The Hidden Paths

When I moved into Swanvale Halt, I realised on exploring my surroundings that the footpath that ran up the hill between the fields and woods at the back of the Rectory and a 1990s estate was originally a road. Even today it has traces of the white lines down the middle. That has fascinated me ever since, even more so since realising that there are paths between the blocks of new houses, connecting the old road with the new; it's like a hidden landscape secreted inside the obvious, external one. Before the new streets were built, there were big houses here, some of them accommodation for the public school that used to own the area, and even tennis courts. I thought it might be a fun location for a Forest Church excursion, following the paths and reflecting on the way communities change, including the various people we used to know who lived in these cul-de-sacs and roads. Doing my recces I found a lone sequoia tree, and a curious double-trunked oak amid the yews and beeches. If God is to be found in the contemplation of landscape, the way landscapes, habits and memories alter affects our interaction with him as well. 

Today the wind blew and the rain fell, and only three of us braved the venture. I think I'll use this walk for a Forest Church later in the year, but I find myself reflecting that I often put material together that ends up not being used, and have to trust that in some way - divine providence, perhaps - it doesn't go to waste. It also struck me that that desire that the great lumber-box of things we have done and had to relinquish, whether creative efforts, loves and relationships, joys and sorrows, shouldn't go to waste either, has been perhaps more of a driving force in impelling me to investigate faith than I've realised. 

I joke that the great thing about the movies of The Lord of the Rings is that nobody has to read the books again, but I do like the walking rhyme Frodo sings near the end. I thought of it again as we traversed the secret paths on the hilltop.

Still round the corner there may wait
a new road or a secret gate
and though I oft have passed them by
the time will come at last when I 
shall take the hidden paths that run
west of the Moon, east of the Sun.

Into the Woods

 

Would anyone come to our first attempt at Forest Church? In the end there were 15 doughty souls (including me) who took the path through the little area of woodland between two estates in the warm if breezy, dappled sunshine of Sunday afternoon, including Arthur, who thought it was great, and he can't see. Millicent his wife led him, and the journey wasn't arduous. I'd already told them they wouldn't need survival skills and we wouldn't have to draw lots to see who would get eaten first. Almost everyone said they didn't even know the woods were there. The exception was Council environmental officer Amelie, who knew all about them, which is why she and her children brought along a litter-picker and a bin bag: they weren't to know I'd done a recce and filled a bag with trash on Wednesday morning. 

My investigations have shown that the only common factor uniting Forest Church events, which have become increasingly popular over the last five years or so, is that they take place outside. Some are hikes across a landscape that give people a chance to interact with each other and their environment in a deliberately contemplative way. Others major on children's crafts and are basically Messy Church outdoors. Others, again, are tree-hugging hippy flimflam. I've bought guru Bruce Stanley's book Forest Church, which is full of ideas but a lot of it veers much too far away from anything orthodoxly Christian for me. There's also weird stuff like drumming. I assured our participants they wouldn't be expected to do anything weird, or at least no weirder than we normally get up to in a church building. 

The basic assumption is that lots of people find it easier to talk to God, and listen to him, outside than in the surroundings of church buildings, and that he can speak through the natural world if we take time to listen, and pay attention to his works. Even coming from a relatively moderate Anglo-Catholic stance, I think this is not unreasonable, and that was what our Forest Church was designed to do. 

We had a brief gathering prayer (a bit of Psalm 119), and then went on our little journey, turning a couple of times and noticing what was around us, including the occasional butterfly flitting across the path. We soon arrived at a more open area, in front of the root-bole of a fallen willow tree. As I thought they would, people automatically formed a circle, so I asked them to turn outwards and spend a couple of minutes simply listening and looking - and smelling, for that matter. I used a compass to tell them what direction they were facing in. Then we cut a little sprig from one of the trees, which happened to be a hawthorn, and little William helped me put a prayer on it in recompense for taking the twig, something I borrowed from Shinto, my second favourite religion, with its ceremonies for pruning the like. I read from George Grigson's The Englishman's Flora about some of the properties and folklore of the hawthorn (Jean the Sacristan said her husband calls hawthorn bread-and-cheese, a name Grigson mentions as arising from the habit of young children nibbling the leaves); we followed with a Bible reading somehow relating to the Summer, Psalm 8, a few verses of 'All Creatures of Our God and King' and a bit of open prayer to which a surprising number of people contributed. Amelie wanted to pray for the firefighters battling a wildfire on Hankley Common. Then we left and had a blessing back at the entrance to the woods.

Now, this is supposed to be an outreach event, but all the attenders were folk we knew from either Swanvale Halt church or, in Arthur and Millicent's case, others. But it's a helpful start, and we will have another go in October. It may go nowhere in the end, but I'm glad we tried. 

Amelie noted smoke visible over the hilltop to the west, and thought this was probably from Hankley Common. It also turns out she spent some time working with the ranger team responsible for Turbary Common, round the corner from my childhood home!