Peter and Miranda moved to Portugal in 1983 to establish and run A Rocha’s first field study centre. Together with their four children they lived at the centre for twelve years until 1995 when the work was given over to national leadership. They then moved to establish A Rocha France’s first centre near Arles, and lived there until 2010, providing coordination and giving leadership to the rapidly growing global movement. They are now back in the UK from where they work to support the A Rocha family around the world while being closer to their own, and not least their grandchildren. Their story is told in Under the Bright Wings (1993) and Kingfisher’s Fire (2008).
We join the many thousands of others who are grieving the loss of Eugene Peterson, who was a dearly-loved teacher and guide to so many of us in the A Rocha family around the world.
Most places that we know around the world have witnessed what has been called a ‘thinning of life’. How anyone lives experiences like this will, of course, depend on what kind of person they are. Miranda and I have an arts training and background, and at times our response to these multiple losses has been emotional and quite personal.
It is easy to get increasingly technical about the year in, year out, work of nature conservation. So, from time to time it is good to be reminded, in an entirely different register, of what we are dealing with, of what creation is.
For over a decade the two of us have had conversations about our joys and struggles in the work of fundraising and eventually decided to capture them in a book. Had we known that writing it would mean five years of work − we might have called a halt right there!
A report from the World Conservation Congress, 1–10 September 2016: ‘Until recently, the conservation movement has been overwhelmingly secular. But the sense here is that this is a moral and even a spiritual crisis…’
It will not be technology, but a fundamental change in our deepest desires that will be how we can help the earth’s species and habitats survive the devastating assault to which we are subjecting them. But we need to think carefully if we hope that we can simply learn to ‘love nature’. What might that actually mean – what is love, actually?
Beyond generosity in both business and personal culture, it would seem that there is one obvious thing that can be done which would give a double benefit. It is simply to resolve to create our wealth, and steward our savings, in ways that join up with our intentions of generosity.
I hope to begin a discussion about how we talk about… for now let’s call it ‘caring for creation’. ‘Stewardship’ isn’t a biblical word, and although ‘creation care’ is now generally accepted, like all terms, it has its limitations. Could we start a debate about how we can best describe our task and be intentional about our language?
If anyone has earned the right to comment about monetizing nature it is Christiaan Bakkes: he spent twenty years in Namibian conservation organizations helping it to happen. But at the heart of the enterprise was a contradiction which is undoing all the gains of the previous fifteen years. Now the wildlife is being decimated.
St Helena is a sobering place to ecological eyes. In the early 17th century the Portuguese landed goats and in a hundred years they had reduced huge areas of lush landscape to bare rock. In the centuries that followed, we have made the world itself an island where the goats of hyper-individualism, corporate greed and short-term political ambition are roaming more or less unchecked.
