#myphotolent2020
Christian Climate Action were looking to capture moments of their Lent Vigil which they planned to hold in front of the UK Parliament. Their devotion to the cause moved me. On the first day I decided that I would like to contribute with something so to participate in their commitment. What follows below is the outcome. Here is #myphotolent2020.
day 01
#myphotolent2020
Eh Oh take me
by the hand,
Strong in solidarity
we stand:
Pray for climate justice,
Pray for climate justice.
taken from the service sheet
day 02
#myphotolent2020
In our quest to grow
We seem to have forgotten
Our true place amongst your creations.
Instead, we prefer destruction and chaos over harmony.
Not unlike self-centred children
Craving for attention.
Gracefully you take the full blunt of our unhappiness.
Please forgive us.
day 03
#myphotolent2020
There are signs that you,
Mother Earth,
Are struggling with our Inflammatory acts against you.
They are felt around the world.
Like a shock wave
They reach other communities
Other continents,
As we fail to understand
We are one body.
Like fingers belonging to one hand,
We belong to one earth.
And what we do to you,
We do to ourselves.
Please forgive us.
day 04
#myphotolent2020
Everything, Everywhere, is You.
Ashes to ashes,
Stardust to stardust,
We are made of the same,
Eternal dance of particles,
Staying and going.
Ground control to Major Tom,
Everywhere is Everything.
So let us live as one,
As I want to be, Am
With you everywhere.
Elementary.
day 05
#myphotolent2020
You hold us high,
Put us ahead of all other creatures,
So to look after your creation.
Despite all your care,
Destroyer of worlds we became.
So you weep.
So much,
Rivers are swelling,
homes are lost.
Forgive us.
Responsible, accountable and sustainable
We shall learn to be.
day 06
#myphotolent2020
But there are those who do care.
So few left though
With a profound respect for the land
And for all other living creatures.
They are gathering,
Remembering,
The primordial mission
given to human beings.
They are voicing their laments,
As too many violations.
So they are marching, and marching on,
To be heard.
And they make a stand.
And pray.
Like they never prayed before.
But too few listen, still.
#myphotolent2020
day 07
High up they hold their colours
High up they hold their beliefs
Crusaders of peace
They march the streets
Taking humanity’s future
In hand
Before it may end
Sooner than planned
They pray day and night
Plea for the rest of us
To get it right
Let us all join
This plight
In might
#myphotolent2020
day 08
All living creatures deserve a place
In your future
Mother Earth.
The children across ALL communities,
Deserve to build their future
On solid lush grounds
As generations before them did.
And not on barren soil
Scorched by the sun
Depleted of life
Or contaminated
With past toxic legacies.
Or seeing their toys, families
And livelihood flushed away.
Chose transformation over transmission.
#myphotolent2020
day 09
Mr Plastic, not Bertrand
More like Poly-something.
Like an eyesore
You have invaded Nature
And just hang
Hang with no aim, no purpose
No intend to create with reverence
Just to create with neglect,
Without love, no return.
Just hanging
Pointlessly
For a millennium,
8,760,000 hours.
All that
For a single-use
Of maybe 1 hour.
How selfish of you!
Enough is enough.
Get out of here.
#myphotolent2020
day 10
Polyethylene
Polyurethane
Are some of your names.
Common name: Plastic.
Since your birth, 1950s
8bn tonnes of you
Have spread worldwide
Most of you still here
Clinging
In our Landfills
Oceans
Beaches.
In Us.
We pick you up.
But all we can do.
Is to put you out of sight
Or re-use you
Transform you.
Flowers Blossoming in Vauxhall.
For a thousand years.
And you remain here. Intact.
But hope is here.
We may have found
A way to get rid of you
Faster.
A bacterium that feeds on you.
A Pseudomonas.
We claim to have found
Our solution.
But the solution, Mother Nature
Is all yours.
As are all the solutions
To our problems.
Our power?
The power to look, to use
The power to do the right thing by You.
Inspired by the scientific article:
Toward Biorecycling: Isolation of a Soil Bacterium That Grows on a Polyurethane Oligomer and Monomer. Espinosa et al., Front. Microbiol., 27 March 2020.
What makes us human?
Our genetic code
Without a doubt.
DNA
We all heard of
The Human Genome Project.
Humans have been
Decoded.
Science facts.
Stretched out
Our DNA
From trillions
And trillions of cells
We are made of
Could go twice around
Our solar system.
But now they say
More than half is not us.
We are more microbe
Than human.
Actually.
A Community
We are
We need
In us
So why not
Around us?
