An Ode to a Tree

Thank you Joyce Kilmer for giving us the great line, "I think that I shall never see, a poem as lovely as a tree...". If you could see what we are doing to some untold number of trees, it would break your heart.

Anyone who can hold a pen or type/word-process a few lines can issue a publication it would seem. Each morning when you leave the hotel, issue papers are in the lobby. If you fail to find one there, in a gauntlet leading up to the main doors of the Convention Center, volunteers are passing out their papers. Thousands of these things are being printed. The Convention produces a daily paper, The Daily, that is stacked up everywhere.

Just inside the main door there is a gigantic table with paper all over it - position papers on the various pieces of legislation, announcements, campaign materials for those running for office, and God only knows what else is on that table but there are thousands of sheets of paper on the table and they don't seem to be moving. If that's not enough, at the daily Eucharist we get a daily bulletin that averages about 15 pages - but they tell us that their paper is from well managed forests. Even so, I think they make 3,000.

Then there are the official papers having to do with the Convention itself. The 850 deputies get a pile of paper everyday more than once a day with new legislative information, a daily calendar and messages from the other House and the bishops get similar packets throughout the day. The Triennial delegates are getting papers and the spouses are getting papers.

It's just silly - that's all I can say especially for a Church that continues to pat itself on its collective back for its care of God's creation and stewardship of resources. And all the while passing more resolutions about stewardship and care of creation. Duh!

But take heart, Conventioneers can have all the paper we want; we can't have a bottle of water. Water bottles are not permitted. We are overusing drinking cups but let us be grateful for something. In addition to the flash drive I pleaded for in my posting Blue Book Blues, perhaps we could be given an individual canister and have the cups removed as well.

Maybe real conservation is something the Youth Presence could shame us into because dear readers, please remember ... Blogs are written by fools like me, but only God can make a tree.