You may remember last year I reported on the summer school sessions regarding faith and ecology. Well this year the subject for all the sessions related to peace. I had a flip through the brochure and was disappointed that nothing really appealed to me apart from one session which set me all apace!
The session was billed as Peace of the earth a ‘forest church’ experience. In the brochure it stated: ’The natural world is often a place where we experience feelings of peace and wonder – important sources of spiritual growth for many of us. Yet our relationship with the earth and nature can be often in conflict with that peace. This session will explore our connection with nature and how it can help us thrive and live at peace with all of life.’
This fitted well with my thinking as you can imagine! Beforehand I managed to look up more about the subject of forest church on a website and discovered there was a book with the same title and the subtitle: A field guide to nature connection for groups and individuals. What forest church incorporates is something I had a similar idea about a year ago and was mulling over in my mind and here were people already doing it and I didn’t realise that this was the case!
There were about 30 of us altogether meeting in the former Bishop’s garden just off the Woking Road. It was a delightful spot in itself. Matt Freer from Oxford diocese who was facilitating the group started us off under the canopy of an expansive walnut tree. We formed a circle and were invited to go bare foot on the grass if we wanted. It was a really hot day and the grass was cool. He gave a short introduction to what forest church is. We took 3 meaningful breaths and then he read to us and invited the Holy Spirit to breathe on our time.
The morning involved using a few techniques which were to help us connect with nature and the world around us. Playfulness is very much part of forest church and uses similar skills to forest school which I am familiar with. We were invited to go for a walk in silence and think about our lives and what we were grateful for. If we wanted to we could share back in the circle what those things were.
My experience was that of walking along the garden paths up into the woodland part and looking at the trees above me and recognising that my life was a journey somewhat like these meandering paths. One path would go off and be quite hidden and winding then I would suddenly come out on an open part and things would be much clearer. The trees diversity spoke to me of the different experiences, work and skills that I’d had or been involved in and that they were all of value in some way, at the time not always realised. In all of this was the sense that God had been in it with me guiding me.
I had a chance to network with a fellow Forest school practitioner, who is also the new Families and children’s worker at a church in Ottershaw. She was there with her vicar and congregation member. (It was good to connect with other likeminded folk including Matt who I’d been communicating with via email). Another guy was into foraging and had found the best patch of ground elder he’d ever seen, proceeding to munch some and share it! He also introduced me to the delights of day lily petals!
Walking further into the garden we arrived at a large oak tree (I’d earlier spoken to one of the full time gardeners who informed me that they’ve recorded at least 110 species of tree in the garden) and spread out under it and were asked what we knew of the oak. A number of people contributed.
I had to leave early but managed to have my lunch with Matt whilst sharing and listening to more about forest church and how it could be done in our context. Watch this space!