Punching above its weight

Pax Christi UK’s General Secretary saying this evening that she was one of only three paid staff prompted surprise. “It punches above its weight,” I remarked – only to arouse a titter: we had just been discussing nonviolent protest as a way of drawing attention to planet Earth as (in Ban Ki-moon’s phrase) “a silent casualty of war”.

It reminded me how heavily our language depends upon military vocabulary. As our speaker, Pat Gaffney said, “It’s the whole of me that has to be a peacemaker.” Just as a film lover is a different animal from a film maker, so the Sermon on the Mount talks not of “Blessed are the peace lovers” – but "peacemakers". So, celebrating Remembrance Day without a commitment to peacemaking “is pure sentimentality”. In the same way, the Eucharistic “Do this in remembrance of me” is a call to action as well as devotion.

“Do I need to be a pacifist to join Pax Christi?” Pat was asked. No, Pax Christi has supporters all along the spectrum. Anyway, she preferred to use the term “nonviolent”. To develop a nonviolent attitude in all things was an aspiration: despite her 23 years with Pax Christi, it's one she had yet to attain fully. It's often easier, she says, to protest outside Downing Street than to talk to one's sister-in-law. Recently, she's had to work out a non-violent reaction to the theft of the flower pots she kept outside the front door of her home.

At the end of a year of escalating conflict in, among other places, the Ukraine, Syria and Iraq and Nigeria, it was opportune that our guest was a prominent representative of the international Catholic peace movement. Active in 50 countries, Pax Christi next year celebrates 70 years of peacemaking.

Pat (seen here with our Parish Priest), after working for CAFOD, came to Pax Christi 23 years ago, and has won renown as a campaigner, an educator and an advocate. She has travelled to Sarajevo, East Timor and (frequently) to Israel Palestine, a pilgrim visiting communities. She has been nominated along with fellow women peace workers for the Nobel Prize, and imprisoned four times for nonviolent direct action – about which Martin Luther King wrote that it “seeks to create such a crisis and foster such a tension that a community which has constantly refused to negotiate is forced to confront the issue. It seeks to so dramatize the issue that it may no longer be ignored.” This, Pat believes, is her Christian duty.

With the aid of illustrations, the links between war, conflict and the degradation of our planet were explored. Do we really measure the true costs of war? Pat asked: the enforced migration, the disablement, the psychological costs, “the toxic remnants of war” (the title of an independent project, fairly recently set up). 18,000 square miles of land were laid waste in Vietnam. In Kuwait, retreating Iraqis torched 800 oil wells. Over the past 50 years 800,000 olive trees, a spiritual resource for the people, have been destroyed in Israel Palestine.

Outside the Atomic Weapons Establishment at Aldermaston Pat photographed children holding a home-made placard: “If we destroy our planet, we have nowhere to go,” it said. We need, Pat urged, to rethink what security is all about. UK military spending – at £38bn. a year – is the sixth largest in the world. But if all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. What of climate change, resource depletion, marginalisation of the majority poor? We spend £1.3b. p.a. on military research and development, compared with £45m. on looking into renewable energy.

At the heart of her message was Pat’s conviction that one person putting their faith into action can make a difference: the priest who came to say Mass on the sacred rocks, threatened by the construction of a naval base on Jeju Island off South Korea; Bishara Nasser’s devotion to protecting Daher’s Vineyard near Bethlehem, resulting in The Tent of Nations project to prepare young people to contribute positively to their culture and future; the Kenyan Nobel Laureate Wangari Maathai, whose simple act of planting trees grew into a nationwide movement.

This presentation to Christian Ecology Link was as powerful as any we have hosted in Cheltenham.

Medicine box

We don't have one - a medicine box, that is. We have various stashes and a glass-fronted cabinet, with rather an awkward key and too few, too shallow shelves. The "medicines" tumble out, difficult to locate when you need them (I find). Big Pharma would come in and throw most of them away for being out of date.

Anyway, it's on my mind this past 24 hours, recovering from a sudden bug: possibly flu, though I had my injection. Feeling the end of the world was near, I have to remember I was out walking earlier in the week.

Odd though that on Tuesday's walk, none of those taking part so much as mentioned my message to our Leader (cc'd to all) of six days previously: "I look forward to being with you in the Malverns," I wrote, "but alas can't commit myself to the attractive-sounding walk you suggest in Croatia next Summer: all our energies are going to be bent in another direction then. You ask for our thoughts: as you know, I am an advocate of low-carbon travel, and would earnestly hope that some of you who do decide to go all that way (Total Flights Footprint = 0.43 metric tons of CO2e​) would look into the no-fly option. The cons are extra monetary outlay, extra time required and a degree of planning. Amongst many other pros (beside carbon-saving) I would cite no airport/aircraft hassle, a journey through a rich variety of scenery and the opportunity to meet people you would never normally come across. The Man in Seat 61 website gives you all the leads you need, but just to make it that much simpler, here are the main options..." I attached an A4 sheet. But silence.

