Conversation Under Trees

BBC RADIO 4 SUNDAY WORSHIP FOR PENTECOST 19 MAY 2024 

Web Script

CONVERSATION UNDER A TREE

LW: Good morning and welcome to Sunday Worship. I’m Lucy Winkett the Rector here. The Bible is famous for being a collection of sacred writings that begin in a garden and end in a city. Today we are in both. On this feast of Pentecost, we gather in the garden at St James’s Church, just minutes from Piccadilly Circus in central London to celebrate the words of Christ that the Spirit blows where God wills. Let us pray, inspired by this Holy Spirit, out here in the open air.

Creating and re-creating God, we give you thanks for all that lives beside us in the natural world. We thank you that we human beings are not separate from but intimately part of your living earth. Give us the eyes of faith that we can celebrate the wonders you have made. And give us courage to make the changes we must, to cherish, conserve and protect our planet home. 

 Amen.

MUSIC Lark ascending - R Vaughan Williams 

solo viola outdoors with recorded wren song

PART ONE: Conversation to stir our hearts

LW

Welcome to the garden at St James’s Church. We’ve just heard the song of the wren who lives here – accompanied by the viola. Birdsong in the city centre is especially evocative, as research has shown birds have had to evolve to be able to sing even more loudly above the traffic….. Out here, adjacent to the church building is where members of our congregation meet regularly for contemplative prayer.

Praying within the natural world about the environment is not easy when the climate emergency is so serious. It’s sometimes hard to know what to say to God in the middle of such extreme weather events such as floods, heat waves and drought. But one way of learning to pray differently is to pray outdoors, letting the natural environment lead us into new perspectives, deeper contemplation, inspired by the Holy Spirit who appeared as rushing wind, as fire, and who brooded over the waters at the creation.

In Scripture, many conversations between people and God, and people with each other, happen in the open air, outside the walls of a Temple or Church. And many happened under the canopy of a tree. Famously of course in the Garden of Eden, where God and the first humans spoke in the cool of the evening. And also Abraham’s mysterious visitors under the Oak of Mamre, and later of course, Jesus who called Zaccheus down from the tree he’d climbed.

Jesus himself was crucified on the Tree, which became for us the Tree of Life: and in that mysterious apocalyptic Book of Revelation it is in the middle of the city that the tree of life offers leaves for the healing of the nations.

READING 
Revelation 5.13-14 

13Then I heard every creature in heaven and on earth and under the earth and in the sea, and all that is in them, singing, 
‘To the one seated on the throne and to the Lamb 
be blessing and honour and glory and might 
for ever and ever!’ 
14And the four living creatures said, ‘Amen!’ And the elders fell down and worshipped….. 

Music 2 Hymn - How great thou art 

Oh Lord, my God 
When I, in awesome wonder 
Consider all the works thy hands have made, 
I see the stars, I hear the rolling thunder 
Thy power throughout the universe displayed 

Then sings my soul, my Saviour God to Thee 
How great Thou art, how great Thou art 
Then sings my soul, my Saviour God to Thee 
How great Thou art, how great Thou art 

When through the woods and forest glades I wander 
And hear the birds sing sweetly in the trees, 
When I look down from lofty mountain grandeur 
And hear the brook and feel the gentle breeze, 

Then sings my soul, my Saviour God, to Thee; 
How great Thou art, how great Thou art! 
Then sings my soul, my Saviour God, to Thee; 
How great Thou art, how great Thou art 

When Christ shall come, with shout of acclamation 
And take me home, what joy shall fill my heart 
Then shall I bow, in humble adoration 
And then proclaim, my God, how great Thou art 

Then sings my soul, my Saviour God to Thee 
How great Thou art, how great Thou art 
Then sings my soul, my Saviour God to Thee 
How great Thou art, how great Thou art 

LW The words of that familiar hymn ‘How Great Thou Art’ were written by the 19th century Swedish preacher Carl Boberg, who wrote this stirring song of praise after being caught in a huge thunderstorm and hearing the birds sing as the rains began to subside.

