We have invited Grant Keenan to tell us recycling on Wednesday 29th May at the Acorn Centre Inverurie at 7:30pm. All Welcome!
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The next meeting of the Eco-Congregation Falkirk and West Lothian Network is on Wednesday 22nd May, 7.30pm at St Ninian’s Craigmailen Church in their Longcroft Hall, West Port, Linlithgow (for map see http://tinyurl.com/cm6q9u6).
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The theme for the evening will be about “Food” with Guest Speakers Tom Conn (West Lothian Council, Chair of the Environment Policy Development & Scrutiny Panel) on Waste Food Collection and Marshall Green on West Lothian Food Bank.
We would like to welcome Fullarton Parish Church, Irvine to Eco-Congregation Scotland.
They celebrated their 175th Anniversary on Sunday 27th April and the photo (borrowed from their website) is from the festivities. Congratulations!
Please help us make them feel welcome!
Scotland’s Nature Festival is an opportunity for organisations across Scotland to join together to provide a nation-wide programme of events aimed at encouraging people to get out and about to become involved with nature in fun and exciting ways. There is still time for your church or eco-group to get involved. You can for example arrange a Wildlife Planting event in the church grounds or organise a walk to take in the natural beauty of your local area.
You can can be part of a unified events campaign together with many other organisations using the same messages, logos and promotional materials. This helps to create a sense of something big happening across Scotland, in which everyone can take part.
The Scottish Natural Heritage website has a range of resource and information for participating organisations.
You can find out how to add your event/s’ details to The List and discover what resources the Scottish Natural Heritage and partner organisations can offer you from the Resouces for Event Organisers page.
If you have other queries, you can contact us at biodiversity@sh.gov.uk.
Castlemilk Parish Church recently joined Eco-Congregation Scotland and Barry Watson took part in our Annual Gathering on 20th April. The Gathering this year was all about food. After the Gathering Barry wrote to us and we would like to share his thoughts (with his permission of course) with you.
Firstly, thank you for a very interesting, helpful and absorbing day – my first attendance at the Gathering. Once I can download the slides etc from the website, I will have plenty to work with for our ‘Project’ – a new Church building in the centre of our Castlemilk and fit for the 21st century – something which is going to take at least the next three to four years.
The discussion on food reminded me of a quotation I took a note of quite ‘a while ago’, which I am sure your team will find useful if they do not already have it.
WE SHARE BREAD AND WINE“We share bread and wine which symbolise all the ways in which human beings live together and tear each other to pieces.”
Think of the domination, exploitation and pollution of man and nature that goes with bread, all the bitterness that goes with competition and class struggle, all the organised selfishness of tariffs and price rings, all the wicked oddity of a world distribution that brings plenty to some and malnutrition to others, bringing them to that symbol of poverty which we call the breadline.
And wine too – fruit of the vine and work of human hands, the wine of holidays and weddings, the wine that loosens you up inside and so is such a good symbol of forgiveness, wine which is water and fire in one. This wine is also the bottle, the source of some of the most tragic forms of human degradation, drunkenness, broken homes, sensuality and debt.
When we take bread and wine we take all of this; our attempts and failures to live together, all that is ugly and all that is beautiful and offer them to God to make sense of them and to consecrate.”
From “Our home encloses treachery and death”, Arguments for Easter, Tim Radcliffe OP, Independent 23 March 1989
And a personal reflection on ‘the spiritual significance of sharing food’. Last year, my elderly mother, who is now very frail and also blind, was in hospital on her 88th birthday. I took in a birthday cake (with permission, of course), which was also shared among the other patients on the ward. Then there was the problem of how do you actually try to eat a piece of cake which you can not see and will crumble when you try? I had to help, of course. I was concentrating on being very practical, while thinking ‘I am spoon feeding my own mother’. I don’t remember thinking anything particularly ‘spiritual’ at this point, but on reflection perhaps this was just such a moment which ‘the spiritual significance of sharing food’ is all about. My Mum is still with us..
Thank you again for [the Gathering].
Peace be with you.
Yours sincerely
Barry Watson
Castlemilk Parish Church
The next Perth & Kinross Network meeting will take place at the Riverside Church on 23rd of May at 7pm. We will be taken on a guided walk by Fergus from the Perth & Kinross Ranger Service. We will meet at Riverside Church for the start of the walk and will return there about 8.30 – 8.45 for a cup of tea.
We hope to see you there!
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Help Christian Aid make a difference by getting yourself a bargain at the Falkirk and St Modan’s Parish Church book sale starting on Monday 6th of May.
