The Creation Care team is hosting a sister parish event on Earth Day:
Rethinking the American Lawn and Sacred Grounds
Monday, Aprill 22 at 7pm
St. Joseph's Learning Center
Speaker: Megan Meyer, Master Gardener
The Creation Care Team invites you to an Earth Day Celebration Monday April 22 at 7 pm in the St. Joseph’s Learning Center! Please join us for refreshments, prayer, and celebration of God’s Creation. Megan Meyer, Master Gardener, will be presenting Rethinking the American Lawn and National Wildlife Federation’s Sacred Grounds. Registration Link:
We can relearn how to care for our earth in ways that support our local food web and pollinators. Native plants - trees, shrubs, native grasses and flowers can lessen the effects of climate change, manage stormwater runoff, improve water quality, and support our local food web and pollinators.
Ms. Meyer, who trained in plant propagation and landscape design, is a graduate of Cornell Climate Stewards program along with training in their Master Gardener program. Her environmental work now focuses on encouraging residents, towns and counties to create healthier outdoor spaces not only for ourselves but for other creatures we share this amazing planet with. She Co-leads Healthy Yards Monroe County a campaign of Color Your Communities Green and has been very active in her own town of Penfield, and beyond, inspiring others to be good stewards of the earth.
Register now!
From the USCCB:
"We show our respect for the Creator by our stewardship of creation. Care for the earth is not just an Earth Day slogan, it is a requirement of our faith. We are called to protect people and the planet, living our faith in relationship with all of God’s creation. This environmental challenge has fundamental moral and ethical dimensions that cannot be ignored.
A true ecological approach always becomes a social approach; it must integrate questions of justice in debates on the environment, so as to hear both the cry of the earth and the cry of the poor. . . . Everything is connected. Concern for the environment thus needs to be joined to a sincere love for our fellow human beings and an unwavering commitment to resolving the problems of society. (Pope Francis, On Care for Our Common Home [Laudato Si'],nos. 49, 91)
The notion of the common good also extends to future generations. The global economic crises have made painfully obvious the detrimental effects of disregarding our common destiny, which cannot exclude those who come after us. We can no longer speak of sustainable development apart from intergenerational solidarity. Once we start to think about the kind of world we are leaving to future generations, we look at things differently; we realize that the world is a gift which we have freely received and must share with others. Since the world has been given to us, we can no longer view reality in a purely utilitarian way, in which efficiency and productivity are entirely geared to our individual benefit. Intergenerational solidarity is not optional, but rather a basic question of justice, since the world we have received also belongs to those who will follow us. (Pope Francis, On Care for Our Common Home [Laudato Si'], no. 159)"