Our service today is led by the earth justice group here at St James’s. In writing liturgies, prayers and holding events for the whole community such as growing wheat and planting seeds together, our congregation has learned more about human beings’ place within God’s creation, not apart from it. Led by our group, we’ve explored historic rituals, marking the natural rhythms of the year, such as wassail, lammas and the beating of the bounds; rituals that have to be re imagined for the centre of a city. And, rooted in our celebration of the Eucharist, we pray together, knowing the need for fundamental change in the way human beings are living, in union with Christ at the heart of all creation.

Deborah: My name is Deborah Colvin, member of the Earth Justice team at Justice team at St James’s. 

The World Economic Forum suggests we are living in a polycrisis with overlapping threats from war, pandemic, food security and climate break down. As far back as 2011 the journal Nature suggests that a 6th mass extinction is underway. Data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration shows that climate change is now greater than at any time since Homo sapiens evolved hundreds of thousands of years ago.

Leaders of many different religions, including Church leaders of all denominations have argued that the root of this crisis is spiritual: We have become alienated from the earth, our common home, and desecrated its gifts, while those who have contributed least to this destruction are suffering most. We need profound change in our understanding and behaviour if future generations are to have a liveable future. The ancient Greeks had a word for this kind of change: Metanoia, meaning a transformative change of heart or spiritual conversion. In Matthew’s Gospel, Jesus preached to the crowds about metanoia as necessary for new ways of believing, a new way of life.

DC In 2018, Robert Macfarlane and Jackie Morris produced a book called ‘The Lost Words Spells’, prompted by recent editions of children’s dictionaries in which words like acorn, moss, dandelion, and kingfisher were removed in favour of what were considered to be more useful words such as blog, chat room and database. The Lost Words Blessing, sung by St James’s Singers, reflects on this theme.

MUSIC LOST WORDS

Enter the wild with care, my love, and speak the things you see 

Let new names take and root and thrive and grow 

And even as you travel far from heather, crag and river 

May you like the little fisher, set the stream alight with glitter 

May you enter now as otter without falter into water 

Look to the sky with care, my love and speak the things you see 

Let new names take and root and thrive and grow 

And even as you journey on past dying stars exploding 

Like the gilded one in flight, leave your little gifts of light 

And in the dead of night my darling, find the gleaming eye of starling 

Like the little aviator, sing your heart to all dark matter 

Walk through the world with care, my love, and sing the things you see 

Let new names take and root and thrive and grow 

And even as you stumble through my hair sands eroding 

Let the fern unfurl your grieving, let the heron still your breathing 

Let the selkie swim you deeper, oh my little silver-seeker 

Even as the hour grows bleaker, be the singer and the speaker 

And in city and in forest, let the larks become your chorus 

And when every hope is gone, let the raven call you home 

PRAYER of repentance

God of the living and dying: 

We see what we do, to our planet and all its inhabitants,

And we know we need to do better. 

We hear the destruction and devastation,

And we know we need to make space for healing.

We touch the land, and sea, and feel the air, 

And we know that we need to raise our voices to protect them. 

Forgive us our apathy, disbelief, and excess 

Give us the vision to leave a better legacy than this. 

Give us courage to transform our world. 

Amen.

PART TWO: Conversation that changes our perspective

Praying outdoors helps us learn that the trees, together with the other beings in the micro-ecology of the garden, offer a creative space for a deeper kind of conversation. But more than that, they help us to quiet our normal busy preoccupations, to be still, to de-centre ourselves and to recognise that we are beings amongst other beings in a great web of interconnectedness."

My name is Diane Pacitti and I write poetry as part of a collaborative St James’s team.

Conversation under a Tree

My friend and I fall quiet.

We look up, and suddenly the plane tree 

is the real conversation. 

We begin 

to sense what it could tell: 

this so-familiar Londoner whose roots 

are immigrant:

who swells to fruiting red 

and smaller yellow flower-balls; who is 

both female and male 

who is multiple-voiced. 

All at once it sways with the wind. It makes my body 

a pool of dark; 

a mound of dappled light. 

I cannot control this conversation. 

My friend catches her breath. We must both attune 

to a new language: rustle-sweep of wind; 

creak of beetle and the sudden shrill

of bird throat. 

We must attune 

to the silence in ourselves. 

