Take your kids second hand shopping to help them make their own costume.  And here is a really important Catholic element that will bring real depth of meaning to your Halloween.  Let the kids dress up as saints! In my own family,  often we would dress up as one thing on Halloween (like a princess or a knight) and then use the same costume the next day for an All Saints party (like St. Elizabeth of Hungary or St. George).  The whole reason for Halloween as I said before, is to prepare for the high holy day (of obligation, btw) of All Saints Day!  Dressing up as saints is extremely on point here!

Dealing with the Spooky Aspect
If you are chary of spooky stuff because it's got a bad vibe to you, due to adults turning folk fun into Satanic or demented sordidness, you don't have to go that way at all.  Just celebrate the autumn and saints.  No judgment here!

If you, like me, rather enjoy spooky stories and old timey ghost stories, fairy tales, etc then have fun with it but be aware that some elements in society have hijacked this into rather nefarious channels.  When my kids were younger, I liked to use this time of year to explore literature that somehow resonated with the autumn months.  To me, it's about discernment.  There is lots of classic stuff to read with your family to deepen your enjoyment.  Oscar Wilde's The Canterville Ghost, The Headless Horseman by Washington Irving, Edgar Allan Poe poems and short stories, Hamlet and MacBeth are perfect plays to read for this season.  Sherlock Holmes stories, Agatha Christie short stories, G. K. Chesterton Father Brown stories.  And for younger kids, just reading fairy tales is fun.

Candy:
Here's a list of some ideas for a zero waste Halloween.   I don't go along with the one suggestion that you just try to find candy that is still wrapped in cardboard boxes like Milk Duds.  First of all, they are tiny boxes and I don't know if they actually make it into regular paper recycling.  And they might contaminate the recycling anyway because of melted chocolate.  So you can't really recycle them, I don't think.  You could compost though.  However, the other thing that bothers me even more is that Hershey is notorious for buying chocolate from the commodities market where they have a deliberately opaque supply chain that probably involves very bad labor practices.  Why do we want to support a company that has been exploiting developing countries and children to make its vast fortune?  That doesn't feel very saintly to me!  I mean Milk Duds and Junior Mints just aren't that important to me when I think about it that way.

I honestly think we teach kids gluttony when we deluge them with candy.  We do it starting well before Halloween and pretty much continuing it through Christmas.  (With maybe a brief break until Valentine's Day starts it up again).  We are really doing a major disservice to our kids in a very misguided, negligent way by letting the candy producers own our consciences because we ourselves are weak and addicted and don't have good judgment.  Kids are obese and diabetes at younger and younger ages is skyrocketing.  We are literally damaging our children's health and endangering their lives because we have so little self-control.

Let's make this about God instead.  When we put Him first, things always shake out the way they should.  To be zero waste one often has to plan ahead.  Some alternatives for trick or treaters:

•  Equal Exchange chocolate from Catholic Relief Services and give that out.  It's pricey so you won't be tempted to go overboard.  And you'll know that your money went to help the less fortunate.  
• Hand out things like mandarins with jack o lantern faces.  I did this one year and the kids thought it was cute.  
• As in the linked suggestions, come up with another non-candy treat to hand out.

But again, we shouldn't buy candy and chocolate from companies that have murky supply chains which more than likely involve child labor or slavery.  We really shouldn't be celebrating the eve of All Saints by gluttonously gorging on misbegotten gains.

To me, a Catholic consumer wants to be educated and make their shopping choices based on Christian teachings.  Excessive, reckless consumption might be the zeitgeist of living in the USA today, but it doesn't align with what is truly meaningful to me.

Making Holy Eve about Holiness:
As Catholics, why don't we make going to confession and adoration part of the lead up to Halloween?  We are preparing to honor all the saints in heaven and on All Souls' Day we are praying for the dead.  Shouldn't we make the beautiful gifts of the sacraments part and parcel of this preparation?  The sacrament of Confession cleanses us of our sins (at least until we sin again!) and Adoration centers our prayer life in Christ's gift of the Eucharist.  This year, 2019, the Saturday before Halloween is October 26th.  Put it on your calendar to go to confession. Or if you have a parish around you that has weekday confession, go for it.

To be continued . . . .

Mondays with Laudato Si' - 9/30/19

United by the same concern

7. These statements of the Popes echo the reflections of numerous scientists, philosophers, theologians and civic groups, all of which have enriched the Church’s thinking on these questions. Outside the Catholic Church, other Churches and Christian communities – and other religions as well – have expressed deep concern and offered valuable reflections on issues which all of us find disturbing. To give just one striking example, I would mention the statements made by the beloved Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew, with whom we share the hope of full ecclesial communion.

