Preparing for the climate talks - upcoming events

the events advertised at yesterday morning's service were: 

Reading People’s March - on Saturday 28th November – see ‘Route’ tab on website:http://readingpeoplesmarch.org – a march from Christchurch to a rally in the ‘3Bs’ in the Town Hall. 

They are also running a coach to London for the People's March for Climate, Justice and Jobs on Sunday 29th November – to book see http://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/2466956 or join Richard and Rosemary catching a train straight after our Advent Sunday Service.

Reading Climate Day on Saturday 5th December at Reading Minster

10 am - 2pm Green Christmas - ethical gift and food fair

4 pm 'Cafe Theologique' - Professor John Mitchell, Principal Research Fellow at the Met Office will talk about his work on climate change

7 pm - Climate Mass with the bishop presiding and Ruth Valerio preaching

All day - exhibitions and prayer stations

Also - Hamish invited us to contact Global Justice Now (who used to be the World Development Movement) about WTO plans to debar low-income countries from buying farmers' crops and distributing them to those too poor to afford food at market price. The email address to ask for a campaign card is offleyroad@globaljustice.org.uk.

Updating, and glimpsing the Kingdom

We've put our action plan for EcoCongregation on hold for the moment, awaiting the launch of Eco Church next year. But we've still been doing Eco stuff. For September's Godly Play I brought in piles of leaves, conkers, pine cones, twigs etc for the children to use for their craft session and especially encouraged them to make musical items with them (some coffee tins and re-used plastic cups helped here).
As usual Creation Season lasted through September and October and was marked chiefly by the use of liturgy that draws on Creation-related images (our Creation Season service booklets have appropriate images inside and at the back is St Francis's Canticle of the Sun). We're now into Kingdom Season but are using a new Eucharistic Prayer this year which again draws heavily on Creation imagery.

On All Saints Day Dominic and Miriam cooked everyone a fabulous vegan lunch - I glanced in on the cooking part way through the service in case they needed help: there was something incredibly beautiful about the calm production of all that wonderful smelling food and Miriam was cooking with her gorgeous three-month-old strapped to her back, smiling and watching.

The meal was a mixed bean chilli with cashew cream, rice, corn bread and salad. Before we started Miriam explained the three reasons for a vegan lunch
1. At the climate conference in Warsaw in November 2013, Philippine delegate Yeb Sano fasted throughout the conference following a pledge not to eat unless progress was made to stop climate madness. Since then across the world climate campaigners have been fasting on the first day of each month in solidarity and prayer.
2. Meat and dairy products are an inefficient use of resources and farming them is a major cause of greenhouse gas emissions
3. Very often farm animals are not well-treated, their capacity for suffering ignored.

The money left over after donations to cover ingredients will be going to Operation Noah.