Dave is Director of Theology for A Rocha International, where he works to embed creation care into international Christian organizations, theological institutions, and mission movements. His past roles with A Rocha include being an International Trustee and the co-founder of A Rocha UK (with his wife Anne). He has a PhD from Cambridge University on biblical theology and biodiversity conservation, and has contributed to many books and articles, including Planetwise, available in six languages. Born and raised in India, Dave has a love for Indian food, Indian culture and Indian Christianity. Dave is also a qualified bird-ringer and loves birding, islands, running and mountains.
David Attenborough’s latest BBC documentary, ‘Extinction: the facts’ makes shocking but deeply compulsive watching. Viewers have spoken of being so overwhelmed as to switch off and return later, and being moved to anger and sleeplessness. I wasn’t as depressed as many, and will come back to why.
It’s not a word I used much previously, but ‘harrowing’ sums up the experience of the last weeks and months. To my mind it has connotations of deep emotional scarring and agonizing pain; perhaps because a harrow is a farming implement with metal blades, dragged across a field to break up and smooth out the soil.
I walked over and tossed vegetable scraps in the trash with a tinge of guilt at still not having a compost system set up. Then my soul turned to the Lord with arms crossed and heels dug in as if to say, “I can’t care about compost right now” or maybe, more accurately, “I refuse to care when so many people are hurting.”
To have dear friends who carry great wisdom is a profound blessing. I seek to glean all I can from every moment we get together. Miranda Harris has poured so much into my heart. Each time we’re together she propels me further on the path towards living into my calling.
It was going to be a good week. But it wasn’t. We were beginning to enjoy our new house and also had our younger son and his family visiting. Then midday Tuesday, the warm Provençal sun spilling over us, we received the appalling news that a terrible car accident in South Africa had taken the lives of our old A Rocha friends Chris and Susanna Naylor and with them Miranda Harris, leaving her husband Peter recovering in hospital.
On Monday 28th October Peter and Miranda Harris, co-founders of A Rocha, and Chris Naylor, A Rocha International CEO, together with his wife Susanna, were involved in an horrific car accident in Port Elizabeth, South Africa.
I remember being 13, and watching David Attenborough walking through a jungle, talking about its beauty and vulnerability, and I remember thinking that I was so glad that people like him were in charge, because he would save the rainforests. It feels as if we have been saving the rainforests for my whole life.
