While some of us have been distracted by the mass beheadings of Christians in Iraq and Syria, the Diocese of Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island has kept its ever vigilant eye on what really matters: it is fearlessly battling a corn maze that has a “conflicted history of corporate interests”.
There are quite a few eco-maze zealots in the diocese. Much as a rotting log is crawling with woodlice, the diocese, apparently, is “crawling with environmentalists”:
Through a network format, Lucas-Jeffries drew the circle wide. Now more than eighty committed Anglicans from Nova Scotia and PEI “encourage and support each other around caring for creation,” she says. Lucas-Jefferies is thrilled with her new role and the abundance of committed Anglicans she meets along the way. “The church is crawling with environmentalists,” she exclaims.
As an example of both the pervasiveness of environmentalists and her skills as a networker, Lucas-Jefferies recalls a happenstance meeting in a corn maze in Truro, Nova Scotia. There, among the groomed rows of corn the environmentalist priest met a kindred Anglican woman from down the road in Dartmouth. The two forged a strong bond when they discovered, with dismay, that the maze had a conflicted history of corporate interests and genetically engineered corn.
It didn’t take long for Lucas-Jefferies to recognise the limited interest the rest of us have in the corporate contamination of corn mazes: she quickly moved on to the much trendier evil of fracking, a subject about which she confidently claims to know nothing:
Lucas-Jeffries spoke from the heart. She also spoke not as an expert, but as someone committed to listening and learning and discerning the movement of the Spirit in this space. With her time at the mic, she put to the room questions she thought essential for the fracking conversation, “Why do we need to do this? Who is going to benefit? What about the pitfalls?”
She ends on the high note of declaring Creation rather than Jesus as the reason for her relationship with God:
“It is because of the existence of Creation that I have this particular relationship with God—and with others—that is enhanced by the beauty of it.”
