Don't Panic! - The Wave

More than 50,000 people came together to demand action on climate change today at The Wave, the biggest ever UK climate change march. The Wave and called for the Government to take much more urgent and effective action. People from all over the country dressed in blue encircled Parliament, calling on the UK government to settle for nothing less than a climate deal in Copenhagen that avoids dangerous climate change and protects the world’s poorest who are already feeling its effects... and I was there!

It was a very humbling event and began with an act of worship at Westminster Central Hall. Over 3000 of us gathered to pray and praise before protesting. Both Archbishop Rowan and Archbishop Vincent were present with Joel Edwards and others to lead us. You can hear Archbishop Rowan's address to us by clicking the photo of the service sheet below.


It seems to me that today's events are archetypally Advent focussed. ++Rowan spoke about not allowing the threat of climate change to fill us with fear, "...This is not about fear. This is not about Christians saying to the rest of the human race ‘it’s not time to panic’, ‘worry harder’. Because we know from experience that doesn’t actually change very much... In sharing the good news there is life for us, life for our neighbours and life for the creation in which God has places us and that is something of joy, not fear … we must act not out of fear but out of love and generosity... Our liberation is the world’s liberation. Good news for us should be good news for the whole of God’s world...” That sense of hope is surely a theme, if not the theme running through this holy season.

As part of the act of worship, supported by many different demoninations, we also gathered to praise God in song, and to pray - seeking forgivness for what we have or have not done to the Earth and it's peoples and to praise the Creator who brought all of this into being, and who is redeeming us into action. It was a very fitting way to begin our protest.


Prayer led me to protest - something of a new experience for me. And yet protest is surely also a theme running through this holy season. Advent calls us all to acknowledge before God that things in our world shouldn't be like this, and aacknowledging this before the powers that be, calling them to account, and prayerfully, expectantly, demanding that God should come and redeem the whole of Creation...















We used a version of a prayer by St. Theresa of Avilla:

Christ has no body now on earth but ours.
no hands but ours,
no feet but ours.
Ours are the eyes through
which Christ's compassion
is to look out on the earth.
Ours are the feet by which
he is to go about doing good.
And ours are the hands by
which he is bless us now. Amen