#myphotolent2020
day 11
Day 12
#myphotolent2020
Fauna or Flora
Two worlds
Different
Not only with
Power-engine and fuel
But mostly with
The inside-outside
Relationship.
Flora
Don’t move
Fauna
We do.
Motion.
We are designed
To get up and go.
The birth of our brain
Was not to think or feel
But first to control movement,
So says Prof Daniel Wolpert.
And thanks to another chap
Newton
We know a few things
On motion.
His first law:
Unless we are acted upon
We don’t move.
Is that so? True.
A kick in the bud
Always got me going.
Spot on then.
So what will it take
To get all of us going
And sort out
The Biggest Crisis
In human’s history;
Climate Change.
Not another
Chicxulub, please.
Be gentle
With our awakening.
#myphotolent2020
day 13
Human beings came to your world,
A world full of your living things.
For a while harmony reigned.
But humans were not content.
God like they wanted to be.
Creation of a new world, they went.
A world full of plastic things,
In numbers that surpass
Your living things.
Forgive our trespasses.
According to an EPA study conducted in conjunction with UN Task Force on Global Development Impact, consumer-product diversity now exceeds biodiversity.
#myphotolent2020
day 14
Your Gardens are full of
Living creatures
Our lives are filled
With things
And we all have somewhere
Small gardens of unattended things
Let us stop hoarding
And not be afraid
Let us be true to ourselves
Confront our wounds
We are trying so hard
To forget.
To our Unattended Gardens.
#myphotolent2020
day 15
Where has our pursuit of wealth
taken us so far?
A total dependence
On fossil fuels
Depleting our precious
Savings we are.
When we so easily
Could survive on income alone.
Best employer without say
Our Sun.
Instead we have chosen
A road paved with bad intentions
With a time of fairness
Far Far Away
Forgive us
#myphotolent2020
day 16
We can see the signs
And yet we do nothing.
We can see your distress
And yet we chose to ignore it.
But it has begun.
That inexorable path towards
Cascade failure
And system shutdown.
Let us act now
While we still can.
And be the change
We all want so to see.
Awaken us.
#myphotolent2020
day 17
I come to you
Dressed in Amber
Autumn long passed
To present my plea.
I am so dressed and not in Green
As too many of my creatures
Are without a home,
All your doing.
I am so dressed and not in red
As it is not too late
For my burned pastures
To again go green.
There is only one home
Me, Earth.
Day 18
#myphotolent2020
Why choose a life in Amber?
Where life must clamber.
Chosen have you not
But let it unfold,
Have you.
Life in Amber
Like life on Mars
Should stay on Mars
And not infest
Our life in Blue and Green.
For that, Will, we need
And Love
Not just for others
But for oneself
First of all.
#myphotolent2020
day 19
Spring is here
Showing us the beauty
Earth can be.
Even our city trees
Can shine
Against the blue sky.
In times most dire
When the earth stood still,
Came we to realise
How we
Have partaken
In the spread of dust
Found so much in the air.
Air we breathe
Air we need
Air we must,
Keep clean.
#myphotolent2020
day 20
We have for generations
Worked our hardest
To contain you
In our glittering worlds
Of Glass and Steel.
Despite these efforts
You find your way back in
Through cracks
To re-take your rightful place.
So rather than living
In opposite worlds
We are learning
To reconcile our differences
In a harmonious
Mutual beneficial
Co-existence.
#myphotolent2020
day 21
Not all of us
Are profit driven
With the only intention
To rip you apart
And use each drop
To the last
To fill their bank account
And grow so large
Like the stomach
Of a Titanausor.
You showed us then,
This way of Life
Was not sustainable.
So without a doubt
You pressed the reset button.
Please don’t as yet
Reset.
Let us learn
Make a pause
And let us reset
Our own way of life first.
#myphotolent2020
day 22
Monsieur V. Corona
Hello, Bonjour, Ciao, Hola
Hallo, Cześć, Hallå…
Many countries
Have greeted you
Unwillingly.
Your multi-pass shows no limits
And grants you access to all humans
From all nations or creeds.
Diseases have no borders.
Despite our need to belong
To smaller groups.
It is time to think
as Citizens of the World.
Accepting that all things
Are interconnected.
We are in mourning
And in prayers
For the shadows
We have casted
And the lights
We have stifled.
Today we must
Include our own brethren.
Many have fallen
To a sweeping plague
Reminiscent of biblical times.
Let us cast aside
Our furies on the whys
And focus our thoughts
On the families in grief
By sending them
Much love and prayers.
Show the love.
