Faith and Ecology Retreat

“Discipleship for the 21st Century: Living in the Spirit of Laudato Si’”

The retreat will begin on May 28, 2018 at 7:00 p.m. and end Sunday, June 3, 2018, at 1:00 p.m.

Combining spirituality and ecology, this retreat invites us to explore prayerfully and in a practical way, the integral relationship between faith, care for the Earth and for most vulnerable persons. The experience incorporating the beautiful natural setting at Villa St Joseph in Cobourg ON, silent times for reflection, Scripture, the letter of Pope Francis (Laudato Si’) and writings from a wide range of faith traditions will enable us to see these interwoven elements as essential for our call to discipleship in the world today. The retreat will be facilitated by Sisters from across the Canadian Federation of the Sisters of St. Joseph.

All welcome: For further information or to register please contact Sr. Loretta Manzera at the Federation office p: 519-642-7029 or e: can.csj-fed@bellnet.ca

The cost of the retreat is $425 (a deposit of $50 would be required at time of registration. Space is limited.

Federation of Sisters of St. Joseph of Canada
Federation Ecology Committee

Becoming a Blue Community!

The video we just posted on the homepage of  our website promotes becoming a Blue Community. Sisters of St. Joseph across Canada have recently signed on to becoming a “Blue Community”.  What does this mean?  We are joining with The Council of Canadians under the leadership of Maude Barlow, along with CUPE (Canadians Union of Public Employees) and the Blue Planet Project acknowledging that water is a human right for all. This may see obvious to some, but we want to make that statement as real and practical as possible.  It is a way of seeing that everything is interdependent. We call this integral ecology. Specifically, it means seeing water as a human right for all. 

Some practical ways this is applied means that we will not use bottled water in our communities and at our events. We will also work to ensure that water does not get sold to multinational corporations and remains a publicly owned commodity belonging to all citizens in our country. We also support all efforts to bring clean potable water to all indigenous communities across Canada.

Water is a right, a political issue, an economic issue, a spiritual issue. More and more we see that it is also a global issue affecting communities around the world. We join this movement because we want to say we stand with those who see that water, as a source of life, is interconnected and related to all life on our Blue Planet. We think we are in good company. 

Joan Atkinson, CSJ

The Thames River is a Person

On October 10, 2017, CBC radio host, Anna Marie Tremanti’s presented a segment entitled “Colorado River: Should the river have the same legal rights as a person”.  A lawyer, Jason Flores Williams, on behalf of an environmental group has asked a judge to grant to the Colorado River the same legal rights as a person.  Mr. Williams stated in the interview with Tremanti, that states and corporations are legal “persons”.  The Corporate “persons” use the finite resources for their own interests, these same resources upon which all of us depend. Existing laws to protect nature are inadequate to prevent degradation of the environment and loss of many species of plants and animals. If the Colorado River is deemed to be a legal person, entitled to be represented by a guardian, this ecosystem upon which the population depends can go to court to protect itself from injuries inflicted by all-powerful governments and corporations. Already, the overuse of the Colorado has been such that this former great river no longer reaches the Gulf of Mexico.  Corporations have sufficient wealth to influence governments into issuing permits for fifty-million-dollar water bottling plants. But new forces are instituting change.  Three dozen communities in the United States have statutes proclaiming the rights of natural entities. Similar laws in New Zealand, Equator, Bolivia, Columbia and India have been passed and upheld.  

David Boyd, and environmental lawyer from Pender Island, BC, is the author of The Rights of Nature: A Legal Revolution That Could Save the World.  Boyd notes that Indigenous peoples think of nature as having human qualities. In Manitoba, aboriginal people speak of Lake Winnipeg having a spirit which is crying for help.  Boyd comments that we treat nature as property which is either privately owned or the property of government.  Indigenous people speak of connections among all nature – "all our relations”.   We are facing the meltdown of our planet with massive decreases in animals and plants. We are on the verge of the 6^th mass extinction of earth in the four and a half billion years of our history.  Concerns of communities about fracking and bottling water abound. Countries, such as Equator, have established that nature has constitutional rights as a legal person.

David Boyd states that unless we develop a different perspective in our relationship with nature the degradation will continue rapidly. We need to transform our view: “Nature is a community to which we belong, not a commodity which we own.”

The radio program hosted by Anna Marie Tremanti The Colorado River, can be accessed at CBC, “The Current”, October 10, 2017.  The audio presentation is worth nineteen minutes of listening.

Pat McKeon, CSJ

‘BEE’ careful in being BEE friendly

Recently, on a car trip from Calgary to visit friends in Hay River and Yellowknife my travelling companion and I made a lunch stop in High Level, Alberta. While waiting for my soup and sandwich I picked up the local coffee news, the Muskeg Buzz. I came across an article in its Heard Around the World section titled, “Cheerios Will Send 500 Wildflower Seeds for Free to Save Bees." This piece encouraged readers to sign up for free wildflower seeds to plant to help save the honey bee. Maybe you have seen the TV commercial on the same topic. Currently, General Mills, maker of Honey Nut Cheerios, is focussing audience attention on the plight of honeybees through their corporate initiative, ‘Bring back the bees’. Their campaign, ‘Bring back the bees’ highlights the vital role bees and other pollinators play in food security, the economy and how bees and other pollinators face decline.

