The Preferential Option for Creation

by Dan Masterton

One of the most challenging but most impactful parts of Catholic Social Teaching to our daily living is the Preferential Option. This theme is spelled out with different titles, depending where you look. You might see “Preferential Option for the Poor” or “Preferential Option for the Poor and Vulnerable.” When I share this theme or teach about it, I like to stretch out the title a little bit.

When I lead service, I want others to encounter and think about people who society has pushed off to its margins. In my Viatorian spirituality, we would describe it as making sure to walk closely and compassionately with people who “society accounts of little importance.” So I usually call this theme “Preferential Option for People Who Are Marginalized.” And I challenge myself this way: Christ calls us to intentionally consider people who are marginalized in everything we do individually, socially, and communally.

One thing that helps me carry this out is establishing routines and habits to make positive behaviors more consistent. So, my wife and I set a line item in the monthly budget: $20 (at least, sometimes more) that is for an undefined donation to respond to the needs of people who are marginalized. At some point, usually as I close up the bills and payments for a month, we identify some kind of social need, usually related to the news or a story we’ve heard from friends, and send our donation that way.

One day last week, a morning social media scroll reminded me it was Earth Day. I had forgotten the date of the holiday, but it wasn’t totally off my radar. My daughters and I had passed through a gardening event at the library a few days earlier, and we used their materials to create seed balls out of newspaper and sunflower seeds. My older daughter had made an Earth Day sign at preschool a few days earlier, too.

Throughout the day, I was glad to find that Catholic friends, Catholic media outlets, and others online were marking Earth Day, too. Some folks offered prayers. A friend re-shared her old tips on resisting “wish-cycling” of non-recyclable items. And NPR shared a special episode about the economic complexity of recycling and also re-shared this mini-documentary from last year that helps unravel the myths of recycling and challenge people to reduce their front-end consumption, which I watched with my daughter.

As the day unfolded, I wanted to act. Of course, I’m liking and re-tweeting stuff during my scroll breaks, but I get uncomfortable when I feel like I’m only a slacktivist – what could I do, even if small?

When I went grocery shopping, I grabbed my reusable bags. They’ve been allowed again informally for a few months, and I’m back to using them almost 100% of the time (still forget once in a while!). When I grabbed my cart, they were offering one free reusable bag for Earth Day! And sharing that their corporate headquarters had given full go-ahead to allow all reusable bags (hooray for the end of un-green pandemic restrictions!). Hopefully, this helps folks like me get back to 100% reusables and maybe helps spur other laggers to become adopters, too.

Free reusable bag on the way into @meijer this morning! 🤓

Hope this helps folks restart the habit of reusable bags after the pandemic restricted it, or perhaps even start fresh and build a new habit.

Single use plastic bags are straight up silly. https://t.co/tKyHSLKR67 pic.twitter.com/QOWZRCMT22

— Dan Masterton (@ThisLadDan) April 22, 2022

Later, I had been meaning to get some more wildflowers and native items planted. (I have six milk jugs where little shoots of local plants are sprouting – fingers crossed to transfer them soon!) So I dumped old, weedy soil from our two little deck planters out into the compost. I shoveled out some deep-bin humus to put in the planters and combined it with a little new store-bought soil. Then I planted the seed-balls that my daughter and I made, as well as some additional sunflower seeds.

My little earth day effort — planting seed balls my daughter helped make along with some sunflower seeds and using our backyard compost for the renewed soil from our little deck planters. #EarthDay2022 pic.twitter.com/lwLEEmeX75

— Dan Masterton (@ThisLadDan) April 22, 2022

As the day was wrapping up, I realized that I hadn’t made our preferential option for the month, but I thought giving for Earth Day isn’t opting for the marginalized. Then I paused. Or is it?

In many ways, Care for Creation and good stewardship oddly remain fringe issues. The extent to which mainstream thought accepts the need to spend, legislate, and act differently in light of climate change is still pretty flimsy. So, really, the earth is treated largely as marginal. And what have my thoughts and actions for Earth Day been if not preferentially opting for Creation?

It’s dawning on me that a preferential-option mindset is fundamental to justly caring for God’s Creation as long as change eludes us. The deep need to do charity and justice by people on the margins remains, but this added element fits alongside as part of a holistic mindset.

So, I went to my favorite Catholic group, the Saint Kateri Conservation Center, and sent our bit for the month of April to support their work. Their impressive staff of professional and faith-filled experts work as volunteers and apply their fundraising to their ministry and outreach – if you feel inclined to opt for Creation financially, perhaps in step with Earth Day or Arbor Day, join me in supporting the Kateri crew. Or at least follow them on Twitter or Instagram.

As we contemplate the call of Christ to intentionally think, speak, and act in ways that consider people on the margins, may we, too, find our ways, even when small, to opt for God’s Creation and be better stewards.