Sunday, September 27

Green Notes from the OSP Green Team:
Meatless Mondays, Feast of St. Francis, Climate Change and Voting, Solidarity Market

​Last month in this Season of Creation, we introduced OSP members to Meatless Mondays as a way to take positive action to help heal our planet while improving our own diets. How are your Meatless Mondays going? Know YOU ARE making a difference!

Some plant-based burger recipes for you to try:
The Best Plant-based Burger Recipes for Your Next Outdoor Cookout - Meatless Monday
Link: bit.ly/plantbased-burgers

---

Sunday, October. 4 - Feast of St. Francis of Assisi
On Sunday, October 4 at 10 am we will celebrate this feast with a special Creation Mass. Francis is known for his kindness, openness, love of animals, and reverence for nature... the patron saint of the environment.
A St. Francis Reflection on Youtube (10 minutes)
Link: bit.ly/stfrances-reflection

You may want to consider taking the St. Francis Pledge
Link: bit.ly/stfrances-pledge

---

Articles on Climate Change worth pondering
Pope Francis: The pandemic has given us a chance to develop new ways of living.
Link: bit.ly/2FNGeGZ
“Pope Francis welcomed this year’s theme chosen by the ecumenical family, “Jubilee for the Earth,” because 2020 marks the 50th anniversary of Earth Day, which began in the United States in 1969. Pope Francis recalled that in the biblical tradition “a Jubilee is a sacred time to remember, return, rest, restore and rejoice.” He developed his message around these five verbs.  A jubilee is “a time of grace to remember” that “we exist only in relationships: with God the Creator, with our brothers and sisters as members of a common family, and with all of God’s creatures within our common home.” 

Election and Climate Change from Maryknoll
A very helpful brief on this issue: bit.ly/maryknoll-election-climate

A Meditation (3 minutes)
Dear Earth, I'm Sorry | Little Life Tales
Link: bit.ly/dearearth-imsorry

The OSP Solidarity Market will be virtual this year.
In early October we will be posting ways you can support the wonderful vendors and ways to purchase their beautiful products. Please stay tuned!

PRAYER | Pope Francis, Laudato Si
All-powerful God, you are present in the whole universe and in the smallest of your creatures. You embrace with your tenderness all that exists. Pour out upon us the power of your love, that we may protect life and beauty. Fill us with peace, that we may live as brothers and sisters, harming no one.

---

---

Sunday, September 20

Meatless Monday Munchies 

Here’s another meatless recipe to try out this week!
BBQ Chickpea Veggie Bowls
[Meatless Monday | Jenn Sebestyen]

Find the full recipe here: mondaycampaigns.org/meatless-monday/recipes/bbq-chickpea-veggie-bowls

---

Fun fact of the week:

---

---

Sunday, September 13

Meatless Monday Munchies 

Here’s another mouth-watering, meatless recipe to try out this week:
Broccoli and Cheese Quiche [Epicurious |BON APPÉTIT]

Find the full recipe here: epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/broccoli-and-cheese-quiche

---

Fun fact of the week:

---

---

Sunday, September 6

Meatless Monday is a non-profit initiative of The Monday Campaigns Inc. in association with the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health Center for a Livable Future. Meatless Monday is also an international campaign that encourages people to refrain from eating meat on Mondays to improve their health and the health of the planet.

---

​Meatless Monday Munchies 
Here’s a mouth-watering, meatless recipe to try out this week:
Vegetarian Skillet Stuffed Shells [Epicurious | Anna Stockwell]
www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/vegetarian-skillet-stuffed-shells

---

Fun fact of the week:

---

Ingredients:
​18 jumbo pasta shells (about 6 oz.)
1 1/2 tsp. kosher salt, divided, plus more
2 Tbsp. extra-virgin olive oil
1/2 lb. crimini mushrooms, thinly sliced
1 tsp. freshly ground black pepper
1/2 cup dry white wine or vermouth
5 oz. baby spinach
6 garlic cloves, thinly sliced
2 Tbsp. unsalted butter
3 cups marinara sauce
1/2 tsp. crushed red pepper flakes
2 cups whole-milk ricotta
3 oz. finely grated Parmesan (about 1 cup), plus more for serving
3 Tbsp. finely chopped oregano, divided


