'All Nature Is Sacred' Cries Out The Leader of These Earth Shepherds

Read on  Sunday,  April 24: Our Comforts, 

Blessings that Can Become  Pitfalls

'All Nature Is Sacred' Cries Out

 The Leader of These Earth Shepherds

 

They Are Devoted to Much More Needed Action 

To Mend Our Environment Here and There

                                   Earth Shepherds on a Field Trip

            

 

                           Oh, give us pleasure in the flowers  today,

                        And give us not to think so far away

                        As the uncertain harvest; keep us here

                        All simply in the springing of the year.

                        Oh, give us pleasure in the orchard white, 

                        Like nothing else by day, like ghosts by night ;

                         And make us happy in the happy bees,

                         The swarm  dilating 'round the perfect trees.

                        And make us happy in the darting bird

                        That suddenly above the bees is heard,

                        The meteor that thrusts in with needle bill,

                        And off a blossom in mid air stands still.

                        For this is love and nothing else is love, 

1.                         To which it is reserved for God above

                        To sanctify to what far ends He will,

                        But which it only needs that we fulfill .

                        ( A Prayer in Spring by Robert Frost )   

 

                            There is a great deal of talk these

                            days about saving the environment. 

                            We must,  for the environment sustains

                           our bodies. But as humans we also

                           require support of our spirits, and

                          this is what certain kinds of places provide.

                          ( Alan Gussow, American artist, teacher,

                          conservationist devoted to and inspired

                          by the natural environment  )

 

 

          Her name is Bonnie Cimo and she told me she talks to Jesus "all the time."  She has lived 64 years, raised four sons with her husband Ron,  a student advocate  for Western Governor's University.  Nowadays, she is in love  with her calling-in-life of "finding  God in nature", she professes. She devotes some  other time as  a substitute high school teacher , often teaching Spanish, and for  forty years has  professed her faith during Mass at St. James Catholic Church in Arlington Heights, Illinois .

          The front yard of her home stands out in her middle class suburban neighborhood 25 miles from Chicago.. Looming over this relatively small patch of a yard are two spruce trees,   and two white pine trees which her husband planted  when they were two feet high; and bordering the sidewalk are patches of little woodsy-like small flowers and a few fairytale statues which have been  planted and placed there  through the years by anonymous strollers who thought them fitting for a nature-lover like Bonnie . 

          When I interviewed Bonnie at her kitchen table, I couldn't help sensing a cabin-like ambience surrounded me.  (Maybe it came from the absence of glitter in the room and in the comfy--and tasteful-- clothes Bonnie wore , as did her husband who passed through the kitchen now and then. )  Bonnie, I  have observed through the years, is a cheerful woman , transparent and articulate about the "Earth Shepherds", which  today is a group of sometimes 20 men and women at St. James devoted to providing care to the environment with the ultimate  goal of stopping the  corrupt consumption of our earth's natural  resources. The question was, Bonnie asked:  Were people  in the Catholic faith, in our parish ,  causing any of this corruption of nature or our country's resources ? 

  

        She has led this this group's efforts since 2015 when Pope Francis wrote  his encyclical  Laudato Si' (Praise Be to You ).  According to the Catholic Church, the Pope's  encyclical seems to embody two attributes associated with St. Francis of Assisi : care for the poor and love of creation. Also expressed by the Pope  is the earth is our common home and we are just beginning to awaken to this truth. The church asks: Will we see creation as a precious gift that has been entrusted to us or will we see it as a "resource" to be used and exploited?                         

     

 

                                     "Either we see creation as a precious gift that 

     has been entrusted to us , or will we see it as 

a resource" to be used and exploited " 

            
     "Earth Shepherds: are encouraging every member  to support  Laudato Si'," Bonnie said, "so all at St. James can be part of  love in action. This is interregnal to our faith. "  Research shows, she pointed out, that "it is the poor who most seriously experience the trauma" of this  corrupt  consumption.    She appeared disheartened by what she sees as a "chronic lack of interest"at St. James  in actually  doing  something  to improve  the  environment. The church leadership does not respond to her emails which plead for  support of Laudato Si' principles such drastically cutting back on our overuse of plastic containers for everything or simply lowering  home heating temperatures to cut back  on carbon emissions which would mean less consumption of petroleum  and therefore , she also said, less  "digging up of the  ground which lessen all kinds of ecological problems." 