Mondays with Laudato Si' - 9/23/19

5. Saint John Paul II became increasingly concerned about this issue. In his first Encyclical he warned that human beings frequently seem “to see no other meaning in their natural environment than what serves for immediate use and consumption”.[4] Subsequently, he would call for a global ecological conversion.[5] At the same time, he noted that little effort had been made to “safeguard the moral conditions for an authentic human ecology”.[6] The destruction of the human environment is extremely serious, not only because God has entrusted the world to us men and women, but because human life is itself a gift which must be defended from various forms of debasement. Every effort to protect and improve our world entails profound changes in “lifestyles, models of production and consumption, and the established structures of power which today govern societies”.[7] Authentic human development has a moral character. It presumes full respect for the human person, but it must also be concerned for the world around us and “take into account the nature of each being and of its mutual connection in an ordered system”.[8] Accordingly, our human ability to transform reality must proceed in line with God’s original gift of all that is.[9]

Mondays with Laudato Si' - 9/16/19

4. In 1971, eight years after Pacem in Terris, Blessed Pope Paul VI referred to the ecological concern as “a tragic consequence” of unchecked human activity: “Due to an ill-considered exploitation of nature, humanity runs the risk of destroying it and becoming in turn a victim of this degradation”.[2] He spoke in similar terms to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations about the potential for an “ecological catastrophe under the effective explosion of industrial civilization”, and stressed “the urgent need for a radical change in the conduct of humanity”, inasmuch as “the most extraordinary scientific advances, the most amazing technical abilities, the most astonishing economic growth, unless they are accompanied by authentic social and moral progress, will definitively turn against man”.[3]

Zero Waste Goals - 9/19

Trying to reduce one's garbage output takes a lot of changing habits.  Everybody has to figure out their own way.  And everyone's on a different level too.  If you are just starting out, simply remembering to bring your own reusable bags might seem like a huge obstacle. 

Usually the first few things that people are encouraged to do in attempting to go zero waste are:

1) bring your own bags when shopping
2) bring your own water bottle
3)  bring your own reusable travel mug
4)  avoid plastic straws
5)  bring your own cutlery when eating at fast food places

Then you might move on to:
6) using alternatives to plastic wrap
7) composting
8) buying milk in returnable glass bottles
9)  making things like broth, yogurt, ghee, mayo at home
10)  making your own cleaners, laundry detergent

But the point is, it takes time to establish these habits.  And because our society actively works against us, it is hard to maintain these good habits.  You really have to live in a very counter cultural way.  It is very easy to slip up a lot!  I am always restarting myself.

The motto for zero wasters is:  BE PREPARED!  Just like the scouts, you have to think ahead to what your needs will be and then provide for yourself accordingly.    A really nice thing that dovetails with zero waste is going to minimalist and trying to simplify your life.  Slowing down helps a lot.  If you are overbooked and stressed out, always running on adrenaline, it is much harder to go zero waste.  You'll always find yourself caught in a bind where you have to compromise.

I've been homeschooling for 21 years.  This is my first year not homeschooling, so I still think in terms of the academic year.  September is a time for making goals.  I like to make goals all through the year actually.  I've got September goals, New Year's resolutions, Lenten goals and summer goals. 

Autumn Goals:

1)  Learn to make homemade vinegar - I started a challenge for this beginning 9/22 on the Catholics for Zero Waste facebook group.

2)  Make and can tomato sauce from my garden tomatoes (currently in the freezer) - I need canning jars!

3)  Learn to ferment something my family will actually eat (because it ain't sauerkraut!) - I'm thinking of homemade ketchup or somewhere I saw a carrot slaw that looked promising.

4)  Harvest carrots and radishes from fall garden.  These are the only two things I got around to sowing for the fall garden.

5)  Make beef bone broth (I bought bones from local farmer)  I make chicken broth all the time.  And I've started saving veggie scraps and making vegetable broth, but I've not done beef broth before.

6)  Prep garden for winter.  I need to learn more about soil amending

7)  Ask for micro-green growing kit for Christmas and then grow micro-greens!  I think this would be so cool to do.

8)  Read more about gardening.  There is so much I need to learn!

What are your zero waste goals, right now?

Little Daily Actions - 9/11/2019

Man, it is so hard to write today's date.  I remember I was on the way to Mass with all 5 kids, the youngest being 3 months old and she had such a major spit up that got every where and I realized I didn't have a change with me.  We were closer to home than church so I just turned around and headed back home.  Then my husband called and said I think there was a plane crash somewhere in Arlington.  That was the plane going into the Pentagon.  So I turned on the TV and spent the rest of the day weeping and on line and trying to keep some semblance of order with my kids.  I remember it was a gorgeous day out but I didn't want the kids to go out.  I was afraid of the sky!  Even though they had grounded all planes by then. 

