It's December and this month's podcast is like the Christmas double issue of the Radio Times, significantly longer than the previous two episodes in the interests of a wide-ranging conversation. I am joined by Alison Thursfield, Moira Gage, Graham Gage and Chloe Arnold.
In the third of our special 'Building our Identity' workshops at Bayshill, we looked at the Unitarian notion of 'the promotion of the service of humanity and respect for all creation' and the similar Unitarian Universalist theme of 'the interdependent web of life.' Not surprisingly, much of the conversation dwells on our relationship with the natural world and reflecting on the podcast since it was recorded, I am particularly struck by Alison's point about the need for humanity to give up its presumption of being able to control and be in full charge of nature. Love of nature and concern for its wellbeing is a theme that often comes up in our services at Cheltenham, and I was reminded of the podcast only today when I read the following lines from Wallace Stegner's 1960 Wilderness Letter, which was meant to emphasize to the United States government, the need to protect wild spaces:
"We simply need that wild country available to us, even if we never do more than drive to its edge and look in. For it can be a means of reassuring ourselves of our sanity as creatures, a part of the geography of hope."
In the second half of the podcast, you can hear my conversation with Chloe Arnold, an undergraduate law student at Oxford Brookes University, who spent a summer in Missouri volunteering for Amicus, an organisation that campaigns against the death penalty.
Listen to "After Church Coffee" on Spreaker.
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