This photograph of Paddington Station was taken a couple of years ago: I might have been passing through today, had I felt committed to book for the annual members meeting of Christian Ecology Link. That I didn't is partly because it now alas has to be known as "Green Christian"... (This is where Leo would start making scratched record gestures.)

"Applying renewable energy within a Christian environmental morality"

This was the title John Twidell chose for his talk to Christian Ecology Link in Cheltenham this evening. Two dozen of us gathered for an excellent presentation, and wide-ranging discussion to follow.

John's faith motivated him to look for work in Africa after completing his second degree - teaching physics in Khartoum University. He saw the waste of a major energy source there (solar) as a failure in stewardship of God's creation, and thus began his experimentation with renewable energy. Returning to the UK, he invented a course in the subject at Strathclyde University, and then obtained the post of Professor of Renewable Energy at de Montfort. He and his wife Mary (whom he met in the Sudan) still live in Leicestershire, where their home bristles with energy-saving measures: they are happy to demonstrate them to any who turn up.

In his presentation, John contrasted green energy - diverting natural flows - with brown energy - digging up in order to pollute. We shouldn't be surprised that renewables are only just becoming accepted: it takes 50 years for people in school to graduate to becoming decision-makers. But the technology for harnessing especially the sun and the wind is now well proven, sophisticated, available and increasingly affordable. Of course, Government help is needed to establish it - the same with any energy source. But Government can equally well scupper it: witness the harm Eric Pickles is doing by his arbitrary overturning of appeal decisions and so preventing new wind farms from being established.

The speaker ended by advocating that we each list possible "my changes" - lifestyle decisions, taking up the issues through lobbying, even career changes (standing for election). And as for leaving the EU, that would be a disaster energy-wise: UKIP want to reopen coal mines!

PS There's an open day to view a community wind turbine not far away, on Sunday 28th: details here.

Joy into action

During my walking on the Jakobsweg, I read Pope Francis' Evangelii Gaudium. I found it inspirational. The joy of the gospel, it begins, fills the hearts and lives of all who encounter Jesus.

It's a long document - more like a book actually: but don't let that put you off reading it. Because it's informally written and well-translated - and full of good stuff. One passage I particularly liked was this: An authentic faith – which is never comfortable or completely personal – always involves a deep desire to change the world, to transmit values, to leave this earth somehow better that we found it. We love this magnificent planet on which God has put us, and we love the human family which dwells here, with all its tragedies and struggles, its hopes and aspirations, its strengths and weaknesses. The earth is our common home and all of us are brothers and sisters.

I was reminded of this when Mary Colwell came to Cheltenham last night, to speak at one of our regular, if infrequent, Christian Ecology Link meetings. Her title was "Surprised by Joy, Impatient for Change". We heard more about the first part than the second, but no matter. For one evening at least it was possible to be an environmentalist and not a killjoy.

What is joy? Mary began by asking, besides being one of the fruits of the Holy Spirit. Not the same as happiness! Do animals experience joy? Hard to say, but perhaps it's through nature alone that we can be truly surprised by joy. Sylvia Earle talks of discovering it when "dancing" deep in the oceans with an octopus: Mary herself, sitting on a Cornish beach, en-joyed a seal popping up amid the breaking waves. For her, it brought to mind the thought voiced by former slave, George Washington Carver: God speaks to us every hour about nature if we'll only tune in.

But John Muir was the figure who dominated the talk: even among the environment-minded, he is little spoken of. Born in Scotland in 1838, one of seven children of staunchly Presbyterian parents, he moved with the family to the United States, where they set up a frontier farm. Seeing the destruction brought to the wilderness by the advance Westwards, he became its advocate, his campaigns bearing fruit within the National Parks system.

Everywhere John Muir looked, he saw God, and joy in nature motivated him to wonder - and to act, in order to protect forests, rivers and birds. He died in 1914, the same year as Martha, the very last of the passenger pigeons whose fate he so much lamented.

For Muir as for us, joy isn't a passive emotion: it arouses a sense of injustice, and makes you want to do something: most people are on the world, Muir wrote: not in it... touching, but separate... I must get out into the mountains to learn the news. A prophetic voice.