Anyway, I didn't mean to go on about that! 

What I did mean to post about is a couple of simple things I carry with me that help reduce trash.

These are my little bamboo cutlery set and a handkerchief I carry with me all the time.  You don't need to buy a bamboo set like I did.  I know people who just take cutlery from home and wrap them in a bandanna and use that.  But the organic grocery chain in my area carries these, so I bought some for stocking stuffers.  I eat out at least once a week for lunch.  And since I avoid gluten, usually I am getting salads or bowls.  So instead of resorting to the plastic forks and knives at the restaurant*, I use mine own.  I wipe them off with my handy hankie (which also comes in handy for lots of other reasons too!).  I do like bamboo because it is naturally anti-bacterial, so I don't fill so icky if I forget to take it out and wash it in between uses. 

If you have lots of young children and are always dealing with wiping noses, etc, I say buy disposable tissue but make sure it is from recycled paper.  But the minute you can, switch to hankies.  They really are a better alternative.  I hate finding used tissues or old crumpled up tissues in the bottom of my purse or by the bedside.  Hankies actually seem cleaner to me now.  And again, with cloth napkins and dish towels, they can be tossed into any wash.  They really aren't the least bit inconvenient if you are doing wash anyway.  And admit it, you are already doing wash!  Added bonus!  Hankies don't shred all over the clothes if you forget to clean out a pocket!

My portable cutlery and my hankie are two little daily actions I've managed to incorporate into my life.  I struggled with a lot of the changes.  So every time I use them, I feel good.  I feel like I am saying to God:  "Thank you God for everything!  See, I'm trying to be a good steward in my own tiny way!"

* My strategies for different restaurants:

Chipotle - I order the bowl but then bring home the cardboard bowl and aluminum top.  They do not recycle or compost at my local Chipotle even though they have trashcans labeled as such. So I bring them home, compost the cardboard bowl and recycle the aluminum lid.  I use my own bamboo fork and knife

CAVA - if you are eating in, you can ask for a real bowl.  That's what I usually try to do.  But if I am getting take out, I do the same thing as I do with Chipotle.  Again, I use my own bamboo fork and knife.

Panera - if you are eating in, they'll give you real dishes and real cutlery.  Instead of using a paper or plastic cup for the drink, ask for a mug.  They have real coffee mugs which I use for any drink from hot coffee to water. 

Five Guys - I get the lettuce wrapped burger.  Everything comes in paper so I throw it away.  But at least I don't resort to plastic eating there.  I use my water bottle to get tea.

Elevation Burger - I don't know if this is a local chain or not.  But there is one 10 minutes from me and it has a really delicious 'Paleo burger' which is wrapped in lettuce with avocado and other things.  Like Five Guys, everything comes in paper.  I just avoid the drinks, use my own water bottle or I buy a juice or soda in a glass bottle and bring home to recycle.  Some times these lettuce wrapped things get very messy so I sometimes need to resort to my handy dandy fork and knife.

Ben and Jerry's - They don't have gluten free cones but you can get a scoop of ice cream in a paper cup (as opposed to plastic).  They even supply wooden spoons, so no plastic there!  But I still can just use my own bamboo spoon I bring where ever I go.

Mondays with Laudato Si' - #3

3. More than fifty years ago, with the world teetering on the brink of nuclear crisis, Pope Saint John XXIII wrote an Encyclical which not only rejected war but offered a proposal for peace. He addressed his message Pacem in Terris to the entire “Catholic world” and indeed “to all men and women of good will”. Now, faced as we are with global environmental deterioration, I wish to address every person living on this planet. In my Apostolic Exhortation Evangelii Gaudium, I wrote to all the members of the Church with the aim of encouraging ongoing missionary renewal. In this Encyclical, I would like to enter into dialogue with all people about our common home.

Thoughts on Can You Afford to be Green When You're Not Rich

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2019/jul/29/eco-friendly-going-green-poor-cost-diary
(You have to read the linked article to understand this overly long post!)

I'm going to pick apart this poor woman's article!  Not that I didn't feel a lot of kinship with her as she attempts to navigate modern life while trying to make wise, conscientious choices.  I did.  And I often feel the same kind of despair because honestly the whole system is against us!  We have developed into a culture, a society, an economic system that relies on over-consumption to power it.  It is not sustainable and it is extremely frustrating at every turn to try to change.  I get it.  So I am not really going to pick it apart, rather I am going to dialogue with the author.  If she were sitting in my living room saying these things, this is how I might likely respond to the things she notes.

