Fall Gathering 2023: Wonderful Music, Wise Words, Beautiful Moments

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By Clara Sims
Assistant Executive Director, IPL New Mexico & El Paso

This year’s Annual Gathering celebration, held at Monte Vista Christian Church in Albuquerque on October 19, was filled with wonderful music, wise words, and beautiful moments of honoring our Sprout and Seed awardees.

Bishop Hunn, Ryan Tate, Eileen O’Shaughnessy, Clara Sims

Our panel discussion offered profound insight for pathways to healing sacred relationships in our world and we are grateful the event was recorded so folks can go back and revisit what was shared. Especially prominent in that conversation was the theme of ancestry – the pain, the beauty, the possibilities that can awaken in us as we become present to our ancestors’ living presence in us, in the land, in everything. I hope if you did not have the opportunity to attend that you will go back and listen to this rich conversation – it was a balm and an inspiration. Thank you Ryan, Eilleen, and Bishop Hunn!

Interwoven throughout our time together, was stunning music offered by David Poole.

Thank you, David, for offering and teaching us songs of peace and healing and hope for our beloved people and our beloved planet. May we all continue to find such needed, embodied ways to pray for healing and peace.

Thank You!

To our Sprout and Seed awardees – we thank you again for your incredible spirits of love and dedication to our sacred earth home. The words you offered in receiving these awards were full of such tenderness and wisdom and they were a beautiful reminder of all we learn about ourselves and one another when we pause to give thanks.

Here again, were our awardees this year:

  • SPROUT: Judy Smith, Congregation Albert Green Team and NM IPL Board Member
  • SPROUT: Sr. Odile Coirier, El Paso Organizer with NM & EL Paso Region IPL
  • SPROUT: Norm Gaume, Middle Rio Grande Advocates
  • SPROUT: Caryl McHarney, educator and eco-artist
  • SEED: Little Sisters of the Poor with Villa Guadalupe Care Facility

Continuing in a spirit of thanksgiving, we want to give a special shout out to our Annual Gathering Planning team: Hayley, Cynthia, Ruth, Terry, Emma, Arcelia and Joan! From the delicious, locally sourced food to the delightful offerings of the evening, to the photography and video duties, you made it possible. Thank you!

We ended the event with a reflection from  Clara Sims, IPL NM/EP assistant executive director. Here is the closing blessing

Save the Date! Faith Climate Action Week April 19 – 28, 2024

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Save the Date! Join National IPL’s annual premier week of worship and action focused on climate – #FaithClimateActionWeek April 19-28, 2024.
This year’s theme is “Common Ground: Cultivating Connections between our Faith, our Food, and our Climate.” We’ll examine our responsibility to use agricultural practices that safeguard our Sacred Earth and how our faiths call us to respond with just solutions for all. Make it a focus of your Earth Day worship services and be part of the solution with the suggested actions in the organizer’s kit.
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Georgetown Hosts Dialogue on Pope Francis’ New Document on Environment

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An In-Person and Online Public Dialogue on
Caring for the Environment and Each Other: Pope Francis’ Follow-up to Laudato Si’

Thursday, October 12, 2023
6:00 – 7:00 pm EDT

RSVP

In 2015 Pope Francis issued Laudato Si’, a major encyclical on the environment offering a hopeful vision that challenged us all to better care for “our common home.” On October 4, 2023, Pope Francis will release Laudate Deum, an unprecedented follow-up document to highlight the urgent need for a more sustained response to the ecological crisis in light of the climate crisis and developments in the last eight years.

Laudato Si’ challenged the world to understand that we’re connected with each other, with the natural environment, and with those who will come after us, and that ecological crises are moral challenges that affect the poor and vulnerable most of all. Pope Francis called for all of us to hear both the “cry of the earth and the cry of the poor” and to ask with humility: “What kind of world do we want to leave to those who come after us, to children who are now growing up?” He offered a vision defined by the conviction that “…we need one another, that we have a shared responsibility for others and the world, and that being good and decent are worth it.”

Five exceptional leaders will discuss the renewed challenges and new questions posed by Pope Francis’ apostolic exhortation Laudate Deum:

Five exceptional leaders will discuss the renewed challenges and new questions posed by Pope Francis’ apostolic exhortation Laudate Deum:

  • Jose Aguto is the executive director of Catholic Climate Covenant. He has previously worked at the Friends Committee on National Legislation, the National Congress of American Indians, and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s American Indian Environmental Office; and he served in the 10th Mountain Division of the U.S. Army.
  • Sharon Lavigne is the 2021 Goldman Prize for North America recipient and the 2022 Laetare Medal recipient from the University of Notre Dame. She leads Rise St. James, a faith-based grassroots organization that fights for environmental justice in St. James Parish, Louisiana.
  • John Mundell is the director of the Laudato Si’ Action Platform, a project of the Vatican Dicastery for Integral Human Development. He also runs his own environmental consulting firm which is part of the Focolare Movement’s Economy of Communion, a business network that focuses on addressing economic inequality.
  • Riley Talbot (C’24), a Georgetown student studying government, theology, and environmental studies, will open the gathering. Riley is also a policy and outreach associate with Catholic Climate Covenant.
  • Christiana Zenner is an associate professor of theology, science, and ethics in the department of theology at Fordham University. Her research and teaching have focused on issues of fresh water ethics, environmental justice, and Catholic social teaching.

Kim Daniels, director of the Initiative and member of the Vatican Dicastery for Communication, will moderate the discussion.