Woodland Morning Liturgy

A wonderful start to the day. Rushing outside to the Orchard, we washed our faces in the newly-fallen rain, scooping it from the grass. We lit a fire from fallen branches to celebrate the rising of the sun on this newly-given day, and danced round its strengthening flames.

We wove our coloured ribbons through the trees to symbolise the human passage through life - multi-coloured and yet so delicate, fluttering in the wind to show that we are so fragile.

Then we gathered stones from the field, and built them into a cairn to celebrate the permanence of our relationships - as solid as stones and and as permanent as the hills, and yet each as individual as the stones themselves.*

Taking pebbles from the side of the brook, we each cast our own into the water - and reflected on the ripples that tell of the passing of time, sailing away and never coming back.

Then we closed by wending our way through the stony Labyrinth in the Woods, to the point where we reached today's Worship Focus - a beautiful snail, hand-carved in the 70s from the wood of a dying elm. A thing of wonder and beauty and life, rescued from the disaster of Dutch Elm disease.

And so we wandered back, refreshed and yet moved and slightly saddened.

But I have to reflect. We do seem to be veering dangerously close to common modern practice in the Church of England.

---

* for health and safety reasons we've taken it down now, of course. We don't want anyone tripping over it.