The Circuit has hosted a hub at Woodlands for the Methodist Church from across the world for the past fortnight. It’s been a busy fortnight, what with road closures, enhanced policing including the coastguard in the city, many many protests, and now the agreed deal for Climate Change. But is it all Blah-Blah-Blah? The Eco-Congregation chaplain for Scotland has said “Tonight, with palpable disappointment at the further watering down of what was already an inadequate final statement, we reflect that even COP is not the be-all and end-all of human response to the crisis our species has caused. Hope and faith become all the more vital. Every merely national and local initiative becomes yet more valuable.”
There’s much emotions and consternation about the terms phased down rather than phased out fossil fuel. So what of our new world?
China and India
It can be easy to point the finger at countries like China and India, but China is the world’s leading country in electricity production from renewable energy sources, with over double the generation of the second-ranking country, the United States. India is the third largest producer of renewable energy.
What have we been doing recently?
We are still busy visiting garden centres, stitching up jumpers, a hat ready for winter and some angels for the Blue Angels service. Some have knitted angels whilst others have sown angels. Angels are diverse! Who knew they had hair?
What is a collection of Angels called? A gathering, a choir or a heavenly host?
The difference between Cherubim and Seraphim is that Cherubim are known to have four wings, and Seraphim are described with six wings. There may be a hierarchy of angels but surely as Methodists we would have to have a committee… 😉
There are many names of angels in Christianity:
- Afriel: Angel of youth.
- Ariel: Angel of nature.
- Cassiel: Angel of temperance.
- Charmeine: Angel of harmony.
- Dina: Angel of learning.
- Gavreel: Angel of peace.
- Michael: Angel of loyalty.
- Gabriel: Angelic messenger.
Can you add any more names?
What has changed for us post COP26?
We have been gradually making differences to our lifestyle; however, we don’t think that COP26 has made a significant difference. Some of us volunteered at the Woodlands hub and it was good to speak with the visitors, especially the activists visiting Glasgow. It was noticeable that Glasgow was eerily quiet with the Police really evident. Many of these police had had to travel some distance as they had been instructed to come from Leicestershire, Norfolk and all stops south of Manchester. Some local buses had to stop their journeys into Glasgow as some protesters had blocked certain roads and in particular bridges.
Some politicians took an air flight from Prestwick to Glasgow which is 40 road miles compared to 22 air miles. Furthermore, how can that be so cheap? What is the incentive to go by transport which doesn’t produce so much carbon? We need better public transport links. This may be our dream for a new world.
We are seeing that some shops are trialling a fill your own initiative. Would you consider using this facility?
Future Meetings
We meet again on 29th November and on 6th December we have a talk about glass fusing. I even understand now that some people locally have a portable mini-kiln! We will be using a separate Zoom link for the Glass Fusing session.
I found it very interesting