#myphotolent2020
day 23
#myphotolent2020
day 24
Our curiosity and technological advances
Lead us at an ever increasing rate
To open new doors,
Expose us to New Worlds
We at times struggle to fully comprehend.
Some doors unleash new possibilities
Some others new dangers.
Before a door is opened
All consequences must be considered.
But it is human to err.
Failures are part of us.
And sometimes harm results,
Unintentionally; naturally.
So we learn not to do
The same again. Our duty.
Still part of us too, are Violations
Causing harm with intent.
Unacceptable we say.
Together in once voice
We say
STOP.
Do NO harm.
#myphotolent2020
day 25
At human distance
An expression much better known by Film directors and the world of cinema
Has just reached new meaning today.
And this is no movie,
It’s real and it is scary.
I am a Wellbeing and Sustainability Champion
At my work place.
Sitting at home in fear, anxious, is not healthy.
My medicine to combat my anxieties: Photography.
It gets me up and about.
“It’s ok to go outside”
So said Chief medical Chris Whitty.
For essentials only though.
Nature is here to welcome us.
The very same Nature we are trying so hard
To conquer and suffocate.
It will be free to roam National Trust parks
To enjoy Nature’s Gifts
While the plague continues.
Just keep your distances from your own kind.
At human distance.
And if you are looking to capture
Close-up images of thorns on stems
Like I did yesterday
Mind the slippery terrain
And don’t let the rosebush dampen your fall,
Ouch!
And you will be just fine.
For All of Nature’s Gifts.
We are Thankful.
For the last few entries I have slightly diverted from the original format. Time to go back to it.
#myphotolent2020
day 26
Unbalanced Energies
Are flowing among your midst.
How do we know?
Autumn leaves and spring flowers
Seen together
In November
For one.
What is the cause of
Your discord?
Difficult to pin down
But human without a doubt.
Cause and effect.
It must play out.
Consequences we will see,
Before your energies
Are balanced once more.
#myphotolent2020
day 27
Social Distancing
Another term
In the floodlight.
Humans began
To withdraw
Since the creation
Of our own world,
Folding back
From our true reality,
The physical world
We all are born into,
For reasons like
Hurts, trauma, fear
Or just not wanting
To change.
And slowly
Losing our ways
Of Togetherness.
Distancing.
Creating other worlds
Virtual Worlds
Worlds of One.
Help us to cope
And Hold on
On what makes us human.
#myphotolent2020
day 28
Beware
Earth
Source of cures
Willow bark tree
Mould
Nature
Our Cradle of Life
Survival.
Intrusions
Forgive us
Earth
Nature
Cradle of life
Biosystems
Artificial
Corporate organism
Pursuit of wealth
Secrecy
Fool is useful
Fair is not
Antithesis of Wisdom
Destruction
Day 29
#myphotolent2020
Out of the woods
You come
Like any mother
Wanting to stand up
Protect
Warn
Teach
It’s offspring
The Next Generation
To stand on their
Own
Feet, hooves, paws
Independent
Integrated
Free.
Free from Anger
Free to love
Free to create
Free to be.
Do show us the way
In our darkest hour
Before we
Reach
Our point of no return.
#myphotolent2020
day 30
We are getting closer
To that Day
That day we put you high
On a Cross
Nailed
Bang Bang
To Die
To Shout
“Forgive Them”.
To have your
Last Breath
Sorry Bro.
To Resurrect
To sit next
To Your True
Father
For Eternity.
You will be back
One day.
So they say.
I think Bro
You are back
Everyday
Every second
In every act
Of Love
Of Compassion
Of Creation.
We can see you
If we have our eyes wide open.
You are always here
Never left.
Forgiven me
You have.
Open my eyes
I will more so.
Create with reverence
I will more so.
Amen.
#myphotolent2020
day 31
Pascha
Will not be business
As usual
Instead
Easter will be celebrated
Away from the crowd
In isolation
In a room
An upper room perhaps?
Not unlike
The first Christians.
Focus on the content
We shall indulge
As rituals
We can't.
Outbreak
Social distancing
Oh yeah bugger!
Too much focus on the form
Can distance us
From true meaning
Content.
Reminder
Each form has a content
As each content comes
In a form.
Hand in hand
Like 2 sides
Of a brain
Working together
One in Thought
One in Words
My love to you
Big Guy
Amen
day 32
#myphotolent2020
Pasta Sunset,
I entitle this composition.
The sun has come down
On the world of Pasta
Who have fallen
Victim of this thing
That stalled our economies.
Pasta has left the building.
Sounds surrealistic. Not.
