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News  »  From the Vicar 9/2022



   From the Vicar 9/2022    14 September, 2022

From Reverend Teresa Stewart-Sykes

Do you remember the penny arcade game popular at seaside amusements? The one where you drop in your coins into the machine to force the tipping point and hopefully you get a jackpot of coins crashing into your hands! You might also know this game from the TV gameshow ‘Tipping Point’?

My colleague Paul Wignall (Vicar of the Bridge group of parishes) has been reflecting that there are some tipping points after which nothing is ever the same again, for good or bad. He writes:

We are at a tipping point. A moment when a huge chunk of past assumptions is about to slide off the precipice. We’ve talked about climate change and the climate crisis and in recent weeks we have seen what it’s going to look like. We can’t avoid any longer the universal impact it will have – on climate, inequality, hunger, employment, wars, trade – you name it. The Earth is changing and how we live on Earth will change too. But how? Some of the old stuff is going to the recycling centre as we take stock: what will we take with us when we move on, what do we leave behind?

These aren’t easy or comfortable questions, and there aren’t easy or comfortable answers. But there is one thing we do know, this new world we must make out of the shreds and tatters of the old as well as our precious keepsakes, will still be part of God’s creation, with its underlying value of life. This wonder at the value of life is what remains as the world swings into a new era. And so, we may ask ourselves, are we being called to be part of these new challenges of how to live, not as consumers of the quickly vanishing world’s goods, but by rediscovering stewardship and care for creation? Past or future, we have to choose. Stay put or change, we have to choose. A world with humanity extinct, or a new world in which humans share, we have to choose. But is there really a choice?

In the Dorchester Team we are passionate about caring for the Earth and we are exploring ways that we can do this together to have more impact. So the Dorchester Team of churches will be running a ‘Care for Creation’ marketplace event at Little Wittenham Manor on Sunday 25th September 11.30am onwards to showcase what the churches are already doing to care for creation. We will also be welcoming to this event Hannah Mann the Environment Programme manager for the Diocese of Oxford and a representative from the Earth Trust to tell us about eco-projects going on in the area around us.

Do come along to find out what’s going on and how you can join in. Or if you want to chat about this do give me a call on 07823 809112.

Rev Teresa

(Written before the death of the Queen)

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