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I had a very limited understanding of the Transition Movement before going to CEL’s annual conference in Ottery Saint Mary back in November. The definition of the movement that came across on the day was of one that seeks to bring resilience to a local community, specifically to enable it to survive the combined results of oil shortage and climate change.  It does this by making that community more self-sufficient. 

To put it into sharp focus, as was done at the conference, supermarkets cannot survive a prolonged oil shortage, as past events have shown.  Supermarkets operate on the basis of fine tuning and just in time supply. There is reckoned to be a maximum of four and a half days food in any one supermarket’s supply chain.

A short term delivery crisis we would have to get over. But a long term crisis – which running out of oil would mean (as is predicted will happen some point in the not too distant future) – could not be survived without something like the self-sufficiency of the transition concept in place. 

Speaker 1: Ben Brangwyn

The transition movement is a faith-based organisation according to the first conference speaker Ben Brangwyn who is a co-founder of the movement with Rob Hopkins. By that he meant that its success depended on having faith in the ingenuity and cooperation and goodness of human beings.

Ben, who in a previous life worked in the IT (information technology) industry which involved him in the ‘useless’ occupation of moving pixels around a screen, today works full time running the transition network. He is based in Totnes which is the home of the transition movement. I understood that the initial idea came about as a result of discussions with staff at the nearby Schumacher College.

Among the interesting statements Ben made, I noted down the following.  

• A community of consumers is not a community that is spiritually alive.  [I think this remark may have come out of a sermon he had heard preached by Rowan Williams at Southwark Cathedral.  Although not a church-goer himself, Ben obviously had a high regard for RW. He also clearly felt quite at home among the people meeting in the Ottery St Mary church.]

• We are living in a petroleum interval. It is passing and we are going to be part of that passing. We have squandered North Sea oil.

• Climate change is taking place faster than is generally acknowledged, largely as a result of ice melt. 

• There are 24 identifiable global crisis points and the feed back from these is accelerating the change.

• We need a green economy, one not based on growth even though growth is generally seen as the only way of dealing with debt and a need to generate interest.

• Supermarkets come in and suck money out of the town. Transition seeks to create a system that makes supermarkets superfluous, having a local food system to replace them.

• The creation of local currency has the same benefit of keeping money in the community. Totnes is one place that has local currency.

• Transition response is a mixture of gloom and joy and both are needed.

• We cannot rely on government – action there will be too little too late. Nor can we do it on our own; that is too little. It needs community.

 We also heard that Ottery St Mary is attempting to keep Tesco out of the town. As far as I can see there is as yet no supermarket in the town although there is a Coop store, which I assume is acceptable. Since the conference Sainsbury has made application for a store in the town (see www.substainableottery.org.uk)  

 [If keeping supermarkets out of towns is a pre-requisite for going transition I don’t hold out much hope for WSM where an embryo transition movement has just been formed. There are seven major supermarkets in the town and I don’t know how many of their mini-stores.  Only one has been burnt down so far]

Transition towns must sign up to the UN declaration of human rights. They are springing up all over the world. Even Mongolia wants to know about it. 

Transition movement calls for resilience – which means the ability to withstand shock and get back to an equilibrium.

Features possible in a transition town include: 

• Local food directory

• Garden share

• Re-skilling – old meet young. Honouring the elders who were around when communities were [had to be?] resilient. Using oral history.

• Communal pigs

• Local money. Several transition towns have their own money systems (Totnes, Lewes, Stroud, Brixton). Seen as a great first step, a way of keeping money within a town, stopping it leaking out.

• Share solar energy (there is local generation at Lewes).

Totnes descent plan. A coming together to do the thinking and visioning (likened to prayer).  Asking what it would be like in 20 years time if transition were successful. How do we get there. Do back casting. To be 50 per cent self sufficient in wood needs planning now. Imagining collectively.

 Speaker 2: Tim Gorringe

 On what grounds should the church be involved in transition, the first basic question asked by Tim Gorringe who is a vicar turned academic turned practically everything else including allotment holder and bee keeper.

