Home work

My younger sister and I shared a bedroom growing up. In our younger days neither of us was very neat, as evidenced by piles of clothes strewn around the room, books on the floor instead of in the bookcase, several dolls and their accessories dropped anywhere we happened to be playing with them, the vanity surfaces full of things that we chose not to put away, and the bed loaded with “stuff” that barely got moved when we crawled in at night. Yes, we shared that too – a large double bed in the center of a fairly small bedroom.

Mom repeatedly asked us to clean our room. This was the chant every Saturday morning for weekly whole-house cleaning. We said OK, blamed each other for things out of place and wasted more time arguing about who made the mess than actually cleaning up anything. This went on week after week. Finally mom couldn’t stand it anymore. So one day while we were at school, she took matters into her own hands. She straightened up our room by putting everything where it belonged and then cleaned the entire room so it was spotless. 

We came home from school, went into the room and stood in the doorway – speechless. Mom wasn’t far behind. I clearly remember sitting on the vanity bench appreciating how wonderful everything looked, and being in awe of how the room had been transformed. Even my younger sister couldn’t believe the change. Everything was in order. Everything.

Mom opened the closet to demonstrate what it looked like when clothes were hanging on hangers. She opened drawers to show what neatly folded and arranged clothing looked like. She sat on a now uncluttered chair and simply smiled. We likened her to how God probably felt when resting on the seventh day. It was all good.

“Mom, we love it. Thank you so much!” we chimed together as we hugged her. She didn’t give us a lecture about how she spent all day doing what we should have done in the first place. She didn’t complain that she got nothing else done all day. She merely smiled and said, “I hope you keep it this way because this is the only room you’ve got. I want my girls to appreciate what they have.” (And we loved the order in our room so much that we did keep it that way for as long as I can remember.)

While there has been much speculation about the content and motivation by Pope Francis regarding his encyclical about the environment, somehow I think he agrees with Mom. Our Earth home is the only home we’ve got. How can we appreciate it and love it? How can we put it in order? How can we keep it in order?

Just as our messy bedroom wasn’t too far gone for redemption, neither is our Earth home too far gone as long as we act expeditiously. I believe Pope Francis in his encyclical, Laudato Si’, or “Be Praised,” is giving us a needed reminder that caring for the earth is our duty, caring for the Earth is a group effort, and caring for the Earth needs to happen now. We have some home work to do.

[Sr. Nancy Linenkugel is a Sylvania Franciscan sister and chair of the department of Health Services Administration at Xavier University, Cincinnati Ohio.]