LOGARTA
Women have been living in close contact with the environment. They have been sensitive to the damages Mother Earth experienced because these affect their children, their families. With our drainages clogged with plastics, they wade through floods carrying their children to school. So the Legal Alternatives for Women Center, Inc. integrated “Protect Women, Protect Mother Earth” in their efforts to bring healing to women victims of domestic violence.
In this endeavor they have partnered with the Archdiocese of Cebu. Rev. Fr. Murphy Sarsona of San Fernando, the leader of the Archdiocesan Commission on Environmental Concerns discussed activities related to this in “Sa Mata sa Kababay-an” in CCTN.
He started by discussing “Eterni-tree”. After rituals involving the renewal of their marriage vows, married couples plant trees. Fr. Sarsona explained that the ritual communicated the Church’s conviction that everything starts with the family, with children being taught by their parents to love plants, animals, caring for Mother Earth. So in orientations related to marriage environmental concerns need to be included.
The archdiocese is encouraging the various parishes to engage in the setting of pocket forests. A parish needs a hectare to be planted with trees which parishioners will care for. They have actually done this in San Fernando. Their pocket forest has the Stations of the Cross within it. There are also seats for those who stay in the forest for quiet time, meditation. So Fr. Sarsona asserts, Christians involved in caring for the environment have a heart for the environment and more. They are responding to the great love of their Creator in providing us with the awesome universe, with the abundance of nature. Everything is a gift and we are only stewards, not owners. We are also responding to the call of Pope Francis for which he provides a guide in Laudato Si. As marine biologist, Perry Alio, reminds us: “all these have been borrowed.”
Fr. Sarsona’s enthusiasm is contagious because he is leading by example. Aside from the mini-forest, their parish has also a center for managing waste. The parish women gather waste papers and make them into paper charcoal. He pointed out that these papers can also be made into rosaries.
Parishioners can actually do a variety of things; but a major challenge is the need for land to host the mini-forest.
Kathy Ruiz, representing the NGO coalition, KAABAG (supported by the German bishops), shared that a cluster of the coalition work for environmental concerns. They organize groups to lobby for the passage of local ordinances intended to reduce emissions harmful to the ozone layer.
In celebration of Earth Day affiliated groups joined a nation-wide march for government action on harmful mining.
The group, the show’s anchors, Atty Virginia Palanca-Santiago and Ms. Fe Cabatingan, of LAW Center, Inc., Kathy Ruiz, and Fr. Sarsona agreed that we should always remember the little things we can do like saving water, saving electricity, picking up plastic waste, making use of plastic alternatives for containers and wrapping. Plastics displaced the native bayong, the work of women weavers.