Woohoo for Wonky Veg!

Last Sunday was Cambridge's third Liberated Feast. [when I wrote that last sentence, it was indeed last Sunday. It is now three or so weeks ago...] If you haven't heard of Liberated Feasts yet, they are the brainchild of Jennie Debenham, and they are a celebration of food that supermarkets think we won't buy. This may be the banana that's not the same uniform size and shape of its brothers and sisters down the aisle, or else the rather over-enthusiastic thigh-width leek. At the Third Liberated Feast, the food that was served was a combination of food rejected by supermarkets and food donated by local farmers.

The Feast was held at St Paul's Centre on Hills Road, 7.30pm. We were all seated on long, Hogwarts-style tables, and serenaded by a variety of musicians. While food was somewhat long in arriving (with a handful of sweating volunteers ladling soup and hurrying in and out of the kitchen), getting to know my Feast-neighbours passed the time very nicely. I would estimate a hundred or so Feasters, most of whom were unknown to me. I was opposite Jessica, who works for the University press office, and Alistair, who works for the Red Cross.

The starter was a pale, parsnipy soup. Chatting to Liz Serocold and Bev Sedley, we couldn't quite work out what all the different flavours were - the combination was a treat. Following the soup, the main course was a fascinating mezze of sprouting broccoli, Baba Ghanouj, Unidentified-Greenish-Dip, kale crisps and other tasty tidbits. The desert was fruit crumble or chocolatey-biscuit thing. All courses were delicious and well worth the wait. The fact that this food would otherwise have been squashed beneath plastic in a hole in the ground somewhere as methane-oozing goo made one particularly appreciate it.

Many thanks to Jennie and all volunteers for liberating that feast for us!

Creative Communities

Last weekend I was helping to organise the Creative Communities event, a Cambridge Carbon Footprint event led by Amy Ross and supported by Kate Honey and a few other fantastic people from a range of inter-faith backgrounds. The idea of the event was to get people from different religions to get together, and talk about how our beliefs affect our engagement with issues around the environment.

The idea is that all of us have something in common - a belief in something greater than us, which could be a way to find the inspiration and resources to make the necessary changes if we are to live consistently with what needs to be done to prevent further climate disasters. Inter-faith work can be delicate though, it's easy to find the differences before you find the commonality, and find yourselves moving further apart.

Aware of that, the event focussed on unity and used games, music and prayer to promote it. We played a match-and-chat game first of all, finding one other person with the same numbered ticket as us, and finding out more about their interest in the environment. We had some beautiful singing sessions, led by Kate, including one lovely tune that she had composed for the event. And also, a lovely pair of songs by a Baha'i gentleman called Peter.

One really remarkable thing about the day was that there were lots of children, and the event really seemed to meet their need for play and colour, thanks to the forward thinking of Portia and Jessa. They ran around and played happily throughout, reminding all of us that caring for the planet is also caring for the futures of the next generation of people.