HOME Team: Honoring Our Mother Earth

On September 6, people from throughout the Chicagoland area gathered to participate in a Creation Care Interfaith Service. A recording is now available and it is worth taking 18 minutes with your family to view this fine interfaith service to support Creation Care.  It’s inspiring and touching.  We need some inspiration and tears to propel us forward in our ministry at this crucial time on the planet!    The service includes a prayer shared by Cardinal Cupich.  

The service starts by honoring the fact that we live on indigenous lands of the Council of the Three Fires:  Ojibwe, Odawa and Potawatomi Nations. 

Many of you may know that the Potawatomi lived at the DesPlaines River, which is now River Forest, and they hunted in Oak Park. There is a native witness tree, a heritage oak tree, at the corner of Kenilworth and Chicago on the tree lawn that is said to have been a tree that the Potawatomi used to guide them back to the river after a day of hunting. 

The acorns from this heritage oak tree were used in the project HOPP (Historic Oak Propagation Project) to grow these genetically rich oak trees.  These young native oak trees have been planted throughout our community.  If anyone wants a tour of some of the heritage oak trees and their babies, I’m happy to do that.  Here’s an article I wrote on them in 2014 for the Wednesday Journal. https://www.oakpark.com/News/Articles/8-12-2014/The-old_growth-oaks-we-hold-so-dear/     

Gina Orlando 
[email protected] 
708-524-9103

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