Today we remember Barnabas, who became a companion of Paul on his first missionary journey. But it was Barnabas who sought out Paul at Tarsus, and brought him back to Antioch, from where they would later travel into Asia (Minor – today’s Turkey) together to spread Christianity among Jewish and then gentile communities. His first job was because of an environmental disaster that particularly affected the poorer ‘saints’ in Palestine. The disaster is called a ‘famine’ in today’s reading from Acts.
Which brings me to the second thing we’re thinking about today: our environment, in this Great Big, Green Week, particularly in light of the climate crisis we are living with. As one theological commentator suggests, it is often hard to be clear about the crisis, because it is a long-term, slow-burning catastrophe, that is for many hard to believe.
The scriptures are full of the glory of creation, from the accounts in Genesis to the Imperial despoilers of creation in the Apocalypse, the book of Revelation: the earth, the heavens, we, declare the glory of God in creation.
Early awareness of the importance of the environment, such as St Francis, who was engaged in his environment, which he saw as God’s gift of creation, populated by God’s other creatures, brother sun and sister moon; and animals and plants, were all part of God’s gift to us, and for whom we were responsible. No wonder that the present pope took the name ‘Francis’ and produced a very important document Laudate Si’, about the Climate Crisis and a Christian response to it.
Or William Blake, the eccentric artist/poet. an important 19th century prophet. Against the polluters and merchants, with their dark satanic mills’; and he wasn’t that wild about the Church of England. But his vision, and hope for a better world inspires us all. I find it ironic that we all lustily sing his poem ‘Jerusalem’ a hope for a new, more egalitarian, more just world where we are all in touch with nature, with God’s creation. Communitarian, egalitarian, left-wing, which we seem not to notice.
Our environmental crisis must be addressed. Governments keep saying we must address it, but do little or nothing about it. It’s almost too late to reverse the catastrophes that are about to happen. The polar ice caps are already doomed.
Let’s look at three people who might give us some hope. It seems that the majority of those who warn us are women. I’m not entirely certain as to why that is. I’m someone who, excited by feminist theologies in the 70s and 80s, got quite annoyed when they connected their work to the environment. [Sallie Ta Selle McFague, Rosemary Reuther, and others. ]
Beatrix Potter, the author of ‘Peter Rabbit’ and other ‘Bunny books’ – a term she hated, but used by her publishers! – is important. From her childhood she’d been an exceptional artist. But before she wrote her children’s books, in her late 20s she was fascinated by mycology (fungi and lichens) and speculated that the way fungi propagated, was through their spores, but some of this was an underground network; and lichens and fungi, related, but lichens were hybrids of fungi, and they lived symbiotically together. She wrote a paper about fungi and tried to get it read to the Linnaean Society, which, as a woman, she wasn’t able to join (she was an amateur anyway), nor could she read the paper herself. They thought her ideas were wrong. We now know she was right; indeed networks of fungi can populate huge areas, whole forests; that trees similarly communicate, and fungi and trees might even communicate with each other. Her scientific artwork, left to the Armitt museum in Ambleside, Windemere, is still used today to identify rare fungi.
So, she started writing her children’s books. Which are some of the most popular books of all time. This made her rich, so she settled in the Lake District, and bought a farm there, taking sheep farming of the local Hardwick sheep seriously; married her solicitor, (they had a long and happy marriage), with whom she bought several other farms, which were left to the country, making up most of what became the Lake District National Park, because she wanted to protect the sheep-farming way of life and protect the land from ‘developers’. She was an early environmentalist. Her graphic skills were extraordinary, even in her Peter Rabbit books, in spite of being ‘anthropomorphic’ – dressed in clothes – they are remarkably accurate.
Her books inspired a child who lived in the US and became a leading oceanographer, working for the US government. Rachel Carson remained single, but when her father died at the beginning of the Great Depression, she supported her mother and her siblings and their families, being the only one with a proper job. Her supervisor once said to her that he couldn’t accept a paper she’d written, but she should get it published in The Atlantic. He was telling her that her writing was brilliant, and it was. She famously wrote a trilogy about the sea and its shore. They were all best-
sellers. But it was when she saw how the chemical companies, and their government watch dog, who seemed to be working hand in glove with each other, were proclaiming the harmlessness of massive insecticide spraying – especially DDT, which if you’re not of a certain age, you might not even have heard of. So, she did a great deal of research herself about the effect of such chemicals on people. They were carcinogenic, she speculated, but it might take a long time to show, because its effects built up slowly. Also, lots of other land and sea life was affected (for example, birds were laying eggs that were deformed and chicks unable to survive). Her book was called ‘Silent Spring’, and had a huge effect. Slated by the chemical companies and the government, she was called “an hysterical woman” who was “probably a Communist.” It became a best seller (it’s still in print, and still worth reading). Eventually the government stopped the amount of spraying that was going on. But that was after her death, at 56 of breast cancer (c 1960).
I could go on … about Dr Suess’s book, ‘The Lorax’, which I remember reading to my children; especially my daughter, Caitlin, whose birthday would have been today; about a place where there were no trees left, and people lived in a very dull world. But there’s hope, because, the boy who is told the story is given the very last Truffula tree seed. Perhaps the landscape could return to its former glory.
