Imagining a Future of Abundance

View from the Pew is a monthly column I write for Newslink, the magazine of the Diocese of Limerick. This piece appeared in the issue for July/August 2009.

It cannot go on.
I think in our heart of hearts most of us realise that we cannot continue to live the way we are living now. The global civilisation we have built over the last 50 years – within my lifetime - is starting to falter. We are moving into a time of crisis. In the modern jargon, our way of life is unsustainable.

We are using up finite resources at an ever faster rate. The most obvious is fossil energy – oil, gas and coal – but there are others, including water and fertile soil. Already we have used up about half the oil on the planet; gas is following fast behind, and coal will inevitably follow, if rather later. The era of cheap energy is over.

Our agriculture and industries are damaging and poisoning the planet on which we live. The carbon dioxide we emit by burning fossil fuels and cutting down forests is causing global warming, about which I have written before. Scientists advise us that at best this will be very costly, and at worse catastrophic, both for us and for all the species we share the planet with.

Growth and consumption drive this crisis.
The global economy is focussed solely on them – when they stop for any reason we have a recession such as we are experiencing now. So governments try to stimulate investment to produce more stuff, so they can levy taxes to pay for the services we all want; and corporations try to boost sales to get rid of the stuff they make, so they can sell more and make bigger profits. Advertising encourages people to desire more. Fashion encourages them to throw away the old to buy the new. People are thus encouraged to work ever harder to earn the money to keep consuming and throwing away. But all too often this is at the expense of their relationships, their communities, and even their own health, as well as the planet. Children see less and less of their parents; volunteering and community spirit dwindle; unhealthy lifestyles make more people dangerously obese. And for all the increased consumption of stuff, people are no happier than they were - even in important respects less happy, studies show.

We have no option but to change. If we do so sensibly we can preserve this wonderful planet, so that our children and our children’s children can continue to enjoy our bountiful inheritance. But if we don’t, change will be forced on us by chaos and catastrophe. If you are one of those who doubt this, you owe it to yourself and your children to investigate the issues. A good starting point would be to watch Al Gore’s movie An Inconvenient Truth (on DVD from Amazon, price £4.98) and Annie Leonard’s The Story of Stuff (20 min to view free at http://www.storyofstuff.com/).

The crisis is spiritual
Many people look for technology to fix the crisis of our time, and I’m sure that will be part of the solution. But I am convinced we need more than that. In the wise words of Alastair McIntosh, a Quaker and Professor of Human Ecology at the University of Strathclyde,

The deep work must be this: to learn to live more abundantly with less, to rekindle community, and to serve fundamental human need instead of worshipping at the altars of greed.

Greed drives you and me to grasp more and more, to keep up with the Jones’s, as we ignore the damage caused to neighbours, the poor and the planet. Greed is at the root of the crisis. And greed is an old fashioned sin to which all human beings have been liable since the dawn of time. Our Christian faith has a lot to teach us about sin and how to overcome it. Jesus calls us to repent and believe in the good news, as the kingdom of God has come near. But how exactly should we respond to Jesus’s call in the face of this crisis?

I think we must all prayerfully seek answers to this question. Just as God loves variety, there will no doubt be a great variety of answers. But I believe that people in every parish should do so, and by God’s grace they are already finding their own answers. Here is a story about what a group of us in the Nenagh Union have been doing. Please let us know your stories!

Nenagh Carbon Watchers
For our Lent course this year a small multi-denominational group followed the Omega Climate Change course (see http://omegaclimate.wordpress.com/). It is stimulating, focussed on the scientific facts complemented by a little theology, and I heartily recommend it - if other parishes are interested in running it I would be glad to share our experience. We looked at why it is urgent to act now; how big our individual carbon footprints are and how to reduce them; global justice issues; how quality of life can be good in a low-carbon society; and how we might take action.

At the end we were so convinced of the need to act now that we decided to continue meeting as the Nenagh Carbon Watchers group. Our first aim is to support each other in our efforts to reduce our household carbon emissions – repentance must be personal, and each one must confront his or her own lifestyle. It should save us money as well as helping the planet. And we also aim to promote in our community the changes in lifestyle needed to flourish in the inevitable low-carbon, sustainable future.

We took the initiative to ask the election candidates standing in the Nenagh area to outline their positions and tell us what they would do if elected. We published their responses on our website (http://nenaghcarbonwatchers.blogspot.ie/), and local newspapers also printed the questions and a report on the responses. We were pleased to note that all who responded were positive – the need for change seems to be so widely agreed now that all are in favour of it, like motherhood!

