See You in the Gardens ~ Matt Way

Hopefully by now you will have seen that this weekend we are launching St Luke’s Church of the Wild. And you’re invited! But, in case you haven’t, or if you’re in need of a little reminder, here it is:

Church of the Wild is a new kind of monthly church gathering, born from the conviction that God longs to speak to us, and does so, among other things, through the natural world around us. It’s an outdoor service, in the church gardens, giving us an opportunity to slow down, to notice, and to wonder together. And it begins this weekend: 3pm on Sunday afternoon, and I am so excited for it.

But alongside the excitement comes some sadness. Because the beginning of St Luke’s Church of the Wild will also mark the end for our giant redwood tree.

For the last 160 years (or so) our building and its shifting congregations have been accompanied by the ever-present Wellingtonia, standing proudly beside our front door. At more than 75 feet tall, it has towered above as this community has changed around it: from Georgian farmland, to Victorian streets, and then morphing into the neighbourhood we know today. Generation after generation has come and gone beneath its branches. But now it is dying.

This spring, when the rest of the garden was bursting back into life, its evergreen needles were turning brown and thinning out. The arborists confirmed what we had begun to fear; the tree is dead. They conjectured that the blazing heatwave of 2022 may have taken more from it than it could bear, with subsequent extremes providing no respite, and leaving it unable to recover.

So, in just a few weeks, on 22 September, the tree will be carefully felled, and its enormous carcass taken away.

We have known for decades that something is changing in the natural world. We have read the graphs, heard (if not heeded) the warnings, and seen the headlines. If you’re anything like me you might spend a lot of time thinking about such things, but somehow it can all feel so distant, so theoretical.

But the death of one enormous old tree that I walk past every day feels different. It feels particular. It feels close. You can touch it, and in a few weeks we will be able to look up into the empty space it will leave behind.

Perhaps this is part of our problem. We know more than we have ever known about the natural world, and yet are simultaneously more disconnected from it that we have ever been.

Perhaps it is time to learn another way of being in the world. Time to learn to pay attention again. To the tree right outside our door, to changing light, to the soil beneath our feet, to the astonishing, fragile, living world of which we are not spectators but part.

This, I think, is where Church of the Wild begins. With an opportunity to slow, to notice, to wonder.

On Sunday we will meet in the church grounds for the first time- not simply as a novel relocation of the things we normally do inside, but as an invitation into a different way of seeing.

It is not church in the wild, it is Church of the Wild!

It is a chance to listen afresh. A chance to remember that creation is not merely scenery around the human story, but a living, sacred gift in which we are entangled.

So maybe, as we say farewell to our beloved old redwood its death might- if we let it- draw us into a newness of life… Much like the story of another old rugged tree that I know.

Perhaps, if we can slow down and open our eyes, and our minds, and our hearts, we might remember something of who we are. There in the church gardens, we might just rediscover our place within this living world, and come to know the God who speaks through it.

Come along and find out? You are so very welcome.

See you in the gardens.