Greenbelt 2011

As usual a large group from St John and St Stephen's attended Greenbelt this year, many camping with members of our vicar's former church.

Last year I was disappointed by the sudden disappearance of the climate change issue. This year, as a CEL speaker noted, it was still scarcely on the speaker agenda. Nonetheless, perhaps still rubbing bruises after Copenhagen, it was very much an issue in the G-Source tent and similar spaces: Cafod are getting us to sign postcards to George Osborne, urging him 'Don't drop the ball on climate change' ahead of the talks in Durban later this year. Unicef are asking us to persuade the Chancellor and Climate Change Secretary to 'Get Children Climate Ready' by using a Robin Hood Tax and a tax on shipping and aviation fuels to provide the money that has been promised to help poor countries deal with the effects of climate change. The Salvation Army had a very family-friendly tent where they explained some of the actions their international development organisation are taking to help the most vulnerable to make responsible use of their resources and to adapt to climate change as well as urging people to make changes in their own lives and support Stop Climate Chaos. The Christian Aid tent was a fantastic rainforest venue with lots for the children to do and very much more high-tec cafe than the one I used to volunteer in! The picture of Richard and Rosemary above is taken from Christian Aid's website. There was a display (with accompanying excellent harvest festival materials) highlighting the development of saline resistant rice and crab farming that was being introduced to help Bangladeshi farmers cope with flooded fields and my seven-year-old was very enthusiastic to join in the photo petition to David Cameron asking for more action on climate change.

There were of course lots of specifically environmental groups in the G-Source tent too. Christian Ecology Link's session there was well attended and entertaining as well as inspiring. They suggested that our response to the catastrophe facing the planet might be charted according to the traditional graph of the grieving process - awareness, reaction, denial, frustration, letting go, testing, search for meaning, integration - and that a lot of us were at the lowest morale point 'letting go', needing to move forward. As well as being persuaded to take the plunge and look properly at their EcoCell scheme, the principal message I took home was the importance of working with others. There was also a useful workshop on Transition Towns which was attended by about a hundred people.

Preparing for Creation Time

As usual at St John and St Stephen's we plan to celebrate Creation Time from 1st September right through October too (rather than stopping at 4th October) so that it leads into Kingdom Season. The night before last we had a rather small planning meeting to make sure the theme is woven into some of our preaching, prayers, meals and actions. There are some really useful resources at the ctbi website but we'll probably also be drawing on CAFOD's Live Simply material.

We were also planning a meeting to be held on 17th November which will be an opportunity to introduce Reading's EcoCongregations to our new bishop, Andrew Proud, to hear his thoughts on the issues and to encourage people from other congregations to become part of the movement. It'll be at 7.30 pm at St John and St Stephen's church and will include prayer, talks and an opportunity for questions and talking with those on the EcoCongregation journey over fairtrade refreshments. If you'd like know more or book a place, please e-mail greeningstjohns@gmail.com. Reading Christian Ecology Link are also involved in this event which is open to members of all denominations.

Green wedding

Jon and Rachel are back from honeymoon - they had a wonderful 'green' wedding (especially the cake, very green, decorated with wellies, chickens and other emblems of the Good Life) but I especially liked the idea of putting all our place names on plant labels in teeny pots of herbs to take home. I have photos but have lost my camera connector, hence failure to enter anything sooner.

The wonderful sunshine today meant it must have been a quarter of the congregation who arrived by bike (maybe not quite, but there were about 20 bikes).

I've been putting more general posts on the Reading CEL blogsite, having finally got round to setting it up, and am reserving this one specifically for St John's stuff.

Christian Aid Week and Sack Gardening

Christian Aid week has just finished. This year we finally decided to abandon the house to house collections that have become increasingly unpopular (I confess I've not done these since I arrived in Reading six years ago). Instead a dinner and auction of promises at the church was organised on 14th May. I couldn't attend but it was a great success and raised about £2,300 for Christian Aid thanks to some very generous people.

Next morning when we arrived for the service, the church was still decked with Christian Aid bunting and the flowers were beautiful in the CA colours of red and white. We had a visitor who is a conceptual artist working on a project which is tied in with Send a Cow. She is encouraging schools and other community groups to grow gardens in sacks and to communicate with others in this country and abroad with such 'bag gardens'. So, after the service we started our church bag garden - most of the work was done by the Exclaimers, especially the older girls who all attend St John's school and will be able to look after it during the week along with the school's own bag garden. (The photo above is from the Send a Cow site - hopefully I'll have one of our own to put there soon).