Joanna's farewell post

After twenty years at St John and St Stephen's Church, my family are moving, so I'm handing over this blog to others on the Eco Church Team, with a quick update on recent activities. As mentioned in the previous post, I was invited to talk about Eco Church to Loddon Reach Mothers' Union and friends on 5th March. This was in the church hall next to St Mary's Shinfield which is a beautiful rural church with lots of wildlife in the churchyard. At the end they presented me with a stunning bunch of daffodils from their church allotment, so they're already well on the way to Bronze, I am sure.

The next day our Lebanese crab apple trees arrived at St John's - chosen to withstand the heat in our forecourt. Sadly both trees have been vandalized since, but they're still growing, just a little misshapen.

On the 17th our duck returned, quacking loudly in the courtyard. We fed her for a couple of days, but then she seemed to have disappeared. About ten days later, planning new planting in the raised beds, our gardener inadvertently uncovered her beautiful nest, perfectly disguised, with 11 eggs already there. She started sitting on it a couple of days later.

Before these hatched, another mother duck appeared at the front of church leading a dozen ducklings down to the water. There's a good chance she had found a place in the forecourt to nest since it's difficult to see where else she might have been walking from to try to reach the river that way.

On 30 April we heard the telltale cheaping of hatched ducklings and I came into work on the 1st May to find them all waiting to be let out, surprisingly sat in rather hot sunshine. It was only from the photos afterwards that we were able to work out there were 13 ducklings this year, since they constantly moved so fast.

The other major highlight in May was hosting Oxford Diocese's world mission conference - Sharing the Journey, Seeking the Kingdom, exploring what it means for Christians across the world to care for creation, seek justice, and nurture disciples along with representatives from all four of Oxford's partner dioceses. The event was organised by Maranda St John Nicolle, Director of CCOW, and Revd Polly Falconer, the diocese's Racial Justice Adviser. 

Among the 100 plus people present, were a team of us from St John's helping out and learning from the panels and workshops (with thanks to Maranda for the photo of some of us):

Revd Christine provided some notes for our weekly newsletter the following week:

We had a stimulating and nourishing in every way (great food!) day on Saturday when representatives from our overseas link dioceses gathered in our church.  We listened to insights on creation care, seeking justice and nurturing disciples from the dioceses of Kimberley and Kuruman (South Africa), Nandyal (South India), Vaxjo (Sweden) and Jamaica.

What follows are my own take away notes from the day-

Jamaica: the challenge to the environment of Bauxite mining – deforestation, dust which not only rests on everything, but can pollute tanks holding drinking water.  Profits not ploughed back into the economy.

Reparations for slavery slow in coming.

Kimberley and Kuruman: 46 parishes 100s of km apart and only 15 full time clergy.  But very active laity who run things (they have to!)

Gender based violence a daily reality.  Church is encouraging women not to keep silence and is trying to be a safe space.  Much emphasis in society on how girls/women should behave.  Need to offer additional focus on men’s/boys’ behaviour.

Nandyal:  The challenge of living out ‘in Christ there is neither bond nor free, male nor female’ etc where inequality is built into society and in the church eg Dalits often worship separately.  Also, nationally, Christians are in a minority and in some places face persecution.

Vaxjo: Sweden is doing similar things to our diocese – insulating churches, reducing dependence on fossil fuels in heating buildings etc.  They love our untidy graveyards that encourage biodiversity!  The church has a spiritual and existential role in challenging the mindset and lifestyle that contribute to the climate crisis.

I should also mention Global Justice Reading's event at the end of May where members of St John's congregation filled a good many of the chairs to hear our friend Dr Simon Batchelor OBE talk about his development work, specifically his clean cooking project providing a climate friendly alternative to the biomass cooking that leads to some four million premature deaths every year - mainly women and children.

Finally, we've decided to make May the time of our regular annual lifestyle audit, having reviewed the questions used previously to enable us to measure progress better. We took in 39 answers, which is a little under 2/3 of regular weekly attendance. The answers may have included a few visitors and while some who didn't fill them in may be those less committed to environmental action, there's a good chance some were those always busy doing several things on a Sunday who didn't get round to it, so this is probably pretty representative.

From Christmas Plans to spring planting and "Wilding"

A shockingly long silence on the blog does not mean we've started resting on our laurels. To accompany a vegetarian curry lunch on the first Sunday of November, we borrowed Phil Chatfield's excellent Fairtrade stall (from Caversham Methodists) to help start our Christmas shopping.

