NO DIRT IN THE SKY, NO BREAD IN THE BASKET

When I was growing up in the 1940’s outside of Pittsburgh, those who worked downtown had to take two white shirts to work: by noon their collars were black from pollution. As a youngster in the 1950’s I watched my Mom sweep the porch and wash the window sills on a daily basis: we lived on a hill above two power plants that spewed pollution from burning coal. As a young priest in the 70’s I served two steel mill towns whose coke plant stacks blew out pollution on a daily basis, so much so that I had to turn on windshield wipers to get the soot off the windows.

Few citizens complained: “No dirt in the sky, no bread in the basket” they said. And they were right. They also knew that the air they were breathing was not healthy. They – individuals, government, industry – reluctantly got together and cleaned up the air as best they could. No longer would street lights need to be turned on at 3:00 or two shirts taken to work. But it took time because the environment was not on the front page back then; bread in the basket was.

And it still is. Almost every area of the country, the world, in fact, has a recognized environmental problem, in fact, several problems. But, of course, the solutions tend to take bread out of too many baskets. And so they are fought and delayed and railed against, as, sadly, they always have been.

The solutions today are no less difficult than they were forty, fifty, sixty, seventy years ago. The difference today, I believe, is that we have become more conscious of the fact that we have been called to be stewards of God’s creation, responsible for the maintenance of this planet. The Genesis story is a reminder that everything God created is good – and will always be and that as the highest creatures of God’s creation we are ultimately responsible for keeping the good good.

As with peace or love or joy, as with all of life, it all begins with each one of us individually. I cannot clean up the world and neither can you. But I can keep my corner of the world clean. I can waste less, want less, even need less. Sacrifice is always involved. But as the word sacrifice reminds us, to sacrifice means to make sacred, make holy: we understand the holiness of creation as we keep it holy. But, as we very well know, sacrifice is never easy. That is why it tends to have an adverse connotation rather than a positive one.

When we use less, demand less, certainly waste less, we leave more for those who already have less than they need and we leave something for our children and their children. What we discover in the process is that we can have both no dirt in the air as well as bread in the basket – and the air will smell better and the bread will be fresher and will taste better because we can smell it better, and there will be enough for all – more than enough, as a matter of fact!