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One of the ways to lessen your footprint on the earth is to include more Vegetarian or vegan food in your diet. If you aren’t used to cooking vegetarian food, today is a day to get creative – google some recipes, create your own! Share your favourite recipes with us here on Facebook using the #carbonfast2016  And here are some thoughts to meditate on as you do so… Lent is a time of preparation for Easter.  Easter is a celebration of the resurrection of Our Lord Jesus, confirmation of ‘God with us’, confirmation of life in Christ . . . from the beginning of time, through the life of Jesus as a human being, now and forever.  In the words of Sister Joan Chittister, “Each succeeding year, Lent calls each of us to renew our ongoing commitment to the implications of the Resurrection in our own lives, here and now.” Lent is a time given to us to return to and, in penance and hope, reflect on the basics of our faith, to probe anew who Jesus is for us, who we are as children of God, who we, humans and animals – all creatures of God – are to each other, and who Christ is to Creation as a whole. It is an opportunity for us to say again, ‘Yes’ to Jesus’ call for us to follow Him and an opportunity to review what it means in practical terms when we say, ‘I believe’.  Crucially, it is an opportunity for me to ask myself how I personally have been responding to God?  Have I been behaving in my daily doings and relationships in ways that help God’s will to be done on earth . . . or hinder it?  Have I made myself available as a channel through which God’s love and compassion can flow freely or have I closed my eyes and ears, hardened my heart and become an instrument serving only myself and whatever I consider ‘mine’? As part of God’s creation, we are intrinsically in relationship with God and with our fellow beings – human and animal – as well as with the Earth.  The question is:  are we in right relationships with them?  This is fundamental to our salvation.  Our faith can never be a matter merely of what we proclaim.    Being in right relationship with God requires us to be in right relationships with each other as humans, with God’s other living creatures and with God’s creation as a whole – relationships lived out through what we think, say and do. In addition to extra prayer and study of the Scriptures, a practice that Christians down the ages have commonly used to assist them in their reflections and self-review during Lent has been that of fasting.  Particularly common has been abstention from meat and sometimes abstention from dairy and eggs as well.  The reasons for Christians ‘giving up’ meat and other animal products have varied over time and from place to place.  Whatever others’ reasons have been, this is a practice that we as contemporary Christians might want to consider to assist our own spiritual journey through Lent in preparation for renewing our baptismal vows at Easter. Becoming more aware of what, and how much, is on our plates and what we are putting into our bodies, can help to deepen our prayers for a world that has become radically broken as a direct and indirect result of our own brokenness and our broken relationships with each other, with the Earth and thus with God.  As Jesus took on the pain of this broken world, we too, as part of God’s indivisible Creation, cannot but feel the pain of others because we are connected to them all. What pain is embodied in the food that we feed our bodies?  What lives cut short? What childhoods lost?  What natural pleasures denied?  What massive quantities of water consumed?  What toxins released into water, ground and air?  What carbon footprint the journey of this food from its far-off source to my plate? And what is my part in this chain of pain and destruction? Most importantly, what can I do personally, as a channel of God’s love and compassion in the world, to break the chain of pain, to eliminate the causes of such pain, to mitigate its effects, to stop the destruction, and to bring healing?  In what ways, no matter how small, can I work with rather than against God in restoring wholeness to God’s creatures and to all of God’s creation? In local, contemporary Christian culture it is common for people during Lent to ‘give up’ something that they really enjoy – like chocolate or alcohol. This Lent, might an alternative be to ‘give up’ something that there is in my lifestyle that “hurts God’s covenant with the earth, with us, and with all living beings”2 – see Genesis 9:9-10? Let us pray that, with God’s help, we become more mindful of our connection to all of God’s creatures and to the Earth through which God sustains us.  Let us pray that we become more loving, kinder and more compassionate in all that we are and do.  As Jesus taught us, we pray that God’s will be done on earth as in heaven . . . This Lent may God’s will be done in us  By Frank Molteno, One Web of Life (SAFCEI)