In his "Surprised by Joy", C.S. Lewis says, Joy is never in our power, and pleasure often is; so if, in the face of adversity, we suffer a defeat, then we can never lose faith in humanity - just pick ourselves up for the next battle.

"In wisdom God made all things"

My photograph shows Bishop David Atkinson, of Southwark driving off from Cheltenham this morning after spending the night with us. David was here to talk to Christian Ecology Link yesterday evening: the title of this post is the one he took, leading into a meditation on Psalm 104 ("one of the great nature poems of the world"), used as a backdrop to some sobering reflections upon our present relationship with the created world.

"What is nature but the creation of God," he began; hence his astonishment that a journalist - seeing him at a presentation given by Al Gore some while back - should ask, "What possible interest could the Church have in the environment?"

But it's merely a measure of the general disconnect between our faith and our responsibility to bequeath a better world to future generations. As Professor Mary Grey commented on the Operation Noah Ash Wednesday Declaration: We will encounter [the issues raised by this Declaration] in the form of a question when we face God's judgement: "What did you do to cherish my creation in its hour of danger?"

We cannot continue to exceed the planet's boundaries and expect all humanity to flourish. Realising this means we need to address difficult questions: how are our pension funds invested? Should we fly? Ought we really to light up the church spire? Where is neo-liberal economic theory going?

As was clear from the wide-ranging discussion that followed, all of us can't answer all of these questions, but each of us can tackle some of them. There's a variety of gifts: we can bear the same witness in our different ways. And muddy carrots keep one earthed. What more natural for believers in an infinite God than to live with the understanding that resources are finite! We need to discover the possibility of living differently in a way which is joyous.

Altogether, an excellent evening, which encouraged all of us to follow David's example and accept, in our teaching, preaching and living, the challenge of integrating Christian belief with concern for our world and its future!

Trinity + Brompton

The three musicians who played last night - a house concert for us lucky few who were invited - are all soloists in their own right, Matthew Trusler, Thomas Carroll and Ashley Wass. Though they came together 18 months ago, to date they are just known as the TCW Trio. At supper after the performance various more or less conventional names were tossed about as possibilities for the future: as we departed, being told we must come to their October performance at the Tetbury Music Festival, I tossed out the idea of "Three Line Whip". That would at least raise a few eyebrows.

But their music making speaks volumes by itself, in particular (last night) the performance of Tchaikovsky's great - almost symphonic - piano trio. Staggering. After which we set off for home, but only reached the end of the drive: one of the back tyres had picked up a nail. Hence the enforced - but very pleasant - stay for supper while, having given up the struggle to change wheels, we awaited the breakdown man: the wheel nuts were on too tight, he said.

Trio yesterday - Triple Crown day today, with England's emphatic victory in the rugby. And the welcome news this evening that our parish priest has bought his first bicycle - a Brompton. Can we call this a win for Cheltenham Christian Ecology Link?

"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.

"The world we made"

Jonathon Porritt's new book envisions the world as it will be 37 years hence, in 2050. It's a fictional memoir, looking back to yesterday, today and the intervening years, and postulating that we have responded to all the warnings that he amongst others have issued to date: that unless we alter course sharply, our world then will not be a pleasant place into which to be born.

It is getting on for 37 years ago that I first met Jonathon, in the heady, fairly early days of the Ecology Party: with the eloquence and passion he showed at Party gatherings, he stood out from the pack. I admired, not least, the way he used his experience as a comprehensive school teacher for tackling conference hecklers; but more significantly he was amongst the first to join me and others in recognising that God and his creation were the elephant in the room. As a result, we went on to establish what is now Christian Ecology Link. (I took this photograph of him at our annual conference last year, where he was a keynote speaker.)

Nobody has worked more unrelentingly for the green cause. Not that we have always seen eye to eye. In sending me my copy of The world we made Jonathon expressed the hope that what he has written about population "won't be too infuriating." "Hostile to addressing population issues," the book says, "was a great army of environmentalists and left-wing politicians in Western countries," arguing "that the real issues were poverty, injustice and over-consumption in the West." Mea culpa. The book goes on, "This kind of approach was not just stupid, but cruel." As Jonathon envisages in his inscription, my question remains, does the end then justify the means?

Various turns in Jonathon's career have been marked by his publishing a new book, but none will - I guess - have brought great riches through royalties. The world we made may just be different. "For me," Jonathon says in his postscript, "writing this book has been a big deal." And indeed an immense amount of research and imagination has gone into it. As you expect from a Phaidon publication, it is beautifully produced and presented. Comprehensive, authoritative, easy to read, and aimed at an international non-specialist market, I foresee it selling well. The question here is, will it release the energies in its readers that are needed to produce the change it predicates? And as a supplementary, how much flying will the author have to do to promote those sales?

