The weather this summer has not been as we had hoped. Damp days make for grumpy folk that’s for sure as we try to manage our expectations and those of our families when we’re stuck indoors looking out at grey skies and constant drizzle.
But cancelled day trips and bored children aren’t the end of it – the inclement weather has a massive knock-on effect on local businesses too: anyone working outside this year has been severely compromised as rainy days mean much work can’t be done; anyone selling summer stuff notes a downturn in sales and our shops and cafes suffer as the footfall just isn’t there.
I noted a conversation the other day where a couple were saying just how quiet it is on the Lynn streets this year. I wonder, then, if our local tourism numbers are down too.
The adverse weather affects all of us in one way or another. While we are complaining of soggy weekends elsewhere in the world (beyond King’s Lynn!) other countries are suffering heat waves and years of droughts. On drier Continents crops are failing and people and animals are going without food. In other places, the sea levels are rising and whole islands are being lost to the sea and their peoples forced to flee.
But it’s just the weather, right? We don’t have any control over that. “Acts of God” they call it. It’s not about climate change…
No, it’s not, it’s about climate crisis and we do have to acknowledge our part in that. We are called to take care of our planet, to be good stewards, not to be greedy or wasteful, but careful and considered about how we live – in love for the planet we live on and for those whom we live alongside now and who will inherit our laziness in future generations.
How can we say we love our neighbour, if we don’t care enough to stand up for the world we live in? What is the point of having the right pronouns if we don’t love the person in front of us enough to ensure that the world we are leaving them is safe?
Revd Kyla Sørensen