Harvest Festival

There was a lovely harvest display of gifts ready to be sent to Readifood awaiting us as we walked into church this morning, grateful that the sunshine had returned for those of us walking or cycling down.

We've continued with prayers and blessings appropriate to Creation Time and some great harvest/creation hymns over the last two Sundays - "For the beauty of the earth" and "Lord of beauty, thine the splendour" last week and rousingly traditional "We plough the fields" and "Come you thankful people come" plus "God made the heavens and earth" this week for Harvest Festival itself. (In previous years there has been some contention over the appropriateness of a 'modernised' version of "We plough" which emphasises the destruction caused to the planet by humankind - it's been suggested that children should not be asked to sing a hymn confessing to environmental sins over which they have no control. I think that is still in debate, but we had the uncontentious version this year).

Because this was the first Sunday of the month it was largely led by the Children's Praise Plus team who explained what happened in the children's group last week - a slide show and props about people working together with God in co-creation leading up to some tasty baking. Children had written the prayers too. I just happen to have the one that was meant to be praying for people working to protect creation because my youngest wrote it:

Dear God, please protect the world, the rain forests and all the endangered animals. Please help us to stop deforesting rain forests and can you make it easier for those trying to stop this happening. Amen

Our first Sunday of the month lunches have begun again and Liz had cooked up a wonderful vegan chilli (from a National Trust recipe). We were lucky enough for many of us to be able to sit out in the courtyard - hard to imagine now as the rain pours down.

The Harvest edition of our NEWT magazine is out and includes a couple of photos and brief account of the climate march, as well as some lovely Greenbelt photos.

21st September - pt 2

Before the communion service at St John's was quite over this morning, Rosemary, Richard B and myself slipped out to catch a train to London for the People's Climate March. We were expecting to arrive late so headed out of Charing Cross and found ourselves joining the very beginning of the march. This did mean we had little sense of just how many people were present but Avaaz are reporting 40,000. The atmosphere was not as carnivalesque or optimistic as some I've been on but good natured and generally positive nonetheless. Being at the front meant we did get to hear all the speakers - Richard Chartres, bishop of London, gave a rousing introduction; a young campaigner who had ensured climate change stayed on the school curriculum was inspirational; Vivienne Westwood's rant left many of us puzzled and provoked some heckling but she was followed by a very positive speaker from Zero Carbon Britain who claimed that without nuclear or fossil fuels we still have the resources for the energy we need. Emma Thompson told of her recent visit to the Arctic and read a large chunk of Desmond Tutu's article in today's Observer on how climate change is 'the human rights issue of our day'. A speaker from Avaaz finished the rally, encouraging us to keep campaigning up to the crucial talks in Paris next year. Although we didn't bump into any friends on the march itself it was good to see three campaigners from Trinity as we got onto the train for Reading.