Sacred Heart Green Team-Oakland in Feb. 2023; seeing the blight of litter on our streets and in our community realized, the solution “starts at home.” So, we began to chart how much trash we collected in front of our house or apartment. Each month we would tabulate those numbers and publicize it in our Church Bulletin.

 

We are elated and astonished to report that the Sacred Heart Green Team and parishioners removed 1,448 gallons of trash from our streets!

 

This “practice” of cleaning up our streets and community finds it strength in the quote from St. Martin de Porres: “Everything, even sweeping (even picking up trash from our streets), scraping vegetables, weeding a garden and waiting on the sick could be a prayer, if it were offered to God.”

 

Imagine if every house of worship in our city could come together in this simple practice of mindfulness/prayer, while caring for “Our Common Home.” (“Lo’Eshe/Love Life-Oakland”)