"My food is my theology"

Ruth Valerio of A Rocha - photographed last night - came up with this striking credo at the outset of her One World Week talk in Bishop's Cleeve Parish Church.

Two thoughts inspired her. First, "Food is fantastic!" - her paraphrase of Genesis 1, 31, "God saw all he had made, and indeed it was very good." Matter, infused by the Spirit, matters to God: how we eat is of importance. Ruth commended Christian Ecology Link's LOAF mnemonic - to remind us to buy food that's - so far as possible - locally-grown, organic, animal-friendly and fairly-traded.

Secondly, food is gift. "I shall rain down bread for you from the heavens," God promised Moses. Even though we no longer require manna, we are still aware, or should be, of the contributions to our life support made by soil, water and the heat of the kitchen: hence the need to remember to say Grace.

Food and faith - they belong together.

Bookless in Cheltenham

The author of "God doesn't do waste!", Dave Bookless, was at St Matthew's today, asking "Churches and the environment: are they on the same planet?" "We Christians need to heed and answer the criticism that we separate human beings from the rest of nature," he urged. "Our grandchildren will want to know Why didn't they act?" And care for the poor goes along with, as Pope Francis has been ceaselessly stressing, care for the planet.

Every church congregation, Dave is convinced, should be first measuring its energy consumption, and then seeking to reduce it. To ignore this challenge is "to borrow from other species and from future generations."

A man of conviction, an excellent communicator - someone who walks the talk.

Chepstow

My friend Jerry asked me to join him today, on a visit to Chepstow. Our mission was to look at the methodist church there: it has submitted for an eco-congregation award, and independent assessors were needed to see what they had been up to.

It's a town centre church, with a lot going on, including the busy Beacon Coffee Shop, where we met: it gives good heart to the community (the church has more than 200 members including quite a decent portion of younger ones - compared to many). The recently-installed PV panels will have made a big difference to the carbon footprint.

We had an interesting discussion with members of the green team - and Jerry and I had another interesting discussion, trying to come to some conclusions on the train journey back.

Before catching our train, we visited the great barn of an Anglican church, St Mary's Priory. How do you set about doing practical green things in a building of that scale? Perhaps the event at Southwark Cathedral tomorrow night would be of interest to them: "Thinking global, acting local" is the title for a discussion on how that ancient building can become more environmentally sustainable.

I didn't remember how beautiful that stretch of railway was, running along the West bank of the Severn. It must easily rank amongst Britain's most scenic routes.

Climate Stewards

Brendan Bowles, Director of A Rocha's Climate Stewards, paid a visit to Cheltenham last evening, to speak at a meeting of Christian Ecology Link. "Christian responses to climate change" was his theme - what is the particular vision Christians have to offer? What example are we able to set?

Brendan began with the two greatest commandments: love God and love your neighbour as yourself. Loving God means working in his direction: he said of his creation, that it was good. And creation is sustained by Jesus. Can it be a good idea, therefore, to trash it?

Our neighbours all round the world are in need of good soil and good rain to feed themselves. Just as being the League Champions doesn't cause you to win a football match, so climate change doesn't cause floods or drought; but if climate change is due to our human behaviour, then that behaviour needs to be looked at - in just the same way as Christians have championed fair trade, and (in the past) the abolition of slavery.

Brendan used to think that the way was for us to reduce our own emissions, before we started to get other people on board. But whilst moral purity is impressive, it makes it difficult for some ever to start on the journey: you hear the reaction, "Anything I can do is never going to be enough. In order to be really green, I need to be dead."

A Rocha has been planting trees in the arid North of Ghana, to act as a barrier against the encroaching desert; to encourage biodiversity, and to enhance the rainfall pattern in that part of the country. £40,000 a year or thereabouts has been pledged by people in other countries towards this scheme, as a way of compensating for their carbon use being so much greater that that of Ghanaians and others under similar climate stress. Planting a tree has its parallel in Jesus's parables of the sower and his seed; of the mustard seed that grew into a large tree; of the yeast that raised the whole loaf, and the candle that shines in the dark. "You are the salt of the world." (To learn more about Climate Stewards and offsetting, see here.)

What goes on in our churches affects the whole of society: we need a huge response to the challenge that climate change brings. It is never going to be sufficient to have just a few really committed people. The power is in the multiplication. Like Jesus, we each have to talk to the bad guys, to get them to make a symbolic change. Like baptism.

Our vision is of a better way of living on low carbon. What we need is, not to accuse people, but to make the good, normal.

Post-election climate change

The environment as usual seems to have come well down the list of hottest election issues. And since climate change has gone completely out of fashion as a discussion topic since Copenhagen, UEA, IPCC etc., it seems opportune to have been catching up a bit these last few days.

On Thursday night, the sensible Director of A Rocha's Climate Stewards program, Brendan Bowles came down from Cheshire to speak in Cirencester, giving us a (Christian) vision of a better world with less carbon; and today, at Gloucester Guildhall, Meghna Das, Sustainable Communities Officer at Coventry, led a COIN climate change speaker training course: most useful!