Guide: Sisters seek sustainability by caring for creation

Scientists and activists place strong focus on temperature increases, specifically how warm things can become before tipping points are reached. Likewise, it's important to take the temperature of those who might make a difference. Is there a sense of urgency or complacency? Do they feel hope or despair? Loneliness or shared purpose? And what does faith have to do with it all?

Engage your students with one or both of these simple activities:

1. Working with your school or parish custodian, weigh the daily or weekly amount of trash generated at your facility/campus. Ask students to guess the amount.

For a more impactful experience, consider:

• Showing them the trash, piled up in bags, on the school parking lot
• Doing an inventory of items found in your classroom wastebasket(s).
• Taking a field trip to your local landfill.

2. Share the following story:

"Tell me the weight of a snowflake," a coalmouse tiny bird asked a wild dove.

"Nothing more than nothing," was the answer.

"In that case I must tell you a marvelous story,” the coalmouse bird said. "I sat on a branch of a fir tree, close to its trunk, when it began to snow, not heavily, not in a giant blizzard, no, just like in a dream, without any violence. Since I didn't have anything better to do, I counted the snowflakes settling on the twigs and needles of my branch. Their number was exactly 3,741,952. When the next snowflake dropped onto the branch – nothing more than nothing, as you say – the branch broke off."

Having said that, the coalmouse flew away. The dove, since Noah's time an authority on change, thought about the story for a while and finally said to herself: "Perhaps there is only one person's voice lacking for peace to come about in the world."

(source unknown)

Begin by saying:

"We don't always pay attention to the weight of things. For example, you might not weigh the fruit you buy at the grocery store, but you might wonder about the weight of people as you join them on a crowded elevator. Increasingly, people are becoming concerned about the weight or strain that we humans place on our planet."

Then ask (regarding the first activity):

• Is it surprising to know or see the amount of waste we produce every day or week?
• Multiplied by the number of days/weeks in a school year, how much waste do we produce?
• Name one common item that you and your classmates could reduce or eliminate from our waste output and how we could do that.

And ask (regarding the second activity):

• What are some situations in our world in which you, as an individual, feel insignificant?
• What is the difference between insignificance and influence? What does it take to reach a breaking point?
• How would you feel if you were eligible to vote in an election and didn’t, but a candidate you like lost by a single vote?

Loving God, the concerns of our world sometimes weigh heavily upon us.

You created so many great blessings, but the things that worry us are most often of our own making.

Make us mindful, Lord, of the ways we weigh on the world, and the positive part we play in respecting and protecting your creation.

Amen.