Mothering Sunday

We were using more Christian Aid resources in this morning's service, as they produced a wonderful meditation for Mothering Sunday. Unfortunately the technology packed up on us part way through but anyone wanting to watch the meditation in full can find it here. I enjoyed researching the history of Mothering Sunday for my talk and had to edit out quite a bit, including the fact that Anna Jarvis, the founder of Mothers' Day in the US, vigorously campaigned against the commercial festival it almost instantly became, deriding the use of greetings cards instead of more meaningful personal communication.

This year, rather than just doing a church walk, we've decided to join in with the local sponsored Christian Aid walk through beautiful Oxfordshire countryside and flyers advertising this were handed out to everyone. If you don't have one, there is information here and see Liz Bailey. Everyone also received copies of Christian Ecology Link's latest edition of Storm of Hope. Previous editions of this are available here.

Fairtrade Fortnight

On Sunday we celebrated Fairtrade Fortnight in Exclaimers, watching Christian Aid's fairtrade assembly slide show, sharing Divine chocolate and building a farm out of fairtrade packaging. (I'm not sure where the other half of Exclaimers were when Laura took this photo).


 

Christianity, Capitalism and the Poor: Where's the Good News

At the Christian Aid Week planning meeting this morning before lunch a couple of people mentioned how inspirational Loretta Minghella, Chief Executive of Christian Aid, was at this year's University of Reading Chaplaincy New Year lecture. It was televised by students so I finally got round to watching it this evening - yes, hugely moving and inspiring. You can watch it on line here.

INF meal at Candlemas

After today's excellent Candlemas Worship Together we had a delicious vegetarian meal. Following the Food Matters meeting, I was determined not to end up buying a pudding from the Co-op on the way to church but I think I'll need to practice the Chocolate and Pear Tatin I made (Green & Black's Ultimate Chocolate Recipe Book) to improve the appearance (although it tasted much as one would hope with that much Divine chocolate in it). The money raised from the meal will be given to INF and so Ali (back from Nepal but returning shortly) showed us a very moving film about their work after the meal.
Less positively from a green perspective, it was again really warm in church today and the figures for the end of year confirm that our gas use (school and church combined) has actually gone up signficantly this year.