Margo Delaney sent us this latest news:
Under creative leadership, Bonnybrook Youth Group led our faith community on a four-week spiritual journey, weaving care for creation with a call to consider human activities that cause harm to God’s bountiful gift and resultant suffering for the most vulnerable people. Below is a brief outline of each week’s presentation. The focus of each week was expressed in a prayer (see example under LOVE, WEEK 4). This prayer, led by a member of the youth group, was incorporated into the Prayers of the Faithful in each liturgy.
Week 1 – HOPE
Symbol: Wood – Foundation of the Manger
Issue: Throwaway culture, overconsumption, energy waste, environmental harm driven by the greed for more.
Week 2 – PEACE
Symbol: Straw – Habitat and Rest
Issue: Loss of biodiversity destroyed ecosystems, pollution of water, soil, forests, loss of safe places for creatures.
Week 3 – JOY
Symbol: Cloth – Warmth and Care
Issue: Fast fashion, exploitation of workers, people with no home, heat, or protection
Week 4 – LOVE
Symbol: Natural tokens – leaf, seed, stone, pinecone
Issue: Climate disruption, challenge to ecological conversion and responsibility
Lord, as we place these signs of creation around the manger, fill us with a love that protects all you have made. Creation is crying out from storms, fires, floods, and heat that threaten homes and futures. Lead us to understand that all is connected. Strengthen us to live responsibly with courage, and care, so that your love may take root in our hearts and in the whole human family this coming Christmas season.
Amen.
Week 4 – CHRIST IS BORN
Symbol: The Infant Jesus placed in the manger
Issue: Stewardship, ecological commitment, healing creation as a sign of welcoming Christ
COMMUNITY
Bonnybrook Youth Group spent weeks discussing their idea of Bonnybrook as an ideal parish. Then they designed this model of our parish as a place of unity, welcome, and peace. The model is displayed in the sanctuary of our church, positioned in the shade of our environment tree.
PRACTICAL
When it comes to practical, what could be more practical that having seventeen fourth class girls and boys from St Joseph’s School join us in helping to plant the next section of Bonnybrook Parish native hedgerow.
The sense of joy and hope was palpable when Catherine, the founder of pocketforest enterprise, laid out eight small spades and one hundred and fifty native saplings along the railings behind the already prepared hedge site.
Everyone laid too with a will, and before long there were baby willows, spindles, hawthorns, alders, crab apples, hollies, hazels, guilder roses and alder buckthorns planted in the rich soil.
In the kitchen, five generous women had the kettles on the boil, and as the last saplings were placed gently into the brown earth, adults repaired to the kitchen for a welcome and warm cup of tea and some fancy biscuits, while the children’s eyes grew large with joy when they saw the variety of crisps and biscuits laid out in colourful array on the long table.
It was heartwarming to see the wonder on the children’s faces as Catherine brought them through the “science” behind the hedgerow planting: how the soil welcomes the roots of the saplings, and as these grow, the mycelium fungi in roots create a flourishing hedge to welcome birds, bees, and butterflies!
As the principal came to reclaim the class for school, the question voiced over and over was: “Can we come back next week to plant again?!”
GLOBAL
The people in our parish continue to support St Mary Magdalen School Riwoto. Their generous donations used are to buy sorghum for school meals. The cutback in the World Food Programme has led to a scarcity of food and so the parish has to procure funds to purchase food in the market.