I'm going to respond as a Catholic.  I think being Catholic makes all this much easier to take.  For one thing, we are forbidden to despair, so any time we are headed in that direction, we have to choose to take a different course.  And also I think when you have a broader, religious perspective on this issue which involves so much rethinking things and daily sacrifice, religious asceticism helps a lot.  We are supposed to be taking up our burden, our cross, our yoke, joyfully.  To live a life of sacrifice brings you closer to Jesus, who is Love Incarnate.  Living in the western world where there is so much material wealth, even for those in poverty often, having to give up stuff is a counter cultural deal.  And that's a good thing!  That keeps us detached from worldly things.  The poor get to enter the narrow gate pretty easily compared to the rich, or so Jesus says!

The first thing I am going to note is the fact that she seems to be a recently divorced woman with an 8 year old son.  The break down of marriage has a horrendous effect on our whole society, in every way.  But most women who are single are poorer than they would be married.  And now her son is going to be part of the statistic that shows what a horrible problem broken families are to children.  I don't know this individual's situation so I can't comment on her particular circumstances.  There are times when divorce seems the only alternative.  If your spouse is violent to you, cheating on you (although some couples manage to forgive and move so it depends on the situation), or if they up and leave you and there's nothing you can do about it and for some reason divorce is a better alternative than remaining married but apart, it happens.  But overall our society has accepted easy divorce the minute you get unhappy, dissatisfied, find out your spouse is irritatingly human, etc.   I think this approach to marriage is part of our consumer culture.  When we get dissatisfied we don't work to fix things, we throw them away to try something new. I think there really should be something like a 3 year wait period before you can begin divorce proceedings.  And during the wait period, it is required that you attend counseling.  It isn't fair to the children to be so unstable.  There's a lack of commitment, loyalty, resiliency in deciding to marry and there's a flightiness, self-indulgence, emotional neediness fed to us by our consumer, advertisement driven culture that makes us seek an escape valve the minute things get uncomfortable.  Consumerism runs on us having immature impulsive desires all the time.  And that bleeds into our relationships.  Here's an article that does a great analysis on this.

The rush of having to deal with every day busyness, especially when you as the single mother and responsible for everything makes convenience an overwhelmingly attractive force.  You don't have the slow time needed to make things at home, or for basic upkeep even.  If you are a single mother desperately trying to make ends meet, you don't have much time to do things that would tread more gently on the environment.  You just don't.  So you wind up spending your hard earned income on disposable stuff and McDonald's.  I don't think this woman did though.  She seems very health conscious, but I think she's atypical here. 

She did lose her job which is totally depressing and scary.  She's only making ends meet by doing piece work, gig stuff and working part time.  That sounds very hard.  But again, I want to get back to family and how our weird understanding of it, our dysfunctional relationships feed into all this.  She talks about renting an old house. But the image of her and her son alone in some old house is a forlorn one.  I thought as I read, where's her family?  No grandparents?  No siblings willing to open their house?  Again I know families are often alienated from each other.  We have such a toxic culture in terms of learning how to relate, forebear, forgive, get along, work things out, and such a warped idea that to be truly successful you must be completely independent in all things.  I think a more familial, community oriented way of doing things is far healthier for both us and the planet.  So she's working hard to air condition her old house for two people, her son and herself and feels guilty about it.  If more people lived together, we'd have less need for so many air conditioners!  This is a real sticking point for me.  Around me there are so many huge McMansions housing 1 to 4 people with the a/c running 24/7 from about May through September.  In these houses, you could comfortably house many more people than that.  We all just require way too much personal space.  It's over indulgent.  And takes a lot of air conditioning.  And of course our houses are all now designed to be dependent on a/c to be comfortable.  She does use blackout curtains to keep heat out which is a smart idea.  Bravo to that!

Packing lunches for her son and also saving leftovers.  She complains that she bought cloth sandwich wrappers for her son's lunches.  I've never seen these, but I did buy some supposedly reusable 'eco-friendly' things that almost looked like pencil cases with velcro (plastic!) closures.  They also molded quickly.  You have to remember to get the food out and to rinse the thing right away.  Unfortunately if you forget the lunchbox in the car until the next morning, you are already out of luck.  So these things weren't made with kids in mind.  And I think they are a bunch of greenwashing anyway.  I think it is far better to just get some sturdy, will last forever, plastic or tin sandwich boxes and just reuse them ad infinitem (of course kids are notorious for losing things, so they might not last as long as you'd wish, which could be an issue money wise.)  Also there are wax paper sandwich bags still around.  They work really well!  Of course the wax still comes from a petroleum by product.  You can get more natural stuff but it is harder to come by and more expensive.  There's something called Stashers, which are silicone resuable bags that zip lock like plastic bags.  These are good but hard to dry and of course more costly, initially.  So I do think getting down the right way to pack a kid's sandwich can be tricky.  I sympathize.  The truth is the kids have to get into the habit of always remembering to bring stuff home and clean them out right away.

