Meeting of the Parliament

Meeting date: Tuesday, November 6, 2012

Official Report 692KB pdf

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Time for Reflection

Good afternoon. Our first item of business is time for reflection, which will be led by the Rev Dr Dane Sherrard, who is the minister of Luss parish church.

I live in Luss, on the banks of Loch Lomond, so imagine my surprise when I received a letter with the backing of the WWF, which invited our village to become Scotland’s first green pilgrimage city. I composed my reply. Yes—we have a proud pilgrimage heritage that goes all the way back to Kessog in the year 510. He was martyred 10 years later, which led to pilgrimage to his burial place that continued right up to the Reformation. We also have excellent green credentials. Luss sits in Scotland’s first national park—an area that was chosen because of its natural beauty and the care that has been devoted to it by farmers over the centuries. However, is Luss a city? No.

I replied expecting to hear little more, but back came the reply: the WWF knew where we were and it wanted us to be one of 12 inaugural cities around the world. “City” was not used to denote size, but to signify relationship; in this case the relationship between faith community and secular authority. The WWF believed that Luss had something to offer.

So, last November we travelled to the inaugural event, which was held in Italy under the patronage of the Duke of Edinburgh. We found ourselves in a company of cities that took our breath away: Jerusalem, Assisi, Trondheim and St Albans. I found myself sitting beside the Sikh who is responsible for the Golden temple at Amritsar in India, where volunteers feed upwards of 100,000 pilgrims every day. There were cities from Africa, China and Japan, and municipal authorities and faith representatives from the 12 specially chosen cities, including our Scottish village.

We learned that the programme had been established because the WWF realised that if conservation were to succeed it needed to have faith groups on board. Eighty per cent of all the folk in the world belong to a faith group and seven per cent of all the world’s land is under the control of such groups.

Each city has made commitments about how we will work with others to green our pilgrimage places. Argyll and Bute Council has become our partner and as such will share expertise and experience with partner green cities throughout the world. We shall also try to ensure not only that the 750,000 visitors who come to our village each year become pilgrims, but that while they are with us are helped to walk gently on God’s earth.

We will learn from Amritsar and Trondheim, and from Louguan and Jerusalem, and they may learn something from Luss.