A sparky evening with Cheltenham Christian Ecology Link

In May last, Fr. Tom Cullinan addressed Cheltenham Christian Ecology Link on “Christ and Ecology”. “We need,” he said, “to allow that which God brought about in Christ’s ministry (and the mystery of his cross and resurrection) to reproduce itself in our age. In other words, we need to become extremely aware of the conditions we are living in; of the social order we are part of, and of what’s happening on our planet.”

Fr. Norman Tanner S.J.’s talk to CCEL last night, “Ecology in Christian tradition from the early church to today” had a different emphasis. The Professor of Church History at Rome’s Gregorian University brought us “a few scattered historical reflections”. Central to his theme was the humanity of Christ, who showed us that an ecological life meant the best, the most sensible way to live.

Norman started with an illustration from the early 4th Century, given us by St Jerome: St Paul of Thebes lived in Egypt as a hermit, a raven supplying him with dates and bread. But hermits did not completely disassociate themselves from the world: St Anthony visited Paul once a year. When Paul died, his grave was dug out by lions with their paws: Anthony placed the body in the grave, the lions covering it up. Both saints lived to 100, their good lives “an image of ecological balance”.

“Good” lives, that is, not just ascetic ones. Jesus is symbolised as a fish: the Eucharistic bread and wine flow into the rest of our lives, where we enjoy a meal at leisure: it completes a natural symbiosis. Ecology implies a mixture of beauty and suffering – the suffering necessary for growth.

A feature of the early Church is life in community – in villages, families, monasteries, nearly all with their animal and vegetable kingdom attached. Where humans and animals live together, as they did, each animal (not just dogs and cats) is known by name. Most people live in the countryside, and farming is – as St Benedict wrote – an integral part of a balanced life. This synthesis does not need emphasising: it is just there.

Within these manageable units, mutual correction between the human population is possible, and the norm. This changed with the Reformation and Counter-Reformation, which placed more value upon each person’s relationship with God, than upon God’s place within an ecologically balanced community. Individualism grew stronger – and we became too polite. “All of us for ourselves” and “the sky’s the limit” get in the way of a balanced life for the community. The question today is: how do we hope to achieve ecological balance?

Now, aware of resource constraints, the problems of overpopulation and habitat destruction, there is a new imperative to live simply. We nevertheless need to remind ourselves that the reasons for doing so, characterised in the early Church’s history, remain valid.

Norman’s talk provoked a flurry of contributions from the large audience. One audience member questioned whether concerns about overpopulation were not exaggerated, which brought a sharp response from Mary Colwell, environmental adviser to our Catholic Bishops Conference: “Even if we are able to feed seven, going on nine, billion people,” she said, “at what cost? 60% of even the animals and plants in the UK are already under serious threat of extinction because of the way we have to use the land.”

She went on, “The problem is that the Christian Church has nothing to say about the natural world: it doesn’t know what it thinks about nature generally and our relationship with it.”

Mary Paterson passed on a recommendation for Richard Bauckham’s “Beyond Stewardship: The Bible and the Community of Creation”. On the controversial question of population, Clive Burton pointed us in the direction of Albert Bartlett's classic YouTube lecture, "The most important video you'll ever see".

Feedback since received includes a note from Canon Andrew Bowden: he found helpful Norman’s stress on the importance of ‘community’ and 'collegiate theological discussion' for a healthy ecological life. At the same time, he asked “Where would we be in our understanding of ecology without the scientific individualism unchained by the Reformation and Renaissance?”

Gordon McConville, Professor of Old Testament Theology at the University of Gloucestershire, also liked the connections to “community”: Norman “said some very interesting things, even if some members of the audience thought he was working with an idea of ecology that they were not expecting.”

From Mary Colwell came the comment that she "really valued Norman's ideas that community, simplicity and connection with nature are great insights the Church has to offer the world today, wise ways of living whether there is an ecological crisis or not."

Norman himself said he enjoyed being with us – and that he had learned a lot! Thanks to him for sparking this particular evening of 'collegiate theological discussion'.

