Celebration:Earth!

there is delight in everyday places.....

CELEBRATION: EARTH!

Taking time to pause: to reflect upon the world we live as part of, the world we are all working in different ways to protect and cherish. Celebration:Earth! sets out to invite people, to challenge groups, to reflect, share, celebrate their activity and to find new partners in environment, community creative and faith groups for the next steps they would like to take

From flowers for butterflies to solar panels, from a new pond to toad crossings, from a campaign to declare a climate emergency to convincing your neighbours to compost….

Is there an environmental success you would share?

From an atheist’s conviction, to an agnostic’s interest, a priest’s belief to a poet’s reflection

Is there a point of inspiration you act from?

Sunrise shining white through the mist that fills the dales, moonshine through clouds. Snowdrops. *

Is there a wonder that gives you strength?

Celebration:Earth! is a project based on hope and optimism. In these times of environmental despair and political melodrama, this project feels it is really important to remind ourselves of wonder. The anger and desperation that often marks environmental action might be great for immediate activity but to be lasting, sustainable and to empower its actions, we feel that environmental determination needs to come from a place of wonder and joy. We need to remind ourselves that this world is a wonderful place. Despite everything we are doing, despite the mess, it is still full of beauty and determination and life that just will not stop, and that can be what keeps us going

Supported by the Worldwide Fund for Nature, UK, and drawing together groups from across society, CE! is building a new network of partnerships of information and support, encouraging environment, community, art and faith groups to all find ways of working together. The “faith” element is important as when we draw on religious institutions or movements or eclectic anarchist networks, we can work with people whose motivations run deep, who can share a different set of perspectives from some of the familiar environmental ones, who care for spaces from small graveyards to tracts of open space and who are often already engaged in powerful environmental missions that the rest of us just don’t hear about

That’s what CE! comes down to: listening to each other: finding ways for groups to meet, to share successes and to find information or partners who might help them take their next steps, reach their next goals

village ponds hold treasures and wodners.....

Over the next few months we are finding people, challenging groups and inviting anyone to join in, building to a weekend gathering at St Albans Cathedral 18 – 20 September 2020 (see the website) but more than that, to connect, to share successes, to remind ourselves that there are good things happening. There is more action that is needed but there aren’t instant solutions and when we are shouting “we need X00 trees” we tend to miss the Y00 that are already being planted…..So how about stopping shouting and starting sharing.

and how can we not marvel at toads...

I am here as an artist – where art can be the vehicle that tells stories and that gives groups and individuals ways of expressing and sharing feelings

– as a pagan, because for me life in all its forms is sacred and I will (try to) work with anyone who comes to us open handed a

and I am here an environmentalist who can’t separate faith from science from creativity….

Within CE!, I am coordinating arts and education development and always looking for projects to share, people to talk to, connections to make

So how about it….

• Join the growing network
• Join us at St Albans (you’ll need to register)
• Tell us what you are up to
• Or just declare your own Earth Celebration event and find a way of sharing what you are doing with other people….they might come and help you or maybe you will inspire them to go and do something for themselves

determination in short grass

I don’t really care if people say this is too idealist to work (a recent criticism). We will only change the world for the better if we find ways of working together, if we learn to live and to think and to feel ecologically (experience the world as networks of connectedness) and I believe we need to remember that we live in a world that is worthy of celebration……

Rant over!

Visit the Celebration:Earth! website, or our facebook page (CelebrationEarth), or follow us on twitter (CelebrationEarth!)

Or keep an eye on things here…the CE! blog should be active soon as well

 

* I chose moments from this morning

 Photos: by me other than Toad's Eye: Kenny Taylor, and small toad in grass - Ian MacLellan - with thanks!