Divi 4 is here

Have just started using divi3 for unitingearth.org.au, and already divi4 is coming out soon- if it's as good as 3 it will be great- 19 days to go :-)

https://www.elegantthemes.com/4

Green, Gay and Christian? (By Rev. Dr Andrew Dutney)

I'm reposting this very old article by Rev Dr Andrew Dutney, former lecturer in systematic theology and former  president on the Uniting Church in Australia, so I can share it with Dr Miriam Pepper following her article: "Climate Change, Politics and Religion: Australian Churchgoers’ Beliefs about Climate Change"

An abstract by me: "Environmental responsibility requires the dismantling of patriarchy. Discrimination against lesbians and gay men is integral to the reinforcement of patriarchy. Environmental responsibility and discrimination against homosexual people work in opposite directions..." (Since the majority of the UCA has not come out in favour of supporting the homosexual lifestyle, it cannot be trusted to be radically committed to the environmentalist cause...as borne out by the very limited extent to which it's 1989 resolutions on the environment have been acted on. However, "The one hopeful sign is the size of the dissenting minority which became evident (during the debate about homosexuality) at the Uniting Church Synod. It surprised itself. It alarmed the majority. Watch this space."

Green, Gay and... Christian? (Chain Reaction, #63/64, 1991).

Unfortunately, some of the footnotes in the original document have not been preserved, but the reference list is retained.

"Land rights for gay whales." I remember the time, about ten years ago, that I first heard the joke. It was in Queensland. The office Young Liberal had seen it on a t-shirt at a party meeting. We laughed about it. The girls in the morning tea room didn't get it. And after a while, neither did I. In those days there wasn't anything funny about being black, or gay, or green in Queensland.

The Premier's tactic had been to lump together those who protested for land rights, or gay pride, or conservation as a single group determined to undermine the morality and living standards of decent Queenslanders. And it was true that many of the same faces could be seen at demonstrations over different issues. It was true too that many of those people were struggling to expose conventional morality as a facade for corruption and injustice, and to explore simpler alternatives to standards of living oriented towards high consumption.

But the elements of truth in the Premier's accusations didn't add up to the invalidation of the protestors' arguments. The issues were linked, but not in the self-contradictory way intended by the Premier and accepted by the joke. These days the links between land rights and environmentalism are being explored quite deliberately. (See, eg, Chain Reaction Nos 58, 61 and 62.)

But what about homosexuality and the environment? It's a subject that's hardly mentioned, even though the significant homosexual presence in some environmental groups would suggest that there's a connection to be made. It seems to me that making that connection depends first on recognising the relationship between patriarchy and environmental degradation.

Studies in the area are almost too numerous to mention, but key contributions (in English) would include those of Susan Griffin, Rosemary Radford Ruether, Mary Daly, Caroline Merchant, Ariel Saleh and other writers identified as ecofeminist. In a variety of ways and with differing emphases, these and other scholars have answered in the affirmative Sherry Ortner's question, "Is female to male as nature is to culture?" It really is a case of man against nature. It is not for nothing that we speak of wilderness as "virgin" (and assume the adjective to be feminine) and of the degradation of the environment as its "rape".

Environmental responsibility will not amount to much until it includes taking responsibility for the dismantling of patriarchy. Once patriarchy is recognised as fundamental to the ecological crisis, the question of the place of homosexuality in patriarchal culture can be asked. In her recent study of masculinities, Lynne Segal called the chapter on homosexuality "Traitors to the Cause". The "cause", of course, is the preservation of men's power over women.

Homophobia, she argues, "not only keeps all men in line while oppressing gay men; in its contempt for the 'feminine' in men it simultaneously expresses contempt for women." (p.158) "Today," she says, "it is clearer than ever that combating women's inequality, combating mysogyny, and combating homophobia, are all part of the same struggle against the oppressive gender definitions sustaining an oppressive gender system." (p.165)

From the perpective of patriarchy, gay men are traitors. Lesbians, on the other hand, are the resistance. As Adrienne Rich argued in a now classic essay, "lesbian existence" and the range of woman-identified experience which forms a "lesbian continuum" constitutes a rebellion against the "compulsory heterosexuality" by which patriarchy maintains itself. The discriminatory treatment of homosexual people is the way patriarchy deals with its traitors and puts down the rebellion. It cannot be patriarchy without it.

