The Pope, the Poor, and Caring for Creation

I have expressed my appreciation for Pope Francis, as a humble, socially responsible Christian leader who is working to effect change in a rather ponderous institution. Recently he instructed cardinals and archbishops of the Roman Curia to take turns hearing daily confessions in a church near the Vatican because he wants them to be pastors, not just bureaucrats.

Now Francis has made an amateur video praising the world’s “cartoneros” — the poor people who pick through garbage to find recyclable and reusable goods. He says their work is dignified and good for the environment.
 

Francis recorded the video Dec. 5 while meeting with members of the Excluded Workers’ Movement of his native Argentina, which released the video this week at an annual meeting of trash recyclers. Francis, known for his simple habits, has denounced today’s “throw-away culture” and said in the video that food that is tossed aside each day could feed all the world’s hungry. Francis has a long relationship with Argentina’s “cartoneros” — literally “cardboard people.” He would celebrate Mass for them as archbishop and invited them on stage during World Youth Day in July.

We often make the connection between social responsibility and care for the environment. We are also becoming increasingly aware that environmental degradation affects the poor more seriously than the wealthy. The pope seems to be making an attempt to connect all of this. Impressive.

Thoughts?

Jesus Loves Reindeer

The whole Christmas situation is muddled these days, what with Santa in his sleigh putting the squeeze on  the baby Jesus in the manger. And Happy Holidays is becoming a more PC greeting than Merry Christmas. So should I take it a step further and claim that Jesus loves reindeer? As George Costanza in Seinfeld used to say, world's collide!

You're correct that there are no reindeer in the bible, unless two-by-two into the ark counts as a reference. There were no reindeer in the gospel infancy narratives, but there are no other animals there either, even though we like to insert them in the story.

But if God is the creator of all that lives and breathes, and Jesus is God Incarnate, then surely Jesus loves reindeer! It is not a big stretch to say that woodland caribou are our Canadian reindeer, or at least relatives. And these caribou are disappearing because of shrinking and changing habitat. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zXbRD92aQhk The northern caribou herds are very susceptible to climate change and are disappearing rapidly. All this was reported recently but it didn't get a lot of attention, what with Miley Cyrus changing her eyebrows and all. After all, species come and go, but celebrity eyebrows are eternal.

You may be thinking that there are bigger issues out there than the survival of a species you have likely never seen. I feel that we are all diminished by the disappearance of a species, even one which aren't on my radar, on Christmas Eve or any time . There are far too many "going down in history" and we humans can make a difference. Jesus would approve and our active awareness would be a nice Christmas gift to the planet, don't you think?

Mandela and Earth Justice

All earth is waiting to see the Promised One,
and open furrows await the seed of God.
All the world, bound and struggling, seeks true liberty;
it cries out for justice and searches for the truth.

I love the words of the Advent hymn All Earth is Waiting. Some Christians dismiss concern for the environment as being "off message" in terms of the gospel. Their focus is personal salvation, forgetting the broader themes of redemption for all of creation. If God made it, God will save it, but we are enlisted as co-creators. We have a unique role in creation care and creation justice. And we know that Jesus was aware of the "least and the lost" in his ministry not as conversion fodder but as human beings of worth.

Here is an interesting piece from Grist magazine by Brentin Mock which examines Nelson Mandela's commitment to climate justice. So often the poor of the planet are most vulnerable to the effects of climate change even as they are expected to provide the raw materials for our affluence. 

Six years ago, Mandela founded The Elders, a cross-cultural group of leaders from across the globe, including former President Jimmy Carter and former United Nations Chief Kofi Annan, to forge human rights-based solutions to worldwide problems.

http://grist.org/climate-energy/justice-giant-remembering-mandela-and-his-fight-for-climate-justice/?utm_campaign=socialflow&utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=tweet

I hope you will take the time to read it and let me know what you think.

Begins with "C" & Ends With "A"

The city of Shanghai in China, with the largest population of any city in the world at over 20 million, has ground to a virtual standstill because of choking pollution. Government cars have been ordered off the roads, factories told to curtail activity, school children told to stay home. The photo above shows the commute from hell. This is a big deal for the coastal city Shanghai which usually has mild to modest air pollution.
Increasingly the industrial engine of China's economic growth is overwhelming the environment, with air and water and earth saturated with toxins. The water supply of many cities has been rendered undrinkable by pollution, including in one case the carcasses of thousands of pigs. It is a nightmarish picture in this country of 1.3 billion people, almost a fifth of the world's human population.

The statistics are staggering but so are the individual stories. An eight-year-old girl has been diagnosed with lung cancer, the youngest patient ever recorded with this disease. Pollution is the suspected cause.

Several things come to mind when I see these grim reports. One is that our Western economies drive the Chinese industrial expansion. We buy and buy and buy what China produces, and we love our cheap consumer goods. But at what true cost?  The second is that we seem to forget that there is no such thing as the "non-smoking section" of our planet. What affects distant lands eventually affects us, whether we want to pay attention or not. The third is that we should wake up to the cautionary tale of China for ourselves. Canada has recently been ranked 58th of 61 nations in terms of mitigating the effects of climate change. http://www.fastcoexist.com/3022288/ranking-countries-for-climate-change-performance-and-why-the-us-is-just-43rd#10We are outrageous per capita polluters and we have a federal government that just doesn't care as long as our economy benefits. This is a matter of scale and timeline, but are we really any better?

The Christian community and all people of faith must keep yapping away about this, regardless of the naysayers. But surely we must also make personal choices about lifestyles which actually reflect Jesus' teaching to keep it simple. As the other country which begins with "C" and ends with "A" we better wake up (okay, there is also Columbia, but you get my drift!)

Thoughts?