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Appropriately enough, the assessment of the award, in which nine members of the parish 'Live Simply' group were questioned on the parish's campaign of awareness-raising, prayer and practical changes, took place on Lent's Family Fast Day - one of the key dates in the community's support for Cafod's work.
The award was explained to the parish at the beginning of December, 2019 - with parishioners invited to write down ideas for how we could live more sustainably on paper leaf shapes which were then left scattered across the sanctuary in front of the altar during the Advent season. In normal times, the application process would take 6 months but the pandemic made everything a bit complicated - and a whole year slower! Nonetheless, there had already been a rich array of initiatives before the first lockdown hit, ranging from showing the two films, 'Global Healing' and 'Global Caring' to a 'Big Brew' event for Fairtrade Fortnight (with an enhanced Fairtrade range of products on the parish repository stall, too).
A 'Lent challenge', in which parishioners were asked to promise each week to undertake one ecologically-focused activity from each of the three categories of prayer, fasting and almsgiving (graded to suit children, families or adults) was inevitably cut short. But while we couldn't meet in person a new website (with a dedicated LiveSimply page), Survey Monkey polls, invitations to 'plant a tree' and to seek a green tariff for domestic gas and electricity and a Creationtide e-mailing all helped to keep people aware of the campaign.
The parish has tried to go as paperless as possible (e-mailing newsletters to all parishioners instead of printing enough copies for everyone, for instance), while Zoom has proved to be a viable way of holding certain parish meetings, including even prayer groups, and will remain part of our toolkit post-pandemic. Certainly, for the moment most parishioners are still 'attending mass' online - saving road-miles, even if it's less than ideal in other ways!
A Green Energy consultant visited and offered advice on the options for reducing the carbon footprint of the church itself (difficult in a 1960s building with zero insulation!), while new more secure bicycle racks will be fitted shortly to encourage people to cycle to church as the parish gradually gathers again. Solar panels? Maybe, but we're still doing our sums on that one.
Lastly, one sad side-effect of the pandemic was that the parish nursery had to close permanently. But, by simply taking down one fencing panel, the parish was able to present the nursery garden to the primary school next door, where it swiftly became the hub of their own 'Eco-Schools' project. And the best campaigners for the planet are, as we have all seen, the young.
So the award is not the end of a process but rather its beginning; and the parish 'Live Simply Group' reconvenes (by zoom - of course!) in a couple of weeks as the parish 'Living Simply Group' , with a warm invitation to fresh faces to get involved. There's a lot to do!
Our thanks to Fr Rob Esdaile for providing this article. The above photograph shows parish priest, Father Rob, with the Livesimply award, which is now on display at the entrance to the church. To find out more visit the parish website.
