I have been following the blog of our Moderator, Mardi Tindal, as she wrote from Durban, South Africa. This is a bit of the HOPE that she saw as the conference on climate change concluded:
“Here in Durban we prayed for a miracle and many will argue that we didn’t get one. The deal is described as insufficient and vague, its meaning still not fully understood. But I think there are hints of a miracle-in-the-making. For one thing poor, vulnerable nations led with their tenacious hold on hope, with the result that some nations are still in the Kyoto Protocol. The fear that Kyoto would die on African soil has not been realized.
“Leadership was given by the smallest and most vulnerable island states, with Africans and Asians close behind. The EU came along as well, and some Africans are crediting the Non-governmental organizations and faith groups’ pressure for aiding this. As Dr. Jesse Mungambi said to me this morning, “At least in the North there was one group of nations that supported us.”
“Indeed, there were a lot of Marys here: NGOs, governments and faith communities who have accepted the transformative burden of carrying hope. Our Canadian faith communities’ witness was vocal. We are among those expressing a willingness to sacrifice at least a few of our own comforts for the sake of carrying a much more important hope for life on this planet.
“Our own Canadian government found it impossible to carry hope to the global community here in Durban. Perhaps, however, we saw a miracle in some of what Minister Peter Kent said. It was here in Durban when I first heard a minister of the crown of our current federal government acknowledge that climate change is our doing and represents “a disaster in the making.”
“To quote Leonard Cohen, “There is a crack in everything; that’s how the light gets in.” Perhaps our government has at least listened to enough angels in Durban to get this far.
allanbaker 