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Five Rs

Director’s Reflection

Dear Companions on the Journey,

I cannot recommend our own Peter McLoughlin’s daily series in the National Catholic Reporter too much.  This recent offering brought me back to my early college years when everyone was reading e.e. cummings:

Christianity does not confine itself to 
the reign of God in the soul; 
it seeks to establish 
the reign of God upon the earth.
~ Fr. Isaac Hecker,of the Paulist Fathers

i thank You God for most this amazing
day: for the leaping greenly spirits of trees 
and a blue true dream of sky; and for everything
which is natural which is infinite which is yes

(i who have died am alive again today,
and this is the sun’s birthday; this is the birth
day of life and love and wings and of the gay
great happening illimitably earth)

how should tasting touching hearing seeing
breathing any-lifted from the no
of all nothing-human merely being
doubt unimaginable You?

(now the ears of my ears awake and
now the eyes of my eyes are opened)
~ e.e. cummings

How would you rate yourself on these R’s —
refuse, reduce, reuse/repair, replace/rebuy, recycle?
Refuse, make the choice not to generate waste in the first place
Reduce, makedecisions that decrease the amount of waste produced
Reuse/repair, expand the shelf-lives of products; join the growing movement to RE-USE
Replace, next time consider the recycled and green option
Recycle, reclaim the raw materials
(Note that recycling is LAST on the list; it is critically important but isn’t as effective as preventing waste in the first place.)

What do you think of this column, shamelessly stolen from Peter McLoughlin?

And let us pray for/with one another.
Michael
The Paulist Center