Revd Dave Bookless, co-founder of the Christian nature conservation charity, A Rocha UK, gave a moving, personal account of how he and his family have come to live a greener, ‘ecologically lighter’ life in urban Southall. He was addressing a Greencoat Forum at the Initiatives of Change centre in London on 21 September 2010.
God doesn’t do waste is the title of Revd Bookless’ latest book. It covers not only his family’s eco-epiphany, rethinking their rubbish and recycling, but also documents their struggle through pain and chronic illness to reach a broader understanding about waste: that down periods in life aren’t simply ‘wasted’ years.
For Bookless, the idea that God doesn’t ‘do’ waste and rubbish in a literal sense can also be a way to rethink what is often considered ‘waste’ in other areas of life. In our results-driven, economic society, we can be quick to write off life’s difficulties as ‘rubbish experiences’, complain about a ‘dead-end’ job and dismiss tasks with no clear reward as ‘a waste of time’.
He recounted the first moment when he consciously thought about waste and rubbish in a literal sense. It was 1989, after an idyllic family holiday on the Isles of Scilly. Tidying up, he couldn’t see anywhere to dispose of their two weeks’ worth of accumulated rubbish. An islander directed him to the tip of the island and there, over a cliff, was an eyesore of rotting rubbish, plastics, old cars and rusting tractors. “It was a clash of two worlds – of the waste of western consumerism in absolute paradise.”
In that moment, as he threw his rubbish on top, he heard an inner voice. “It was as though I could hear God asking me, ‘How do you think I feel about what you’re doing to my world?’” It was a defining moment. “Before that day, I had never connected my Christian faith with how I treated the environment. It was like the dislodging of a stone that turns into an avalanche.”
Bookless turned back to the Bible, where familiar passages suddenly took on new meaning: God’s love wasn’t reserved only for humanity. “What is the story of Noah’s Ark, if not one about a God who is passionate about protecting the planet’s biodiversity? God takes a few humans onto the Ark, but also takes two of every single creature on Earth.”
“In the well-known verse from John 3, ‘God so loved the world that he gave His only son...’, the ‘world’ here was originally ‘cosmos’ – the whole created order.”
In a search for other Christians doing practical work to conserve the environment, Bookless discovered A Rocha, a Christian conservation charity founded in Portugal. In 1994, he went to visit the group – a time when his wife, Anne, was confined to a wheelchair, suffering from ME or chronic fatigue syndrome. She was unable to walk up the stairs or even lift a kettle, and the family wrestled to understand her condition. But, slowly, they began to feel “God was doing deep work, shaping Anne’s personality and empathy through her illness.”
The family moved to Southall, where Bookless became the Vicar of St George’s Church. The congregation lacked confidence and seemed downtrodden by life, he said. “In many ways, they were broken people. Southall was an area of environmental and social deprivation and residents lacked pride in their neighbourhood. Not a single member of the congregation played a musical instrument. Perhaps some people would say it was a ‘rubbish’ church.”
Yet the family arrived when Anne was ill and, like the congregation, they were in need of support. That dynamic worked to empower the local church community, who rallied round to help them. In times of difficulty, the family has seen God working through friends and members of the church community, through the excellent work of NHS doctors. “Those years of difficulty, disability and depression weren’t wasted years but a time of rebuilding for us as a family: a time of profound inner change.” In the end, Anne experienced an extraordinary healing, through a profound awareness of God’s love, ‘from head to toe’, in the midst of a church service in Chorleywood. She was completely cured of her illness.
It was in Southall that Bookless set up the UK branch of A Rocha. Their first project was to be in the local area, transforming 90 acres of derelict land into a much-needed country park and nature reserve for the community. “The land was open space but it was an area of dumped burnt-out cars, fly-tipping and dirt tracks that were only used for motorcycle riding. The local people didn’t go near it.”
A Rocha worked with the local council to ‘redeem’ the site, turning it into the Minet Country Park, a nature reserve which now has breeding kingfishers, butterflies and orchids. Local residents were closely involved in the project. Schoolchildren planted trees and people of different faith backgrounds now work together on a community food-growing project. Today, the area is thriving and similar A Rocha projects are underway all over the UK.
Working to redeem the wasteland was, for Bookless, a clear metaphor for life. A Rocha UK is now working on a campaign to encourage Christians to ‘Live Lightly’ and rethink their relationship with consumption and waste. “In Britain, half of all food produced on our farms is thrown away,” says Bookless. “In our homes we throw away millions of tonnes of food a year. As a family, we’d never grown anything before but now we grow a lot of our own food. There are important lessons to be found in Nature, in sowing seeds, feeding and nurturing, and waiting and harvesting.”
Esme McAvoy
God doesn’t do waste, by Dave Bookless, InterVarsity Press, £6 plus postage
English