July/August 2024 Message from an Elder

Dear Friends

In my set of prayers for May I included the following prayer:

for gentle rain; “Dear God, we thank you for the Summer Sun and warm days that we have, that ended a long cold wintry spring, but please could we have some gentle rain? No rain to cause floods please, but gentle rain to soak into the ground and refresh the crops. Please help the farmers that are facing drought conditions, wherever they are in the world, be it far away or close to home. Amen.”

It was much needed then and it did seem to be answered for a while! But unfortunately, we are (as I write this in mid-June) in need of this again. So hopefully, by the time you read this, the prayer will be answered again.

Which led me to thinking about climate, and how dependent we are on it, despite all our technological advances. Sometimes it seems that whatever we try to do to be green and ecologically friendly, it never seems to have an effect. One hears so many stories about how big companies are destroying the environment that we get discouraged and slacken in our attempts to counteract that.

Unfortunately, I think that probably most big companies and indeed governments, be they local councils or parliament, seem only to see the short-term monetary profit in their policies, and seem to be blind to the long-term problems that they are storing up for themselves and the general public.

I suspect the big problem is that there is so much pressure from higher up to accumulate wealth that the companies and the government are structured only for short-term gain. Unfortunately, that seems to be a reflection of society’s aims and goals.

Perhaps we all need to look at our own values and outlook on life, and see what we can do day to day to make the world a better place for the next generation – focus on the future rather than profit for the here and now.

Maybe the first step would be to start young and shift the focus in education, right from first days at school, from learning for learning’s sake, to an environmental focus. Make the school allotment the focus of the curriculum right from day one.

Schools must follow the curriculum set down by parliament, so perhaps we should lobby parliament to make gardening and growing crops for the school meals a permanent part of the curriculum. Hopefully, if it was done each day, the resultant produce would make the school mostly self-sufficient in food and it would only need to buy in the odd item.

Surely, most of the items needed for healthy meals can be grown in this country, either outside or in a greenhouse?

Hopefully, if we start young enough, the next generation will be better equipped to help the world become a better place for all. Hopefully it is not too late for them.

Yours in God, Helen