Bulletins

Acting for Creation Bulletin #26 - What if? (22/10/2026)

Acting for Creation Together in Gippsland

Email: acting@gippslandanglicans.org.au

This month’s reflection is brought to you by Cath Connelly. But first the news:

Grants for church gardens Krista Mountford, Development Officer for the Diocese, has created an initial list of grants that may be useful to parishes wanting to act for creation in the development of their gardens – perhaps planting a wild-life friendly native garden, starting a community food garden, or creating a mini-forest to draw down carbon into the soil. The list of grants has been sent out to all parishes, and you can also request a copy from the Registry (Dave Perryman: davidp@gippslandanglicans.org.au or Krista Mountford: KristaM@gippslandanglicans.org.au).

Now over to Cath:

In response to a recent retreat on the topic of The Future of Hope: Becoming a Good Ancestor, a dear friend of mine, Jeannie Minnis, penned the following poem:

What If?

What if we could taste and smell colour and if we could hear colour and smell sound, If the laws of gravity were tipped upside down, and if we could fly like eagles and see with their clarity.

And what if the earth tipped on its axis and North became South and East became West, and all homes had bee hives in the backyard, and beekeeping was an essential subject in schools.

What if there was no domestic violence, sexual abuse and exploitation, and if the work of great poets, like Mary Oliver, were included in the Bible.

What if Donald Trump became a pacifist and a lefty, and despots turned into flowers.

What if children at risk were kept in family circles and the concept of family was informed by our First People’s concept of family, if artists, dancers and poets were politicians, and if everyone danced and sang and all people learned a musical instrument.

What if there was no chemical farming, no one went hungry and wars ceased, and earth, air, fire and water were valued like sacraments.

If all children were cherished, no women died in childbirth, if breastfeeding was easy and all women were cared for by a midwife for 6 weeks after birth.

What if no one died alone or unloved by others, and that we could hear the trees speaking.

What if people of all faiths worked and prayed together and lived in harmony and that death was not sanitized and funerals commercialized.

What if ABC radio had a return of the Children’s Hour and the Argonauts, and we had Skippy, Mr Ed and Catweazle on television again.

Jeannie Minnis, 2026 

When I reflect on my own ‘what if’s’ I would dream of a time, say three hundred years from now, when Earth is regenerating her beauty, when there will be food shared equally amongst all, when technology frees us from illness, when access to education is taken for granted, when transportation is free of emissions, when all forms of life are honoured and enhanced. To dream of a time when our descendants look back to now and remember that not only was this a time beyond horror for its destruction, greed and selfishness, but that there were also millions of us engaged in the work of bringing healing and hope.

Everything that I have read on the topic of hope (which, as the topic of my Doctorate, is quite extensive), says that to achieve a future such as the ones that Jeannie and I are portraying, we first begin to imagine. We dream of what is possible and then we set about working out how to achieve this. This is hope. Hope is not some intangible concept. Hope is a verb rather than a noun. We do hope rather than have hope. As Jurgen Moltmann says in his profound book, The Theology of Hope, “hope strengthens faith and aids a believer into living a life of love, and directing them toward a new creation of all things. It creates in a believer a ‘passion for the possible’ in which hope, through visions, dreams and projects, kindles the imagination to transcend the limits of reality into the sphere of the possible.”

A ‘passion for the possible’. I like this. Tell me, what is your ‘what if’? What do you dream for the future? How can we work together to make this a reality? Here at ACTinG we would genuinely love to know.

A couple of excellent podcasts:

‘Accidental gods’ – https://accidentalgods.life/ - Manda Scott

‘From What If to What Next’: https://www.robhopkins.net/ - Rob Hopkins