So the connection appears to lie along these lines: Environmental responsibility requires the dismantling of patriarchy. Discrimination against lesbians and gay men is integral to the reinforcement of patriarchy. Environmental reponsiblity and discrimination against homosexual people work in opposite directions. Having sketched the outline of a relationship between homosexuality and environmentalism, I would like to describe its relevance for a matter of some importance to myself: the relationship between environmental groups and christian churches.

For most of 1990 the Uniting Church in South Australia was involved in a debate over whether one of its leading youth workers should be allowed to retain his positions of responsibility in the church. It had become public knowledge that he was gay, and that he was not interested in being "healed" of his homosexual "condition". (Religious organisations are exempt from the provisions of the Equal Opportunity Act.) The matter came before the anual meeting of the Synod. After many hours of argument it was clear that while a majority would have homosexual people excluded from leadership in the church, it was not large enough to carry the day (70% was required for a resolution on this debate).

Eventually it was resolved that the Synod would encourage the church's appointing bodies "to seek the leading of God in each circumstance as it arises." That is, in respect of homosexual people offering for positions of leadership, local churches are free to be as discriminatory or non-discriminatory as they like. Given the evidence of the debate in Synod, most would like to be thoroughly discriminatory; and will make sure they are! A few will continue to follow a policy of non-discrimination.

The previous meeting of the Synod, in 1989, had included a debate on the church's environmental responsibility. That debate was far more amicable, and a lengthy resolution was passed which included a number of practical undertakings. As far as I can tell, that resolution had virtually no effect at all (except perhaps that members of the 1990 Synod were encouraged to bring their own coffee mugs, to minimise the use of the disposable cups which were still provided). In the light of the 1990 debate on homosexuality, it should not have surprised me that the 1989 resolutions on environmental rsponsibility have yet to be put into practice.

For as long as the christian churches remain so divided on homosexuality, with a majority remaining militantly heterosexist, their appearance of support for environmental responsibility cannot be trusted. There are increasing numbers of christians becoming involved in environmental groups. Most of them would be in the non-discriminatory minority in their churches, and should be welcomed both for the contribution they can make to the groups and also for the challenge which they will pose to official christianity. But many churches are now following their members, and seeking formal working relationships with environmental groups. It is this latter kind of relationship which should be treated with some suspicion. At some point it has to be said that, by and large, the churches do not come up to the mark ethically according to the standards of environmentalists.

Take, for example, the fundamental values of green politics as identified by Spretnak and Capra (p.56). The churches have a very mixed record in respect of Ecology, Social Responsibility, Grassroots Democracy, Nonviolence and Decentralization. In some areas the churches' performances have improved a little, but there is still a long way to go. Even the churches' record on Spirituality is ambiguous. Jung's description of religion as a means of avoiding religious experience rings true for so many because of their encounters with christian churches. And in the matter of Postpatriarchal Perspectives it is not even clear that the churches could survive such a change in perspective.

In general, they have yet to show themselves to be anything other than thoroughly patriarchal. According to these seven fundamental values, then, the churches seem to be basically immoral! The attitude to homosexuality is something of a litmus test, measuring the extent to which churches are trustworthy allies of environmental groups. According to present indications, we can't expect much of churches officially.

The one hopeful sign is the size of the dissenting minority which became evident at the Uniting Church Synod. It surprised itself. It alarmed the majority. Watch this space.

References

Mary Daly Gyn/ecology (The woman's press, 1979)

Susan Griffin Woman and nature (The woman's press, 1984 [1978])

Carolyn Merchant The death of nature (Harper & Row, 1989 [1980])

Sherry Ortner, "Is female to male as nature is to culture?", in M.Rosaldo & L.Lampshire (eds) Woman, culture and society (Stanford University Press, 1974) pp.67-88.

Rosemary Radford Ruether New woman new earth (Harper & Row, 1975)

Adrienne Rich, "Compulsory heterosexuality and lesbian existence" Signs 5 (1980) pp.631-660

Ariel Salleh, "Deeper than deep ecology: the eco-feminist connection" Environmental ethics 6.4 (1984) pp.339-345

Lynne Segal Slow motion (Virago, 1990)

Charlene Spretnak and Fritjof Capra Green politics (Bear & Co, 1986)

Paying to keep all the animals in our lives happy.

On the one hand, it's good to know that your meat has been able to
hang out on a big paddock,
munch on oranges, play with the dogs,
and walk your kids to the bus stop.
On the other hand - sob - poor Kev. Rest in pieces




Many of us spend money making our dogs and cats lives more pleasant[1]. We feed them good food. We pay vets to keep them healthy and happy, to the tune of $2.5 billion a year. Pets cost us $6 billion a year overall. That’s about $2500/year for the average dog. A cat is cheaper at $1700/annum. Half of us buy them special treats for Christmas and their birthdays.