Check out this Mercy Meatless Monday Guide for prayerfully living out meat-free during the Season of Creation. ​

Preparation:
Cook shells in a large pot of boiling salted water, stirring occasionally, until very al dente, about 9 minutes; drain. Run under cold water to stop the cooking; drain again. Meanwhile, heat oil in a large skillet over high. Add mushrooms and cook, stirring occasionally, until they release juices, then are dry again and nicely browned, 5–6 minutes; season with black pepper and 1 tsp. salt. Reduce heat to medium, add wine, and cook, stirring, until reduced by half, 1–2 minutes. Add spinach, cover, and cook until beginning to wilt, 1–2 minutes. Uncover and continue to cook, stirring occasionally, until spinach is completely wilted and most of the liquid is evaporated, 2–4 minutes more. Transfer mushroom mixture to a large bowl; reserve skillet.

​Cook garlic and butter in reserved skillet over medium-high heat, stirring occasionally, until garlic is fragrant and beginning to brown, 2–3 minutes. Add marinara sauce and red pepper and bring to a simmer over low heat. Cook, stirring occasionally, until warmed through, 6–8 minutes.

While sauce cooks, add ricotta, 3 oz. Parmesan, 2 Tbsp. oregano, and remaining 1/2 tsp. salt to mushroom mixture and stir to combine. Spoon about 2 Tbsp. ricotta mixture into each shell. The shell should be filled to capacity but not overstuffed.
Nestle stuffed shells into hot sauce in skillet. Cover and cook over medium heat until shells are warmed through, 4–6 minutes. Remove from heat and let sit 5 minutes. Sprinkle with Parmesan and the remaining 1 Tbsp. oregano.

---

Sunday, August 30

For this year’s Season of Creation, we invite members of the OSP community to learn about the impact our food choices have on the world around us. With this knowledge, we can take meaningful action to affect positive change.

Meatless Monday Munchies
Here’s a mouth-watering, meatless recipe to try out this week: thebuddhistchef.com/recipe/one-pot-vegan-burrito-bowl

Ingredients:
3 tbsp olive oil
1 red onion, diced
1 red pepper, diced
1 zucchini diced
1/2 cup frozen corn 75 g
1-400 ml/ 19 oz can black beans, drained
1 cup basmati rice (raw) 185 g
3 tbsp taco seasoning
2 cups vegetable broth 500 ml
1 tsp maple syrup (optional)
​salt and pepper to taste

Directions:
1. In a large pan heat the olive oil over medium heat. Saute onions and red peppers for 7 minutes.
2. Stir in zucchini, frozen corn, black beans, basmati rice, tacos spices, and maple syrup (optional).
3. Pour in vegetable broth and then bring to a light boil. Cover the pan and reduce heat to low. Cook for an additional 10 to 15 minutes, or until the rice is all the way cooked.
4. When rice is done, S&P to taste. Top with your favorite toppings

---

Celebrate the Season of Creation
“All of us operate as instruments of God for the Care of Creation.” – Pope Francis

Sunday, August 23

From Sept. 1 to Oct. 4 each year, the Christian community celebrates the Season of Creation by praying and acting together to cherish and protect our common home. The Season of Creation is a time to renew our relationship with our Creator and all creation through celebration and a renewed commitment to stewardship.

Caring for Creation protects the inheritance the Creator has given us, … an inheritance essential to our well-being. Pope Benedict XVI told us protecting this inheritance is a way of fulfilling our role as stewards of Creation. Pope Francis urges us to recognize our connectedness with the natural world saying, “Nature cannot be regarded as something separate from ourselves or as a mere setting in which we live. We are part of nature, included in it and thus in constant interaction with it.” (LS 139)

For this year’s Season of Creation, we invite members of the OSP community to learn about the impact our food choices have on the world around us. With this knowledge, we can take meaningful action to affect positive change.

Why does our choice to eat meat matter?

