Last week John Daniels shared a podcast that helps to add context to our global predicament, The Great Simplification. Here’s another resource that you might find useful as you wrestle with big issues with your community.
Our Common Home: A guide to caring for our living planet is a co-production from the Vatican and the Stockholm Environment Institute, “the result of a collaboration between the scientific and spiritual communities.”
It’s one of the pithiest summaries you’ll come across of environmental issues, with the basic facts presented alongside quotes from Laudato Si that frame the problems in a faith context. As you would expect from Pope Francis, environmental and social concerns are held together. Justice for the poor is at the forefront, as “the environment and social justice cannot be separated.”
As we’ve mentioned before, Pope Francis recognises the need for a new economics as part of this, which is of course what we are committed to at Joy in Enough. “We cannot overcome the twin crises of climate change and biodiversity
loss,” he writes, “nor overcome pollution, resource degradation, poverty and injustice, without transforming outmoded patterns of behaviour, culture and economics.”
The resource has a simple two-page spread on the topics of climate, biodiversity, water, air pollution, food, consumerism, and equality. Each one has action points for readers to discuss and consider.
Our Common Home could be read individually, or groups could take a topic per week and use the resource as a starting point for discussion. As it’s nicely designed and very accessible, you could also print off the spreads for a notice board. It’s free to download here, and available in five different languages.
Let us know if you find it useful!
Joy in Enough 