Many of us have taken part in harvest festival services during October. It’s no accident that the SEC Faith in Action committee’s topic for this month is ‘The Environment’. For those of us not directly involved in ‘bringing in the sheaves’, the environment offers a huge range of themes for prayer and action at harvest-tide. Here are just a few from the October leaflet, which you can download here.
- Pray for the good stewardship of the world and all its riches.
- Undertake an energy audit using the Eco-Congregation Carbon Footprint Calculator from www.ecocongregationscotland.org.uk
- Draw something from the natural world: a leaf, a feather, a pine-cone, a range of mountains. Draw it from life, not a photograph: look at it very carefully and draw it as well as you can. Use it as a prayer of adoration, confession, and supplication, without words.
- Eat mindfully, aware of the work of earth, rain, sun, wind and human endeavour which has brought the food to your table.
- Use your LOAF when you buy food : try to ensure it’s locally produced, organically farmed, animal friendly, fairly traded. Your shopping bills may increase, and you may find it harder to eat any product at any time of year, but you will probably be eating better quality food, and your money will be doing more good than if you’d given it to charity.
- Enjoy the harvest- celebrate it.