• The raising of the animals requires vast amounts of land to do so humanely.
• The enormous amount of methane cattle produce is a huge contributor to greenhouse gases causing climate change.
• The production of the meat consumes millions of gallons of water depleting this critical natural resource.
• The pollution created by transporting the cattle to slaughter and the meat to market.
• Eating less beef is good for our health.

As facts by scientists continue to pour in, it is increasingly becoming evident that climate change is one of the most important existential crisis of our lifetime. If we are to leave a healthy and prosperous planet to the coming generations, we must take action now in haste to combat the changes we’re facing locally, nationally as well as globally.

The catastrophic impacts of climate change are due to the dangerous increases of carbon and other greenhouse gases in our atmosphere that are warming the earth at an alarming rate.

A major contributor to this crisis is the meat industry which represents 30% of greenhouse gases—more than all car, airplane and train emissions combined!

By simply cutting back on our meat consumption, we can make a positive contribution to solving this crisis. To this end, we invite you, your family and friends to join OSP’s Green Team as we celebrate the Season of Creation by participating in Meatless Mondays! Each week between now and October 4, we will send members facts about the meat industry and its impact on our planet as well as interesting recipes and cooking tips through OSP’s weekly e-blasts.

Meatless Mondays Make a Difference! Please join us and make a difference for our planet!

---

Green Notes from OSP Green Team: Home Composting 101
Sunday, July 26

“Composting turns household wastes into valuable fertilizer and soil organic matter…. This dark crumbly, earthy-smelling stuff works wonders on all kinds of soil and provides vital nutrients to help plants grow and look better.”
​– USDA, Natural Resources Conservation Service, Backyard Conservation Tip Sheet

Now that we are all at home cooking more, we may find ourselves wondering about all those food scraps in our kitchens. The EPA estimates that up to 30% of food waste in the trash could and should be composted, saving us time and money. Home composting reduces what goes into landfills, and gives the home gardener a valuable soil amendment that provides nutrients to your growing plants. So if you want to try composting at home, here are some tips to get you started.

1. Select the site for your compost pile. It should be flat, large enough to hold all the material you want to compost, with good access to water, and close to the part of your yard where you will use your compost. Don’t place it next to a wood fence or other structure, since compost can discolor wood.

2. Select a bin to hold your compost. You can purchase a plastic container at a garden center, or make you own from wood and chicken wire. Some containers are rotating drums on stands that can be manually turned, eliminating the need to aerate the pile (see 5. Below). Another option is to dig a pit and place your pile in the pit. 

3. Gather your material. The two types you need are green and brown. Green material includes fruit and vegetable scraps, including food that is too old or moldy; tea and tea bags; coffee grounds; garden waste, including fresh grass clippings and leaves; and egg shells. Citrus peels will compost faster if cut up into small pieces. Greens provide nitrogen for your pile.

4. Brown material consists of twigs and sticks; dried grass; egg cartoons and other cardboard; newspaper and other papers; dried leaves; and sawdust. Paper and cardboard break down quickly when cut up first. Brown material like dried leaves from fall can be stored and added gradually to the pile in spring. Browns give the pile structure by allowing air and water flow. But don’t compost these items: meat, fish, bones, the pits of stone fruits like peaches and cherries, oils, butter, dairy products, and weed seeds. Meats, oils and dairy will attract rats and other (unwanted) animals to your pile. Stone fruits take years to decompose. Weed seeds will likely still be viable when you use your compost in your garden.

5. Build your pile by layering browns and greens, starting with a layer of browns. A ratio of 1 part green to 2 parts brown is a good balance. Water your pile and aerate it by turning it with a pitchfork every week to 10 days.

6. In warm weather, your compost will be ready in 2 months; up to 6 months in cold weather. You can add your rich earthy finished compost to your containers; tuck it into the hole when you are ready to plant new perennials or shrubs; or top dress it in your lawn and garden beds to smooth out brown spots and low places and add nutrients to your soil.

People have been composting for hundreds of years. George Washington, our first President, engaged in composting. So give it a try! You will be sending less to the landfill, and improving your soil and the health of your plants at the same time. 