A history lesson

As I mentioned a year ago, my school contemporary Norman Tanner S.J. said he'd come to Cheltenham to talk about ecology from the historical perspective. Since then, Vatican II: The Essential Texts has been published, a collaboration between Norman and Pope Benedict. So, renowned as my old friend is as a church historian, there should be a good turnout on Monday next, when he visits us. In fact he arrives on Sunday, to enable us to spend some time together: I hope to show him something of the Cotswolds: I always enjoy seeing round through the eyes of a visitor, especially at this golden time of year.

"Boldly not to go"

This is the title The Tablet has given to an article I wrote for them earlier this year about pilgrimage. After some delay, it is - I see from their website - included in this week's issue, dated in fact 15th June. I reproduce it here with permission of the Publisher: note the weblink I have included.

The photograph of Caroline's and my shadows I took walking early one morning on the Via de la Plata in Spain in April 2010: originally, The Tablet asked me for an illustration, so I sent this, which they seemed to like ("A good generic pilgrimage shot, and applicable to a pilgrimage almost anywhere"). But I see that instead they have now included with the printed article a cartoon which seems to me to miss the point I was making.

_____________

"What is the essence of ‘pilgrimage’? Martin Davis explores the question using the hypothetical meeting of a fictional Justice and Peace group of a notional Catholic parish, St Bilbo’s … but the issues raised are very real indeed.

Pope Benedict’s Caritas in Veritate had been the subject of discussion in the St Bilbo’s parish Justice and Peace group the previous year. “We must recognise our grave duty,” members noted (in paragraph 50), “to hand the earth on to future generations in such a condition that they too can worthily inhabit it, and continue to cultivate it.” Inspired by Cafod’s LiveSimply campaign, members began to ask themselves how, as witnesses to their faith, they could each live more sustainably. “We are used to fasting during Lent,” one said. “But then resume normal life. So what is the impact of the choices we make daily, upon other people and the future of the planet?”  

This led on to a study of how members used energy, both as individuals and within their families. Roughly 15 tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent represents our UK average annual “footprint”. For those living near the breadline and in inner cities, it can be less: for others, more. They read a suggestion made by the ecumenical charity, Christian Ecology Link (CEL): a sustainable allowance for Christians seeking to walk the talk, CEL proposed, should be 2.5 tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent a year (2.5 tonnes is a sixth of the current average: CEL concedes this is a target it will take most of us many years to reach).

The problem is this, the group realised: much of our “allowance” would be absorbed by things it’s possible to reduce, but not dramatically – food and drink, home heating. Then there’s commuting to and from work. But what about other travel? Finding the tonnage attributable to particular journeys was not difficult. London to Glasgow and back by plane: half a tonne of carbon dioxide equivalent; a flight to Hong Kong: 3.5 tonnes. Clearly, flying distorts our carbon footprint considerably. “But surely, doesn’t it all depend on the reasons for our trip?” one member argued. “Last year, my mother went to Chicago to visit her dying brother: wasn’t that better than my friend flying to Vilnius for a stag weekend?” The group decided a discussion along these lines, while interesting, could only end up as negative: “We need some positive response within the parish to the challenge of carbon reduction.”

A quiet voice spoke up: “Didn’t I read somewhere that the Stations of the Cross were invented at a particular point in time, a time when it became impossible to follow Christ’s last steps in Jerusalem, on the ground, because of hostilities? As pilgrimages have never been more popular than they are today, perhaps we could find a new way of doing pilgrimage closer to home.”

But what was “pilgrimage”? First and foremost there had to be a journey. It may be enlightening, to browse through the four million links that a search for “virtual pilgrimage” gives on Google. Ultimately, though, pilgrimage is not for couch potatoes. A journey is needed, then, and one with a point in view. A pilgrim is not a wanderer.

Nor does pilgrimage equate with tourism, often though tourists chart their way to pilgrim destinations. One group member had walked to Santiago de Compostela: “Many on the route”, she said, “admitted they were there just there for an active holiday. They saw stamps in their pilgrim passports as mere souvenirs, unconcerned as they were about the historic link between pilgrimage and that unfashionable word penitence.” What defines a pilgrim is the spirit of penitence in its widest sense: it’s as necessary as a hat and a staff. Parallel to an examination of conscience, a pilgrim prepares for departure. Inessential things are left behind. Attaining the necessary fitness is a penance. Leaving home on an uncertain journey implies vulnerability and trust. Pilgrims rely on the kindness of strangers – other pilgrims and those living along the way. They put aside their usual comforts, but for what? So that they can renew their faith, and become better examples to others.