John 21: 10 Jesus said to them, “Bring some of the fish you have just caught.” 11 So Simon Peter climbed back into the boat and dragged the net ashore. It was full of large fish, 153, but even with so many the net was not torn. 12 Jesus said to them, “Come and have breakfast.” None of the disciples dared ask him, “Who are you?” They knew it was the Lord. 13 Jesus came, took the bread and gave it to them, and did the same with the fish. Today’s Action:  Smart Fish Friday: Commit to weekly fish bought from sustainable stock. In the first century, Jews fasted on Mondays and Thursdays. The original Christians were all Jewish and were used to the fasting as a spiritual discipline. They moved the fast days to Wednesdays and Fridays, because Judas engineered Jesus’ arrest on a Wednesday and Jesus was crucified on a Friday. Most often that fast took the form of avoiding meat in the diet. In those days, meat was a luxury food. You either had to buy it in a market or you had to own enough land to keep cattle. On the other hand, anyone could grow vegetables or forage for them, and anyone could catch a fish in a lake or a stream. The point is that you could eat without money if you were poor. So meat was rich people’s food and fish was poor people’s food. That is why the most common form of fasting was to omit meat and eat fish. Eating Fish is a symbol of a more simple lifestyle, however it is important that the fish you eat is from sustainable stocks. Consult the South African Sustainable Seafood Initiative (SASSI) list.  SMS the name of the fish to 079 499 8795 or download you own list from www.wwfsassi.co.za Also, does packaged fish (tins or boxes) bear the Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) endorsement? Is the tinned tuna “dolphin friendly”?

“By the breath of God ice is given, and the broad waters are frozen fast” Job 37:10 Today’s  Action: Fix your fridge! Here is how to make your fridge more efficient!Here are the Ten Commandments for a Cool Fridge 1) Thou shalt not open the door too much Particularly if you have kids, you know fridge doors get opened dozens and dozens of times a day. Whenever that happens, warm air rushes in, making it harder for your appliance to keep cool. Leave the doors open longer than two minutes, and you’re putting strain on the fridge. So until they invent glass doors, do what you can to limit how often and how long your doors get yanked open. With shopping trips, lump all the refrigerated items into one big pile and then load up as fast as possible. 2) Thou shalt fill thy fridge Stuff the fridge full —a full fridge means that there’s less hot air that needs cooling. If your fridge is empty, then fill fridge and freezer with bottles of water. 3) Thou shalt choose the right location Don’t put your fridge near obvious hotspots – away from oven, and radiator etc Make sure there are a few inches of space around it for circulation. 4) Thou shalt check the Seals and the Frost Just as leaky window and door seals yield a drafty house, a fridge with bad seals around the doors can’t do its job well. If your seals have suffered from wear or damage, try to get replacement parts. 5)  Thou shalt defrost thy freezer As for the frost side, it’s a good idea to periodically defrost your freezer, as that will help it work better. If you see more than a quarter-inch of frost all the way around, it’s time. 6) Thou salt clean Those Coils Dust is the enemy of many large appliances, dust on the coils of your fridge forces it to work harder. Use a vacuum cleaner and a small brush to get to those hard to reach areas. Your efforts will not only keep the fridge working better, but it will last lonter.. 8) Thou shalt pick the Right Temperature Going colder than the preferred temperature wastes electricity, and for refrigerators, Keep the refrigerator temperature at or below 40° F (4° C). The freezer temperature should be 0° F (-18° C). There are other benefits as well to sticking in this range: “Anything higher and foods will spoil too quickly (it also presents food poisoning problems). Anything lower and the food freezes up.” 9) Thou shalt not  put hot foods in the fridge let them cool down. 10) Thou shalt thaw frozen foods in the fridge rather than on the counter. They’ll help cool the fridge as they defrost.

17th Feb : Aim for Zero Waste!   “When all of them had enough to eat, Jesus spoke to his disciples. “Gather the leftover pieces,” he said. “Don’t waste anything.” John 6:12   Action: Aim for Zero Waste! Look at your food this week, what are you wasting?       In the feeding of the 5000, Jesus told the disciples to collect up all the food and not to waste anything. I wonder who the people were who received those leftovers? – the elderly, the orphans, the physically challenged, who had not been able to walk to where Jesus was preaching. How would Jesus feel about the amount of waste we create and throw away now? “Food wasted by consumers in high-income countries (222 million tons) is roughly equal to the entire food production of sub-Saharan Africa (230 million tons).” Here is South Africa a staggering one third of annual food production is wasted!  Some of it is on the farms, where products are considered “substandard quality” and are left to rot. Some of it is during transportation from farm to shop. More food is wasted in shops as it passes its sell by date. And then there is me, and you. We buy too much, cook too much, and leave too much on our plates. Our challenge today is to write down what food you throw away this week. Aim to reduce it to zero by eating leftovers and commit yourself to shopping more carefully, preserving leftovers, giving to those in need, and composting to improve your garden…..   Shopping with a list helps curtail those “impulse buys”. (JAEI)