You are warmly invited to join ARRCC WA’s Zoom Prayers and Meditations for Our Earth and UNFCCC COP 28 UAE, Nov-Dec 2023.
This ARRCC WA / the Brahma Kumaris Australia initiative follows the Interfaith Liaison Committee to The UNFCCC format.
Our prayer and meditation around the world has helped the previous COPs. Our invitation is that we continue what we have begun with a renewed sincerity of commitment. The need now, as we all know, is urgent.
Interfaith Liaison Committee
COP28 will aim to keep global warming below 1.5 degrees and provide climate justice.
These are high aims, in problematic international circumstances. Our prayers and meditations are much needed.
We already are seeing the consequences of climate change. The experts urge us to act swiftly to avert a worsening climate emergency.
As people of faith, we offer the unique contribution of our spiritual practice. We know how our prayers and meditations can change the atmosphere and help with inspiration.
We all know the difference between a holy place of cordial relationships and a place fraught with human discord.
From now to the time of the Talanoa Dialogue and Interfaith Service on 30 November in Christ Church Dubai and to the end of the COP, please meditate and pray. We hope all who gather for this COP will feel they are on holy ground and act accordingly, for the sake of all creation.
To receive regular weekly invitations please register your interest by return email to Elaine George, Secretary, ARRCC WA
Zoom this Thursday 12 October, 2023
11.30am to 12 noon (Western Australia) Passcode 082143
Introduction into Silence Guest speaker: Bishop Philip Huggins
An Anglican Bishop who in recent years has felt compelled to do what he can to prevent catastrophic climate change.
Member of the Interfaith Liaison Committee to the UNFCCC
Recent President of the National Council of Churches in Australia (NCCA).
‘We pray for courage and compassion to transform those human activities destroying nature and altering the climate system on which our lives depend.’
Bishop Philip Huggins
- We give thanks for this unity of purpose.
- We give thanks for the beauty and wonder of creation.
- We give thanks for the lives and experiences which inspire and illuminate our commitment.
- We pray for courage and compassion to transform those human activities destroying nature and altering the climate system on which our lives depend.
- We pray in our hearts to reject fear and embrace love, hope and transformation for a more healthy, safe, clean and sustainable world.
- We pray for strength so that our lives are patterns and examples.
- We pray for the protection of climate activists and environmental defenders, who often risk their health, if not their lives, in advocacy.
- We pray for protection of climate scientists so they can work without intimidation and with sufficient funding and support.
- We pray for protection of the poor and most vulnerable communities, those least responsible yet most affected by our insufficient climate action.
- We pray that our leaders grasp the urgency expressed in the latest science and guide our economic systems to reject dependence on extraction, exploitation, and accumulation through dispossession.
- We pray for wisdom, courage, and compassion in our climate negotiators at COP28. May they agree on shared solutions together that honour the needs of the poorest, while reflecting meaningful action from the richest and highest emitters.
- We pray the developed countries will lead as they promised in the Paris Agreement.
- We pray leaders in all countries will do all they can to rapidly reduce extraction and burning of fossil fuels, and promote sustainable economic, social, and political systems to stabilize global temperature rise at 1.5C above pre-industrial levels.
- Our context is that we are members of faith communities across the world who join in prayer and meditation for meaningful decisions and urgent action at the climate conference (COP28) in Dubai. Accordingly:
- We pray that developed countries meet their promise of US$100 Billion dollars a year to help developing countries to implement climate action.
- We pray for sufficient finance for Loss and Damage, supporting those communities already profoundly impacted by climate change.
- We pray, from the Paris Agreement Rulebook, for ambitious, effective, and fair compliance in common time frames and with transparency in reporting.
- We pray for human rights and Indigenous People’s Rights to be included and better protected, including protection of these rights in carbon trading schemes.
- We pray for an inclusive conference, in which the voices of the least powerful are heard alongside the most powerful.
- We pray that delegates attending the COP feel inspired and act accordingly.
- We pray they remain healthy and return home in peace.
- We offer these thanksgivings and prayers with all that is in our hearts, some of this still making its way into words.