COP26 – Day 1

Dear friends,

During the chat after today’s HT service, we decided that it would be a great idea if people posted prayers, thoughts, poems, and art during the COP26 conference in Glasgow this coming week.

I know I am not alone in feeling the need to draw closer to a community of like minded people during this time, in a place where we can express our grief, fear, anger, hope, joy, love etc.  I sometimes feel overwhelmed by the various emotions that pass through me as I read the day to day developments. It is good to have a place to share this.

Loving the earth, seeing what has been done to it,
I grow sharp, I grow cold.

Where will the trilliums go, and the coltsfoot ?
Where will the pond lilies go to continue living
their simple, penniless lives, lifting
their faces of gold?

Impossible to believe we need so much
as the world want us to buy.
I have more clothes, lamps, dishes, paper clips
than I could possibly use before I die.

Oh, I would like to live in an empty house,
with bones for walls, and a carpet of grass.
No planks, no plastic, no fibreglass.

And I suppose some time I will.
Old and cold I will lie apart
from all this buying and selling, with only
the beautiful earth in my heart.

Mary Oliver