The World Council of Churches was at the recent climate change conference in Cancun. With the perspicacity that we have come to expect from the WCC, they warn that, in spite of their best efforts, not only is time passing but appalling events are in the offing:

Time has run past. The problems and their challenges are still here. Scientific knowledge, supported by statistics and climatic models, as well as plain observations made by peasant, farmers, Indigenous peoples and coastal inhabitants has confirmed that the climate is changing because of human activities and that such change will prove disastrous for life in this planet, while we are still unable to take the unavoidable steps to detain the already tangible and oncoming appalling events.

As a small consolation for their lack of success in reversing the inexorable forward motion of the fourth dimension, during the opening ceremonies, the WCC would have been soothed by the ambience wafting from incantations to the Mayan jaguar goddess, Ixchel to whom virgins used to be sporadically sacrificed. I expect the WCC members felt safe enough.

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Who says that we live in a secular age? I’ll have you know that a recent U.N. climate change conference began with a prayer that the delegates would receive divine inspiration as they went about saving the planet.

Of course, the deity being prayed to was not the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ but, rather, a goddess who demanded regular sacrifices, including the occasional human one. Given what is going on at Cancun, this invocation seems oddly fitting.

The “invocation” was given by Christiana Figueres at the start of the conference in Cancun, Mexico. Perhaps inspired by the setting, Figueres invoked the Mayan goddess Ixchel.

Noting that Ixchel was the “goddess of reason, creativity and weaving,” Figueres “prayed” that the jaguar goddess would “inspire” the delegates.

This is the kind of self-parody that even the U.N.’s biggest critics couldn’t make up. Ixchel is often depicted as a “fierce hag” who, in her capriciousness, is just as likely to cause devastating floods as gentle rains that make crops grow.