    Bonnie and Ron on a nature

        study stroll through a forest    

        

     What makes Bonnie happy ? "Being with my family." And sad? "The ongoing  destruction of Ukraine ."  For recreation , she  and Ron are in a band which occasionally performs for some audiences. She reads novels by Thomas Hardy and said she gets "transported" by his descriptions of the English countryside. As for milestones or defining events in her life, Bonnie mentioned the time she first touched a piano at age seven: " Electricity went though my body.  " And there was that drive through Yellowstone National Park  , and perhaps most of all often looking at insects and other creature in he  backyard when a child. With a "Wow" she expressed  her joy of  causing her  doctor's office to cut back on its use of plastic containers. She said that was a Wow! experience.  Some big challenges faced by Bonnie include caring  for her elderly parents and raising  four sons . ( One of them doesn't eat meat because of the methane gas which comes from grazing cattle.)

                                          Ron and Bonnie  by the front door of  their home

          

        

                                            Two Earth Shepherds tending to 

                                           the St.James' "pollinator" garden

  Earth Shepherds has planted a "pollinator" garden in the northwest corner of the  St. James parish center parking lot and has invited Fr. Ryan to bless it on Earth Day. accompanied by  school children and singing.  Bonnie would  like to hear from anyone  plans to attend.  Her web address is www.facebook.com/sjearthshepherds . She also invited people to come to one of Earth Shepherds monthly meeting which likely  will be in her  home . She said newcomers can learn more about Catholic Social Teaching  and how to be a steward of  God's creation.  "All  nature around here ," she said,  "is  sacred because God made it."

                                                         The End

 (The following is taken   from the Oct. 1, 2018  Exodus Trekkers blog " Life Down at the Mississippi Abbey" )

           We rose from the table. Sr. Gail had several tasks awaiting her. We exchanged a few spontaneous words about "gratitude"  and then parted  company.  Our words about gratitude and her words about coming close to Jesus  lingered with me as I walked to the field gate below and opened it to a  mile-wide panorama of wheat, calf-high  corn, alfalfa ,  haystacks here and there and, beyond all that the abbey's woodlands.

            I began walking slowly  down a  wide dirt  path shaped by years of tractor wheels running over it. The sky was puffed with white clouds,  and  birds—most often  orioles— kept flushing  up from  patches of  wild  flowers.  Gazing upon this land and the life it was nourishing  as I breathed in part of it,  made me think of those life-lesson parables  Jesus told his disciples about humankind interacting with nature.

            I continued walking until, on my left and about a hundred yards down a gentle slope  of corn ,  I saw a pond with  a cabin on its far bank. A few tree branches, tall weeds, and bulrushes obscured most of this setting  as if nature itself had requested it so. I walked to the pond  down a furrow of corn and stood on a bank opposite the cabin, a stone's throw away.  It was a simple log  structure with windows without  any covering and an interior  empty of furnishings. I recalled being told that it was built without nails by pioneers  and that the sisters sometimes came here to  meditate and pray—as I did now,  sitting on earth and listening to frogs and crickets.

            Those thoughts about gratitude which Sr. Gail and I had shared  came to mind.  "Another thing about knowing God better, " she had said,  " is gratitude, and  gratitude for me is constantly around me when I look at  nature .When I walk around here there is so much beauty and so much life and so much gift that my heart is filled with gratitude. And that comes back to me in prayer.  I have so much to be grateful for: life, love, opportunities to know God in other people. " 

            Her words had  stirred me to say, "This may sound simplistic, Sister Gail,  but I am often grateful   just to have been created   as a human, to be given life instead of no life. "

            Sr. Gail smiled  and nodded her head.  "You know," she said, "the closer we get to God, the simpler  our thoughts about Him and Jesus will be."

            I  kept listening to frogs and crickets.

 

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