Meeting for Sufferings: ‘Courage to Save the Planet’
Devon Area Meeting sent a minute regarding the 'Courage to Save the Planet' initiative
Devon Area Meeting sent a minute to Meeting for Sufferings for adoption and publicising among Friends.
Minute 55/2014: ‘Courage to Save the Planet’ suggests that Friends are asked to hold politicians in the Light for a minute each evening at 9.00pm, ‘seeking to influence them to have the courage and leadership to take necessary actions to address climate change’.
The idea came from an Exeter Friend who took a university course on ‘Climate Change, Challenges and Solutions’ earlier this year. The course left her ‘increasingly alarmed at the extent to which humans have altered the climate system, and continue to do so at an accelerating pace’.
The Friend began searching for ‘a meaningful, effective response to the situation’. She remembered ‘The Silent Minute’, a 1940 initiative led by Wellesley Tudor Pole that involved people listening for the chimes of Big Ben on the radio at 9.00pm, then spending a minute to think or pray for peace.
She adapted this to the ‘Blue Marble Minute’, inspired by the poem of the same name by Joe Miller (see ‘Thought for the Week’).
The initiative evolved into ‘Courage to Save the Planet’. Its organisers hope that significant steps towards halting climate change can be made before the twenty-first International Climate Conference, to be held in Paris late next year.
The clerks suggested that the minute be taken back to Area Meetings. A Friend later said that he was disappointed at how the minute was ‘disposed of’.
Comments
Please login to add a comment