---

---

Green Notes from OSP Green Team: Why Green Teams should be Anti-Racist
Sunday, June 28

“Earth is the only planet we get. And, thanks to polluters who profit from exploiting Black and Brown communities, we’re in the process of making it uninhabitable.” 
- Hop Hopkins, “Racism is Killing the Planet” in Sierra, June 2020
​
What a time we are living in. First the global pandemic, which has taken so many lives, and led to mandated social distancing measures, with forced cancellations of all kinds, from funerals to sporting events and concerts. No kissing, no hugging, no handshakes. We can’t see our relatives and friends in hospitals and nursing homes. Then the economic collapse with its bankruptcies among businesses large and small, unprecedented job losses, loss of health insurance and swift fall of the stock market. How do you find a new job when business are closed or operating at 25% of capacity? Who is going to pay for your health care if you are uninsured, get COVID-19 and need hospitalization? And now the images of police killings and racist attacks in all forms, including the deaths of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, and the threat to Black birder Christian Cooper by a white woman who was violating New York’s Central Park rules about dogs on leashes.

Were you surprised to see racial patterns emerge as we tallied the devastation of COVID-19? Did you expect that African Americans in the US would be 2.5 times more likely to die from COVID-19 than whites? Did you know that African Americans in Chicago make up 30% of the population but 60% of the COVID-19 deaths? A survey of Black and Latinx small businesses in mid-May found that 51% had sought financial assistance of under $20,000 under the CARES Act but only 1 in 10 received that assistance. Meanwhile 81 publicly owned businesses in California got $204 million in CARES funding; some declined or returned the funding after public outcry over large corporations benefitting from money intended for small businesses.

Hop Hopkins, from the Sierra Club, argues in his article “Racism is Killing the Planet” that there is a connection between these racial patterns and our on-going environmental problems. The connection is that both spring from the same fundamental attitude, a sense that certain places and certain people are of no value, are “disposable,” and so can be treated without any particular attention and concern. These places are sacrifice zones in our country. And the people who live there are also sacrificed.

---

Think Cancer Alley, also called Death Alley, in Louisiana, hit hard by pollution from local oil refineries and chemical companies and named for the high cancer rates in its mostly black population, and now suffering from COVID-19 as well. Think the Navajo nation with its uranium mines and coal plants, which have polluted the air and ground water in the area for decades; now the nation’s infection rate from COVID-19 exceeds that of any single US state. Closer to home, think the far South Side of Chicago, for years a dumping ground for pet coke (a byproduct of oil refineries), experiencing high rates of pollution, related conditions like asthma, and now with high numbers of COVID-19 cases.

We need to give up thinking of parts of our country as sacrifice zones, inhabited by disposable people. No human life is disposable; all are valuable and deserve our love. That kind of thinking lets us ignore the ways we are trashing this planet, our common home. If we saw each part the world as sacred, then we wouldn’t be willing to create a Cancer Alley. We wouldn’t be willing to build pipelines across rivers that are the water supply for thousands of people downstream. We would use our superb science and technology to figure out ways to live lightly on this earth, and to create prosperity that does not depend on damage to some. We would distribute the benefits and the burdens of shared wealth equally among all people. And we would be closer to the green world that our hearts desire. So, for all these reasons, Green Teams should be anti-racist. 

---

Join Encore on Thursday July 9 at 7 pm for Reflections from Rev. Brian Sauder

OSP’s Encore Group is staying connected during the pandemic with Zoom meetings on topics of interest to those aged 50 and older. On Thursday July 9 at 7:00 pm, Encore is hosting a session with Rev. Brian Sauder from Faith in Place. Faith in Place is a statewide not for profit group that believes “when people of faith lead the environmental movement, it is a movement focused on justice and care for our common environment.” Rev. Brian Sauder is an ordained minister of the Mennonite Church with degrees in environmental science, religion, and business administration. This should be an inspiring and relevant conversation as we celebrate the 5-year anniversary of the publication of Laudato Si. To sign up, go to the following link on MyOSP: osp.ccbchurch.com/goto/forms/327/responses/new

Everyone who signs up will receive the Zoom link no later than 2 pm on July 9.

---