Eco Catholic

It's winter coat weather in northwest Ohio, but Sr. Jeremias Stinson's tomatoes are doing just fine. So are her broccoli, dill, beets, cabbage, lettuce, spinach and carrots.

Stinson's veggies are thriving because they live inside a warm snug plastic greenhouse -- a polyhouse. The polyhouse makes it possible for Stinson and her food-growing colleague, Sr. Grace Ellen Urban, to maintain a year-round garden.

For the last three years, their all-seasons bounty has gone to the Helping Hands of St. Louis Parish soup kitchen to provide nutritious soups, stews and salads for hungry people living on Toledo's northeast side. Since 1992, Stinson and Urban, Sisters of St. Francis of Sylvania, have maintained a 4,500-square-foot garden and an apple orchard to help support St. Louis' daily meal ministry.

The dream of adding on a year-round operation began germinating in their hearts a little more than four years ago.

When Franciscan Fr. Richard Rohr joined the order in 1961, he learned that no one in the community was allowed to cut down a tree unless the provincial gave his permission to do so.

This tradition was a "little bit of Francis that lasted 800 years," Rohr said, writing in his daily meditation website last week. Rohr is founding director of the Center for Action and Contemplation in Albuquerque, N.M.

As the seesaw "we win-you lose" conflict between corporations and environmentalists continues and our poor planet grows sicker by the day, the priest's recent columns are especially timely. They present us with a concise overview tracing how we divorced ourselves from the natural world, and with it, part of our souls.

For Saul of Tarsus, it was traveling the road to Damascus. For John Barrie, it was a trip to Ecuador in 2004.

John, a well-known and successful green architect and industrial designer, was looking out of the window of a bus.

"I do solar design," John said. Looking out at the homes, "I realized that if you rearranged the materials [wall and windows] you could make buildings that were much more comfortable in which to live. You could be comfortable during hot days and cold nights.

"My training put me in a position where I could do something. No one was designing things for poor people. I can do this."

Thus was born the Appropriate Technology Collaborative.

Appropriate Technology Collaborative's mission and history
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The Appropriate Technology Collaborative mission is to create "new sustainable technologies that promote economic growth and improve the quality of life for low income people worldwide."
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