Sitting in the garden at St James’s now, we invite you to similarly focus on a garden, whether actually or in imagination - or perhaps just to look out of the window at a tree. At the heart of the monthly liturgies we hold in the garden here, we each separately move out into the garden for 15 minutes to simply be present to whatever draws our attention - a tree, a leaf, a plant, an insect or stone, or the sky. Simply gazing, as if at a beloved, without preconception or analysis opens us up to the possibility of reciprocity, of being gazed at in return, and often induces a sense of awe, wonder and joy. When we re-gather to share our responses, it seems we have often experienced a fuller appreciation of Creation as a ‘communion of subjects’. Perhaps this sense of communion, of being truly in ‘right relationship’ is the basis of the metanoia we seek

LW John Tavener’s piece ‘O, Do not move, listen’ leads us now into a consideration of this practice of deep contemplation.

Music John Tavener’s piece ‘O, Do not move, listen’ 

D. Penelope, can you tell us about a particular experience you have had in the garden liturgy? 

P. There was one particular occasion that felt in the moment like a kind of epiphany, but also led to a complete change of attitude. I was standing by one of my favourite places in the garden when my gaze suddenly alighted on a large snail slowly progressing along a slender stem that looked too small to bear its weight. At the time, I was engaged in a battle in my garden at home with convoys of snails that advanced on my small vegetable patch each night, slowly decimating it. But now I found myself marvelling at the beautiful spiral patterning and colour gradations on the snail’s shell. And then I noticed the trail of slime behind it - and found myself smiling in delight as it sparkled in the early morning sunlight, a kind of shining silver milky way. My sense of revulsion and hostile rage at these creatures transformed itself into a kind of reverence. I had a strong sense of being given to by the snail. In the light of the Franciscan understanding that the whole universe is the material expression of God, then everything in it must be sacred, valuable, meaningful. And indeed I have subsequently learned that snails perform valuable functions in the ecosystem; recycling decaying plant matter and helping soil aeration and moisture retention – as well as being an important food source for other garden wildlife, such as birds, frogs and hedgehogs. 

What about you? Could you speak about how bringing a scientific lens affects your experience?

D: Well, for example, sometimes in the liturgy I feel I am participating in a sort of tree breathing which is enhanced through both knowledge of plant physiology and a more poetic communicative exchange. It’s amazing that the circumference of a tree changes over a 24 hour period. The tree gets thinner during the day as water is drawn up from the soil and evaporates from the leaves, narrowing and tightening the water transport vessels, then slumps down again at night when the water flow stops. A single circular tree breath over 24 hours. Tuning into that movement brings me closer to the rhythm and time of the earth. The liturgical container provides a context of reverence. 

LW Scripture teaches us the radical power of conversation to help change the world. And in teaching us that prayer is closely linked to action, one of the actions we can take is to sing! The hymn ‘Holy Spirit, Gift Bestower’ reminds us that all our life comes from God through the Spirit and that our very breath is an intimate route of connection with God; whose love holds the stars apart, and who loves each living thing on the earth intimately too.

MUSIC ‘Holy Spirit, Gift Bestower’

HYMN accompanied by viola/accordion 

Holy Spirit, Gift Bestower
Holy Spirit, gift bestower 
Breathe into our hearts today, 
Flowing water, dove that hovers, 
Holy Spirit, guide our way. 
Love inspirer, joy releaser, 
Spirit, take our fears away. 
Reconciler, peace restorer, 
Move among us as we pray. 

Holy Spirit, Christ proclaimer, 
Wisdom bringer, light our way. 
Fire that Dances, wind that whispers, 
Holy Spirit, come today.

Ease disturber, comfort bearer 
Move among us while we pray. 
Truth revealer, faith confirmer, 
Rest within our hearts today 

Words: Catherine Williams (1965) 
Tune: Welsh Trad. Arr. Norman Warren (1934-2019 

PART THREE: Conversation that gives us new ideas

The performance poet Zena Edwards sings and speaks regularly at St James’s and her recent work has focussed on the importance of urban green spaces. Her poem The Diligence of Peace inspires us to cherish the earth and change the world.

Diligence of Peace 

The diligence of peace. 
Tranquility. How long can it last? 
Ah, this question: an abyss of uncertainty. 

Come into the garden 
Rest. A single thread 
Of doubt, wound around 
The limb of the holly 
Will still be there when you return. 
If you care to pick it up again. 

Come into the garden. 
Leave a little offering of surrender, 
Leave a little changed. 

