Eco-Congregation Scotland is taking a baton to Paris, to express the demands of churches in Scotland that negotiators agree to a deal that promotes global climate justice. The baton, which will pass around churches in Scotland throughout the summer of 2015, will carry the hopes and aspirations of Christians across Scotland for climate justice to be central to any agreement reached at the conference.
What is happening ?
Greyfriars Recycling of Wood have made a baton for Eco-congregation Scotland from recycled church furniture.
The baton bears the message Time for Climate Justice: Churches in Scotland Demand a Deal in Paris, December 2015.
The relay was launched by Aileen McLeod MSP, Minister for Environment, Climate Change and Land Reform at our Annual Gathering on 25th of April:
In December 2015 the baton will be taken to the UN climate change conference in Paris to share our message with other churches and delegates.
See where the baton is going
You can have a look at this map and calendar of where the baton is going to get an idea of when it will be in your area. There are two batons in order to cover as much as Scotland as possible (which is why it will appear that it is in two places at once on many dates!). Green markers indicate where the baton has travelled so far; red markers indicate where it will be going.
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If you are a local church congregation you can book the baton to visit your church when it is passing through your area. As the route is dependent on who signs up please contact us as soon as possible to get your name on the list. Please send an email to manager@ecocongregationscotland.org (or use our contact form here) stating the name of your congregation, its location, plus your name and phone number. We will get in touch to arrange a date.
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We ask that all congregations receiving the baton do the following:
Fill out one of the postcards and post it to us so we can collect them together and give to the Climate Change minister to show where the baton has been.
Contact the local press (newspaper or maybe local radio).
Put an article in your own church magazine.
Contact other local congregations (of all denominations) and ask them to take part.
When you receive the baton there will be a pack containing printed information. If any of this is missing you can download a copy here:
Ss Ninian and Triduana RC Church, Edinburgh received their Bronze award earlier this year. The assessors noted that the parish is active in making the link between faith, justice and creation. They were also impressed by their garden transformation, restoring their garden to an eco-garden, incorporating a sitting area for social/quiet space, a meadow area, and a pond area. Their church garden revamp included:
New benches installed from repurposed pews
5 swift boxes added
A pond created from a repurposed old school sink
Water butt installed from a repurposed grey bin
Bug hotel created from a repurposed old shopping trolley
Winter home for frogs and bulbs added by local school children
Leaf mould pile created
Plants added from cuttings from parishioners gardens
Augustine United Church (Edinburgh) recently designed and distributed an environmental survey for members of their congregation. They have kindly shared their survey with us for others to adapt and use in their own Eco-congregations. Feel free to download and edit the survey for use in your church.
In gathering material for Season of Creation, I’m sorry that I don’t actually have any budget to ‘reward’ contributors. It’s on a ‘riches in heaven’ basis, and I can certainly assure every contributor of my own deep personal gratitude, as someone who, for now, receives the means of their livelihood from work on what should be an indissoluble connection between Christian faith and human care for the rest of the Creation we are.
In the course of this work, I’ve been deeply moved by the simple realisation that, in Bible languages, the spiritualising distinction made in modern English between ‘sky’ and ‘heaven’ is meaningless. That whatever else you mean or need to mean by ‘heaven’, the skyness of heaven should always be kept in view: that God’s Creation of ‘Heaven and Earth’ is one unified Creation.
John Bell wrote a piece a few years ago about astronauts ‘looking down on heaven’ from an orbiting platform. If you can get your head round that, the rest will make sense.
People do love to get carried away with the immensity of the Universe, though this can be a distraction from this particular ‘Sky & Soil’ or ‘Earth Sea and Sky’ of the planet which is shared as home by such a mind-expanding diversity of interdependent life, but the bottle-garden of planet Earth is what we’re given, what we’re part of, what we share. Not as property, but as home.
This is why, a couple of years ago, I grumpily took issue with an internet ‘meme’ from Archbishop Justin Welby, in which he suggested that “Prayer is not about sending requests into the sky.It’s about allowing God to make us more like Jesus Christ.”
No problem with the second half, but the inadvertent implication, that the “sky” is some sort of neutral and pointless dumping ground, rather grated. And indeed, much of what EcoCongregations engage in does involve “requests to the sky”. Or giving, for the good of Creation.
It’s also why, when we do engage, prayerfully and practically in ‘climate’ or ‘nature’ actions, both our of love for the Earth and our fellow creatures, and in response to the crises of nature, climate, and biodiversity, there’s a very real sense, even if it may not be measurable, in which we add to the ‘riches of heaven’ in the health of the climate, the treasures we enjoy and share in a breath of fresh air.
One example Jesus gives is a cup of cold water. Water, of course, is part of the Water Cycle – well-known to the Prophet Isaiah who mentioned it in the same breath as the endlessly recycled and repurposed Word of God (ch 55). That wee bit of reality does help to add meaning, and something of the ‘reward’ Jesus was quite happy to mention, to the horror of those dear folks among us who try so perversely hard to make out that Christian good works have to be without benefit to those who do them.
Perhaps a mid-way is to observe that doing good certainly does us good, in terms of mental health, and spiritually, even if, by the standards of our culture, it may not always be “profitable”.
A while ago, I took the decision to sponsor the planting of a tree in acknowledgment of the carbon impact of each of the video sermons, of which I’m probably making about 12 a year.
It’s a personal action, very much a minimum and in no sense an ‘offset’, in the way which is used by our society to justify the continuation of deadly lifestyles based on burning fossil fuels. Business as usual with fossil fuels is not excused by the odd sapling. But if you fly and plant trees, why not stop flying and carry on with the trees?
Since my wee dozen added to the EcoCongregation Grove is not a ‘secret’ you’ve discovered, but something I’ve shared, yes, ‘I’ve blown that aspect of my reward already’, but it’s not for David. Rather, this is on behalf of the community of our movement, EcoCongregation Scotland. A movement which will only continue to exist due to the sacrificial giving of members and member churches. But a movement which enriches the lives of Scottish Christians -and therefore their communities, human and otherwise.
I’ve just paid for three trees in acknowledgment of my Advent reflections, filmed at locations of pumped-storage hydro power stations. Those words don’t sound glamorous. But they raise questions about the cost of our decisions to the landscape, to nature, to the Earth, to the Heavens.
For me. nonetheless, this grain of reality: a tiny addition to the riches of the Sky, for the good of all makes me smile. As should every ‘climate’ action you undertake, especially as a congregation.