Chris has a BSc and PhD in geology and has worked as a consultant geologist for oil companies and as a university and college lecturer. He has however always been very much involved in environmental issues. He spent a total of eight years in Lebanon (1980–84, 1994–96) and during the second period was in part responsible for founding A Rocha Lebanon. He and his wife Alison now live in southern France midway between the two A Rocha France centres. Chris is on the Board of Trustees of A Rocha France and takes part in teaching weeks at Courmettes and in leading a popular natural history tour of the estate. In such spare time as he has, he likes to write both fiction and popular theology and has written a number of books with J. John, most recently Jesus Christ: The Truth.
This April there were unseasonable storms in Cyprus. Travelling around to see if there was any potential for an A Rocha project, I was struck by the contrast between the resulting shadow and the sunlight. That combination of light and dark seems to typify the island.
It was a transformed class that reconvened under the shade of the ash tree a couple of hours later. It was like conducting an orchestra to establish the learning objectives of the lesson; the wetland provided invaluable services to the human communities of the Bekaa, it contained rare and beautiful species and it needed protection. We didn’t stop there; questions tumbled from the class all the way back to the bus.
Kenya has been in the news this month because of the massacre at Garissa University. Supporters have been asking about any impact here on the coast, where A Rocha has its field study centre, Mwamba. We feel perfectly safe here and are keen to welcome visitors.
The tent was dark but warm inside, a simple wood stove providing a flickering light. The bitter, piping-hot coffee was in an elaborate brass pot. Most of the year they lived in Homs in Syria but each spring, and sometimes in the autumn, they would get the tent out of storage and make the trek to the Bekaa for extra work.
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.
After explaining that I was going to be the new science teacher at the large secondary school in the valley (which seemed to explain my weird views on animal life), I was escorted by a gaggle of boys and young men into the wetland proper, on the trail of Yusef.
Taking care of creation is sometimes more than mere words and issues. For some, it is a matter of life and death. Such was the case for Honduran preacher and community leader José Matilde Bonilla.
After three years and 36 blogs, I’m taking a short break from writing for Planetwise, so it seems appropriate to conclude this series with Jesus. So let’s turn for a moment and ask who Jesus was and is in relation to the whole created order.
The “reality” of the situation is grim. But, like a figure-ground image, what we first see isn’t all there is. Viewed with human eyes, the challenges facing the planet look insurmountable. The eyes of faith, however, see a different picture; they see more.
The Magnificat is often associated with beautiful, traditional music, but this can conceal the passionate words of a young teenager who is full of radical hopes for a new world order (…) In his mercy, God will overthrow proud rulers, reject the wealthy and complacent and raise up the poor, rejected and marginalized.
