CHM Care of Earth Committee l-r:  Lisa Martin, Sr. Kathleen Henneberry,  Sr. Cathleen Real, CHM Associate Joan Resnick and Sr. Mary Bea Snyder on a field trip to the Nahant Marsh Education Center.

"We commit ourselves as individuals and as a congregation to work for justice within the human family and to care for Earth itself." -CHM Mission Statement.

The CHM mission statement is dear to me. With Earth Week upon us I thought I'd mention just a few of the wonderful things the sisters do towards the "Care for Earth" part. They may not be in schools but they are still educating!

• The CHM Care of Earth Committee is ready for their 3rd Annual Earth Speaker event (free) on April 26, 2014, with Iowa State Senator Rob Hogg presenting: Climate Change and Sustainability: Defining Challenges of our Generation.

CHMs are a part of the regional group, Catholic Sisters for a Healthy Earth, which recently prepared a beautiful (free) reflection booklet, "Earth as Our Home," on the various rooms of a house, placing each room and its activities into the broader context of our Earth-home.

• The sisters support our local hero Chad Pregracke and his Living Lands and Waters organization. Each year they volunteer for his Quad City-wide Xstream Clean-up. Cleaning up our nation's waterways is the goal.

• Our Lady of the Prairie Retreat is a CHM ministry where individuals and groups can spend a day, a weekend or even a week reflecting, meditating and appreciating the beauty of God's creation in a very special place deep in the midwest countryside.

“As long as the earth endures,
seedtime and harvest,
cold and heat,
summer and winter,
day and night
will never cease.”

                       -Genesis 8:22