+ Invitation: Read

Will you come to the top of this hill with me?

Look out across the landscape of now; the grey sky stretching over a thousand, thousand closed front doors, the faceless traffic flowing endlessly somewhere, masked parents queuing orderly to pick up their children from school.

A storm is passing, and the air grows still, but the horizon remains dark.

What is there to say, above the hum of traffic and washing machines and devices on standby? Are you feeling the cold? The cold of not knowing what to do? The cold of not feeling a part of the story? The cold of sitting alone? The cold of being static with fear? The cold of having no voice? The cold of uncertainty about tomorrow?

I want to make you a coat.

A coat to warm you. To warm you; with a sense of what to do, and of being a part of the story, with the knowledge that you are not alone, alone; a coat that will not be still, a coat to carry your voice and to comfort your uncertainty. A comforter, a carrier of sorrows, remembrances and a carrier of hopes. Stitched from the ragged past into a gentle armour against a sharp future. So you can wear the promise that we all belong together.

But I can't.

I can't do this alone.

How can such a coat be made? And by whom?

Only by many hands, cut pieces of blanket, embroidered, stitched and joined, on a journey. Like a living fable, this coat must grow as it travels on many backs, from the south coast of this island to the city of Glasgow in the north, every person who is willing, may have a piece joined to this coat. It will be a pilgrim coat, it will be a coat of hopes.

Look to the North, and into the near future; world leaders, gathering like rooks to once again talk about the brewing storm – unstable global climate, ecological collapse and mass extinction. That is where your coat must go. Will you let them try the weight of our hopes? If they stand with us, they will delay no longer for the sake of growth, they will act now for the children of the future. May it's warmth be their encouragement, and our messages guide them...