Or about Greta Thunberg and her amazing doggedness; but bringing hope to a world in trouble.
There’s one more person I want to mention to you. I read about her in Friday’s Church Times – her arrests have been mentioned a number times before as a Extinction Rebellion demonstrator. You might just think of her as a silly old woman; but you need to know that’s simply not what she is. She’s called Sue Parfitt, she’s a widow, and has taken her husband’s surname after his recent death. She used to be the Pastoral Advisor in this diocese of Southwark, so, not only an Anglican priest, she was a leading Family Therapist, and wrote a number of important text-books on family and psychotherapy generally. Her reason for leaving had something to do with the managerialism in the Church of England. Her faith and her protest are directly linked.
It’s not a level playing field out there: the mining and utility companies are net polluters, making lots of noise about sustainable energy, pulling the wool over our eyes.
Just outside Merthyr Tydfil, where my paternal grandmother came from, is an open cast mine, called Ffos-y-Fran, which was given permission to take on an environmental regeneration project to replace a hill and slag heaps that had been there. They found 11 million tonnes of coal there over the years, and the escrow pot they’re supposed to put into for the actual greening of the site, only had £15m in it, which at the time would have needed at least £50m – its now nearer £150m. So, they applied for an extension recently, on the grounds that they need to put more money into the pot. They were refused, but are apparently still mining there. Some of the other mines in the Welsh valleys, owned by Celtic Energy, sold their mines for £1 each to themselves through a firm in the offshore British Virgin Islands. Taken to court for fraud, the judge found that ‘while some might regard their actions as “dishonest” or “reprehensible”, they were not illegal.’
(What kind of country do we live in?)
Or, the Water companies, 70% owned by foreign equity companies and pension funds with no interest in our water and safety needs. Recently apologising for years of pollution and underfunding the infrastructure, they’ve promised to treble their spending over the next ten years, but users – we, you and me – will be paying for it, not them! Many of these companies are loaded with debt, rather as the Telegraph was by the Barclay Brothers, to the tune of £1 Billion.
We must all take some responsibility for what is being done in our name, and work to make our utilities and energy smaller, and more local.
When we proclaim God the Trinity as our creator, we need to think what we’re implying, and our responsibility to the environment. Working in the Meadow isn’t a gardening club, it’s a commitment, in a small way, to our environment. I’m not intending to tell you what to do, or make you feel guilty, but in a spirit of Barnabas’ name, to encourage you; but I am suggesting we all need to think about it – not least myself.
Today we remember Barnabas, who became a companion of Paul on his first missionary journey. But it was Barnabas who sought out Paul at Tarsus, and brought him back to Antioch, from where they would later travel into Asia (Minor – today’s Turkey) together to spread Christianity among Jewish and then gentile communities. His first job was because of an environmental disaster that particularly affected the poorer ‘saints’ in Palestine. The disaster is called a ‘famine’ in today’s reading from Acts.
Which brings me to the second thing we’re thinking about today: our environment, in this Great Big, Green Week, particularly in light of the climate crisis we are living with. As one theological commentator suggests, it is often hard to be clear about the crisis, because it is a long-term, slow-burning catastrophe, that is for many hard to believe.
The scriptures are full of the glory of creation, from the accounts in Genesis to the Imperial despoilers of creation in the Apocalypse, the book of Revelation: the earth, the heavens, we, declare the glory of God in creation.
Early awareness of the importance of the environment, such as St Francis, who was engaged in his environment, which he saw as God’s gift of creation, populated by God’s other creatures, brother sun and sister moon; and animals and plants, were all part of God’s gift to us, and for whom we were responsible. No wonder that the present pope took the name ‘Francis’ and produced a very important document Laudate Si’, about the Climate Crisis and a Christian response to it.
Or William Blake, the eccentric artist/poet. an important 19th century prophet. Against the polluters and merchants, with their dark satanic mills’; and he wasn’t that wild about the Church of England. But his vision, and hope for a better world inspires us all. I find it ironic that we all lustily sing his poem ‘Jerusalem’ a hope for a new, more egalitarian, more just world where we are all in touch with nature, with God’s creation. Communitarian, egalitarian, left-wing, which we seem not to notice.
Our environmental crisis must be addressed. Governments keep saying we must address it, but do little or nothing about it. It’s almost too late to reverse the catastrophes that are about to happen. The polar ice caps are already doomed.
Let’s look at three people who might give us some hope. It seems that the majority of those who warn us are women. I’m not entirely certain as to why that is. I’m someone who, excited by feminist theologies in the 70s and 80s, got quite annoyed when they connected their work to the environment. [Sallie Ta Selle McFague, Rosemary Reuther, and others. ]
Beatrix Potter, the author of ‘Peter Rabbit’ and other ‘Bunny books’ – a term she hated, but used by her publishers! – is important. From her childhood she’d been an exceptional artist. But before she wrote her children’s books, in her late 20s she was fascinated by mycology (fungi and lichens) and speculated that the way fungi propagated, was through their spores, but some of this was an underground network; and lichens and fungi, related, but lichens were hybrids of fungi, and they lived symbiotically together. She wrote a paper about fungi and tried to get it read to the Linnaean Society, which, as a woman, she wasn’t able to join (she was an amateur anyway), nor could she read the paper herself. They thought her ideas were wrong. We now know she was right; indeed networks of fungi can populate huge areas, whole forests; that trees similarly communicate, and fungi and trees might even communicate with each other. Her scientific artwork, left to the Armitt museum in Ambleside, Windemere, is still used today to identify rare fungi.