A Future of Abundance
It is difficult to imagine what a low-carbon, sustainable future will be like, except in terms of what we must give up. It is easy to see such a future as poorer, greyer and less exciting than the present. It is tempting to fall into the trap of denial, to do nothing in the hope that the prospect will go away. But if we do we will be unable to make the sensible choices and we will be forced to suffer chaotic change.

I think we need urgently to re-imagine a future of abundance, and to do so as communities, so that we can begin to create it together in common purpose. Because the future can be one of abundance, and more fulfilling than today. What we need is a vision of the kingdom of God for the 21st century.

The Transition movement is one promising approach. This aims to stimulate groups within a local community to come together to envisage what must happen for the community to flourish in a sustainable future, to begin to plan for it, and to encourage stakeholders including local councils to buy into the vision. Started in Kinsale and piloted in Totnes in England, this model is rapidly being adopted in hundreds of communities in Britain and Ireland. You can read about in The Transition Handbook written by its founder Rob Hopkins (Amazon, price £8.28). The Carbon Watchers are actively mulling over whether and how to start a Transition Town initiative in Nenagh.

And I feel sure we can learn from the Eco Village in Cloughjordan, where construction started early this year (see http://www.thevillage.ie/).

Summer has arrived!

Oh, what a gorgeous weekend we have just had! I think we can finally declare Summer has arrived at last, after the wettest May I think I ever remember. And that is as it should be. Last Thursday was Ascension Day, which I always think of as the first day of summer, perhaps because it was a school holiday and we were allowed out by ourselves to explore. I must have been just 13 when I went with a friend the same age on the train to Arundel. We boated on the River Arun in front of the Castle, and ate chinese goosberries - now called Kiwi fruit, but then a rarity - with our picnic.

Beautiful Borrisnafarney Church

After lashing with rain until noon on Saturday, the skies cleared and we went to beautiful Borrisnafarney Church to celebrate the wedding of my good friends' daughter Kirsten to Christian, followed by the christening of their baby daughter Zoe. The tiny church was full of children, and Paddy Anglican really needed his stentorian voice to make himself heard. I was fascinated by the fashionable, skimpy, feathery hats the ladies wore. Afterwards we were royally feasted at the Yacht Club by the bride's father Jack. And to cap it all, Leinster won the Heiniken cup!

Kirsten & Christian celebrate in the Roller

Zoe, Kirsten & Christian

Sunday broke with clear skies and news that the Volvo yachts had arrived in Galway in the early hours, with Green Dragon in 3rd place. I had a beautiful drive with Susanna to Shinrone and Aghancon to lead Matins - you can find the address on child abuse and John's kosmos-world here. This was the last of my regular jaunts to the Shinrone Union, because their new Rector will arrive in June. Afterwards Jean Talbot treated us to a superb Sunday roast lunch. On our return I should settled down to course work, but in the lovely sunshine I decided I just had to get to grips with the Drive Border, cutting back an overgrown Spanish broom, pulling nettles and giving Penstemon Ruby Garnet a hair cut.

The Drive Border

The Nenagh Carbon Watchers is a group of individuals concerned about global warming who decided to continue meeting after last Lent's Omega Climate Change course. We wrote to the local and European election candidates with questions about their views on transition to a low carbon society. On Monday I pulled together the responses we received - I would have hoped for more - to write an article for the local newspapers. The candidates all support reducing carbon emissions and taking initiatives to help our communities flourish in a low-carbon future. It is good to know that the need for action is now so widely agreed that all are in favour of motherhood! I also put the responses up on a website - http://nenaghcarbonwatchers.blogspot.com/ - so that they are now a matter of public record.

View from the Pew - Tilling and Keeping

View from the Pew is a regular column I write for Newslink, the Limerick & Killaloe Diocesan Magazine. This article appears in the May issue.

What a wonderful, blessed place the Burren is!

I jumped at the chance of a day trip to introduce my wife’s Finnish colleague Paula and her friend Anu to this unique landscape. I suppose we each have our personal dream landscapes on which our spirits feed. This is one of mine. I’ve spent many long days walking its green roads in all weathers, climbing its bare hills, and visiting its monuments, by myself and with those I love.

We were blessed with the weather - glorious early April sunshine, an invigorating breeze, and just enough cloud to give depth to the sky. We had a magical time. I feel sure the magic will draw Paula back when she moves to Limerick in the autumn. Here are some highlights:

• At Kilmacduagh, beside the ruined cathedral and leaning round tower, a lady lovingly tending a grave regaled us with legends. The founder, St Colman, begged a site for a monastery from King Guaire, of Dunguaire near Kinvara. The King agreed, but told Colman he must walk away from Dunguaire until his belt fell to the ground. At Kilmacduagh Colman’s belt finally broke, and there he set up his monastery. Guaire was wise to send Colman as far away as possible, I think, since the holy man could be an awkward neighbour. St Colman was celebrating mass on Easter day after his Lenten retreat in a Burren cave. Hungry, with no food, he prayed for a good dinner to break his fast. Immediately a band of angels descended on Dunguaire and carried off the King’s own banquet for Colman to feast on!
  
