Forest Church and more

 The last couple of Forest Church sessions have been especially creative. In September there was corn dolly making - and these were then used in the decorations for the harvest service at church. 

Then last month was even more adventurous - everyone made bird boxes.

There seem to have been a lot of meetings going on, including our first attendance at ARocha's Gold Award holders online forum, and a very useful Diocesan event ‘supporting churches to net zero carbon’. Our own heating plans are once again being completely rethought since my last post so I'll wait until things are actually happening before reporting on that again!

Another occasion for hearing inspirational stories from other churches was the Church Times Green Awards ceremony at St John's Waterloo. Rosemary and I had been shortlisted in their Green Champions category - the winner was Jean Carletta who set up the HeatHack programme - see video here.

And there has been excellent news about the Climate and Nature Bill - Roz Savage MP, who came third in the Private Members Bill ballot - has selected this as her bill and it will receive its second reading in January. So now we all need to encourage our MPs to be there to support it.

Summer update

 As life returns to its normal rhythms after the summer break, the celebrations in June feel a very long time ago! We've enjoyed harvesting tomatoes most Sundays over the summer and sharing them round. The peas were finished long ago and the squash plants have done less well, but I'm hoping one of the fruits is ripe enough to make it into the next church lunch.

Over the summer we have a simpler rota for children's activities with the usual leaders taking a break and other congregation members just picking up a bag with a story book and some activities in. I've tried to make the crafts as recyclable/compostable and environmentally friendly as possible this year. The books were slightly challenging Old Testament texts so, for Moses and the plagues I included making origami frogs and some facts about frogs (the origami frogs were very popular).

For Daniel and the Lions I included a quiz about lions, and we used some of the paper plates that got put into the back of the cupboard for emergencies about ten years ago and haven't been needed. Cups from the same box finally found a use when it came to Jonah and the Whale and that week included pictures of lots of different sea creatures to be put into size order - not an easy task it turned out.

As usual, many of us attended Greenbelt towards the end of the summer. I spent a few hours helping at the Green Christian stand with its sobering screen counting the rising temperature in real time. This was conveniently close to the Hot House venue that had a great many climate related talks, including one in which I learned a surprising amount about using public transport more effectively (this will be feeding its way into green tips in the newsletter). I was struck by the many different definitions of Hope I heard; more than one speaker rejecting the concept of an interventionist/all powerful God; several mentioning that it's better to have many people recycling badly than only very few doing it perfectly; and Kate Raworth's urging 'Don't be an optimist or a pessimist, be an activist'. We had every possible kind of weather with a vengeance, but were blessed with sunshine for the Communion:

The following week I was at a conference on medieval history where I encountered an impressive display of vegetable planting at a place I would not have expected: Christ Church College, Cambridge. I'm not sure we can replicate this at church, but it's something to think about.

Now we are into Creation Season and Fairtrade Fortnight (I'll be using the parable of the workers in the vineyard in Godly Play to explore the latter this Sunday). For this Creation Season the World Council of Churches have been encouraging churches to support the Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty by endorsing the Faith Letter for its implementation so we discussed this at PCC earlier in the week and agreed to sign it as a church. 

Last Saturday we also had a well-attended meeting about plans for a new heating system as our elderly boilers can't be repaired for much longer. The cost of an air source heat pump is pretty eye-watering and naturally we would rather be spending that sort of money on helping other people insulate their homes or 'quicker wins' for the environment. However, apparently faculties for new gas boilers are only being issued in very exceptional circumstances and because our church is used so much of the week the electric options that many churches are turning to simply won't work for us. That does at least mean we can't feel guilty about spending money in this way, but finding the money may take a little while.

At our most recent Eco Church team meeting we started working through the many suggestions sent by A Rocha when we got our gold award. One of them is to pick one of A Rocha's Target 25 habitats and species to focus on trying to support, so we've opted for butterflies. The main focus for the moment is our proper celebration once Revd Claire returns from sabbatical, and plans to make the front of the church greener.

