Day 2: getting started & a new word!

This month, I want to look at and take steps to reduce the (often unseen) ways that my household is invested in fossil fuels. I’ve been thinking for awhile now how my family and I are part of systems and have everyday habits that use fossil fuels in ways I’m not aware of or can actually ‘see’. This includes where I put and invest our finances, the energy I use (just got shoved on to a new provider when mine went under), tools and tech I rely on, waste I produce, and lots more. That’s much too much to think about at once so this month I’d like to spend time looking at a few specific things and make thoughtful changes about them. I’ll start with looking at and possibly changing my bank, who I give nearly daily business to without knowing much about their opinion or approach to sustainability.  Then I want to look at energy providers, then I’ll see how far I get…!

But I also wanted to share something I heard on the radio yesterday morning that was beautifully connected to where I’m at with this challenge. I didn’t realize that March 1 is also Shrove Tuesday this year – the day before the Christian period of Lent – until I heard a short piece about it on Radio 4, when Reverand Lucy Winkett talked about the meaning of ‘shriving,’ a new word for me but one which rather spookily fit lockstep with the start of my challenge. (You can listen to the piece here, it’s only a few minutes long)

She framed her discussion of ‘shriving’ in the current and developing war in Ukraine and how we as citizens outside that country react to situations we feel helpless in and how we might wonder what we would do in those situations. She explained that ‘shriving’ refers to ‘an ancient practice which is not about what we would do if we were someone else but is about the reality of being us and making real change in the real world today, asking not what would I do but what am I doing. How am I living? What should I stop doing?’ 

She described shriving as a practice of personal reflection, decision making and change and involves ‘honest introspection in the bracing company of others’ which ‘isn’t a retreat into a private spirituality either because the answers to those questions include my willingness to engage, create or protest; my decisions in so far as I can make them about what I do with my money and time; the degree to which I add my voice to, for example, the debate about the responsibility to war or the refugees or the sanctions regime.’ Parts of this resonated a lot with me – in this space, this challenge is about my own willingness to engage, create and protest; make decisions about what I do with my money and time and where I add my voice in the debates about the responsibility to climate change – and all in the company of fellow cChangers.

 
The ‘profound challenge’ of shriving (and the associated time of Lent), she suggested, ‘is not just to speculate what I would do if I was someone else but to insist that change is possible even today, in the one precious life that, connected with all humanity, I live myself.’  

Such a fitting start, hope others are going well too!