On this 50th anniversary of Earth Day, let us heed our Pope’s encyclical, Laudato Si’, to take greater care of creation. There is still much more work to be done as stewards of God’s beautiful creation (hence our time on earth is not yet finished).
At Newman we have been busy. We have replaced most of the lights in our exterior, chapel, kitchen, and hallways with LEDs. We have recycle and compost bins in all the major areas of the church and have been working on educating folks to use the appropriate bin. We use our heat judiciously, saving money and decreasing our carbon footprint. The early planners have filled our arable land space with towering redwood trees. We had a small vegetable garden that has gone fallow. We also feed the homeless through Loaves & Fishes - here at Newman the 1st Saturday of the month, and weekly at the Men’s Shelter and the Women’s Shelter. We collect groceries to donate to the Alameda County Food Bank. We support Berkeley Catholic Worker with volunteers for Sunday morning breakfast, a parking lot to provide a dinner for folks on holidays, and monetary funds, We are active in various ways of social justice through our Non-Violent Peacemaking Group.
Areas we are exploring include turning the rest of our lighting to LEDs, installing a dishwasher so we can use silverware instead of landfill-destined plasticware, and installing solar panels on our chapel roof.
What about yourself? What are you doing to being faithful stewards of God’s creation? What creative ideas have you come up with to promote the care of Creation? Please send your ideas to Fr. Ivan and we’ll post them in our Parish Blog to share the wealth of ideas.
14 Earth Day Events - Earth Day is Wed, April 22. It is the 50th Anniversary for Earth Day, to help the world recognize the importance of caring for creation and then to be part of that transformative change in the midst of our environmental crisis.