Monthly Message (February 2010) - The Bible and saving the planet

Dear Friends,

In London we joined the big blue WAVE in early December. And what a day it was! Thirteen of us from Trinity-Henleaze URC joined the demonstration in the capital calling for ‘climate justice’ - a call to care for the earth for the sake of the future in partnership with the poor. Being part of a 50,000 strong trail of hopeful people was inspiring - and they say that 1 in 3 of that crowd was from a faith community.

Then there was the Copenhagen conference on climate change in December too. The hopes were high, expectations were enormous, and many people looked for agreements that might address the environmental issues of our time and offer the world hope for the future. The conference did not meet up to those high hopes. The negotiators and world leaders went home frustrated and carrying the weight of many people’s disappointments.

I met with someone who had been in Copenhagen recently and heard his reflections on the outcome. He was not all pessimism - recalling that there was an agreement to try to limit global warming, even if the detail was not worked out. He was positive about the fact that the big powerful nations, America and China, had been at the table and talking about the climate at all. The challenge now, he said, is to keep up the voice calling for change ... and of course an election year gives us the opportunity to do just that. But along with the requests for big national and international action, the challenge is to us to make all the difference we can in our daily living and caring for the earth .... the ‘bottom up’ actions of personal and group transformations are essential. And then the challenge ‘virtue ethics’ ... doing what is right to care for the earth simply because it is the right thing to do ... living hopefully for the long run, come what may.

Far away in London and Copenhagen there were hopes and disappointments ... but the difference can be made in the place where we live.

In Lent this year, which begins on the 17th of this month, some of us will, with Christians from all the churches of our neighbourhoods, take part in the Churches Together in the Westbury Area (CTWA) Lent course. It’s a course based on the book ‘Planetwise’.... which explores what the Bible has to say about God’s care for the earth and how faith in the God who loves the earth challenges us to be active in the environmental issues of our time. The book considers, how in rediscovering care for the earth we recover some of the precious things of our lives that had become lost in the busyness and madness of our consuming culture and life-styles.

Caring for the earth helps us rediscover time for people, community, growing things, good food, delight in beauty and a longing to treasure and share simple things. The plight of God’s wonderful earth pushes us, in faith, to cherish the things that are really important.

Later in the year, along with the CTWA churches, some local schools and community groups will be part of the Connect 2010 Arts Festival ... with an environmental theme! Caring for and celebrating God’s gift of the earth and sharing the love of the earth through art. The festival will take place between the 17th and 27th of June and be filled with all sorts of events and activities in which we raise the issues of loving the earth and transforming our actions to care for it.

I hope that you’ll look for opportunities to take part in the arts festival .... and find ways to care for the earth, playing your vital part in being God’s people of hope for the world.

Yours,

Tracey.