More election prep (and wildlife)

 After a Godly Play session last Sunday on Jesus calming the storm, I took the children into the courtyard to a much tamer aspect of the natural world and encouraged some wildlife photography (BBOWT have a competition with categories for photos by children and of urban wildlife). I lent our youngest member my phone so his are the only photos I have at present:

There is a bee here if you can spot it.

Then we moved on to water-painting - the following was not prompted by any adults:

After the service it was part two of our hustings - this time with Reform Candidate Andy Williams and Labour Candidate Matt Rodda. Matt got held up so it was a two stage event asking each of them to answer questions on the climate, poverty etc as previously. Rosemary was able to take the opportunity to present Matt personally with the three page petition asking him to support the CAN bill which we had been promoting at the school fair.

Although the church is in Reading Central constituency, some of the congregation live in the new Earley and Woodley Constituency. Together with some fellow Reading Area Green Christians and CTEER members, we organised a hustings on Sunday evening at Trinity Church (the one behind Asda). It was chaired by the minister at Trinity - Jon Salmon.  The photos are courtesy of Phil Creighton who was also the star who managed to organise all of the main candidates to agree to come:

I think we were all a bit worried that barely anyone would turn up, but as 7pm approached we began to fear we were actually going to exceed our 200 capacity - in the end we counted in 182, so pretty perfect. We opened with a question on the climate - which was genuinely the topic we had received more questions on than any other - Mike B at Trinity asked this one. Two of us from St John & St Stephen's asked questions too - Alison on foodbanks/poverty, myself on biodiversity and the CAN bill. It was disappointing that two of the candidates hadn't heard of it, and indeed surprising after the publicity given it at the Restore Nature Now demo the day before. (Many of us couldn't attend that demo due to other inescapable commitments, although I happened to bump into Margaret at the station on her way there so can confirm that the church did get represented!). I have of course written to those candidates unaware of the bill since, pointing them to the zero hour website and their fellow party members who are supporting it.

An extra bonus of being at the hustings was catching up with Simon Batchelor OBE - the first time I had seen him since the honour was announced for his exceptional contributions to international development and innovation - see more here.

Before proceedings began, I couldn't resist taking a few pictures of Trinity Church's 'meadow'. (Impressive solar array too!)

Finally this week, I had a chance to share news of our gold award at Deanery Synod, starting a couple of potentially useful conversations with other churches.