And good on us for not being neglectful pet owners! We accept that it costs more to keep a pet happy and healthy. I’m guessing, but I’d say you could keep a dog alive, but miserable, for about $500/year, and a cat for about the same (minimal, basic food; locked in a cage; basic worming but euthanasia for any that get really sick).

So we’re paying about $2000/year to keep a dog happy and healthy, and $1200 for a cat.

How many of us are willing to spend extra money keeping the other animals in our lives happy and healthy? You know, the ones we eat?

If McDonalds are right, none of their customers are. That’s why they don’t use free range chickens or pigs[2].

If we shop at the “Big Two” we can get chicken breast for $12/kg. If our conscience is slightly twinged it will cost us $13/kg for the “RSPCA approved” kind, which is a far cry from free range[3]. Fully free range, chickens, who are presumably fairly happy until the brutal production line slaughter, are @16/kg.[4]

So if we ate a kilo of chicken breast a week, it would cost $200 more to make the chooks relatively happy: able to roam outside, dust bathe, eat grass and forage. We have free range chickens, they are full of personality, adventure. They complain and pace relentlessly if we have to keep them locked in for a day or two.

Have you seen those pictures of miserable chooks in battery layer cages? They cost us $2.79 a dozen versus $6.35. If we eat half a dozen eggs a week, that’s $185 extra to let the chickens who are making our eggs have an actual life until they get ground up for pet food.

If the effect of watching Babe has worn off for us - and who doesn’t love bacon – a miserable pig is $15/kg, compared to $22/kg for its free range counterpart.  

 A kilo of happy pig a week would set us all back $350 per year.

So two kilos of happy meat and a dozen happy eggs a week would set us back about $700. Quite a lot, but a lot less than keeping a dog, or even a cat happy.

Jesus called us to do for others as we would have done for us if our positions were reversed. Most of us readily get that this applies to our pets. We wouldn’t let them suffer, or stick them in a tiny cage for their whole life just because it’s cheaper and easier. How do we so easily skimp on the other animals in our lives, who arguably give us even more?

If you’ve forgotten what animal suffering looks like in Australia, or would like to get your church thinking about it, here's a short reminder, in the context of a prayer of confession which points to a more hopeful future...

[1] http://www.ava.com.au/news/media-centre/hot-topics-5


[2] https://yourquestions.mcdonalds.com.au/questions/6015


[3] http://www.couriermail.com.au/news/queensland/farmers-attack-coles-marketing-scheme-backed-by-the-rspca-to-deliver-healthier-chickens-to-consumers/story-fnihsrf2-1226800132011


[4] From store web sites, prices accurate at time of writing

How much CO2 would John emit?

Keoni Cabral, flickr

 “This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers and sisters. If anyone has material possessions and sees a brother or sister in need but has no pity on them, how can the love of God be in that person? Dear children, let us not love with words or speech but with actions and in truth.” 1 John 3:16ff

Christian responses to climate change should be framed around the wealthy, like Australia, laying down its life for our brothers and sisters in poor countries.  Laying down our lives, or lifestyles, so that our brothers and sisters in future generations do not inherit a baking planet of “debris, desolation and filth.”  Laying down our lifestyles so that this planet, God’s garden, has a chance to provide for the whole Earth family.

Christians must resist the political cowardice, expressed by Canada’s prime minister, who declared that, “there was no chance of any country acting for the planet if it involved costs to its economy.”[2]  Discipleship without carrying the cross is not discipleship.

Indeed, reducing our emissions is not about charity to brothers and sisters in need, it is about justice.  Alongside John, we need to hear Zacchaeus (Luke 19), who made his fortune through unjust means, and as part of his conversion sought to make restoration.  The poorer nations are that way largely because of the legacy of colonisation, in which nations like ours took all the resources they could extract, moved their economies from self-sufficiency to growing even more crops for the west, and now continue to make far more off interest on loans required to fix the mess then we return in our shrinking foreign aid.  Even such “aid” is only given when it is deemed to be in our own interest[3].

John speaks of actions and truth.  The latest emissions reduction commitment by the government obscures the truth by shifting the bottom line.  No longer speaking of reductions compared to 1990, or even 2000, they commit to a reduction compared to 2005 levels.  This, of course, means that the reduction quoted is less than it appears in comparison to other commitments against 2000 levels.

