I posted this more than three years ago. It just seemed appropriate to repost in light of Pope Franics’ encyclical Laudato Si….

Did you know that on January 10, 1992 – a cargo ship lost overboard 28,800 “rubber duckies?” In fact the bathtub objects came in all sorts of shapes and animal figures. The duckies were lost in the mid-Pacific ocean about where the 45th parallel crosses the International Dateline. Some are still out there, circulating in gyres – most likely in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch gyre – but some of the duckies have been recovered in Maine and Scotland, clearly escaping for distant gyres and other lands.  Will this information change your life?  Probably not, but there is something entertaining about rubber duckies circumnavigating the globe. And if you are concerned about the environment there is also something disturbing when you consider one man’s garbage is another man’s ducky with a similar specific density that floats just as well. Perhaps you want to know more about ocean dumping? Or perhaps you will see that the US Catholic bishops have written about this and other environmental topics in the document Renewing the Earth. Rubber duckies, Catholic Social Teaching, ocean gyres – who knew? Maybe you will find one of those rubber duckies.  Or just maybe we will all be a little more conscious of the unnecessary plastic objects in our lives.  And maybe … just maybe… we will all see the Gospel connection to our lives in something as simple as rubber duckies.  It really is all connected.