Pleasantville Celebrates Earth Day With Messages of Unity and Hope
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Communities across the region and the nation participated in Earth Day celebrations last weekend, many stressing the importance of a clean environment and reducing carbon footprint to slow down and possibly reverse the effects of climate change. Pleasantville did something a little different.
The Pleasantville Interfaith Committee partnered with the village for the inaugural Pleasantville Earth Day Interfaith Celebration that featured the committee’s five clergy leaders and lay members of each congregation encouraging cooperation to make their community, and by extension the world, a better place.
Gerard Falco, a parishioner at Emanuel Lutheran Church and one of the organizers of the event, said the impetus for the celebration was to adhere to many of the principles in the Earth Charter, a kind of global mission statement related to sustainability, peace and social justice created by visionaries around the world more than 20 years ago.
With all of the world’s problems in 2022, it was a fitting time for Pleasantville to launch the event in that spirit.
“They identified the problems we have as a society that include things that you normally think of – social justice, democracy, the environment – and they decided in order to solve these problems it requires all of us because we’re all globally interrelated,” Falco said. “It becomes a shared responsibility and we can only solve these problems by working together.”
The roughly 80 people who attended planted five saplings on the village-owned property on Lake Street, a short walk from the Pleasantville Pool. They also received seeds to plant sunflowers, the national flower of Ukraine. The attending clergy offered prayers and messages of hope and dignitaries spoke as well.
Fr. Luke Hoyt, the pastor at Holy Innocents Parish in Pleasantville, said people can disagree on many issues large and small, but there should be no argument over preserving the planet.
“One fundamental thing that we can all agree on is that this planet is our home and so we have to do our part to make it a beautiful home, and one thing that we have all been given, as communities of faith, is a very important fact, which is that this Earth has been given to us as a gift and that we’re in call to live in this Earth as that, as a gift, and not just a gift in a metaphorical sense, not just a gift in an ecological sense,” Hoyt said.
Clergy and members from Pleasantville Community Synagogue, St. John’s Episcopal Church and Temple Beth El of Northern Westchester also comprise the committee and participated.
Village Trustee David Vinjamuri said current events, such as the war in Ukraine, is making it even more challenging to fight climate change as other countries are ramping up oil drilling. Then there are the thousands of people that are dying who shouldn’t be dying.
However, the symbolism of planting is to renew the planet for future generations.
“Remember, every time we plant someone will eventually sow, and what we want is for that to be a great harvest for us and the Earth,” he said.
Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins, whose district will include Pleasantville should she win re-election in the fall, told a story about growing up in a New York City project and having asthma made worse by the burning of garbage that was done to get rid of trash in those days.
At the time little was known about the toll on the air quality and people’s health by doing that.
“Nobody understood that the air that we breathe is taking a toll in our ability to thrive, and so to stand here now in a conscious community that I once again have the privilege of representing after the lines have been drawn, with faith leaders who understand the connection between the divine and humanity and the interconnection between the environment, our health piece, and being able to respect each of these things enough to know that war is not an answer is a great thing for me,” Stewart-Cousins said.
Martin has more than 30 years experience covering local news in Westchester and Putnam counties, including a frequent focus on zoning and planning issues. He has been editor-in-chief of The Examiner since its inception in 2007. Read more from Martin’s editor-author bio here. Read Martin’s archived work here: https://www.theexaminernews.com/author/martin-wilbur2007/