Just for a fortnight
Some of us were without
PASTA.
While others had plenty.
The Vanishing of the Pasta.
Horror movie. Not.
Reality. Yes.
The day workers went home
With no essentials
Will be remembered.
Self-centredness,
Is really the plague
That consumes us.
Like children
Stuck for ever
In the egocentric stage.
Me, Me, Me, Me, Me.
The perspective of others
That defines adulthood
Eludes them.
Economy of Zombies and Unicorns
Will be the key words
Defining the beginning of this 21st century.
Disconcerting, it is.
Asleep, we are.
Awaken, we must.
Challenge our fears, we will.
#myphotolent2020
day 33
Creatures of the night.
Up all night to get lucky
To get some… fun
Working, planning, Preparing
For the opportunities
That the new day will bring.
They are up, also,
Christian Climate Action
All nights
For 40 days
Not to get some fun
But to raise the bar
Holding a Vigil
Praying
For us to wake up
To come to our senses
For us to do the right thing.
They pray to save our ways
Our planet
So it will keep spinning.
And spinning.
Round of applause
To those silent warriors.
Blessings
To all silent warriors.
In these
Time of Crisis.
Amen
“Like the legend of the phoenix
All ends with beginnings
What keeps the planet spinning
The force from the beginning
We've come too far to give up who we are
So let's raise the bar and our cups to the stars”
Daft Punk (Get lucky)
English Ivy
A story of hope
Is spreading across our city
Of sadiqkhanian proportion.
English Ivy walls rise
Around our city schools
To catch that dark matter
We call particulate matter;
To stop this destroyer of breath
So to protect our most precious
Investment, our children
Our future.
And all thanks to NASA.
Yes, our space guys
Who put at the top of the league
Of air-filtering plant system,
The English Ivy.
So hail the Ivy.
Stopper of all dark matter
Now showing in our neighbourhood
Like in a good old fashioned fairy tale.
But this is our reality
No fairy tale nor science fiction
Just our way of using
Science data
For better living
For smarter living
In our metropolis.
Funding is here
All we need is
To believe the data, to act.
A leap of faith lies
behind all new steps
Into the unknown,
Behind all new beginnings.
Faith is the drive force of all act.
May Faith be with us always.
May Faith be our guide, our strength,
To collect even better data
For even smarter living.
Only to become better humans.
#myphotolent2020
day 34
There is nothing more brutal
Than a change in form.
Earth creatures are most vulnerable
When shedding or moulting.
Growing is inevitable.
Just another constant of life.
Our circle of life
Begins with a push
Into the limelight
Where the spectacle
Never ends only
With a hasty brutal darkness
And a deafening silence.
Some of us experience
Their stage exit
Like a slow descent
Of a landing plane
And are here to tell.
Some are called to re-ascend
Only to continue their journey
Towards another destination
Unplanned.
To live on borrowed time
Is extra-ordinary.
Philosophers named it
La petite mort.
Knowing that our soul
Should swim in the
Abyss of nothingness
But is not,
Reignites the spark of life.
Awakenings.
Only at the precipice
Do we evolve
Do we grow
And find a will
To change.
To new beginnings.
#myphotolent2020
day 35
Man-made things,
Products, stuff,
The world of objects
is growing
Larger and larger
Now threatening our own existence
And taking a good chunk
Of the Natural World
With it
To the crisis point:
Consumer-product diversity
Now exceeds biodiversity.
Objects served us well
Since Homo erectus.
So Homo technologicus
What’s up?
One word: Junk
Objects of no purpose
Planned obsolescence.
Overconsumption is a disease
At the heart
Of All our environmental problems.
Consuming us. Ironically.
Like a bad indigestion.
Or chocking on vomit.
Clotting of our sewers
Drinking water contaminations
Are just a few symptoms.
It is us that are in need of healing.
It is us who are in need of attention.
It is us who are in need of care.
We change, change will follow.
Our path to salvation:
Purchase with care and conscious.
Ethically.
But mostly remember
The best thing in life
Are not things.
Big Virtual Hug to all.
Inspiration: affluenza: The All-Consuming Epidemic Thomas H Naylor, John de Graaf, and David Wann
#myphotolent2020
day 36
Bricks, stones and buildings
Form our cultural matrix,
We are born into
Imprint upon and grow out of.
And for some
Found residence in death for millennia.
Nothing is for ever.
Teaches us nature.
Even mountains go
With the flow
Only to become part of something else.
As for all, there is a big bang beginning
A Middle and an End.
Buildings are built to serve
And deserve to R.I.P.
