Eco Catholic

My little altar in my home is an exercise in diversity. It mirrors a spiritual journey marked by unanticipated twists and turns along the way.

One of my favorite Robert Lentz icons, “Christ of the Desert” graces the center. A white slender statue of Mary stands to one side of the icon. Kwan Yin, the Buddhist Bodhisattva of Compassion, occupies the other. Filling the rest of the space are a white candle with Monarch butterflies embossing its surface, a photo of Fr. Thomas Berry and snapshots of cherished friends who have become my anam caras, soul companions, through the years.

Each altar resident has its own history but I want to tell you about one in particular: The Gecko.

Gecko is a sparkling silver pin with tiny ruby eyes and he rests at the foot of my Jesus icon.

I keep him there to remind me of the Holy One’s penchant for sending us messages through her creatures. Barely two inches long, Gecko arrived in a carefully wrapped gift box from a good friend for my going-away party. It was January, 1992, a few days before my departure from Columbus, Ohio to study at a creation spirituality master’s degree program at Holy Name University in Oakland, California.

Global warming theory predicts an overall temperature rise over decades, but slowdowns, and even brief periods of cooling are not only possible; they’re inevitable. The climate system is complex and influenced by ocean currents, wind patterns, changes in vegetation and ice cover and dust particles in the air.

The decade that just ended is a case in point. While it was the warmest ten years on record, temperatures didn’t rise as fast during the 2000s as they did for the previous 30 years or so. And while they aren’t at all surprised by this, scientists are still trying to figure out why it happened.

One culprit named in a new study is the coal plants in China, according to a new study just released. If unchecked by pollution controls, the sulfur spewing from their smokestack creates atmospheric particles that reflect some sunlight back into space, counteracting the warming effect from rising amounts of CO2.

It's summer. Winter clothes are put away. We wear t-shirts. Have you ever wondered what the impact of one t-shirt is on the planet? You'd probably be surprised to learn what's involved in the lifecycle of just one t-shirt.

Matthias Wallander writing on the Huffington Post Green blog informs us.

The people of Kazakhstan are generous in their hospitality. There’s a saying: “Kazakhs’ hearts are like the steppes – wide, kind and generous.” Regardless of the hour of arrival of guests, Kazakh women will immediately set to work to prepare a dahsterhahn – a table full of food. If guests arrive and the table remains empty, the host is greatly shamed. Each guest must sit for tea, which includes bread, fruits, nuts, sweets and cookies.

We all have our dahsterhahns, feasts of remarkable generosity that have been extended to us in our lives.

Years ago, a friend and I boarded a westbound Amtrak train in Kansas City, getting off when it made a short stop in a Wyoming town. From there we hitchhiked up to the eastern side of the great Wind River Range. We rode in the back of a VW bug with our heavy backpacks on our laps. The driver, a young woman with a German Shepherd, drove 40 miles out of her way to drop us at the trailhead we sought.

The Missouri River floods have threatened Nebraska's Ft. Calhoun and Cooper nuclear power plants putting tremendous stress on both the systems and their operators, but the immediate risk of a meltdown like those that occurred in Japan at Fukushima is small.

Carl Pope, former director of the Sierra Club writing on The Huffington Post Green Blog says it's also clear "that if these same floods had occurred a year ago, before the Nuclear Regulatory Commission forced plant operators to upgrade safety standards, Ft. Calhoun, at least, would have been at serious meltdown risk. If the floods recede with no further damage to these plants, President Obama could, quite legitimately, claim that he saved Omaha. He probably won't, though, because the politics of doing so would reveal a deeper and more disturbing truth: while the Obama Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), led by Gregory Jaczko, has begun to take seriously the problems it inherited, America's fleet of 104 operating nuclear power plants is anything but safe."