Keeping these core values in mind, the group prepared St Bilbo’s for its first alternative pilgrimage day. It was carefully planned not to be just another parish outing. Rogation Sunday was chosen, as there’s a long tradition (now largely unobserved) for Rogation-tide processions. After Mass, a quorum of parishioners of all ages set out in the rain. With them were a number of residents of the local Cheshire Home using wheelchairs, and a handful from the neighbouring St Frodo’s Anglican parish. The route lay along part of the parish boundary and then into the adjoining parish. A halt was made outside one group member’s home, where the parish sister led penitential prayers.  

“Every place on God’s earth can be a holy one,” she said. “We don’t have to travel afar to find him. We don’t need a celebrity destination. Each day, he’s there, where we are, in our midst. Didn’t Moses find himself on holy ground without even knowing it (Exodus 3:5)? So let us now walk on in silence, reflecting together on what it means to walk humbly in God’s world, to walk lightly on his earth.”  

In time for a late lunch, the party, a little wet, reached the hall of the adjoining parish’s primary school, where everybody pooled what they had brought, and some nursed others’ blisters. “How does it happen”, asked the parish priest, “that when we bring food to share, there is always some left over?” He then spoke about the Sacrament of the Sick, and administered it to those who wanted it. Many came forward. A member of the organising group reminded everyone how, in former days, your pilgrimage didn’t end at the destination: you had to walk home again. “However,” he said, “for those who would like a lift, I’ve arranged a minibus.”

At the St Bilbo’s AGM, there was the chance for feedback. One parishioner said: “We are a large parish. I always sit in the same pew, and used to exchange the sign of peace with someone I didn’t know. Through the pilgrimage walk, I’ve made a new friendship. How can we love our neighbour, if we don’t know them?” Another benefited from meeting the Cheshire Home residents, and had now become a regular visitor there. For a number, the pilgrimage route had taken them to parts of their neighbourhood they had never before visited: resolutions were made to explore their local area more, and to consider its needs. Nobody opposed the suggestion: “Let’s do it again next year – and invite others!”

■ Martin Davis is a parishioner of St Gregory’s, Cheltenham, and convenes Cheltenham Christian Ecology Link.“

Father Tom Cullinan with Cheltenham Christian Ecology Link

I am still digesting an exceptional talk, given yesterday evening. Here's a link to a soundbite, illustrating Fr. Tom's delightful sense of fun, as well as his seriousness. And here's a link to a transcript I made of most of the talk and the Q/A session.

Already messages of appreciation have come in. One says, "The evening we had with Fr. Tom... was so nourishing and thoughtful! He is an inspirational speaker and I was reminded... and inspired to think again about what is important and how I live."

This shows the degree to which Fr. Tom has turned his back on the world, in order to live the simple life: we were telling him at breakfast, what each of the children were up to. "Thomas does web design," I said. "Web design?" he replied. "What's that?"

"A Year of Food & Faith"

Fr. Tom Cullinan is paying us - Cheltenham Christian Ecology Link - a return visit at the beginning of May: I have been circulating this poster for his talk.

Cheering up Leeds

Meeting Dee on the steps of Oxford Place Methodist Centre as I was leaving Leeds yesterday made me realise what a drab bunch we were in Christian Ecology Link. I had spent the day with 70 or so fellow members and friends - the occasion of our annual conference.

"From A to B? Or making A a good place to Be?"

This was the title of the Christian Ecology Link workshop I attended today. In doing so, the Government-funded transportdirect website calculates I created 21kgs of carbon emissions on my train journey: this was, it seems, less than a quarter of what it would have been had I driven, but nearly double that of a coach passenger.

I looked these figures up after my return, having been stirred by the workshop's presentations into taking more interest in the way in which I travel around. One of the speakers, indeed, urged us all to consider a pledge "to live within rations". 500 kilograms a year is suggested. Only by doing so would we avoid the pitfall of "vague good intentions, such as This year I aim to be driving less, flying less, using less... All use-less!" he said.

So, I now have a strategy for action. Measure my carbon footprint, first: record car mileage, train and longer bus trips. (Air travel is out at over a kilogram every two kilometers for CO2, multiplied by about three if you take into account nitrogen oxides etc.) Secondly, live locally. Thirdly, when driving, never exceed the speed limit.

There were other exhortations, but you can only take on board so many at a time, and that's plenty for me to be going on with. And besides, there's the big unspoken challenge: how to avoid being Holier than thou?

The workshop was the first meeting to be held in the newly-refurbished basement of St Aloysius' Church, Somers Town, just behind Euston Station - where I saw an encouraging number of bikes stored, for weekday commuting.

