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This week in our blog, Val Brown of Christian Aid, reflects on the 'frenzy' of Christmas and how ALTERnativity offer a different approach.

I’m sure that, like me, you’ve realised that we are now facing the pre Christmas frenzy.

But of course, there should be much more to Christmas than ‘frenzy’, and I’ve been thinking very seriously about something that was said at the Christian Aid AGM this year by a bishop from Uganda. He suggested that instead of focusing on making poverty history, we should instead concern ourselves with making greed history. It is greed, he argued, that supports the status quo, ensuring that it is enormously difficult to attempt to challenge and change structures which keep people poor.

I think Christmas is a great time to raise the topic of greed, as it is a time when even the best intentioned of us indulge, over-buy, cave into the pressure of finding the perfect gift, and generate as much waste in a week as we normally do in a couple of months.

This year the Christmas build up begins as climate scientists around the world have hit the panic button – indicating that unless there is a fundamental shift in our behaviours, politics and economics, then we are on course for even more erratic and extreme weather. Weather that is already depriving people of their homes and livelihoods and driving displacement.

So what can we do about it?  ALTERnativity exists to support individuals and Churches to take a step back from the hustle and bustle of Advent and Christmas and reflect on the Christmas story, and specifically Mary’s concern for the poor.

Over the years, our conversations have let us hear people share frustrations that Christmas is incredibly busy, very stressful, gifts are given and received without much thought and the pressure to overspend and take on debt is enormous.

Christmas, for all the perfect marketing, can be a very lonely and stressful time for people. ALTERnativity asks people to recognise the poverty of that first Christmas and encourages people to think critically about how we celebrate the coming of the Christ child in a world where more than half of our sisters and brothers are starving. In responding to this, our new resource is aimed at getting people talking - sharing the joys and stresses of Christmas; reflecting on what gifts are most appreciated; and challenging ourselves to cut back on the waste that is generated in our celebrations.

This complements our advent family box that enables families to take a little time each day of advent to reflect on one aspect of the Christmas story. With a reflection for children and another for adults, this is a wonderful gift for Sunday schools, Messy Church and youth organisations.

Thanks to the support of ACTS, we are delighted to be able to offer our new resource for free, and we are now giving away the family box for free as well – only charging postage if people are unable to collect from either the Church of Scotland Office in Edinburgh or the Christian Aid office in Glasgow.  If you would like to receive our resources, please e-mail info@alternativity.org.uk or find us on Facebook ( https://www.facebook.com/JustGodSimplyChristmas/ )
 

To mark Prisoners week, Hugh Foy writes our latest blog reflecting on his missionary work inside Scottish Prisons.

Pope Francis, from very early in his pontificate, identified an important witness in his travels: wherever he goes and whenever he can he visits a prison. He describes the importance of prison ministry as a fundamental aspect of Christian witness in today’s world.

He has criticized prison systems that work only to punish and humiliate prisoners, and has denounced life prison terms and isolation as forms of torture. He believes that the contribution we can continue to make as Christians is to advocate for justice reform and hold fast to a commitment to rehabilitation as a counter to simplistic notions of punishment and, even worse, societal revenge.

He clearly reiterates the best of Catholic Social Teaching by reminding us that those sentenced to prison are meant to lose their freedom not their dignity, whilst they make amends to their victims and the wider society for their crimes.

It is now Prisoner’s Week. As a community of priests and lay missionaries, the Xaverians work inside Scottish prisons, working collaboratively with Catholic prison chaplains, and in ecumenical collaboration with our brothers and sisters from the Reformed traditions. We deliver spirituality programmes and retreats for prisoners and pilot training for Catholic lay volunteers.

It is a profoundly humbling experience. Beyond the joy of working with the unsung sheroes and heroes who make up prison chaplaincy teams, we have encountered men and women prisoners desperately seeking to put their lives ‘back in order’.

The vast majority of prisoners - or perhaps we should refer to them as ‘recovering citizens’ whom we encounter in jail - have lived with mental health issues, addiction, and extreme poverty: more often than not all three. Naming their reality is not to condone their behaviour. In fact, in our experience these men and women are the first to admit their crimes and sins. Often the challenge is to help them to journey back to a relationship with God that allows them to be healed, and through God’s mercy to reach a place in which they can reclaim their dignity as a child of God.