With too much looking backwards
So does disappear our
Ability to see afar.
Nature recycles.
Another constant.
We resist.
We hold on. We hoard.
Wouldn’t our future be better
Preserved by directing
Some of our prodigal expenditures
To humans in need now
To preserve human biodiversity
Rather than to persist gilding
Brittle bricks.
What purpose would serve
If our worldly family mansion
Cost us the right to live
On this planet
Leaving nothing but
A worldly family tomb
For our children to reside.
Ever changing landscape is LIFE.
Ever changing cultural landscape
Protects us from procrastination
And Self-annihilation;
From cultural fibrosis.
End of civilisations
We had many, too many
And here we are again
Repetitive cycle of blunders
Of Egos
Losing sight of what is truly precious - LIFE
We ARE,
Not bricks.
Inspiration: Walden by David Henry Thoreau
#myphotolent2020
day 37
Crisis
Not all crises are the same.
Some cause just one crack,
Some others create rifts
Visible from space.
In time of crisis
The new enters by force.
In front of a crisis
We have to judge and to decide
Should I stay or should I go,
Good or bad,
Left or right,
Live or die -
The ultimate decision.
No matter the type of crisis,
What is done is done
What is lost is lost.
But whether we look
At a crisis as a failure
Or as a learning opportunity
Remains our point of view
And choice, always.
#myphotolent2020
day 38
“Urban Crisis Landscape
Is the title of this series of compositions.
They were taken in my street
Less than 50 metres from my flat
In a time where the planet
Experiences, its most dramatic changes
In landscape yet
Due to climate change
And pandemics.
Ice melting,
Storms breaking umbrellas.
Let this be our opportunity
To learn, to rise
And build a better us.
Inspired by Times of Crises by Michel Serres, Bloosmbury, 2009.
In this together
We are
Echoes in courtyards
Across cities
With the sounds of applauds.
But we were always together.
So when did we feel
Not connected
Detached
And alone?
Disconnect to better connect
So does a neurone
When in need
Of maintenance or repair.
Too many injuries
From others
Left unattended
Un-repaired
Un-resolved.
So there is only one
Place to hide;
Home alone,
With only things as comfort
As too many of us have.
How to escape from the rat race
From routines
Unplug.
Simple.
Now take your time
To heal
To turn inwards
Tend to these unattended places
Close the gaps, the cracks
Become whole again.
Then re-connect
As a whole human being
Without gasping for attention
But ready to create new momentum
Of life that will echo
And resonate
To the end of time
#myphotolent2020
day 39
#myphotolent2020
day 40
I would like to finish with a quote that I found most fitting to conclude this reflection on climate emergency and on our future not just on this planet but in the Universe among Everything Everywhere.
Bertrand de Jouvenel, the eminent French political philosopher has given description of a ‘western man’ where without a doubt we can recognise our modern economists
“He tends to count nothing as an expenditure, other than effort; he does not seem to mind how much mineral matter he wastes and, far worse, how much living matter he destroys. He does not seem to realise at all that human life is a dependent part of an ecosystem of many different part of an ecosystem of many different forms of life. As the world is ruled from towns where men are cut off from any form of life other than human, the feeling of belonging to an ecosystem is not revived. This results in a harsh and improvident treatment of things upon which we ultimately depend, such as water and trees.”
Thank you
Pascal
Acknowledgements
First I would like to express my deepest gratitude to Vanessa and Tim in trusting me with the job. It was a real pleasure to cover the 40 day Lent Vigil organised by the Christian Climate Action (CCA). I would like to thank mostly Ruth and Melanie but also the entire CCA community for providing a friendly audience and for their encouragements when moral was low. Without them, you would have missed out on 20 days. It was an experience to dedicate one's life to a 40 day spiritual journey. Also a big thank you to Anita Kapila and Christopher Ramsey, good friends of mine for their continuous kindness and moral support. And at last but not least, a big thank you to my most precious new family, the community at St Anne and All Saints Church in Vauxhall, my local.
References
"Nothing comes from Nothing" I am a fervent reader as I believe that we should all be students of life for life. Explicit references have been cited in texts above but my mind has been forged by many authors over many years. Still how I run the network of my knowledge is mine. Here are just a few:
-
Small Is Beautiful: A Study of Economics As If People Mattered the economist E. F. Schumacher. H Blond & Briggs, 1973.
-
The Future: Six Drivers of Global Change by Al Gore, Random House, 2013.
-
This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. The Climate by Naomi Klein, Penguin Books, 2014.
-
Nature in Cities by Lise Bourdeau-Lepage, 2013