The government’s Climate Change Authority called for a 40-60% reduction by 2025 compared to 2000.  The government has committed a mere 28% by 2030 against 2005 levels.  Even the climate change authority was only calling for us to lead from the side, matching other comparable countries, not showing cross carrying leadership for the poor of the world, future generations, and all God’s other creatures. 

Their target reflects scientific truth modified by political realities, but the government has aimed far lower even than this compromise, despite the authority’s stinging criticism[4], perhaps because the current prime minister believes that climate change, “is not the only or even the most important problem the world faces.”^[5] 

Uniting Justice has called for reductions commensurate with the Climate Change Authority, with a thirty five year transition to full renewable energy.  Can we Christians go further and call for bold sacrificial responses, even if they seem politically impossible?  “Beyond Zero Emissions” is adamant that their fully costed transition plan could get Australia to 100% renewables in just a decade[6].  It is technically possible, just not politically palatable to a prime minister committed to protecting the coal industry[7], which he sees as the foundation of our prosperity for the foreseeable future[8].

More truth.  The Government’s target will send us into climate catastrophe, but even the CCA/Uniting Justice targets will not avoid climate change.  They might keep global warming to 2^oC, but this is not “safe.”  We are already seeing the effect of climate change at 1^oC warming. Two degrees of warming only gives humanity a reasonable chance of avoiding dangerous, even catastrophic, climate change.[9]    Is that the best we want to aim for?  Is that the legacy we wish for the poor and future generations?  A 50/50 chance of avoiding catastrophe?    Is this doing for others what we would want done for us?

Can we call on our government, especially with its high proportion of Christians, to give our nation the courage to embrace sacrificial love of neighbour, giving them not a 50% chance of catastrophe, but an excellent chance of abundant life on a fecund garden planet?

What to do?  Changing light-bulbs won’t cut it.  Phone.  Write.  Talk.  Preach.  To our leaders, newspapers, blogs, congregations.  If we call for sacrificial justice perhaps the Government will at least move to match its own Climate Change Authority’s recommendation. 

Put up a “4^oC is not welcome here” banner at church.  Carry it to a rally in the lead up to the UN climate talks in Paris[10].  This “COP21” meeting must set us on a path to the reconciliation and renewal of the whole creation.

What else?  Cancel your overseas holiday and go to the COP21 rallys in France instead, or better still stay home and give the money to 350.org, or BZE.org, or Uniting Justice or Uniting World[11].  Sell your spare car or holiday house and do the same.  Call on the 1% of the world who controls half our wealth to do a Zacchaeus. 

The whole Earth family is in need.  Let us respond not just in words and speech but also actions and truth, thus confirming that the love of God is in us.

 

 

---

[1] http://unitingearthweb.org.au/uniting-earth-ministry.html

[2] http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/leading-tory-mp-calls-tony-abbotts-climate-change-policies-incomprehensible-20150722-gihsio.html

[3] http://www.gevans.org/speeches/speech567.html

[4] http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/climate-change-authority-head-bernie-fraser-issues-blistering-rebuke-to-abbott-government-20150814-gizh1f.html#ixzz3imrjmKnO

[5] http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/tony-abbott-seeks-alliance-to-thwart-president-obama-on-climate-change-policy-20140609-39t93.html

 

[6] http://bze.org.au/about

[7] https://www.facebook.com/AYCC.org.au/photos/a.389387619490.165707.159082219490/10153510361489491/?type=1&theater

[8] http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/nov/04/coal-is-the-future-insists-tony-abbott-as-un-calls-for-action-on-climate-change

[9] http://arxiv.org/abs/0804.1126 , http://www.skepticalscience.com/monckton-myth-5-dangerous-warming.html   http://www.ucsusa.org/sites/default/files/legacy/assets/documents/global_warming/emissions-target-report.pdf

[10] http://www.cop21.gouv.fr/en

[11] http://www.unitingworld.org.au/about/church-connections/church-projects-partners/pacific-climate-change-response-program/

Final words at Bellingen Uniting Church.

Final reflection at Bellingen Uniting July 2013

On biblical diversity, women and men as God's image, Gay marriage and what really matters instead, not judging, and proper Christian fundamentalism.

A slightly polished up version of my spoken notes.  Not perfect by any means but good enough.

