Prayer on the Rocks

In 1678 the Roman Catholics of two isolated Swiss alpine hamlets called Fiesch and Fieschertal prayed that they would be spared from the advancing Aletz glacier. The villagers promised to live virtuous lives and to continue to pray. In modern times women were prohibited from wearing coloured underwear so that the glacier would not be provoked. I want to know if they were on the honour system, or if someone was assigned to check.Some would argue that this was pure superstition but we might also conclude that 300 years later the village is still there, so something worked.

The hamlets are in the news because they have petitioned the pope to allow them to reverse the prayer. They now want to pray that the glacier not disappear. It is receding at a rate of about 30 metres a year, the result, experts say, of climate change. I have no idea whether the colour of underwear is part of this request. "Glacier is ice, ice is water and water is life," the local priest recently said to the villagers from the Valais region, which has sent its sons to protect the Vatican as Swiss Guards since the 16th century. "Without the glacier the springs run dry and the brooks evaporate. Men and women face great danger. Alps and pastures vanish and towns die out."

Here are people who are attempting to put the effects of climate change in a spiritual context, even if we feel they are a little misguided. Actually, our denomination and may others pray that people will come to their senses about the human impact on climate. We might be more inclined to ask ourselves how we can alter our ways for the benefit of the planet, but we understand that there is a faith element to all of this. And if God is the Creator, we can open up the conversation, which is what prayer really is.