I believe the Church could in many ways nurture prisoner, victim, and the common good. Many prisoners would like the opportunity to make amends to their victims, but the opportunities for this inside the current criminal justice system are minimal.

This is a complex process to facilitate, and where the victim agrees and can be kept safe, international evidence indicates it is a deeply powerful experience of healing for all involved. This process also contributes effectively to reducing levels of recidivism.

I also believe restorative justice is rooted in the best tradition of Gospel Non-Violence, offering a return to a more humane and just solution to the pains and scars caused by crime and sin for victims, perpetrators of crime and the wider community. It is a Gospel inspired process that as a Church we should support, advocate and create the space to serve in, as part of the wider healing ministry of the Church moving forward.

This Prisoners Week in 2018, please pray for victims, men and women in jail, and all those who minister and work in the criminal justice system, as we remember the words of the holy father Pope Francis “Christ comes to save us from the lie that no one can change”.

Hugh Foy is Director of Programmes and Partnerships for the UK Province of the Xaverian Missionaries he can be contacted at hugh@confortiinstitute.org and on twitter at @hughfoy

This time, in our blog, our friend, Wolfgang, from Switzerland's Justice and Peace Commission tells of his fears for the Alps as climate change takes hold in Switzerland. 

Switzerland is proud of its glaciers. With their enormous ice masses, they shape the Alps. The Alps without glaciers are hardly imaginable. In Grindelwald there is even a campsite called "Gletscherdorf" (glacier village).

 But one cannot see a glacier from Gletscherdorf anymore - because the ice masses are melting so rapidly.

In the last 40 years, glacier surfaces have shrunk by about a third. If you, like me, like to go into the mountains and take high-alpine tours, the changes are obvious.

It is sad to see that of the formerly almost inexhaustible ice masses that nature has produced, sometimes only a small miserable remnant is left. Where a few years ago there was ice, today the bare rock lies in front of you. Visitors to the Rhonegletscher (Rhone glacier) in the back-most Valais almost have to search for the glacier, so far has it retreated.

The Konkordiahütte, an alpine hut belonging to the Swiss Alpine Club, not far from the world-famous Jungfraujoch, can only be reached from the glacier surface via a ladder about 150 meters long.

The glaciers are melting. That is clear.

Scientists tell us that these are the effects of climate change. As a result, there will be no more glaciers in the Alps towards the end of this century. In addition to the loss of a unique mountain landscape of rock and ice, this creates further problems. When the permafrost thaws in the heights, the rock loosens and increasingly, rock-falls are to be expected. On August 23, 2017, the Piz Cengalo (3369 m above sea level) suffered the biggest landslide in Graubünden. Part of the village of Bondo was destroyed and eight people lost their lives.

Climate change literally sets the mountains in motion. And all this is happening faster than we could have imagined just a few years ago.

The glaciers as water reservoirs will then no longer exist. In dry summers in particular, glacier water is likely to be lacking. In Switzerland, that means not only a problem for the production of electricity from hydroelectric power stations, but also for agriculture. Operators of hydroelectric power plants and agriculturists already have had to adapt to these rapid changes. Switzerland's river and lake landscapes, as well as the fauna/wildlife they contain, are also likely to change in the foreseeable future.

Everything starts to move with the melting of the glaciers. Cold and warm periods have alternated in the history of the earth. But never before has this change taken place so quickly as it has today. Scientists agree that the main reason for this is the rapid increase in CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere caused by the combustion of coal, gas, petrol, kerosene and crude oil.

We must act so that our children too can still experience the Alps characterised by the enormous masses of ice. In Paris, the states promised to limit global warming to 1.5°C. However, the implementation of important measures to this end has been hesitant. In "Laudato sì" Pope Francis pointed out to us that melting glaciers, rising sea levels and hurricanes affect the poor the most. Climate change is thus also becoming a question of global justice.

Wolfgang Bürgstein
Secretary General Justitia et Pax Switzerland