Readings Colossians 2:6-19 and The Lord’s prayer (either version)

Colossians 2:6 encourages us to continue to walk in Christ (often translated “live in”).  This travelling metaphor isn’t something the Uniting Church made up.  Jesus- follow me.  Paul talks of faith as a marathon, Colossians - walk in Christ.

Paul was always leaving messages for congregations.

What message would I want to leave with you?

What final dot points?

One is that it’s exciting, empowering, and necessary to read the scriptures, the biblical witnesses, seriously, not just devotionally and certainly not just literalistically.

To have a hard look at Colossians, for example, and notice that a lot of it doesn’t sound like Paul.  For example this next bit about the fullness of God dwelling in Christ.

In the letters which everyone does agree are written by Paul, there’s none of this divine Jesus stuff.

Which is why most scholars think Colossians was written later on, by someone else in Paul’s name, as Christian thinking continued to develop and diversify.  Faith is always on the move.

So we end up with the Synoptic gospels- Mark, then Matt and Luke (and Paul) in which Jesus is Messiah and Lord,  and John’s gospel and Colossians which attributes greater divinity to him.

The diversity of opinion about who Jesus is (his nature), is accompanied by diversity in opinion about what his life means.  How it all works.  As the lawyer put it to Jesus, “what must I do to inherit eternal life?”

So we have Paul: Jesus is the sacrifice for our sins.  This is magnified in Hebrews: Jesus the high priest and ultimate, perfect once for all sacrifice.  We have John: the need to believe in his name.  And the synoptics, Jesus puts it quite differently.

The lawyer asked, “what must we do to be saved?”  Jesus’ answer:   Love God, self and neighbour.  Do this and you shall live. 

In the Lord’s prayer he says forgive others.  “Forgive us our sins,” we should pray, “ as we forgive those who are indebted to us.”

Mark, Matt and Luke all contain explicit expansions of that claim by Jesus- being forgiven is caught up in forgiving.

So, salvation: was it all done for us as a sacrifice (as Paul argues) or as a legal satisfaction in heavenly court (as Colossians says), or do we have to participate (and Jesus argues in Mark, Matt and Luke).  Is it about beliefs (John) or actions (synoptics)?

My point isn’t to settle the argument, but to remind you that the arguments are there, in scripture.  Being a disciple means joining in the argument, praying and discerning, not simply memorising answers and trying to believe them.

Of course we do have to decide, and what we decide will shape what we think the gospel is and what we are inviting people to, but we decide knowing that there is a diversity of contrary opinions, or at least other emphases.

I don’t want to settle the argument, but I will say that for the most part I’ve tried to focus on Jesus’ understanding of his nature and mission, and our responsibilities, as far as we can work that out, rather than Paul or Colossians or John.

It is strange that some churches listen far more to Paul than Jesus when they try to work out who Jesus was and the point of his life.

“Your kingdom come” Jesus invited us to pray.

Not the kingdom of the world, of power and privilege and violence.  But the kingdom of leaders being servants, the first being last, of love of neighbour including and perhaps especially the neighbour we’d happily see burned out of house and home.

As Colossians puts it, Jesus divested himself of the rulers and authorities and made a public example of them.

Usually translated here as Jesus “disarmed” the rulers.  But the word more often in scripture is translated as divested.  Separated himself from, disassociated with.

UCA in NSW recently decided to divest itself from the fossil fuel industry.  To separate itself. 

“If it’s wrong to wreck the earth, it’s wrong to profit from wrecking the earth.”

We live in a world where we’re pretty enmeshed in dozens of systems we don’t like and would change if we could, but maybe there are things God is calling us, you, to divest ourselves from.

When our grandchildren or great grandchildren look back on this time in history and ask us what we did about it, what will be the things they most want to interrogate us about?  What will be most want to be able to say we divested from?  Resisted as people of faith?

Instead of just leaving that with you, I made myself think about it.

The first, from above, is obviously that I resisted various arrogant, narrow, alienating and blatantly false attempts by some Christians to say that their simplistic, selectively collected summary of the faith was the Faith.  That the bits of the bible they likes was The Bible.

It should hardly be an issue anymore, but clearly we continue to affirm, in so many ways, that women are less important and competent than men.  In the OT reading for today Hosea is told by God to marry a whore and get her pregnant as a symbol of Israel’s wanton ways. 

That God would be willing to use a woman as an object in such a way, and the constant comparing of Israel to a slut wouldn’t have batted an eyelid back then, hopefully it would now.  The idea that women are stupider than men, found in the New Testament, because it was Eve who was fooled and not Adam, hopefully wouldn’t pass our lips serious in worship today.