And I almost forgot, I came into work a couple of weeks ago to find this on my desk - I never expected to find our church mentioned in The Tablet:

Celebrations

The summer holidays are almost upon us and Revd Claire is about to start her sabbatical, so we're postponing the big celebration of our Gold Eco Church award until the autumn. However, we did have delicious homemade cake and fizz after the service last Sunday to celebrate and our new certificate is now in situ. Unfortunately neither Dino nor Richard could be with us, so Sally and Christine stepped in for their husbands in our celebratory photo:

It's possible some of the flowers in the courtyard need a bit of thinning out, but they're attracting a lot of bees and in the past week I've seen a scarlet tiger moth and a red admiral in there.

More election prep (and wildlife)

 After a Godly Play session last Sunday on Jesus calming the storm, I took the children into the courtyard to a much tamer aspect of the natural world and encouraged some wildlife photography (BBOWT have a competition with categories for photos by children and of urban wildlife). I lent our youngest member my phone so his are the only photos I have at present:

There is a bee here if you can spot it.

Then we moved on to water-painting - the following was not prompted by any adults:

After the service it was part two of our hustings - this time with Reform Candidate Andy Williams and Labour Candidate Matt Rodda. Matt got held up so it was a two stage event asking each of them to answer questions on the climate, poverty etc as previously. Rosemary was able to take the opportunity to present Matt personally with the three page petition asking him to support the CAN bill which we had been promoting at the school fair.

Although the church is in Reading Central constituency, some of the congregation live in the new Earley and Woodley Constituency. Together with some fellow Reading Area Green Christians and CTEER members, we organised a hustings on Sunday evening at Trinity Church (the one behind Asda). It was chaired by the minister at Trinity - Jon Salmon.  The photos are courtesy of Phil Creighton who was also the star who managed to organise all of the main candidates to agree to come:

I think we were all a bit worried that barely anyone would turn up, but as 7pm approached we began to fear we were actually going to exceed our 200 capacity - in the end we counted in 182, so pretty perfect. We opened with a question on the climate - which was genuinely the topic we had received more questions on than any other - Mike B at Trinity asked this one. Two of us from St John & St Stephen's asked questions too - Alison on foodbanks/poverty, myself on biodiversity and the CAN bill. It was disappointing that two of the candidates hadn't heard of it, and indeed surprising after the publicity given it at the Restore Nature Now demo the day before. (Many of us couldn't attend that demo due to other inescapable commitments, although I happened to bump into Margaret at the station on her way there so can confirm that the church did get represented!). I have of course written to those candidates unaware of the bill since, pointing them to the zero hour website and their fellow party members who are supporting it.

An extra bonus of being at the hustings was catching up with Simon Batchelor OBE - the first time I had seen him since the honour was announced for his exceptional contributions to international development and innovation - see more here.

Before proceedings began, I couldn't resist taking a few pictures of Trinity Church's 'meadow'. (Impressive solar array too!)

Finally this week, I had a chance to share news of our gold award at Deanery Synod, starting a couple of potentially useful conversations with other churches.

Reaching Gold!

It has been another very busy month on the Eco Church front, leading up to a momentous milestone. 

On the later May Bank Holiday four of us escorted our duck down to the river again, this time with nine ducklings. We got it almost all on video too, but there are no stills - do watch the epic journey on our Facebook page (posted 3rd June)!

Even before the election was called, we had invited local parliamentary candidates to join us for an informal hustings and our monthly church lunch on Environment Sunday. The Lib Dem and Green candidates as well as a representative of the Conservatives all joined us for a very enlightening and positive discussion that included climate justice/the loss and damage fund, the Climate and Nature Bill, housing, food banks, 'in work' poverty and more.

We also got to do some harvesting in the courtyard:

On 8th June Rosemary & Richard C and I were at Oxford Diocese's Celebration of Creation Care at Wesley Memorial Church in Oxford, hearing inspirational stories from around the diocese and found ourselves nominated for the Church Times Green Award for Congregation and Community Action. Bishop Stephen used the parable of the sower in a wonderfully encouraging way to explore Eco Church journeys and Ruth Valerio was the keynote speaker:

Forest Church next day was at a new venue, beside the river, and that morning we began Great Big Green Week by using WWFs carbon calculator to measure our footprints over coffee. We've been combining the week with being voter champions and produced leaflets for the school with the key dates for voter registration, postal votes etc as well as a mention of Greenpeace's recommended topics to ask candidates. 