Some passion from Teague

Catholic writer and journalist Ellen Teague last night came from London to meet a couple of dozen of us at our final Cheltenham Christian Ecology Link gathering for 2012: her theme, on which she spoke with some passion, was “Christian ecology?” An imperative for our times!

Ellen laid out her credentials with the aid of slides she had taken whilst teaching in Nigeria, working for CAFOD during the period of the Ethiopian famine and in more recent times advocating on the climate change front with the Columban Missionaries.

During her 30 or so years’ involvement in campaigns on behalf of church organisations, Ellen said she had witnessed a growing awareness that development and the environment were connected. But it was not just those living now on the margin, with whom Christians should be showing solidarity: the problem was that so many are only getting through today by compromising tomorrow. What happens to those dependent on firewood when all the trees have been cut down?

And yet how little do we hear in our media about modern Rainforest martyrs, Chico Mendez and Sister Dorothy Stang, murdered in Brazil! Or the priests and picketing people of Mindanao in the Philippines, risking their lives to celebrate mass together on the route heavy vehicles were using to open up new mines.

Father Sean McDonagh has described the eucharist as the sacrament of ecology: how can Christians preach the good news of life in abundance, without being concerned for the disappearance of the glaciers in the Andes, the melting water of which is vital for the citizens of Lima?

As a Catholic, Ellen had long wondered why her church was so slow to embrace initiatives which were fully in accord with Catholic Social Teaching, such as Creation Time – in recent years celebrated by other Christians throughout Europe each Autumn. One reason was the church’s anthropocentric vision. Humans are effectively edging others off the planet. When considering the plight of the unborn, well, the church clearly sees abortion as a sin. But how do we describe a tragedy such as Bhopal? Someone’s sin? No, our reaction is more like, “A pity!” We seem to lack any moral code to cope with biocide: it’s as if there’s a failure of communication between religion and science.

And in a clergy-centred church, what matters greatly is the lead priests give within their parishes and dioceses: an enquiry was made to one of our leading seminaries, “How much time do you give to teaching creation theology to your candidates for the priesthood?” “Half a day,” came the reply. Not half a day a week, not half a day a month – half a day in the whole six-year course! But maybe the biggest obstacle we face is that priests don’t have children and grandchildren through whose eyes we (who do have them) can so easily see the future.

“The environment is not something you can dip into,” Ellen told us. What we have to develop is a sustained focus upon the meaning of God’s covenant with creation, outlined in the Book of Genesis. Quoting theologian Mary Grey, she urged us to become “a prophetic community working for our own transformation.” As people of faith, we need to step up.

Her words were, the audience agreed during the plenary session that followed Ellen’s talk, some challenge. We were able to reflect upon this at Compline, with which the evening ended. Deacon Robin had helpfully selected as our reading a passage from the first letter of Paul to the Thessalonians, concluding: “God has called you and he will not fail you.”

Mark Letcher's Cheltenham visit

We had a reasonable turnout for our Christian Ecology Link meeting last evening. The 30 or so who came were rewarded by a thought-provoking talk: it was followed by a good discussion.

Mark Letcher has been promoting sustainable energy for nearly two decades: his Bristol consultancy, Climate Works, helps organisations reduce their carbon footprint - but he didn't come to plug that. Instead, he spoke about his involvement with Operation Noah, an independent charity founded by Christian Ecology Link 11 years ago - the first Christian campaign to focus upon the need to address climate change.

We will all remember 2012, Mark said, for its Summer of sport - but it has also been (to use Churchill's phrase) "a period of consequences". Illustrative of many disconcerting, but largely under-reported, events is the steep reduction in Arctic Summer sea ice.

How can we, Mark asked, accept these climate events, and merely prepare to adapt to them? It's not just the prospect of six degrees of warming, but the effect of rapid acidification of the oceans, a world population of maybe 10 billion in 70 years, and an eagerness (not to say a demand) on behalf of most of the have-littles to consume as much as we - or worse, the Americans - now do, and that in the near future. "This just doesn't stack up!"

Successive Governments have adopted policies that are letting the environment run down: what an outcry there would be were a political party to set out in its manifesto, "We intend to let the Health Service run down"!

Mark went on to say that what we face is not only a rape of the resources of the natural world, but "an unmitigated assault upon the poor." Is it reasonable, he asked, that the poorest should carry the biggest burden when they have contributed least to the problem? This is surely the real challenge for Christians.

Why is it so difficult to talk to others about climate change? If it doesn't frighten, then it can shame them - and inducing neither reaction is effective to alter a person's frame of mind.

