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Introducing a Champion Tree at the Missionary Oblates Novitiate November 26th, 2024

In September there was buzz around a special champion tree recently discovered on the property at the Missionary Oblates Novitiate.
 
The Basswood tree was recently nominated as one of Illinois’ largest native trees.
 
In this video, Sr. Maxine Pohlman, SSND, Director of La Vista Ecological Learning Center introduces us to the tree and explains the selection process.  
 


La Vista Hosts Autumnal Equinox Event October 2nd, 2024

At La Vista Ecological Learning Center’s September 21 Autumnal Equinox event, there was buzz around a special champion tree recently discovered on the property at the Missionary Oblates Novitiate.
 
The Basswood tree was recently nominated as one of Illinois’ largest native trees.
 
Guests at the event celebrated this majestic Basswood and enjoyed food, poetry, art and music to honor this and other members of our earth community. 
 
 
Visit the National Register of Champion Trees to find one in your area: https://www.americanforests.org/…/champion-trees-registry/
 
 
 
 
 
 

Week 4 – 2024 Season of Creation: “To Hope & Act with Creation” September 24th, 2024

(By Maurice Lange, current Justice & Peace Director at Presentation Sisters & founder of the Oblate Ecological Initiative)

Reflection #4: September 8 – 14

READ: 4th part of Pope Francis’ letter for the 2024 Season of Creation (below)

REFLECTION:

Image by Sohail Sattar, Pixabay

What is the dominant worldview that we swim within here in the West? It is that we humans are separate from “nature”, that we are superior to it and can do to it what we wish. This perspective is pervasive. It gets preached to us in countless ways by so many means. And, this worldview is deadly. In Laudato Si, Pope Francis stresses an opposite paradigm time and again: that “everything is related” and “everything is interconnected”.

In this year’s Season of Creation Francis calls us “to contemplate in hope the bond of solidarity between human beings and all other creatures”. How have you stepped out and away from the dominant Western worldview? To what are you being called to embrace/let-go-of, so as to live more deeply in solidarity with all other creatures?

READ FULL REFLECTION

ACTION: Ponder those who have lived from a paradigm that everything is interconnected: Hildegard of Bingen, St. Francis of Assisi, Chief Seattle, Rachel Carson, Sr. Dorothy Stang. What did each embrace? What did each let go of?

Everything is interconnected, and this invites us to develop a spirituality of that global solidarity which flows from the mystery of the Trinity. (Laudato Si #240)


La Vista Hosts Inter-Community Novitiate May 11th, 2023

On April 26th La Vista hosted Inter-Community Novitiate Program in St. Louis, MO. The focus was on how ecological restoration projects on the OMI Novitiate land help to preserve biodiversity.  There were nine novices and three formators present. 

 


VIDEO: JPIC’s Laudato Si’ Action Platform Report September 16th, 2022

Caring for our common home is essential to Missionary Oblate’s mission to the poor, because they are the ones most affected by the devastation to the planet.

The seven-year Laudato Si’ Action Platform offers a fresh opportunity for each of us to commit to complete sustainability in the spirit of Laudato Si. Oblates JPIC is promoting the following works from Oblates and allies in the province as a step toward integral ecology.

 

 

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