So, she started writing her children’s books. Which are some of the most popular books of all time. This made her rich, so she settled in the Lake District, and bought a farm there, taking sheep farming of the local Hardwick sheep seriously; married her solicitor, (they had a long and happy marriage), with whom she bought several other farms, which were left to the country, making up most of what became the Lake District National Park, because she wanted to protect the sheep-farming way of life and protect the land from ‘developers’. She was an early environmentalist. Her graphic skills were extraordinary, even in her Peter Rabbit books, in spite of being ‘anthropomorphic’ – dressed in clothes – they are remarkably accurate.
Her books inspired a child who lived in the US and became a leading oceanographer, working for the US government. Rachel Carson remained single, but when her father died at the beginning of the Great Depression, she supported her mother and her siblings and their families, being the only one with a proper job. Her supervisor once said to her that he couldn’t accept a paper she’d written, but she should get it published in The Atlantic. He was telling her that her writing was brilliant, and it was. She famously wrote a trilogy about the sea and its shore. They were all best-
sellers. But it was when she saw how the chemical companies, and their government watch dog, who seemed to be working hand in glove with each other, were proclaiming the harmlessness of massive insecticide spraying – especially DDT, which if you’re not of a certain age, you might not even have heard of. So, she did a great deal of research herself about the effect of such chemicals on people. They were carcinogenic, she speculated, but it might take a long time to show, because its effects built up slowly. Also, lots of other land and sea life was affected (for example, birds were laying eggs that were deformed and chicks unable to survive). Her book was called ‘Silent Spring’, and had a huge effect. Slated by the chemical companies and the government, she was called “an hysterical woman” who was “probably a Communist.” It became a best seller (it’s still in print, and still worth reading). Eventually the government stopped the amount of spraying that was going on. But that was after her death, at 56 of breast cancer (c 1960).
I could go on … about Dr Suess’s book, ‘The Lorax’, which I remember reading to my children; especially my daughter, Caitlin, whose birthday would have been today; about a place where there were no trees left, and people lived in a very dull world. But there’s hope, because, the boy who is told the story is given the very last Truffula tree seed. Perhaps the landscape could return to its former glory.
Or about Greta Thunberg and her amazing doggedness; but bringing hope to a world in trouble.
There’s one more person I want to mention to you. I read about her in Friday’s Church Times – her arrests have been mentioned a number times before as a Extinction Rebellion demonstrator. You might just think of her as a silly old woman; but you need to know that’s simply not what she is. She’s called Sue Parfitt, she’s a widow, and has taken her husband’s surname after his recent death. She used to be the Pastoral Advisor in this diocese of Southwark, so, not only an Anglican priest, she was a leading Family Therapist, and wrote a number of important text-books on family and psychotherapy generally. Her reason for leaving had something to do with the managerialism in the Church of England. Her faith and her protest are directly linked.
It’s not a level playing field out there: the mining and utility companies are net polluters, making lots of noise about sustainable energy, pulling the wool over our eyes.
Just outside Merthyr Tydfil, where my paternal grandmother came from, is an open cast mine, called Ffos-y-Fran, which was given permission to take on an environmental regeneration project to replace a hill and slag heaps that had been there. They found 11 million tonnes of coal there over the years, and the escrow pot they’re supposed to put into for the actual greening of the site, only had £15m in it, which at the time would have needed at least £50m – its now nearer £150m. So, they applied for an extension recently, on the grounds that they need to put more money into the pot. They were refused, but are apparently still mining there. Some of the other mines in the Welsh valleys, owned by Celtic Energy, sold their mines for £1 each to themselves through a firm in the offshore British Virgin Islands. Taken to court for fraud, the judge found that ‘while some might regard their actions as “dishonest” or “reprehensible”, they were not illegal.’
(What kind of country do we live in?)
Or, the Water companies, 70% owned by foreign equity companies and pension funds with no interest in our water and safety needs. Recently apologising for years of pollution and underfunding the infrastructure, they’ve promised to treble their spending over the next ten years, but users – we, you and me – will be paying for it, not them! Many of these companies are loaded with debt, rather as the Telegraph was by the Barclay Brothers, to the tune of £1 Billion.
We must all take some responsibility for what is being done in our name, and work to make our utilities and energy smaller, and more local.
When we proclaim God the Trinity as our creator, we need to think what we’re implying, and our responsibility to the environment. Working in the Meadow isn’t a gardening club, it’s a commitment, in a small way, to our environment. I’m not intending to tell you what to do, or make you feel guilty, but in a spirit of Barnabas’ name, to encourage you; but I am suggesting we all need to think about it – not least myself.