This week began with our Gold Eco Church assessment - Sara from Eco Church was joined by Don from Mortimer Methodist Church and Linda from St John's Moulsham, Chelmsford. We had a lovely day, learning lots from them as we went along (we have a long list of new suggestions for our next meeting) and next day came the very exciting news that we are the first parish church in Oxford diocese to have achieved the Gold Award, and the 50th in the country. Here we are with Don and Linda beside the old St Stephen's font in our courtyard:

To finish the week, we've been at the school fair, selling plants, getting signatures for a petition about the Climate and Nature bill, and supervising games about naming wildlife and discovering the hottest years on record. (The last was inspired by this website).

Our next meeting is on Monday - time to start planning for the next chapter! 

From the garden to Christian Aid

 I am excited to report that the duck has indeed returned. Eggs were spotted on 26th April.

And by 1 May she was ensconced on the nest and I haven't managed to see how many eggs there are. Nikki has provided duck food and a water container for her.

Meanwhile, we've been enjoying some really lovely flower displays in church since committing to source all our flowers locally where possible and avoid floral foam:

We've put up a new bee hotel as the old one was not well used and we decided it was probably in too shady a place (but there were a couple of blocked holes, so I didn't like to move it). This has been a good talking point as well as being put to use very swiftly. So I've signed us up for the Big Bee Hotel Experiment.

The wildflower patch has a great variety in it, albeit not all that colourful yet. I added some of the seed bombs left over from a recent Forest Church session, and some of the children buried a few in pots around the courtyard, so we're looking forward to seeing what comes of those.

And I was chuffed to find froghoppers have been by, creating cuckoo spit (apologies for the blurry image).

Meanwhile the main border has been drawing lots of bees and dragonflies.

And the marigolds I planted too late last year started flowering very early this year and are still going. Since taking this photo, I've been able to inter-plant them with tomato plants, courtesy of Reading's Carmelite community.

This number of bikes is pretty common on Sunday mornings and there were even more for the APCM.

Finally Christian Aid week has been very busy - members of our congregation were up early at the station on several mornings collecting from commuters; 

there was the sponsored walk through glorious countryside at Bix (organised by Richard and Rosemary) and three of the younger members of the congregation have committed to walking 70K in May. Our church lunch this month was in aid of Christian Aid too.

Spring update

Lots has been happening over the last few months, but I've not found time to update the blog. One of the highlights was last December's demonstration in London during COP28 - here are Liz and Rosemary outside the BP offices. 

We also had a very constructive meeting with our MP, Matt Rodda, discussing a range of environmental concerns. But disappointingly he still won't commit to supporting the bill recently brought back to parliament as the Climate and Nature Bill.

Closer to home, we are still working on plans for solar panels for the school that shares our premises - a far longer process than we were expecting with our very cautious diocesan schools board! And have begun looking into an air source heat pump to replace the elderly boilers. Rosemary and I had a useful conversation with one of the teachers about eco-activities in school but teachers are so busy we are trying to find ways to support them that are not going to take up any more teacher time. In January several of us took part in the RSPB's Great Big Garden Birdwatch. At the beginning of March we shared a short David Attenborough film after the service and explained current plans for trying to get to net zero in our church and the wider diocese as well as encouraging more action at home.

January's Forest Church included making rather delicious looking seed muffins to feed the birds with (the one on the right is for human consumption); February was very wet but some great den-building went on, and March was in glorious sunshine in the Harris Gardens, perfect for the cherry blossom season.

A couple of weeks ago a working party enjoyed the sunshine and marked Earth Hour a few hours early clearing all the weeds from the forecourt and doing lots of tidying and planting in the borders. Through Lent we've been drawing attention to Climate Stewards' Carbon Fast, and a number of the congregation joined in Greenpeace's Plastic Count. I've just taken down the notices for those and replaced them with posters encouraging more planting for wildlife:

Meanwhile the courtyard garden is looking rather lovely, and we have had quite a few visits from a pair of mallards, so are hoping for more ducklings this summer.