But we do constantly give the idea that God is more like a bloke than a woman in our singing, which is a big chunk of our worship, and our prayers and so on. 

It is impossible that this doesn’t have a negative effect on girls self image.  It gives a false teaching about the God the Spirit, who is of course no more male than female.

God as father made sense in a world where fathers commanded allegiance and loyalty.  As did Lord.  They are metaphors, no more. 

The amount of angst caused by positing out the obvious, even as I heard it resulting in some of you being interrogated around town as to whether the minister has _really_ said God was a woman (which of course I didn’t) would be funny if not so disturbing.

Did the minister _really_ say women are as much the image of God as men.  Well, yes he did.

Even worse than equating women and men appeared to be trying to persuade the church that of all the issues facing us in the world today, whether two men or two women marry is way down the list.  Personally I’d go much further than that, and affirm that whether a couple is treating each other in the way Jesus taught is more important than their gender. 

But for those who disagree on that, surely a church which wants to defend families should be much more loudly heard on issues like providing sanctuary to families fleeing war, challenging a world where 1% of families control most of the world’s wealth, making other families starve.  In a town where unemployment and poverty is so high, government policy on welfare and tax breaks for the rich will have far more impact on people’s well being than their sexuality.  I’m reliably informed that one man in town owns 70 houses!  That is far more important for the dynamics of this town than his sexual preference.  

Our other reading for this week was the destruction of Soddom.  In popular culture because of the men’s homosexuality.  In the story because of their same sex rape of Abraham’s guests (putting aside the disregard Abraham showed for his own daughters).  But in Ezekiel we read God’s judgment of Soddom:

“She (or course it’s she) had pride, more food then she needed, and prosperity, but did not aid the poor and needy.  They were haughty, and did abominable things before me; therefore I removed them, when I saw it.”

It follows that if God was going to judge Australia along the lines of Soddom, if a decision to allow gay marriage even registered, it would be way down the list behind being a proud nation; with plentiful food; and yet not aiding the poor and needy.” 

The church should be preoccupied with managing the earth’s resources in such a way that families of the future can supply their needs, and I’d add the families of the many other species we share this planet with.  Gay marriage will have far less impact on families and individuals than the latest measurement which shows we have exceeded 400ppm of CO2 in the atmosphere.  

Our great grandchildren will be far angrier, will suffer far more, if we fail to support groups like 350.org and beyond zero emissions, than if we fail to stop gay marriage.

The author to Colossians finishes by reminding the congregation that people will always tend to focus on the small stuff, and be quick to condemn those who don’t agree with them.

Instead, stick to the fundamentals:

Walk in Christ, the head: the source of our movement.  Love God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength.  Love yourself.  And likewise, love your neighbour. 

Most especially the one you despise, at least in part because like the loving Samaritan, they may be the one to show you the path to eternal life.

Bellingen Christmas Carols: Christmas Morn

The sequel to the Christmas Eve Carol

Come and sing it with us at our Christmas service at 8:30 am (!)

"Christmas Day " Tune: silent night

Christmas morn, breaking dawn
Joy for some, others mourn
With young Mary we have found
Unexpectedly grace abounds-
Jesus: God is with us
Jesus: God is with us! 

Christmas Day, children play
Blazing sun, or sky grey
Swollen river and cicada call
Signaling to one and all
Christmas time has come!
Reminding us of God’s son.

Christmas night, stars are bright
bellies full, eyes shut tight.
Fruit bats circling way on high
Children sleep whilst parents sigh
Thanking Jesus for peace
Forgiveness, love and release

Bellingen Christmas Carols: Christmas Eve

Hopefully one a week until Christmas.
You can join us and sing some of them at the Carols, 7:30pm Fri 21st December at Bello Uniting Church, or at our Christmas service at 8:30 am (!)

"Christmas Eve" Tune: silent night

Christmas Eve, who’d believe
lavish grace, we receive
Fruit bats circling way on high
Crimson sunbeams caress the sky
Call us to seek for peace
Forgiveness, love and release

Christmas Eve, we believe
Jacaranda’s purple leaves
Swollen streams and cicada call
Signaling to one and all
Christmas time has come
With God we all are made one

Christmas Eve, we perceive
God's at work, to relieve
With young Mary we have found
Unexpectedly grace abounds-
Jesus: God is with us
Jesus: God is with us.