Wild Church

 Do you have forest church, or wild church, where you are?

Here in Sussex there's a few initiatives for church out of doors, because we have stretches of woodland where people can just wander or walk their dogs. 

And last night my daughter Grace sent me a message to see if I'd like to go with her to a wild church gathering this morning, a mile or so along the road from me, by Church in the Wood.

A church has stood there in the wood for a very long time. The first one was probably in the 11th century, and after that there was one in the 13th century, then the Victorians built the present one in a Neo-Gothic style. 

It's all on its own in the wood away from the housing development that sprouted later in the 1930s. For a long time it had no electricity. When I first moved to Hastings at the end of the 1970s, that church was lit only by candles. I remember one time when my then husband went there to play for a wedding. He was all poised for Widor's toccata with his hands over the keys, when they opened the door for the bridal party and all the candles blew out.

This is what the church looks like.

But we weren't in the church building, today we were in and of ourselves the church in the wood. 

So our church looked a lot less picturesque, more like this (Teresa Davey — a few camp chairs standing around in the mud and leaves amid winter trees)

One of the men, looking for a place to plant his chair where it wouldn't sink in to the rich and abundant mud, placed it carefully like this, sheltering the wild arum growing there, the plant we call Lords and Ladies, so he wouldn't accidentally tread on it and bring it to an untimely end.

We breathed the spring air and Roger who organised it read us Psalm 139 about us being made in the depths of the earth, and added some thoughts about the entanglement of all living things, interconnected like a mycelium, and we brought our bits of knowledge about Celtic thought and folklore out of the back of our heads for comparison, and Janine had made tea and coffee and brought some Jaffa Cakes to share. There was a dog called Ellie and another called Gorka, and we looked at the mud and the leaves and the oak moss and sprouting acorns. We breathed in and out and joined in quiet prayer.

It was peaceful and gentle and friendly, and we got gradually . . . very cold.

What Gerard Manley Hopkins said:

What would the world be, once bereft
Of wet and of wildness? Let them be left,
O let them be left, wildness and wet;
Long live the weeds and the wilderness yet.

Clarence the cat was left at home, sagely pondering similar things but through a closed window and right by a radiator.