In the past, we were prepared to make sacrifices for future generations: our parents and grandparents suffered the deprivations of wartime; and went on to accept the concept of "greenbelt" to safeguard our countryside. However, now we seem to be saying that we have the right to live as we are living, even though we know it's at the expense of future generations. Is the future we are being offered the one we want for our grandchildren? If not, then there's an urgent need to talk, to coordinate and to challenge politically.

We face a profound crisis affecting our values and our faith, as well as our relationship with the natural world. But the other side of the coin is that it's also an opportunity for an alternative vision. Something like that set out in David Atkinson's "Renewing the face of the earth." Something too like that Ellen MacArthur, for instance, has recognised in setting up her foundation. "What's missing at present is all of our voices: our eyes are closed, and we have fingers in our ears."

"Better ways of talking about climate change"

This is the title of our forthcoming Christian Ecology Link meeting, this coming Friday here in Cheltenham. The poster photograph (above) is captioned, Will we be seeing palm trees in Cheltenham’s Promenade before too long?. I took it in Seville when we went there a couple of years ago.

All the details have been widely circulated, and we hope for a good turnout - Mark Letcher speaks well and authoritatively, being the director of the Bristol-based sustainable energy consultancy, Climate Works.

Lunch with Norman

I always feel that bit bolder about taking random photographs after a good lunch. This one was snatched whilst I paused at traffic lights on my Boris Bike: I was returning to Paddington to catch the train home after meeting a school friend at Mon Plaisir today. (I managed a quick visit to Edmund's newish office in Covent Garden beforehand.)

Norman lives and works in Rome, but comes over for Summer holidays. We haven't seen a lot of each other over the years, and it was a pleasure to catch up. As a prominent church historian, he comes in for criticism from time to time, mainly from right wing elements who see recent history rather differently to him. Yes, he agreed, Vatican II has taken a while to bed down, "but then so did Chalcedon". (Don't you love sweeping thoughts like this?) "It's easier with Councils like Trent and Vatican I, which strengthen the Pope's hand," he surmised.You don't get this sort of conversation much in Cheltenham.

I came away enlivened - and delighted that Norman had agreed to come and speak at a local Christian Ecology Link meeting at the end of his Summer visit next year: on ecology in the early Church.

"Il faut cultiver notre jardin"?

We spent the best part of today in the Old School Rooms, Stoke Gifford, hard by Bristol Parkway station, at the Christian Ecology Link annual conference. Wouldn't we have been better off "on our allotment"? Jonathon Porritt - our keynote speaker - postulated the possibility, only to reject it. After "a hundred years of suicidal growth", it is still possible to transform our (dire) situation, he said, but we need to strain each sinew to do so - and call in aid every spiritual resource: that's what justified congregating in a stuffy hall on a sunny Spring morning - and joining a peaceful protest at Hinckley Point ("No more Fukushimas!"): Jonathon was off there after his speech.

"But how can you work with a monolith like Unilever?" he's asked. "Well, I can imagine a sustainable world with no Magnum ice creams, but not one without Marmite."

Three decades or so ago, at one of the still nascent Ecology Party half-yearly conferences, a small group of Christians met to form a pool of holiness within the warring world of Green politics. And here some of us still were, seeking mutual encouragement within that same pool, Christian Ecology Link.

Today, we were marshalled, facilitated and inspired by Barbara Echlin, Ellen Teague and poet Clare Best. And - Jonathon apart - a further seven men (!) came forward to offer that encouragement.

Tim Gorringe proclaimed the whole of reality as God's, not "capital" for accrual, but gift for our nurture and for use for others' sake. Adopting an altogether lower tone, Chris Sunderland spoke of the need for inner transformation for our generation, which lived in the shallows and marketed the mind, having turned its soul into a desert - rather than a fertile land for spiritual growth.

Jeremy Williams invited us to share his quest for a simpler, more sustainable life, by detoxing from consumerism. The excellent presentation by Mark Letcher showed how we might reframe our specific concerns about climate change, so as to persuade a broader cross-section to take it seriously, while a more general political engagement was urged upon us by Jonathan Essex, a Green Party local councillor: he took me back to the early days when we were all paid up members of the Ecology Party.

The gentle, prophetic voice of Ed Echlin was heard advocating organic food production, and sparking a wide-ranging discussion amongst both young and old. Finally, CEL Chair Paul Bodenham steered us towards the darker form of hope - based not on bright, shiny technology, but upon God's sustaining power within us, drawing us into conversion: sharing that hope, we become evangelists.

"All of us find our communities where we can," Jonathon Porritt reflected: CEL brings people together from a diversity of local and national communities - a unique network, and repository of goodness.