Wanted to update my website on a few things that I just haven't had the time to post about until now. From hair to ramping up action, to bandaids and lots more.
This week I ended up writing a letter to the Arch Bish. With Pope Francis recently declaring a climate emergency, I am keen to know what he is going to do about it.
The solution seems plain and clear to me. Put solar on ALL available buildings in the archdiocese. Sacrifice some of our capital for a while. In the meantime, we could also be investing in rechargeable car parking spots, so that no matter where you go, if you park at a church you could charge your car.
All priests need formation to be ecological converts FIRST before they can expect anyone in their congregation to make any change. I know this because as a teacher, there was no way that students would have ever listened and taken action unless I did it myself.
So with this, I spoke to the episcopal vicar at mass last night about this whole issue. I posed those issues and questions to him, and he threw them right back at me with things like 'it starts with you, go on the council'.. etc. To which I told him, yes, I have. Our very small parish doesn't even have enough money to support the maintenance of its very old building. The only way that we can contribute to stopping climate change is if Brisbane helps us financially. I asked the vicar why the Archdiocese doesn't have a policy on this already... and that stumped him a bit. He seemed to think that this whole climate emergency thing wasn't his responsibility.... But I genuinely believe it is his responsibility, and the Arch Bishops, and every priest in the Archdiocese.
If all of the Archbishops in Australia, all the bishops, all the priests, all the deacons, everyone, were all ecological converts, and we invested where we could, and reduced waste by Churches entirely, we would be like one of those top 100 organisations to go 100% renewable. From a youth leader perspective, it is this type of initiative that young people are looking for. If they see this and can see how climate action is a new way of professing faith, then they will be more engaged in the Church.
We have to lead by example. We have to acknowledge the sacrifice that we have to make and we have to make it.
This week, I have another meeting regarding similar things with the schools, so hopefully we have some of the same discussions.
A few things that have been going on at the same time. I'm ditching the shampoo bar. I find they go soggy too quickly and they are hard to deal with. I am now washing my hair with bicarb and apple cider vinegar (trying to find a replacement for apple cider vinegar though because to me it smells like vomit and feet. ew.). It is working quite well. My only problem is that I have literally the oiliest hair on the planet, so I occasionally am just using plain soap instead because it gets rid of the oiliness.
Band-aids are tricky. They have always been made out of plastic. And with blistering feet occasionally they are a necessity. Enter PATCH band-aids. From biome or similar places. They are made of bamboo and not plastic.
This weekend, with all of my free time I got to make almond meal cookies from leftover almond meal from making milk, I made a chickpea salad (trying to eat less meat), I have been saving up my veggie scraps so that on the holidays I can make some chicken stock.
Speaking of, this holidays, I'm going to be doing loads. Including
- investigating the new renting and solar initiatives, and trying to convince my landlord to get solar for us.
- I'm going to attempt to make some food with native plants etc. including rosella jam and wattle-seed damper.
- a tonne of craft projects are lined up and ready to go.