Pie and Coffee 
Environment
The Yerevan Office of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe reports that “Armenia’s entire stock of 872 tons of [the rocket fuel] mélange has been successfully recycled into an environmentally safe fertilizer, which was then provided to local farmers at no cost.” A modern case of swords into ploughshares. The project was part-funded by the United States of America.
God, on this Sunday after the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity,
we again thank you for your Church;
and for our sisters and brothers united in your son, Jesus Christ,
who taught us to pray to you as our father in heaven.
Lord, in your mercy,
hear our prayer.
Read the rest of this entry »
My friends are publishing books faster than I can read them these days, which is probably a good thing; to wit:
On Saturday, I went to a day-conference ‘What is the world coming to? Ecological crisis and Christian hope’ at Redcliffe College, organized by the John Ray Initiative. Speakers included Ernest Lucas, Margot Hodson, and Dave Bookless.
On Sunday evening, we had a united service at the cathedral Christ Church, Oxford, for the centenary Week of Prayer for Christian Unity, with Bishop William Kenney (Catholic Auxiliary Bishop of Birmingham) preaching.
As I mentioned earlier, my landlord decided to have the apple tree in the back-garden felled last weekend.
(The centenary Week of Prayer for Christian Unity starts today.)
2007-02-08
2007-04-24 Read the rest of this entry »
Or: œcumenism in Oxford; and trees. Last Friday, journalist Eric Albert of the French newspaper La Croix interviewed several of us about œcumenism in Oxford, for a series for the centenary Week of Prayer for Christian Unity, which starts this Friday. La Croix is a daily paper of Catholic foundation, with circulation about 100 000. Those interviewed include: Bede Gerrard (Orthodox; county œcumenical officer), Hugh Lee (city rector, Anglican), Stephen Platt (Russian Orthodox), Rosemary (layperson at Blackfriars, the Catholic Dominican friary), me (Église Reformée Unie), and several others. We had fun discussing. Expect to read something about this in French soon.
Tree-related news: Earlier in the month, there was some brouhaha about a tree in Bonn Square in the city centre. Now that tree is gone. ¶ Last Wednesday, my friend Oxfordshire County Councillor Deborah Glass Woodin was wrongly arrested whilst trying to ascertain the legality of some tree-felling attempts by Oxford City Council in the nearby Westgate area (but not at the same site as Bonn Square). ¶ Later in the weekend, my landlord decided to chop off the apple tree in the back-garden (more on this later, with photographs perhaps).
For this Saturday: have a happy feast-day of Saint Wulfstan, Bishop of Worcester, patron of vegetarians.
Will the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Bali this week give us Contraction and Convergence? Then, will it be implemented as carbon rationing or personal carbon trading? Will the decresing annual ration give a form of demurrage (negative interest; with thanks to Cllr Dr Rupert Read)? By the way, the Joint Public Issues Team of the Baptist Union of Great Britain, the Methodist Church, and the United Reformed Church urges Britons to write their Members of Parliament about the Climate Change Bill.
Following Clive Lord et al.’s idea about citizen’s income, in this issue of New Left Review, Robin Blackburn proposes a universal pension of 1 USD per day. Can we have a universal ‘human rights’ income, on the strength of Article 25.1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights? (Dream on.)
In this week, as European Union heads of governments signed the Lisbon Treaty, I read the draft constitution of Corsica by Jean-Jacques Rousseau (with thanks to Dr Bob Purdie).
‘Home economics’ is a redundant phrase.
This Sunday afternoon, after singing the wonderful hymn by Isaac Watts, “The heavens declare thy glory, Lord”, I went with my friend Martin of Sage to Saint Margaret’s Church, Lewknor, where they are hosting a “LOAF Fayre” along with an afternoon service. LOAF stands for “locally produced, organically grown, animal friendly, fairly traded”.
The church is now serving as a gateway to the Aston Rowant National Nature Reserve. This project is supported by the Diocese of Oxford and the Christian nature conservation organisation A Rocha.
Brother Samuel SSF of the Hilfield Project/Friary preached on the theme of “Living Lightly on God’s Earth”, and gave us three tips after Saint Francis: courtesy, know your place, and give thanks and praise (“sing in tune”). He mentioned the early Italian vernacular hymn by Francis, which we are familiar in the English as “All creatures of our God and King”. It came from his Canticle of Brother Sun.
This weekend I went to Yorkshire, for Saturday evensong at York Minster, and for Sunday service at Saltaire United Reformed Church in a World Heritage Site.
In unrelated news, my friend Chris Goodall’s calculation “If it’s only greenhouse gas emissions you are worried about, then it may be better to drive than to walk” got picked up by the Times on Saturday, and in turn by Rocketboom on Monday. Chris is the parliamentary candidate for the Green Party of England and Wales in the constituency Oxford West and Abingdon.
Zhèng Xiè 鄭燮, commonly known as Zhèng Bǎnqiáo 鄭板橋, was a Chinese scholar of the Qīng Dynasty who fluorished during the reign of the Qiánlóng Emperor. His “Letter to younger brother Zhèng Mò” 寄弟墨書, which I translate below, was included in my textbook for classical Chinese when I was in high school in Taiwan(!). Rumour has it that the famous Lin Yutang had also translated the same letter into English, which I fear is still in copyright. In any case, I loosely translate/paraphrase here, with the benefit of having read some Karl Marx, John Seymour, and Derek Wall. It is an essay that affirms the primacy of primary production (agriculture) for self-sufficiency and food sovereignty, equitable land management, and indigenous eco-socialism in China.
Dear Mò,
I am very glad to read, in your letter of the 26th day of the tenth month, that our newly-bought field yielded 25 tonnes of grain in the autumn. Now we can be farmers until we leave this world.
I think that farmers, the primary producers, are first-class people between the heaven and the earth. In contrast, we scholar-bureaucrats should be the last among the four classes, ranking after farmers, craftsmen, and merchants. Read the rest of this entry »
This afternoon Grace Ross and I went down to Worcester’s water treatment plant, and I taped Karla Sangrey giving us a tour. It was fun checking out all the different equipment. Didn’t smell too bad, either.
With a little luck, a short movie about Worcester’s water treatment situation will come out of this. With a lot of luck, some fresh new ideas for dealing with the situation will emerge.
At present, the EPA is unhappy with the level of some of the chemicals coming out of this plant into the Blackstone River. (Worcester is the headwaters of the Blackstone.) It looks like the city will sue the EPA to keep from upgrading the plant, as such an upgrade would be very expensive.
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