One thing that really did strike me as whiny in the article was her complaining about having to wash out plastic bags and hang laundry on the line as too time consuming.  Oh come on.  That to me is being a little too attached to convenience.  And why isn't her son helping her with this stuff???  He's 8.  At that age they really can be helpful, not like when they are 3 or 4 and make everything take twice as long.

Another thing that to me seemed over the top in terms of trying really hard to find hardship where there wasn't any, was complaining about not having a dishwasher.  Somewhere someone published a study, I suspect done by a company that manufactures dishwashers, saying that running a dishwashing machine is more environmentally friendly than washing dishes by hand.  I strongly doubt this one, yet it is taken as gospel truth by everyone because I think they don't like to hand wash dishes.  It's very convenient to convince oneself of this.  I think the study must have compared the most efficient, theoretical dishwasher with someone who stood over the sink with hot water pouring out of the faucet for 30 minutes straight.  In that case, maybe, but here's my problem with all this:

1)  Most people have to rinse dishes anyway before they are put into the dishwasher, otherwise the bits of egg yolk, pasta, potato, peanut butter very likely will get baked onto the dishes and the pasta stuck to the twines of your forks, etc.  Sometimes if you don't rinse something off, it will get sprayed in a fine grit on some drinking glasses or something and then when you unload you find you have a hard time cleaning the glasses of it by hand.  Did this dishwasher test include having to rinse everything before putting in?  Because that can take a lot of water!

2)  Water conserving dishwashers take forever.  This means that sometimes you wind up using more dishes, glasses, etc than you would need simply because you can't wait for the darn dishwasher to finish it's job.  And this is even with putting it on the shortest cycle.  And the whole time it is using electricity to run, to spin the spinner, to heat up the water and of course water itself.

On the other hand, especially if you just have two people like the woman and her son in the article, you can conserve water while washing your dishes.  You don't have to run hot water the whole time.  You can soak the dishes in soapy water and then drain and then soak in clean water with minimal amounts of water.  I know you can do this because I did this for years.  And even washing dishes that had piled up for a family of 7, I still got everything washed much faster than a dishwasher.  So honestly bemoaning the fact that she and her son didn't have a dishwasher struck me as a bogus complaint.

She talked about buying beeswax covers for $28 dollars to replace plastic wrap.  This to me was not a good judgment call.  I do very well without any plastic covers and have for years.  I use old jars and tubs for leftovers or I simply turn a saucer or plate over a bowl and put it into the fridge.  I do sometimes use aluminum foil, but I can make one box of foil last for months.  I rinse off used foil, if I can and reuse it for other things and when I am completely done with it and it is falling apart, I ball it up and put it into recycling (for my county it must be the size of a fist to be recyclable so I will combine other foil into the ball.)  Aluminum is something that is highly recyclable, there is a market for it and it takes far less energy to recycle it than to mine it.

So she could have foregone the beeswax stuff and spent that money on nice sandwich containers.


With all this, hindsight in 20/20, you know?  So I don't blame anyone for getting caught up in greenwashing that goes on in marketing things that don't actually work so well as swaps for plastic.  I've done it too.

Packing cans of sparkling water in her son's lunch - She stopped sending aluminum cans of sparkling water because her son said that he can't finish a whole can and that to recycle at the school they must empty the cans first but there's no place to.  We actually ran into this problem at our parish and our solution was very simple. We put a bucket next to the recycling bin and tell people to empty out any liquid in the bucket before throwing it into recycling.  If I were this lady I would call the school and tell them to handle this better!  We need to advocate!  And there are many really simple solutions that aren't happening simply because no one has thought of them!  But the fact that the school itself hasn't thought of this means that they are probably not recycling at all since they haven't taken the effort to do it properly.  So this means they are lying to the tax paying public and not teaching the kids good habits.  BAD.  So on this point I would play gadfly (nicely) and work with the school to step up their game in this regard.  We can't wait for other people to do this for us.