“Pollinators are critical to our ecosystems. Insect pollinators, both wild (e.g., many species of bees and moths) and domestic (honeybees), are in serious decline due to the combination of habitat loss, disease, pesticide exposure and climate change. These pollinators are responsible for an estimated one out of three bites of food that people eat, which is worth billions of dollars to the North American economy. Pollinators ensure the reproductive success of plants and the survival of the wildlife that depend on those plants for food and shelter.”*

A significant part of General Mills’ campaign is partnering with the Canadian, P.E.I. seed company, Veseys to offer free packages of wildflower seeds for planting. Last year, the 100,000 seed packages Veseys expected to give away went in a matter of days. The seed company scrambled to get another 100,000 packages to General Mills. This year’s projection is that General Mills is going to be giving away over 100 million seeds to Canadians.**

At first glance, this initiative seemed like a super-duper, winning idea to me. The intent to highlight the plight of the honeybee is wonderful and taking steps to address its dwindling habitat is to be applauded. With a little research I discovered, however, the method chosen to accomplish their goals has been called into question by Paul Zammit of the Toronto Botanical Gardens.***

Zammit bases his concern on the fact that all plants should not be planted in all locations. The free package contains a mixture of seeds some of which are non-native and perhaps even considered invasive in the location where they are being sent. The horticulturalist is quick to add that he likes that the campaign is getting folks like us talking about pollinators such as bees and supports the campaign efforts to urge us to take the opportunity to facilitate pollinators in our own backyards, balconies and outdoor spaces. However, his over-riding message is to take the ‘bee careful’ route to wildflower planting. Paul Zammit recommends first checking with our local flower societies or flower supply stores to select native flowers best suited to our locale in creating wildflower habitats for the bees in our neighbourhoods.

View https://youtu.be/JgZ-DLesdAU for other ways to help pollinators in your community.

Adding to your bee trivia ... did you know?

• Bees have terrific colour vision, that’s why they love showy flowers. They especially like blue, purple, violet, white & yellow.

• There are over 20,000 species of bees around the world!

• Bee species all have different tongue lengths that adapt to different flowers.

• The honeybee’s wings stroke incredibly fast, about 200 beats per second thus making their distinctive buzzing sound.

• A honeybee can fly for up to 9 kilometers and as fast as 25 kilometers an hour.

• 1 in 3 bites of food we eat is made possible by bees and other pollinators who spread the pollen that crops need to grow. That includes many of our favourite foods like apples, almonds, coffee and of course, honey.

Nancy Wales, CSJ

*Ontario Nature
**Seeds Given away in Cheerios promotion may be problematic, horticulturalist says – CBC NEWS posted March 26, 2017
***Seeds Given away in Cheerios promotion may be problematic, horticulturalist says – CBC NEWS posted March 26, 2017

Waking Up from a Millennia-Long Sleep

The most remarkable feature of this historical moment on Earth is not that we are on the way to destroying the world---we’ve actually been on the way for quite a while. It is that we are beginning to wake up, as from a millennia-long sleep, to a whole new relationship to our world, to ourselves, and to each other. (Joanna Macy—activist, environmentalist, Buddhist practicioner Italics are mine)

In a nutshell, Joanna Macy shines a clear light on what integral ecology means. The word ecology in the phrase gives the limited view that integral ecology is about environmental issues. Not so. In its root meaning integral ecology is about the interdependent relationships in the household that we call earth…and beyond.

What is amazing is how our consciousness has evolved over the last 50 years. It would never have occurred to most of us 50 years ago to call earth our common home. The boundaries of what we would have called the “neighbourhood” would have been confined to about two blocks from where we lived. In this present chaotic era, we know viscerally and with some anxiety that climate agreements must be global; we know as we have never known before that poverty and images of scarcity set the groundwork for war; we sense in our bones that our images of God, of the Sacred radically influence how we live together; we experience that acts of generosity and courage add to the field of wisdom in which we can all share.

We need to give our attention and our intention to this: seeing what is wrong, what are the distortions that are damaging the earth and each other AND being tenacious about holding the primal truth about the goodness, empathy and innate desire for connection at the heart of who we are. If we only focus on what is wrong, cynicism and arrogance will eventually prevail. If we only see the beauty of the possible, we may become detached from the real and present suffering in our world. Holding both together gives momentum to what can change.

And so, together, let us keep waking up to a whole new relationship to our world, to ourselves, and to each other. And in the process, we just might be discovering a whole new relationship with and within God.

Margo Ritchie, CSJ