Sharing Eden

LBFN June 20^th 2013

John Woodhouse

Westminster Cathedral Interfaith Group

The group has been in existence for nearly 10 year and consists of about 14 Catholics and And Anglicans (I don’t ask – it’s open to all) We meet once a month from 4 to 5 p.m. on a Wednesday (see attached article)

I want to discuss our latest project Sharing Eden. I found out about this book as a result of attending a talk by Mary Colwell at Heythrop college where I am studying. This fired me up to do something about faiths involvement with the environment.

The book is written by 3 authors Christian, Muslim and Jewish and I arranged for the authors to attends our first 2 sessions. Some members of the group had problems getting copies but I arranged for Church House and St Paul’s bookshop to stock the book (cost £2.50) and in a  couple of cases bought copies myself and was reimbursed by group members.

We all found the book most stimulating, well  illustrated and worth reading. At the later sessions we worked through the questions after each chapter and made notes for the Cathedral works manager which were submitted. He was in the end unable to attend our meeting but sent a full response to our numerous ideas and I am due to write an article “How green is the cathedral?” Answer As green as it can be in view of the age of the buildings (mostly 1902).

We had a visit from Karen Lawrence of Peterborough Environment initiative and she spoke enthusiastically about Peterborough’s bid to be green and faith communities involvement.

This week we are to have a talk by a rep from the World environment movement about their green initiative.