In Laudato Si’, Pope Francis reminds us that unlike nature’s life cycle where all waste and by-products are re-used, “our industrial system, at the end of its cycle of production and consumption, has not developed the capacity to absorb and reuse waste and by-products. We have not yet managed to adopt a circular model of production capable of preserving resources for present and future generations” (LS#22).
 
I am motivated to consume less by facts about what happens to clothing and textiles in the landfill :  

• Textiles can take 200+ years to decompose in landfills, generating the greenhouse gas methane.
• Chemicals and dye may leach into the soil eventually contaminating ground water. 
• The volume of clothing Americans throw away each year has doubled in the last 20 years from 7 million to 14 million tons.
• It takes 2,700 liters of water to make one cotton shirt and synthetic blends come with their own set of perils.

We know many options for donating usable clothing and goods, such as local nonprofit thrift stores (Goodwill, The Closet in Herndon, The Clock Tower in Falls Church, Treasure Trove in McLean, Capital Caring’s Thrift Shop at Seven Corners), but what about those old shoes and jeans? Here are a few solutions:
 
Madewell* stores in Tysons and the Mosaic take old (blue or any color) jeans and work with partner Cotton’s Blue Jeans Go Green, who fabricates the jeans into insulation for Habitat for Humanity Homes.  Donate your jeans, keep a home warm and receive a store coupon toward a new pair.

The Teva Forever* program works with Terracycle to turn your old Teva sandals into running tracks, playgrounds and more.

Soles4Souls* focuses on shoes that are distributed in programs in the US and around the world.  Their local collection partners include The North Face, DSW, and mail in donations through Zappos.

​Postage paid mailing labels are available for these programs on their webpages.

Can we all be more mindful of following the Refuse, Reduce, Reuse, Repurpose and Recycle this year?

*See reference: https://www.madewell.com/inspo-do-well-denim-recycling-landing.html
https://www.teva.com/tevaforever/
https://soles4souls.org/give-shoes/
https://www.zappos.com/e/soles-4-souls
​

How better to commune with God’s creation than by beholding snow covered peaks from the top of a mountain? Breathing the crisp air and feeling the wind as you glide down a frozen slope (or race pell-mell through a mogul field!) surely makes us feel at one with the universe and treasured by God.  
 
Sadly, some ski vistas have changed – while the trails are white, the surrounding countryside is a wintry gray/brown, no snow in sight.  The stark backdrop of the ski venues during opening days at the Winter Olympic Games this year showed this to the world.
 
Recently, a Washington Post Travel section* piece looked at how some ski resorts are responding to climate change. The ski industry is dependent on climate and is also responsible for exacerbating warming that may lead to skiing’s demise.  The article looks at several US ski resorts that are taking action to respond to the needs of the environment as they try to sustain their industry.
 
Aspen Skiing Company captures methane leaking from an old coal mine to produce power to operate the entire resort of four snow hills, hotels and restaurants and stops the methane leak.
 
Taos Ski Valley is a certified B Corporation that considers environment, sustainability and social responsibility in every action. Taos protects the health of water in the Rio Grande by caring for the forests in its watershed. The resort will convert to all solar by the end of this year and be carbon neutral by 2030.
 
Berkshire East Mountain Resort in Massachusetts generates 100% of its electricity on-site using a wind turbine and solar panels, feeding excess power to the local grid. A top-of-mountain pond for snow making uses gravity to reduce power needs.
 
Bluebird Backcountry is a dramatically different type of ski operation that is “human powered,” no lifts, no snow making, no hotels or restaurants. Portable solar panels heat the tents and at the end of the ski season, they disappear leaving the slopes unmarked.
 
These approaches show that, as stewards of creation, we can see with new eyes, asking -- what can we do for the earth? what does the earth need? What can I do today, to show that I value the intrinsic worth of creation?  Whom will I talk to about this?
 
*(How four ski resorts are working to slow their demise, Heather Balogh Rochfort, The Washington Post, Travel, Sunday, February 13, 2022)

‘Because the world can change a lot in 40 days’

How will I connect spirituality and works this Lent? For inspiration, I look to Pope Francis’ words in Laudato Si’ recalling that all people need “an ‘ecological conversion’, whereby the effects of their encounter with Jesus Christ become evident in their relationship with the world around them. Living our vocation to be protectors of God’s handiwork is essential to a life of virtue; it is not an optional or a secondary aspect of our Christian experience.” (LS # 217)

One resource that I can use is a Lenten calendar that reminds me daily why I’m fasting from plastic, or increasing my abstinence from beef, or advocating for clean water, while I am encouraged to keep taking my own small steps.

‘Because the world can change a lot in 40 days,’ VAIPL* has created a Lenten Creation Care Calendar for 2022. This year’s theme is It’s Time to Act. The calendar begins on the Sunday before Ash Wednesday; each week has a theme and each day offers either a prayer, a fact about environmental impact, or a suggested action to help us care for earth and neighbor as part of our spiritual Lenten practice. Links to additional resources are also included.

Give it a look to see if the calendar may be a conversation starter and motivator for you and your family.

You can access and print a copy of the calendar (see below)!

*Virginia Interfaith Power & Light (VAIPL) is the state affiliate of a national organization, Interfaith Power & Light, which is dedicated to bringing together all faith communities to mobilize a religious response to climate change through energy conservation, energy efficiency, and renewable energy. VAIPL collaborates among people of faith and conscience to grow healthy communities by advancing climate and environmental justice.  See www.vaipl.org
​

​Ash Wednesday falls on March 2nd, marking the start of Lent. You may not realize that our Lenten call to prayer, fasting and almsgiving also leads us to embrace Pope Francis’ guidance in Laudato Si’ to respond to the “cry of the earth and the cry of the poor” in addressing climate change.

