At Faith & the Common Good, we believe that the environmental crisis is, at its root, not merely a crisis of pollution and extinction, but a crisis of alienation and fragmentation; a crisis of the spirit. Only when we can work together and communicate meaningfully with one another at the heart and soul level can we hope to bring about the necessary changes required to live in peace, harmony, and health.
Renewing the Sacred Balance requires fundamental reconciliation with the whole Earth community. We cannot remain silent, nor remain isolated in our actions when so much of the world is broken. Working together, we must commit to understanding the roots of our broken relationships, to repairing the damage done to our fellow living beings, and to following through with concrete actions for revitalization.
Faith & the Common Good supports our network members to work collectively to raise awareness and encourage action to ensure that all living beings, including future generations, have access to clean air and water, toxic-free living environments, and a life-supporting climate.
As Senegalese forestry engineer, Baba Dioum shared, “In the end, we will conserve only what we love; we will love only what we understand and we will understand only what we are taught.”
Motivated by love, mutual respect, and a sense of the sacred, Faith & the Common Good encourages our network to draw upon our diverse faith and spiritual traditions to forge new connections with our planet and bring us back into right relationships with the whole Earth community. We come to this work with the hope and gratitude for all that Mother Earth has given us.
Current Projects
Canadian Interfaith Conversation Series With roughly 50% of Canadians claiming a religious affiliation and 27,000 faith buildings centrally located in communities across the country, it is imperative that Canada’s faith sector join the fight to address the problem of climate destabilization. In Canada, while progressive religious denominations (ex., United Church of Canada) and faith-based ecological justice organizations (ex., CPJ, Khaleafa, KAIROS, Shoresh) have played important roles in galvanizing their respective networks to prioritize “Creation Care,” strong, diverse, religious voices have been largely invisible from the national conversation on climate. This, despite the fact that all religious traditions share obligations around...
Home About Us Tools for Action Eco-Invest Latest News “Hear both the cry of the earth and the cry of the poor”– Pope Francis, Laudato Si’ Join usBecome a part of our network by joining our newsletter or signing up to be a volunteer. DonateHelp us bring the Mouvement Laudato Si' Movement Canada initiative to life. Acknowledgement MLSM Canada is based near Hamilton, Ontario, situated upon the traditional territories of the Erie, Neutral, Huron-Wendat, Haudenosaunee and Mississaugas. This land is covered by the Dish With One Spoon Wampum Belt Covenant, which was an agreement between the Haudenosaunee and...
After six years this program ended on December 31, 2023--with much gratitude for the generous support of Scarboro Missions and for other supporters over the years, as well as hosting provided by Faith & the Common Good. All the blogs are archived and available on this site. For Toronto Catholic parishes interested in a free presentation that I will continue to offer to help form a parish Creation Care Ministry—please see this blog for more information. To find ways to care for our common home and help bring Laudato Si’ to life alongside Catholics and others across Canada, I invite...
2022 Indigenous Canada- FCG Network Study Group Image credit: Indigenous Canada Coursera “We say where the sacred spirit, kîsikâw’pîsim, comes up, it makes a light and then it goes down over here. That light it makes, we call that event, kîsikâw…and it's a spirit, a spiritual event... And so..the vulgar translation is daytime... But our interpretation is that it is an event which is a time for spirit… What we do is, we observe this life with this apparatus, one of the seven holes in our head. We call this, miskîsik…And, it's a tool to help me to observe...
Resource conservation is just one aspect of greening; when we approach it from a faith-based perspective, we consider our role as stewards of natural resources and the sacredness of these resources. Water is life; it is hydration, habitat, and health. Our faith traditions teach us to revere this resource, to give thanks when it is abundant and to cherish it when it is scarce. We have been working with the Sacred Water Circle in central Ontario for a number of years, helping to bring attention to the sacredness of water and our role as stewards of water protection. Inspired by traditional Indigenous...
