Transition
Some of you will have seen the headline in the Guardian during 2010, which claimed that the Pentagon believes ‘Peak Oil’ will occur in four years time, 2015.
Peak Oil does not mean that oil will simply run out: it does mean that the age of cheap and easily available oil is over as we are down to tar sands and deep sea beds. Since virtually our entire lifestyle, and especially our farming, depends on oil, and there is no substitute yet in sight, it is wise to ask what we are going to do when that happens. This is the agenda of the Transition Town movement, undoubtedly already in a town or city near you. What work are people going to do when commuting is no longer an option? Even more important, what are they going to eat ? These are the questions of
Transition Towns, preparing for a future when cheap and easily available oil is no longer there. Beginning in Kinsale in Ireland, and then in Totnes in Devon, the movement has spread all over the world.
It has a number of points of major interest. First, it is not aligned to any leading political party or ideology: it is interested in finding answers to a pressing practical problem. It addresses itself to the whole community, and to people of every party. Second, although it has no political agenda it is actually a deeply democratic exercise in that it wants to put power into the hands of ordinary people in their locality. It does this by getting people to reflect on transport, energy, and food and to seek strategies which will withstand the oil shock or, to use the Transition buzz word, ‘be resilient’. It is not a hair shirt, tighten your belts, let’s do without movement, but a movement which seeks a more satisfying, creative and community oriented lifestyle. It takes up longstanding initiatives like Community Supported Agriculture, shared gardens and allotments, seeks to further interest and knowledge in all the varieties of alternative energy, campaigns for better public transport, and common sense schemes like bike carriers on buses. What Transition does is to put these into a new and more community oriented context.
For Christians what may be of particular interest is that the groups commonly have ‘heart and soul’ or ‘inner transition’ groups which ask what the spiritual dimensions of transition are, and how people are to be weaned off their present addiction to consumption
What work are people going to do when commuting is no longer an option?
10 www. countryway. org. uk
The Transition movement is not a Christian initiative, and all the many spiritualities of our culture make a contribution, but Christianity is an important part of our culture, and has huge resources for dealing both with cultural trauma and for a more sustainable pattern of life. As Paul sets it out in Romans 5 and 6, baptism is all about transition from an old and corrupt way of life to a new one in the one body of Christ. To come to Transition as a Christian is to be challenged to think what that Pauline transition means for us today, and what the idea of one body means in our pluralistic (and materialistic) society. All citizens should be involved, but that includes all Christian citizens too!
Prof Tim Gorringe University of Exeter
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