Barbara Mearns has been involved with A Rocha since its beginnings, and for many years ran the A Rocha International office from her home in SW Scotland. Now retired, she writes an irregular blog about local wildlife at mearnswildlife.wordpress.com and spends as much time as possible recording dragonflies, butterflies, moths and birds. With her husband, Richard, she has researched the lives of many early naturalists, most recently for their updated Biographies for Birdwatchers (2022) see mearnsbooks.com.
I wrote the lines below after listening to myself, on a Friday night, wearily moan that I was just an office drudge. By Sunday, after a two-day break from the computer, a good sermon and a bit of birding, I had a different perspective.
Noah’s been in the news recently. Darren Aronofsky’s eponymous film has caused controversy and discussion by deliberately playing fast and loose with the biblical account. Critics have mostly loved it whilst the viewing public have been more ambivalent. Knowing that Noah was next in my blog series on biblical eco-characters, I reckoned I had to see the movie!
In these days drawing near to Easter I am mindful of Christ’s work of redemption – of His design to reconcile ‘all things’ to Himself, as Paul says in Colossians. His work of redemption not only transforms human lives, but all of creation as we participate with him in his reconciling work. Allow me to illustrate.
This calls for a bit of imagination… Picture a meeting, beyond the limits of time and space, between the first human and the most famous critic of Christianity’s environmental credentials. Let’s eavesdrop on what they might say to each other…
The news that Indonesia’s senior Muslim clerical body has issued a fatwa against illegal hunting and the poaching of endangered species has caused considerable media interest. The story serves to illustrate that it is now mainstream for conservation organizations to understand that religious groups can play a central role in achieving conservation goals.
Job may seem a strange character to launch a new series of biblical eco-heroes. After all, his story is famously depressing: a tale of undeserved suffering, humiliation and the apparent absence of God. Yet the book of Job also contains the longest passage about non-human creation in the Bible.
If you are on Olympics overload and are hankering for a little talk show blather, check out Context with Lorna Dueck’s “God’s Gardeners” episode. Margaret Atwood claims the spotlight for most of the show, but then yours truly and my handsome husband Markku join Margaret and Lorna for the last third of the show.
In a disintegrating world we tend to live disintegrated lifestyles, with beliefs, values, and lifestyle choices in separate compartments. This can lead to a huge guilt trip. In ecological terms I know I’m hypocritical. But guilt doesn’t help. Instead, here are some positive suggestions… and I’m speaking to myself here.
I long for a transformed, honest food system in which there will be an end to economics characterized by ‘skimping the measure, boosting the price and cheating with dishonest scales’… Yet the supermarket mantra of ‘get big or get out’ certainly seems to be winning the war right now, and our mission here appears to be ‘impossible’. But is it?
Today’s consumer culture takes a love of new starts to extremes. Fed up with your clothing, computer, phone or furniture? Chuck them out and buy something new. The New Testament is full of ‘new heaven’, ‘new earth’, ‘new Jerusalem’, ‘new creation’. As I grew up I assumed ‘new’ meant exactly what it means in the culture I’m surrounded by.
