John’s Notes: Parish Newsletter editorials
July 2019
“I often hear adults say: ‘We need to give the next generation hope’. But I don’t want your hope. I want you to panic. I want you to feel the fear I do. Every day. And want you to act. I want you to behave like our house is on fire. Because it is.” Many have been moved by the urgency in Greta Thunberg’s speeches (this one given to the World Economic Forum in Davos last January), and – having been sidelined for decades – the way we treat the natural world is now undoubtedly the defining issue of our times.
Recently, Leeds City Council committed to make Leeds carbon neutral by 2030. And the Diocese of Leeds published a Diocesan Environmental Policy urging churches to adapt their model for use in each parish. We’ve have had some lively and engaged discussions as a result – not least because members of our farming community rightly challenged the assumptions made in the Leeds document about the sustainability of vegan and vegetarian food over meat. Round here, arguments based on industrial-scale beef farming figures aren’t relevant – and I am using far more greenhouse gas buying tofu from Morrisons than getting local lamb from a nearby farm shop.
There’s a lot to celebrate about the close relationship our agricultural parishes have with creation through the everyday activities on our farms, and in our worship, like at lambing and harvest times. There’s sustainability built into the ‘make-do-and-mend’ approach to farming and everyday life. There’s ‘localism’ everywhere here, where farmers help each other in their work on the land, where PCCs use local tradespeople and local materials in maintaining our building and land, where parishioners use local shops – where some even work as volunteers in the case of Clapham Village Store. Want to see a churchyard where wildflowers are encouraged and the ecology of plant, insect and animal life is thriving? Look no further then Keasden, which has been practicing this for years.
As sustainability expert Mike Berners-Lee told the audience at a packed Settle Methodist Church recently, ‘There is No Planet B’. Christians recognise our responsibility to care for the Earth so that human life and all God’s creatures may be sustained in harmony. We can respond to all of this creatively, without fear or falling-out, starting from where we are.