I totally get being frustrated at having to shop at two or three or four stores to avoid excess packaging.  I can't wait for the day when Loop comes to my area.  I have yet to get my act together about this.  Shopping is so complicated.  I buy my coffee and fruit and veggies at one store and then my bulk grains and milk in a glass bottle at another and if I want to get deli meat and cheese in my own container I have to go to a third store.  It's rather ridiculous.   I often daydream of opening my own bulk general store where there are old fashioned meat and cheese counters where someone behind the counter gives you the exact amount you need in your own container or in old fashion butcher paper.  And everything else is sold in bulk.

I completely sympathize with this woman's frustration in terms of trying to reduce one's waste.  Our whole system is set up to run on gasoline and convenience.  It is an uphill battle but it really is starting to seep into the mainstream more.  Slowly.  More and more outlets are reporting on the devastating effects our over consumption is having.  Manufacturers are starting to take notice.  The plastics industry is panicking and trying really hard to produce more and more plastic in the short time they see available to them.  This sucks royally but I do think it can be taken as a sign that they see the writing on the wall, though their response is truly evil.

The tone of the article tends to be woe is me.  I get that the premise is that it is harder for poorer people to be more environmentally conscientious because it costs money.  And partly that may be true, but the thing is being forced to be frugal leads to avoiding over consumption.  A lot of zero waste stuff actually dovetails quite nicely with living simply and being frugal.  You are already making do and making an art out of it.  And that's a really good thing.  Making do is the opposite of being spoiled.  It's resourceful.  It forces you to get your pleasure somewhere else than having everything shiny and new. It makes you have to not care about fitting in or doing whatever the groovy moms are dictating as cool this season.  It helps you stand on your own two feet a bit.  A lot of really is an attitude thing.  If you see yourself as a victim then it's a depressing pain, but if you see yourself as a counter culture warrior embracing good choices, then it is empowering and uplifting.

Individual people and concerned groups are resourceful and trying to come up with solutions.  I like being part of that community of people bringing change, rethinking their lifestyles.  It's refreshing at the same time as being frustrating.  And every victory feels so good!  I don't think going down the vortex of self-pity as victim is very useful.  Instead, be a warrior!  And while I am sorry for her job insecurity and necessarily having to live a low consumption lifestyle as a result, a lot of people do this on purpose!  They choose to give up a lot of disposable income in order to pursue a more simple life that is more economical and ecological.  What if she embraced that choice as well?  Honestly having natural limits (no money!) takes a lot of anxiety out of decision making in terms of consumption.  If you can't afford it, you don't even have to consider it.   It's like teaching the value of hard work and money to rich kids, it can be very artificial.  Whereas if the kid knows that if he helps out in terms of chores, getting odd jobs, helping with a family business, being entrepreneurial, finding paying work and he knows he is contributing, that teaches those values naturally.  So some of this is attitude and societal expectations.  It is hard though, we are so steeped in it, it does take a lot of energy to free ourselves from the group think that says woe is me, everything isn't easy and convenient for me.  But of course I don't want to dismiss the anxiety that underlies everything when one's job situation is precarious. 

Anyway, those are just my random thoughts on this article.  I didn't even get to every point.   People are welcome to add their two cents! 

Little Daily Actions - Frugal and Creation-Friendly Tips

I'm going to recommend two simple things I think large families with small children can do that really are workable.  I know this from experience.  I grew up in a large family of 12 where my mother was extremely frugal of necessity and she managed to do these things.  I try to incorporate them into our lifestyle as well with a family of seven.

1) Switch to cloth napkins and nix the paper towels.

Cloth napkins, dish towels, dish cloths, aprons, etc can be purchased inexpensively and even second hand.  If you are a large family, you are already doing lots of laundry.  Napkins, dish towels, rags, etc can be thrown in with other towels, sheets, garments that you are already washing.  Old t-shirts and other old clothing articles make perfect rags for cleaning and dusting.  You don't need to buy sponges and microfiber clothes to clean your house.

You might want to keep one roll of paper towel hidden away just in case.  I keep one under my utility sink in the mud room, I forget it's there most of the time.  Occasionally, when there is something super gross to clean up, I'll use it,  but for regular daily use, we have dish towels for drying dishes and hands.  And we have cloth napkins.  Assign a napkin to each person for a day or maybe a couple of days.  Keep it at your table with a napkin ring designated for that person.  I recently made napkin 'rings' from wooden clothespins that I labelled with each person's name.  Give them their clean napkin, at the end of each meal they clip their clothespin to the napkin and keep at their place at the table.  Now if you have young children who are going to play with the clothespins, napkin rings, or whatever you might think of to use, perhaps it would be better to simply keep the napkin at the child's regular place at the table.  We always used our table for homeschooling though, so things got shoved to the center of the table and rather jumbled. 

