Elizabeth Lymer

Alhamdulillah, this week I wrote and told some children a story about good neighbourliness, which included helping each other with simple deeds – deeds that are also good for our wider environment: making bread, darning socks, and gardening.

Masha Allah, it’s thanks to Wisdom in Nature that I have developed heartfelt experience and knowledge to endeavour to care for Allah’s creation in my daily life. And, it’s directly thanks to WIN that I was inspired to write and tell that story, and to post the text and colouring sheets earlier in the week.

http://www.wisdominnature.org.uk/index.htm

It’s Climate Week this week (March 12 – 18), so it seems like a good time to share the following. ‘I Can Care For Creation Anywhere!’ below, and the two linked colouring pages, are inspired by The Islamic Foundation’s, ‘I Can’ series for children, with its themes of positive Islamic action.

I Can Care For Creation Anywhere!

I can care for creation by planting trees.

I can care for creation by choosing toys that don’t need batteries.

I can care for creation feeding birds my leftover bread.

I can care for creation pouring used water onto a flower bed.

I can care for creation running no more water than I need.

I can care for creation by eating when I’m hungry and not out of greed.

I can care for creation growing plants for animals and my family to eat.

I can care for creation by not eating much meat.

I can care for creation mending my shoes when I’ve worn out their soles.

I can care for creation darning my socks when they’ve got holes.

I can care for creation eating fruit in season.

I can care for creation by only buying new things when there’s a reason.

How about drawing your own pictures to accompany the list of rhyming couplets, or writing your own text, to make your own, ‘I Can Care For Creation Anywhere!’ book? (Please remember to use recycled paper, if you can, and to pass on, or recycle, your work when you are finished with it.)
And how about choosing some, ‘I Can’ actions from the given list, or your own list, to achieve each day of Climate Week, and to try and keep up doing afterwards?

Colouring – I can care for creation by planting trees

Colouring – I can care for creation by choosing toys that don’t need batteries

The poem below is actually more about awakening to a of source of fear that lead to overcoming it than about a state of being newly Muslim and newly wed… But does introducing a poem in terms of its process (rather than simply stating its inception point) spoil the reader’s journey through the poem?

Full time Muslim, full time mother,

Very grateful.