Thought for the Week - 4th September 2022

Dear Friends, 

September 1st to October 4th is designated in the church calendar as the ‘Season of Creation’ or sometimes called ‘Creation Time’. It gives an opportunity for us all to renew our relationship with our Creator and all creation through celebration, conversion and commitment together, joining with sisters and brothers in the ecumenical family in prayer and action for our common home. It was in 1991 that the Ecumenical Patriarch Dimitrios I suggested that 1st September, the first day of the Orthodox Church’s year, be observed as a day ‘of protection for the natural environment’, and this was later widened by the European Christian Environmental Network to the season we know today recommending that it be a period ‘dedicated to prayer for the protection of Creation and for the promotion of sustainable lifestyles that reverse our contribution to climate change’. We can often think that information about the changing climate is something of a recent phenomenon say within the last 30-40 years, but I was interested to find the summer a newspaper clipping from a New Zealand paper, The Rodney & Otamatea Times dated 14th August 1912, where in its ‘Science Notes and News’ section the headline read, ‘Coal Consumption Affecting Climate’. It went on to say, ‘The furnaces of the world are now burning about 2,000,000,000 tons of coal a year. When this is burned, uniting with oxygen, it adds about 7,000,000,000 tons of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere yearly. This tends to make the air a more effective blanket for the earth and to raise its temperature’. We’ve seen some of the hottest temperatures ever recorded in the UK this summer and hosepipe bans are in place in many areas because of the lack of rain over the last few months. And it is not only in the UK that we are seeing extreme weather patterns but all over the world. All these things should be of concern to us, particularly as we are called as God’s children to care for and protect the planet we live on. ‘Creation Time’ gives us an opportunity to become better informed about the issues, read and do our own thinking, pray and act. This year’s ‘Season of Creation’ resource booklet says, ‘may this season of prayer and action be a time to Listen to the Voice of Creation, so that our lives in words and deeds proclaim good news for all the Earth’. 

Grace and peace,

Neil

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