By abstaining from meat on Ash Wednesday and Fridays, we each reduce our responsibility for greenhouse gas emissions from livestock, animals raised for food that produce an estimated 14.5% of human-driven greenhouse gas pollution.* Calculations by the Diocese of Raleigh, N.C., suggest that merely by avoiding all meat on Ash Wednesday and Fridays during Lent, the average observant Catholic’s personal contribution to emissions reduction would amount to 45 pounds of carbon dioxide equivalents.  When looked at community-wide, this makes a significant impact!  The 446,000 Catholics in the Diocese of Arlington alone could avoid 12,000 tons of CO2 emissions, the equivalent of taking 2600 cars off the road for this full year.

Raleigh’s Greener Lent program promotes the idea of doing a little more than the minimum by enlisting people to reduce their beef consumption in particular and calculates the impact. During this Lent, you could save your weight in CO2e by reducing your consumption of red meat, while eating well and still enjoying some poultry and fish.  Check out the options at their website: https://greenerlent.org.

We are all asked to make personal sacrifices during Lent out of appreciation for God’s gifts and Jesus’ sacrifice for us.  But not all such sacrifices also offer such a quantifiable positive effect in preserving and protecting God’s creation.  After Holy Week, we will check back to ask those who participated in such purposeful fasting what they did, and will calculate Saint Luke parish’s GHG reductions if we obtain enough data.  Have a truly meaningful Lent!
 
*[UN Food and Agriculture Organization
https://www.fao.org/news/story/en/item/197623/icode/)].
 
REMINDER – SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 27, AT 4:00 P.M., FLAHERTY HALL
Are You Ready for Gardening Season?
Please join the Care for Creation Ministry as we welcome Master Gardener Kim Young.

​Learn tips for eco-friendly gardening in Northern Virginia and bring your questions as we look forward to planting season in McLean!

Lent is a couple weeks away, so I’m thinking about the connection between care for creation and Lent; I found a source of inspiration and encouragement in Dan Misleh’s message in the February Catholic Climate Covenant newsletter. In it, he encourages us to face reality while maintaining hope. We are guided to place climate awareness and action at the forefront of our Lenten practice. Here is Dan’s letter:

​Dear Friend, 

“Blessed are those who have not seen and have believed.” (John 20:29)  

As we head into year three of the pandemic, I thought of this line from John’s Gospel. An online search revealed several Sunday school lessons that linked the Doubting Thomas story with COVID19. One featured hairspray: you can’t see it, but you know it’s doing its job.   
These lessons struck me as ironic. Children get the message more readily than adults. But far too many adults act as if the unseen threat is not there.   
The same can be said of climate change. Young people see a grim future because invisible and excessive greenhouse gases are doing their job a bit too well. Yet for most adults, we simply go about our lives as if our CO2-spewing cars, homes, businesses and flights aren’t multiplying the threat of extreme floods and droughts.
 
Climate anxiety, especially among young people, is real. Stack on the social isolation of the pandemic, the deterioration of our civic discourse (often spilling over into our churches) and threats to our democracy, and it’s not hard to understand why more and more young people are looking elsewhere for hope, and leaving institutional solutions, including from our Church, behind.
  
Let’s all face reality as we head into Lent. We must rise to the real threat posed by climate change, lower the temperature on our civic discourse, purposefully encounter the “other”—including disillusioned young people—and embrace their story. And we must live a Christian life worthy of the example of Jesus, who loved all, especially the lost, the lonely, the forgotten, the outcast.
​  
With blessings,   
Dan
Dan Misleh  
Founder   
Catholic Climate Covenant 
Reprinted with permission from the February 2022 Newsletter at www.catholicclimatecovenant.org
​

Lent is a couple weeks away, so I’m thinking about the connection between care for creation and Lent; I found a source of inspiration and encouragement in Dan Misleh’s message in the February Catholic Climate Covenant newsletter. In it, he encourages us to face reality while maintaining hope. We are guided to place climate awareness and action at the forefront of our Lenten practice. Here is Dan’s letter:

Dear Friend,
 
“Blessed are those who have not seen and have believed.” (John 20:29) 
 
As we head into year three of the pandemic, I thought of this line from John’s Gospel. An online search revealed several Sunday school lessons that linked the Doubting Thomas story with COVID19. One featured hairspray: you can’t see it, but you know it’s doing its job.  
 
These lessons struck me as ironic. Children get the message more readily than adults. But far too many adults act as if the unseen threat is not there.   
The same can be said of climate change. Young people see a grim future because invisible and excessive greenhouse gases are doing their job a bit too well. Yet for most adults, we simply go about our lives as if our CO2-spewing cars, homes, businesses and flights aren’t multiplying the threat of extreme floods and droughts.   

Climate anxiety, especially among young people, is real. Stack on the social isolation of the pandemic, the deterioration of our civic discourse (often spilling over into our churches) and threats to our democracy, and it’s not hard to understand why more and more young people are looking elsewhere for hope, and leaving institutional solutions, including from our Church, behind.  

Let’s all face reality as we head into Lent. We must rise to the real threat posed by climate change, lower the temperature on our civic discourse, purposefully encounter the “other”—including disillusioned young people—and embrace their story. And we must live a Christian life worthy of the example of Jesus, who loved all, especially the lost, the lonely, the forgotten, the outcast. 
​ 
With blessings,   
Dan
Dan Misleh  
Founder   
Catholic Climate Covenant 
Reprinted with permission from the February 2022 Newsletter at www.catholicclimatecovenant.org