Earthquaker Issue 101
The United Reformed Church at the top of my road in Northampton is the embodiment of good community outreach underpinned by its A Rocha bronze accreditation in the Eco Church programme. I have taken part in some events they have organised with an emphasis on widening awareness of the environmental crisis. Through this I was asked if I would like to be a Quaker presence in their group loosely known as the Ecu-Eco group. I have the blessing of my Local Meeting and have found a happy and congenial home with them. The mission is to try to have an environment activist within as many congregations as we can engage with – sadly some still seem to regard this as an issue that does not concern their worship. Previous events that I attended but was not involved in organising included the participation of other local groups and co-operatives, and local councillors.
This summer we planned to hold an event at the end of July with the above name, in front of the museum in our local park. The title caused a discussion about whether we might be seen as Creationists but we felt most people would read it as we intended – a light green poster decorated with bees. We set up tables with environment themed jenga, displays about green churchyards, wild church, Green Christian, seed planting, Eco-church and nature trails. There were activities for children such as making flowers out of plastic bottles and decorated boats also out of plastic bottles.
My contribution was to display panels made by Northamptonshire Area Meeting’s own Loving Earth project with Advices and Queries 42 written alongside. I also brought some textile work made by children at LM and copies of A & Qs and the Loving Earth books. I was pleased that it garnered a lot of interest.
Most of the people who stopped by were themselves from the local churches and maybe other attractions elsewhere in the park drew most of the other visitors – the park is well used especially at weekends – but we packed away feeling that we had achieved what we had aimed for, and ready to start the next event, which will be a special worship gathering to celebrate the Season of Creation during September.
I missed the de-briefing committee meeting on 13 August, as I had knee surgery the day before and was understandably out of action, but I look forward to reading the minutes. I feel this small group is doing the best anyone can these days, making small waves which hopefully result in the butterfly effect.
Angela Atkins