Written by Zena Edwards© 

MUSIC

Hildegard of Bingen

REFLECTION (written and read by Revd Dr Ayla Lepine, Associate Rector, St James’s)

I’m Ayla Lepine, the Associate Rector at St James’s, and in joining some of the Earth Justice liturgies and prayers, I’ve learned again that the Spirit of God has no boundaries, unlike our own bodies, ideas, feelings, and selves. The Spirit moves through all beings, in the core essence of all things. The wind of the Spirit, fiery and fierce at Pentecost, does what She does. The Spirit is unpredictable, and Her ways are not our ways. And yet the Spirit is also life-giving breath, a divine heartbeat for eternity. This breath brings us back to the rhythms of nature, reminding us that the earth is God’s and it always was.

On a parish retreat, we took a sheet of paper and drew a line down the middle. On one side we wrote: ‘God is…’ On the other: ‘God is not…’ Someone offered this: ‘God is not…on your timetable.’ The climate emergency is teaching us this in new and devastating ways. 

Our planet is not on our greed-stricken timetable. And in fear, we often look to ourselves for answers, digging into the ground of our own frailty, and coming up empty. We’ve forgotten the Spirit’s life-giving breath and Her sacred wisdom. We’ve forgotten that the earth can educate us. 

The story of Job is one of terrible despair and suffering. But it’s easy to miss the way that nature’s own inherent, intuitive wisdom is woven into the text. It’s not often that God speaks directly to anyone, inside or outside the Bible, but in the book of Job God does so boldly, strongly, and at length. The knowledge Job needs, God tells him, comes from creation itself. 

Dare we ask nature our questions, especially if the answers are hard to bear. God instructs Job: ‘ask the animals, and they will teach you; the birds of the air, and they will tell you; ask the plants of the earth, and they will teach you; and the fish of the sea will declare to you.’ By bringing the earth into Job’s heart, God brings Job, and all of us, down to earth.

FINAL PRAYERS INCLUDING LORD’S PRAYER 

Holy creating Spirit, we lay before you our human tendency to want to dominate and control. Give us courage and insight that we may resist the temptation to exploit your world and the people with whom we share the earth.

Gracious God; hear our prayer.

We pray that we may learn from the earth-wisdom of indigenous peoples, and of those who have gone before us. 

Gracious God; hear our prayer 

We pray for a changing of our minds that will impel us to act. 

Gracious God; hear our prayer

Holy creating Spirit, fill us with wonder; set our hearts on fire with love. We pray that we may have moments of relationship and amazement as we encounter trees, birds, and insects, and all the other life-forms that surround us. 

Gracious God; hear our prayer.

Holy creating Spirit, may we practise the deeply receptive stillness of trees, who breathe in tune with the rhythms of the earth and the sun. Help us to enter into a new, reciprocal relationship with our planet. Help us to renew and cherish the earth. 

Gracious God; hear our prayer.

And now we pray in the words of the One who withdrew to the silence of a mountain to teach his disciples how to pray. 

Our Father who art in heaven 

Hallowed be thy name.

Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.

Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our trespasses.

As we forgive those who trespass against us.

And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. 

For thine is the kingdom, the power and the glory.

For ever and ever. Amen.

READING
Job 12:7-10

“But ask the animals, and they will teach you, 

or the birds in the sky, and they will tell you; 

8 or speak to the earth, and it will teach you, 

or let the fish in the sea inform you. 

9 Which of all these does not know 

that the hand of the Lord has done this? 

10 In his hand is the life of every creature 

and the breath of all humankind. 

MUSIC

We shall be known by the company we keep 

By the ones who circle round to tend these fires 

We shall be known by the ones who sow and reap 

The seeds of change, alive from deep within the earth 

It is time now, it is time now that we thrive 

It is time we lead ourselves into the well 

It is time now, and what a time to be alive 

In this Great Turning we shall learn to lead in love 

In this Great Turning we shall learn to lead in love 

We shall be known by the company we keep 

By the ones who circle round to tend these fires 

We shall be known by the ones who sow and reap 

The seeds of change, alive from deep within the earth 

It is time now, it is time now that we thrive 

It is time we lead ourselves into the well 

It is time now, and what a time to be alive 

In this Great Turning we shall learn to lead in love 

In this Great Turning we shall learn to lead in love