*** Important point!  You may wonder, well what do I drain my bacon or sausage on if I don't have paper towel???  You can use paper bags for this or any kind of brown paper of that sort.  I buy my coffee in bulk in paper bags and I use these for draining purposes (and other purposes as well!).

Photo from The Spruce article 17 Things You Should Never Put in a Dishwasher

2) Strategy for Only Having to Run the Dishwasher Once a Day.  Do the following:

Assign a cup or drinking glass to each person each day.  They keep this cup by their napkin!

Now you might have a couple of extra cups used somehow throughout the day, but when it comes time to pack and run the dishwasher 7 to 10 or even 12 cups or glasses will not fill the top of the dishwasher up.  Instead you can put some smaller plates and bowls in the top rack of the dishwasher and fill the lower rack with dinner plates and the other smaller plates or bowls that didn't fit in the top.

You need enough sandwich plates for everyone, enough bowls for everyone and enough dinner plates for everyone.  And then a couple more, for guests or for unexpected uses.

Breakfast:  you can use your bowls here for oatmeal or yogurt.  Or your sandwich plates for eggs and toast.

Lunch:  whatever you didn't use at breakfast you use now!  So if you used bowls at breakfast, lunch should be something that doesn't require a bowl (like soup!), but rather sandwiches, mac & cheese (though that can served in bowls, if you used the smaller plates for breakfast).

Dinner:  use your dinner plates unless you need bowls for chili or stew you happen to be serving for dinner.  Then you have two options, you can have something for lunch that doesn't need a plate at all, like sandwiches which you can serve right on the table or you can use your bigger dinner plates at lunch and your bowls at dinner.  I also like to use saucers as smaller supplemental plates where I can stick side dishes or muffins or what have you.

The point is if you plan it right and have enough dishes (buy extra second hand), you can get away with running your dishwasher once a day right before you go to bed.  And it really isn't very inconvenient at all.  Like, hardly a blip on the screen once you get into the rhythm.

For silverware, only use what you need at each meal.  You don't need to formally set the table for every meal.  For instance, if I am serving vegetarian chili, corn muffins and carrot sticks for dinner, I only need to put out soup spoons for the chili and knives for buttering the corn muffins.  Carrot sticks are finger food.

 Also, buy extra silverware, second hand, so that you have enough to get you through three meals.  I remember struggling with not having enough silverware early in my mothering career and my lovely mother in law noticed it and gave us an extra set of flatware for Chanukah/Christmas.  It made all the difference!  What a help it was.  And all that silverware can be washed in your dishwasher at night.

Given this scenario, be prepared to hand scrub your pots and pans and serving dishes, platters, colanders, slow cooker, chopping knives, etc.  Also you'll have to scrub your mixing bowls, casserole dishes and chopping boards by hand too.  But clean these as you go and learn to cook mostly simple dishes that only require one, two or three pots/bowls to make.  Things that are more elaborate are saved for special occasions.  And if on special occasions you do have to run your dishwasher twice, well at least you know you don't usually do that.

NB:  Remember, plastic containers, etc really shouldn't be washed in the dishwasher anyway.  At least if you really need to, put it up on top only.  Hot, melt-y plastic and food don't go together well! 

National Catholic Reporter - Season of Creation Daily

The National Catholic Reporter is doing a daily series on the Season of Creation.  Check it out here.

Global Catholic Climate Movement - Season of Creation

Sunflowers from my own garden.

Here's a link to the GCCM's Season of Creation page.  Things are happening all over the globe!

Season of Creation Begins Today!

Happy Season of Creation!

Here's a link to the Laudato Si' pledge!

Overwhelmed Families and How To Deal

A member of the Catholics for Zero Waste (CZW) facebook group asked this question:

Can we talk practical solutions for busy and overwhelmed families? I am feeling super discouraged because I am so overwhelmed already and I feel like all attempts at reducing plastic waste are all ways to make life way harder.

Several people responded with their approach (do what you can!) and tips for how they handled things.  A really thorough response came from member Tricia Koroknay-Palicz, who composed her post from her cell phone while in a hospital waiting for her newborn to awake!  Congratulations, Tricia!

Her organizing principle comes from this Washington Post quiz based on the book and project Drawdown.  Read more about this here.  She works through each point and applies it to her family.

Tricia Koroknay-Palicz I think about this too. My mindset on this is that (i) we are called to what we can do / give what we can give joyfully. and this looks different for different families. and we need not compare ourselves to them. (ii) I try to prioritize our household actions in this arena based on two factors: impact of the action, and how much of a sacrifice/challenge the action is. For thinking about impact, I found this article helpful.

