Reflection
The Season of Creation, the annual celebration of prayer and action for the environment, begins today and ends on October 4, the feast of Francis of Assisi, patron saint of ecology. The Season of Creation is a time of grace that the Church, in ecumenical dialogue, offers to humanity to renew its relationship with the Creator and with creation. The theme for this year is Listen to the Voice of Creation. That voice has become loud and clear. We hear it in uncommon heat waves and drought, in floods and in wildfires. Its cries have become louder each year and we need to listen. We need to recognize and admit that we have become a destructive species upsetting the balance of this planet because of our corporate and individual actions. It is time to hold power to responsibility and individuals to understanding. Creation is challenging us to change or face the consequences.
Prayer
Listen to the voice of creation.
Action
How seriously do you take the climate issues facing us? Do you avoid the topic? Do you find reflections on climate responsibility boring? Do you ever share them? Take time to inform yourself. Read Laudato Si if you haven’t. Go to seasonofcreation.org. What can you do? Get involved.
You may be interested in the presentation below.
SESSION 1: LISTEN TO THE VOICE OF CREATION
Thursday, September 1, 6:30 — 8 p.m. Central Daylight Time (CDT)
Hybrid option: In-person and via Zoom
Facilitator: Lori Apel and guests Join us as we kick off our Season of Creation series! This lively, cultural event will share a collection of prayers, songs, and diverse musical presentations featuring intergenerational voices and mood-enhancing instruments. Cost: $5.00. Please register and prepay at shalomretreats.org by calling Shalom at 563.582.3592.
Suggested Reading
O God, how manifold are your works! In wisdom have you made them all; the earth is full of your creatures.
Psalm 104:24-25
If someone has not learned to stop and admire something beautiful, we should not be surprised if he or she treats everything as an object to be used and abused without scruple. If we want to bring about deep change, we need to realize that certain mindsets really do influence our behaviour. Our efforts at education will be inadequate and ineffectual unless we strive to promote a new way of thinking about human beings, life, society and our relationship with nature. Otherwise, the paradigm of consumerism will continue to advance, with the help of the media and the highly effective workings of the market.
Laudato Si
In the name of God stop destroying forests, wetlands and mountains, stop polluting rivers and seas, stop poisoning people and food.
Pope Francis to extractive corporations
To all of you who choose to look the other way because you are more frightened of the changes that can prevent catastrophic climate change than the climate change itself- Your silence is the worst of all.
Greta Thunberg
The earth is what we all have in common.
Wendell Berry
Preservation of our environment is not a liberal or conservative challenge, it’s common sense.
Ronald Reagan
We simply must do everything we can in our power to slow down global warming before it is too late… The science is clear. The global warming debate is over.
Arnold Schwarzenegger
We don’t have time to sit on our hands as our planet burns. For young people, climate change is bigger than election or re-election. It’s life or death.
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez
By polluting the oceans, not mitigating CO2 emissions and destroying our biodiversity, we are killing our planet. Let us face it, there is no planet B.
Emmanuel Macron
I hold a vision of this blue green planet, safe and in balance. At the end of the Fossil Fuel Era, we are emerging to a new reality. We are ready to make the next leap – as momentous as abolishing slavery or giving women the vote.
Elizabeth May
We are in danger of destroying ourselves by our greed and stupidity. We cannot remain looking inwards at ourselves on a small and increasingly polluted and overcrowded planet.
Stephen Hawking
One of the biggest obstacles to making a start on climate change is that it has become a cliche before it has even been understood
Tim Flannery
You cannot adapt to extinction
Vanessa Nakate
When enough people come together, then change will come and we can achieve almost anything. So instead of looking for hope — start creating it.
Greta Thunberg
We are living in what must surely be the most daunting and arresting moment we have ever faced as a species. We face a developing reality that can either condemn human beings to oblivion or inspire us to wake up to our lives in a dramatically more interesting way. A way that begins in living soberly and creatively towards the crisis of our planet– not as a problem to be solved by engineering an ever better, safer human “bubble”, but as a constantly unfolding obligation to begin considering the remaking of ourselves as ecologically awake human beings.
Susan Murphy, The Koan of the Earth