• We walked the green road from Corker Pass around Abbey Hill, past Patrick’s Holy Well with its votive offerings, to Burren RC Church. What a walk: blackthorn sparking silver in the shelter of the flanking walls; on one side a patchwork of green and brown fields stretching down and away to the waters of Galway bay; on the other rising terraces of grey rock, and arching overall the blue sky.
  
• Hungry from walking, we lunched at Linnane’s of New Quay on a feast of native oysters, prawn cocktail and crab sandwiches, with wholemeal bread. Afterwards, at nearby peaceful Corcomroe Abbey, beautifully dedicated by its Cistercian builders to Sancta Maria de Petra Fertilis - St Mary of the Fertile Rock - we admired harebells carved on the capitals of the chancel arch.
  
• We scrambled up the craggy limestone hill at Black Head, across the old green road, searching for the dry stone walls of the fort, Cathair Dhúin Irghuis. It’s always higher than I remember, over 600 feet: constantly expecting to see it over the next brow, I start to worry I’m lost when I don’t. But suddenly there it is, perched below the hilltop on a wide platform from which its stones were levered, walls still standing in places to nearly 20 feet. Built sometime between 400 and 1200 AD, no one knows just when, it was surely meant for a look out, since it commands a gigantic view: west over the Aran Islands to the vast Atlantic; north to Connemara and the Twelve Pins; and south to the cliffs of Moher.



• Though too early for the famous Burren wild flowers, of which the Spring Gentian is the emblem, I found Early Purple orchids, so much smaller than those which grow in inland woods, gleaming alongside primroses and violets in sheltered hollows.

The Burren landscape is not wild at all – it is hand made.
For millennia human beings lived here, working in sympathy with nature, not against it. They tilled and kept this land, as Genesis tells us God put Adam in the Garden of Eden to do. They have left us traces of their presence, often signs of their faith, but in forming the landscape they did not ravish it, wisely preserving the fragile ecosystem which they lived in and were part of.

We are not so wise today. On the hill above Black Head I found cans and beer bottles thoughtlessly discarded, ugly and a danger to stock. Fanore beach is littered with plastic trash washed in on the tide. Mass tourism degrades what visitors come to experience: the Poul na Brone dolmen has been roped off by the OPW, walls keep people away from the Cliffs of Moher, and steer them to the expensive visitor centre.

Wherever there is enough soil, farmers have grubbed up the species-rich rough grazing their ancestors formed, to make rye-grass swards which glow emerald with nitrogen from bags. I mourn the loss of the bio-diversity, but I hope those who have borrowed and invested so much will make a sustainable living from their fields. I fear they may not, when fertiliser and energy become scarce and dear in future. If farmers no longer till and keep this place, what will become of it? It is only their patient work with crops and animals that maintain its integrity and beauty. Already large areas lie abandoned, degrading to hazel scrub.

Sustainable Living
Sustainable is the fad word of the moment – I even heard a Minister talk about a sustainable budget the other day! Though the word may be ugly, the idea it signifies is beautiful – sustainable living is living in balance with the world and all it contains, so that our children will be as bountifully endowed as we are. We have not been doing that for a generation or more.

The gathering crisis of climate change means this must change, and change urgently. If you are interested in an explicitly Christian view, you can do much worse than read an excellent new book, Christianity, Climate Change and Sustainable Living, by Nick Spencer & Robert White (£6.99 from Amazon.). Drawing from science, sociology, economics and theology, the authors make the case that Christians must respond and can make a distinctive contribution, and they propose practical actions at the personal, community, national and international levels.

As an example of practical action, a multi-denominational group of around a dozen of us followed the Omega Climate Change Course in Nenagh during Lent (for more details email me at joc_sanders@iol.ie, or see http://omegaclimate.wordpress.com/). What we learned made us want to continue meeting together as the Nenagh Carbon Watchers. As a group we plan 1st to support each other as we monitor and reduce our personal carbon emissions (both helping the planet and saving ourselves money!), 2nd to use the European and local elections to raise awareness of the issues, and 3rd to explore the potential for our communities of the Transition Towns initiative.

But sustainable living is about more than just climate change. It is about creating vibrant relationships of love and respect: with our fellow human beings, with the world we inhabit and its web of life, and ultimately with God, who has given everything to us. And it is about protecting and handing on our dream landscapes like the Burren too.