My takeaways from it included: 

(i) cutting down on food waste and eating more plants and less meat are both amongst the top 5 things one can do, impact-wise. Both of these also help our families budget, and fasting days are part of the Christian tradition. 

(ii) using water more efficiently helps keep our water bill down! in our house this means keeping the water level on the lower side at bath time, and only letting the kiddie pool be filled once per day at maximum. we could also hook hoop our gutters to rain barrels and use this water for watering the garden, but I haven't gotten round to that. you can often get water barrels for free. 

(iii) in the energy category, switching to wind energy was highest impact. PEPCO actually allows third parties to provide energy to pepco customers, and if I remember correctly we switched over our electricity to 100% wind energy through such an arrangement and this resulted in a lower per unit energy cost and brought down our electric bill by 20%. 

(iv) in the transportation category, shipping goods more efficiently and flying less both appear. flying less is good for our family budget (e.g. spending a summer vacation week at a state park within a 3 hour drive from home rather than flying to a far off destination). and shipping goods more efficiently can mean dropping our amazon prime membership and just waiting until we have a number of things in our amazon cart before clicking the buy button (orders over $35 get free shipping). 

A few other things I have found to work for our family are: using whatever paper already comes into our house, such as paper bags, packaging materials, junk mail etc as art supplies for my daughter; trying to do things locally whenever possible to reduce our car use; intentionally nearly always only buying used stuff - we use value village like other people use Walmart or target; wearing out our clothes and shoes; buying produce at Bestway (much less packaging!) or through lancaster CSA (we found cost very reasonable, cheaper than any other supplier of organic food, with no packaging, and not much more expensive than our local regular grocery store; eating seasonally (e.g. eating local peaches from the grocery store when they are in season rather than ones shipped from South America out of season; using Tupperware and reusable lunch bags rather than disposable lunch baggies / sacks. 

Further down the thread she includes these other points:

 a few more things that we do as a family: if we can't buy an item used, we do without. this meant sleeping on a matress on the floor for a year while I waited for a king size bed frame with drawers underneath it to appear on craigslist (did you know you can save searches and set alerts to yourself when an item you are looking for appears!). you can also do national searches of craigslist. and ebay can be good for hard to find items. 

we buy larger packages of things (cheaper and reduced packaging) and subdivide for use (I use bread bags to store meat in our freezer, and glass jars that come with my husband favorite salsa for raisins, olive oil, and other pantry staples.).

my husband and I are both known at our workplaces for our willingness to take home whatever leftover food there is after a meeting.

we use dryer balls instead of dryer sheets.

we use cloth napkins instead of paper napkins.

we have longer intervals for laundering towels (2x per month), sheets (1× per month except for potty training child) and certain clothing items. this lowers time, energy, and water spent on laundry!

Mondays with Laudato Si' - 8/26/19

2. This sister now cries out to us because of the harm we have inflicted on her by our irresponsible use and abuse of the goods with which God has endowed her. We have come to see ourselves as her lords and masters, entitled to plunder her at will. The violence present in our hearts, wounded by sin, is also reflected in the symptoms of sickness evident in the soil, in the water, in the air and in all forms of life. This is why the earth herself, burdened and laid waste, is among the most abandoned and maltreated of our poor; she “groans in travail” (Rom 8:22). We have forgotten that we ourselves are dust of the earth (cf. Gen 2:7); our very bodies are made up of her elements, we breathe her air and we receive life and refreshment from her waters.

Nothing in this world is indifferent to us

Week in Review - 8/23/19

Friday's collection of articles, etc found around the internet this week.

Zero Waste:

CNN talks about Trump and plastics

Tiny pieces of plastic found in Arctic

Economics:

The power of the consumer

Wisdom of the saints:

How should the rich relate to the poor?

Other Environmental Concerns:

Forest Fires in Brazil

Bishop Barron Explains Catholic Social Teaching:

Bishop Barron on George Will's The Conservative Sensibility

Hope

A lovely article on how going local can save the world  Here's a quote.

"There are two key instructions to tease out. First, I seek the restoration of relationship, with both my neighbor and my place, which doesn’t depend on my cleverness, the sophistication of my technology, the money at hand, or the permission of politicians. I restore my relationship with strong doses of affection and humility, and by keeping my work, like the honeybee, eminently local.

Second, that we, each of us, are capable of countless small acts of care, and in such is the restoration of the wild, the world, and the culture. In such is the conversion of the displacing colonist to the helpful, welcome guest."