New Start in Creation Time

The new school term has begun and with it a time for other new starts. Nine members of the congregation met up during the after service coffee yesterday and agreed that the time has come to return to Module 1 of the Ecocongregation toolkit, to give our church an environmental check-up and establish a new action plan. Striking while the iron is hot, we will be reconvening at my house this Wednesday to start the project.

The children's church this month will be following themes appropriate to Creation Time and we started today with the story of St Francis. I put together a Godly Play style retelling of his life using some of Giotto's images from the basilica at Assisi. The children's creative responses ranged from a pipe-cleaner Francis with stigmata to ragged dressing up clothing and a picture of a ship bearing Francis's father's silks. There were also a silver sister moon and a picture of Francis preaching to the birds.

Harvests

Once again we have reached that time of year for sharing harvests - I'm very much looking forward to sampling Diana's apple, marrow and ginger chutney purchased today (all money going to Tearfund), and have several plans for the damsons from Hugh and Judy - thank you.
As the Season of Creation approaches once more I'm hoping we can start planning to move forward in our 'EcoCongregation journey'- all ideas welcome over coffee in the refectory after the service on 14th September (or email me).
The front of our church is currently extra-colourful thanks to the wonderful rainbow picture (above) produced by children at the holiday club last week, based on Desmond Tutu's book, God's Dream.

Preparing for Christian Aid Week

This Sunday we had a guest preacher  - cover star of May's Xn Magazine and Christian Aid's regional co-ordinator for Berkshire - Jess Hall. She sent some great resources which Liz and Judy used in the children's work last week about the story of nine-year-old Edile in Colombia. This week they were able to learn more about him in the very moving film Jess showed during the service.

For the readings and sermon I was meant to be leading Godly Play out in the hall but we found we were locked out and had to improvise - the only space was the newly rebuilt inner courtyard, a gorgeous suntrap with curved steps like a theatre and soft standing to kneel on while doing crafts so we were very glad to have been forced to move and appreciate the outdoors.

After communion together Stefan was able to show Jess the model of Edile's house that Climbers had made last week. Earlier in the service several of the Exclaimers read out prayers they had written. This was Ffion's:
Dear God, Thank you for giving us clean houses and appropriate things to eat and drink. Thank you for giving us games and activities to play and work with. Thank you for everything! Please can the people in Colombia have all the things I have.

Earthing Faith at St Nicholas, Earley

Last Thursday I attended an Earthing Faith gathering at St Nicholas Church, Earley, to give a five minute report on our experiences as an Ecocongregation and the resulting connections we made (RCEL, GREN etc). Drawing together highlights, skimming the blog and some APCM reports was a much more positive experience than I'd expected, remembering just what had been done so far. We've very much put green issues on the back burner lately, and yet there are many positives that have remained - still far too many bikes for the bike racks, still most commonly vegetarian shared meals, continuing to mark Creation Time and so on. It was great to be at green church event in Reading again, catching up with old friends but also finding lots of new faces, churches newly getting involved. I was very interested to learn about Oakwood Forest Church which sounds a wonderful way of doing church in Reading. (This image is from the cloisters at Mont Saint-Michel).