Then on 6th November we were finally able to celebrate our Eco Church Gold Award properly now that Rev Claire had returned from sabbatical. Sadly it was too late for Bishop Olivia to join us (she'd already retired), but it was great to welcome Associate Archdeacon Rev Liz Jackson who presented us with the plaque:

Lots of our community partners were able to come along to help us to celebrate and have stalls showing their own activities. These included Reading Hydro, Global Justice Now, Draughtbusters and an especially lovely stall from Reading Natural History Society that I'm very cross I forgot to photograph.

We had picked a weekday so that some children from the school could join us too and they gave us an excellent and inspiring update on the action they're taking in school to tackle pollution and climate change. Unfortunately they couldn't stay to join the cream tea afterwards - I was pleasantly surprised to discover I actually like vegan cream:

Among those attending was our Area Dean, Rev Mike Smith, who asked us to give a report at the next deanery synod. So we quickly booked that in for the end of the month - it was in the 'good news in the deanery' slot, which was nice, although I think I'd have preferred it to be a 'call to immediate action' slot. I have had an invitation to talk at another local church as a result anyway. And before the synod I was invited to St Catherine's Tilehurst so we could do some learning from one another - they're doing really lovely things with some of the space around their church:

And they have since successfully reached Silver Eco Church standard. Then, on 27th November, several of us from St John's headed over to visit a more experienced Gold Eco Church - Mortimer Methodist Church.  Here Don Graham (one of our Eco Church assessors) welcomed us for a really beautiful and inspirational afternoon. At some point I should post a full report of the trip as there was much too much for this blogpost:

Like us, they have very little land on site. But they've made the most of its possibilities. A tip to remember for any space is that apparently hollyhocks will grow in the tiniest bit of ground so it's worth pushing their seeds into likely gaps around the edge of land.

They have an impressive array of solar panels, carefully monitored:

And a very rural old churchyard on the edge of the village, adjoining their former church building, which they also maintain for wildlife.

In December, we were very grateful to Tricia at EcoNet for arranging for the church to be sent a Christmas tree ahead of the Caversham Court sale - this always happens on the first Saturday in December which, this year, fell after the first Sunday of December. As usual we were able to decorate it after our church lunch, although reaching the top proved rather tricky this year.

BBOWT volunteer Martin sent us the following so I could put up a notice explaining our tree's story: The Scots Pines are cut by Berkshire, Buckinghamshire and Oxfordshire Wildlife Trust volunteers from Barossa nature reserve, managed on behalf of the Ministry of Defence by our sister Wildlife Trust in Surrey.   The site is both a Site of Special Scientific Interest and a Special Protection Area.  Heathland sites like Barossa need to be kept open, free from too many invasive trees, if they are to support the wide range of wildlife which only lives on heathland.   As well as the obvious heathers,  Barossa is home to the beautiful yellow bog asphodel and the carnivorous small leaved sundew, a range of heathland specialist birds such as Dartford warbler, Stone Chats, Woodlarks and Nightjars, at least four species of reptiles and many other species only found on heathland.  Cutting pines for Christmas and other management work  keeps Barossa an accessible wildlife rich site.

Through December we had the usual newsletter advice and posters on ways to keep Christmas greener. Meanwhile we'd also finally agreed the plans for our heat pump, which we hope can be installed this summer, and invited a tree expert over to help us consider ways to make the front of our church greener. Ultimately we decided that it is such a warm space that there is no way to put trees close to the building without cutting through the tarmac for them and then endangering the building itself, so we're starting with a couple of planters. Richard and Rosemary dug a good bit of the soil from my underused home compost heap, and they topped it up with peat-free compost from the garden centre. The plants were chosen for their resilience to heat and attractiveness to pollinators, with some primroses added in for Easter colour (Hebe, Carex grasses, Syringa, Campanula, Viburnum, Choisya, Sibirica and Clematis).

We've had replies from three of our local MPs to our letters about a fossil fuel non-proliferation treaty, but were naturally disappointed that none of them was prepared to support the CAN Bill: we are waiting to hear what's next on that campaign. One final activity I have to include before ending this overlong report - about a third of the congregation were present last night, with a couple of guests, to watch the inspirational story of the Knepp estate rewilding project in the beautiful 2023 film Wilding. It was quite astonishing how quickly the soil healed and became rich with life when given the chance. As a medievalist, I was, of course, captivated by the fact that our last record of white storks breeding in Britain was in 1416, and now they're back. You can even watch their nest this year on a live webcam which is a mindblowing privilege (I've been listening to the birds in Sussex as I type).