Answers given included: the job of the church (ecclesia as in people) is to think about and realise God’s purpose. The church is always in transition so transition is something church people are called to do. 

He went back to Deuteronomy (30:19), to what was written, instructions given to lay people after all the bureaucrats had been taken away. ‘Two ways I set before you. Choose life’. He went on to explain how this related to the transition movement. The transition movement is positive. It does not frighten people into change.

He asked what is the way of death in our culture? His label was consumerism, or what ‘older people’ call capitalism. To illustrate the kind of change that has taken place to result in the consumerist culture he quoted Lewis Mumford, the town planner, who had pointed out that from the 16thC onwards society had changed from being pastoral to industrial with activities  such as mining at its centre; from cyclical (pastoral/farming/forestry) to taking more and more out of the earth with nothing being put back. [non reversible activities like oil and gas extraction].

Founders of the transition movement looked back to the older cultures (permaculture), which were circular and involved putting something back. It meant going back to the ethics of care and conservation.

He referred to William Blake and the ways of imagining. The importance of this was that he saw God as being love and creativity, at the start and end of all things – a liberation of the imagination. This needed in three areas; politics, economics and culture. 

Politics. The transition movement is profoundly political. To show this he quoted Tom Payne as saying ‘democracy is community taking responsibility’. In contrast he referred to what he labelled palaeolithic parties and sclerotic politics. He advocated joining the Green Party.

Do not spend time writing to your MP but make the effort to reshape. That is how we work out the purposes of God in the community. The call was to work from the bottom up. His quotes were 1 Corinthians 1 and Numbers 11:32. All human beings are called to take part in shaping God’s world. Being a prophet, taking part in shaping your world. 

Economics. Acts. Turning the world upsidedown. The church is what lives out of love and imagination. It’s about turning the world upsidedown. Rich becoming poor, poor becoming rich. Not based on pay or reward. Calls for re-imagining the community and the economy.

Because the church lives out of the imagination it lives out of hope.

Quoted Moltmann – God and Creation. No one can ensure that the worst will not happen (BK. This brought to mind the Rowan Williams’ quote that God will not provide a safety net for fools.]

Referred to Luther’s apple tree saying [to the effect that if Jesus were returning tomorrow he (Luther) would plant a tree.]. That was at the heart of the Transition Movement.

Another quote from Tim: Farmers of North Devon are so far in the past they are in the future. 

Speaker 3: Sarah Drew (Sustainable Ottery) 

The third speaker was Sarah Drew founder member of Sustainable Ottery.  It was she who had had the vision for making the small Devon town of Ottery St Mary a transition town. And she got the project off the ground. This has since built up over the past two and a half years into a viable operation with its own very useable website and a community interest company.

It began with Sarah being persuaded to attend a conference and, without any previous interest in or thought for sustainability, came back to begin a one-woman campaign. She came across as one of those people who having grasped an idea did not let it go.

Letters to the local papers were followed by an exploratory meeting and envisioning day. As a result several activities were started and interest groups formed.  The best source of uptodate information on all this is the website (www.sustainableottery.org.uk). Sarah also told us that a campaign was currelty underway to keep Tesco out of the town. [Since the conference, according to the website,  Sainsbury has also made application to enter the town and so it too is now in their sights. 

Like Ben Brangwyn, Sarah was not a church goer but she too seemed at home in the CEL company. She ended with the advice; ‘Do what you can and do it happily.’ 

I did also sit in on the workshop run by Brother Sam of Hilfield Priory. Here are the brief but challenging notes I made: frequent referencesto Saint Francis: 

• Do not despise anything.

• Nothing is trash.

• Awe in everything.

• Economy of gifts.

• Everything shows something of God – delight and wonder.

• All were brothers/sisters. We are stardust. Wendell Berry.

• All finds it true end in worshipping God. The song of creation. It is our job to join in the song.

• Repentance. Don’t make people feel bad. 

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