The Solstice and Celebrating Creation

 

                                                                 Killbear Provincial Park

All things bright and beautiful,

all creatures great and small,

all things wise and wonderful:

in love, God made them all.

1 Each little flower that opens,

each little bird that sings,

God made their glowing colours,

God made their tiny wings.  R

2 The purpleheaded mountains,

the river running by,

the sunset and the morning

that brightens up the sky;  R

On this Summer Solstice our daughter Emily and husband Brad are camping in beautiful Killbear Provincial Park on Georgian Bay. It is a place of memories for Brad's family and where he proposed to Emily. They are urban people with a trendy part of downtown Toronto as their current habitat but both of them spent lots of time in the outdoors as they grew up and still love the natural world.  

                                                      Killbear photos June 21 2026 -- Emily Hendriks

They were also raised in Christian families which attended church but that's not part of the rhythm of their lives at this point, Yet they have noted that there is a sense of the sacred in this place and that they have spontaneously sung a couple of hymns while they're rambling about, a somewhat surprising admission.  In a text exchange Emily commented that the hymn All Things Bright and Beautiful was bumping through her head yesterday. It sounds perfect for the location. 

Perhaps our favourite Solstice Day ever was on Haida Gwaii a couple of years ago. We celebrated the astonishing natural abundance of this island archipelago off the BC coast on what is also National Indigenous Peoples Day. It couldn't have been a better setting. 

Wherever we are today we can give thanks to the Creator and celebrate the gifts of Creation. 

3 The cold wind in the winter,

the pleasant summer sun,

the ripe fruits in the garden:

God made them every one.  R

4 The rocky mountain splendour,

the lone wolf's haunting call,

the great lakes and the prairies,

the forest in the fall;  R

5 God gave us eyes to see them,

and lips that we might tell

how great is God our maker,

who has made all things well.  R

Refugia for Butterflies

                                                        Yellow Swallowtail

"The private garden has become the last viable habitat for many butterfly species in developed regions of the United States. A functional house — with correct slot geometry, a puddling station, and untreated wood — can mean the difference between local extinction and a stable population. The problem is not people's willingness. The problem is that most commercially available butterfly houses simply do not meet the basic biological requirements."

Dr. Patricia Nguyen Entomologist, UNC Asheville — Dept of Biology & Environmental Studies

 Nearly 20 years ago I stepped away from congregational ministry for a few months to recalibrate and renew.  I spent about half the time in an old farmhouse on Ragged Chutes Road in the back of beyond. The sprawling farm was at the end of the gravel road and I was alone during the week with Ruth joining me on Thursdays evenings after work, then driving back early of Monday mornings. During the week it was just me and the critters, the deer and bears and coyotes. There were also plenty of birds and dragonflies and butterflies aplenty. I called this spot Refugio, a Spanish word meaning shelter used to describe the hostels on the Camino pilgrimage. The farm was a safe and healing place amidst the big pines and maples. 

I came across the word in it's plural form recently in the title of an article in Nature magazine about the decline of butterflies in North America: More than 70% of Americans live in areas with no natural refugia for butterflies. The private backyard may be the last one left.

Butterflies are not decorative. Where they disappear, the birds that feed on their caterpillars disappear. The wildflowers that depend on them for pollination stop reproducing. The decline is not an aesthetic loss — it's a collapse signal. And the signal has been flashing red for years.

The article is also about Dot Calloway, a woman who crafts butterfly refuges for backyards, something I'd never heard of before. They are essentially butterfly hostels with carefully calibrated slots where the butterflies can tuck themselves away from predators as well as a source of water with a perch.To me they look like little chapels. What a wonderful vocation, a practical commitment to Creation. She writes a letter to every buyer. Sadly, Dot is closing her workshop after more than 30 years. 

In our backyard we see monarchs and swallowtails and viceroys and others. We are we are always pleased to observe them at a couple of bushes adjacent to our deck with blossoms that attract them. I suppose it's very nerdy to get excited about a yellow swallowtail but I'm happy to confess that for me it's a sacred encounter. 

Dorothy "Dot" Callaway (75) in her workshop in Weaverville, NC. Thirty-two winters, more than 3,000 houses — and now the last collection.

https://craft-folk.com/pages/dots-butterfly-house?gad_campaignid=23758989514&wbraid=ClMKCAjwrs7RBhAlEkMA0iCF2XNz_KmwAoCAYzEN_MJH86DkYdVDqEe3ALAPVu2_DQPaziiontPRHztcK0HSn-24ZxXbBQ__5FoSm70FSM_9GgJgUg&shem=rimspwouohe,

Juneteenth, Hush Arbors & Black Ecotheology

                                                                  Hush Arbor Worship Service 

 Happy Birthday to our wonderful son, Isaac, and to Wordle -- definitely in that order.

This is also Juneteenth, a federal holiday in the United States to commemorate the end of slavery following the Civil War. The enforcement of the Emancipation Proclamation happened last in Texas on June 19, 1865 and by the 1890s Juneteenth was used to acknowledge this auspicious date.

On  this Juneteenth I'm pondering all those people who were enslaved by supposedly Christian supremacists yet continued to worship the God of liberation and hope. And I'm particularly mindful of those who chose to join together for worship away from their enslavers in secluded outdoor settings termed "hush harbors" or "hush arbors". A harbour is a safe haven and an arbour is a wooded area so both make sense. These meeting allowed Black identity to flourish away from white missionaries and slave masters who used religion to enforce submission. 

I wonder if theses "invisible churches" were part of the foundation for Black eco-theology which is now receiving scholarly attention. I mentioned last year that I read the eye-opening Night Flyer: Harriet Tubman and the Faith Dreams of a Free People. Author Tiya Miles posits that Tubman, a courageous liberator of enslaved persons "is arguably the most famous Black ecologist in US history" because of her broad knowledge of woods and waterways on the secretive path to freedom.

Miles quotes scholar Dianne Glave who notes that African Americans have long envisioned the environment in luminous and evocative, capricious and perilous ways.

Happy Juneteenth to all those who seek the depth and breadth of this day in all aspects, including Black eco-theology. 

Creating an Ethical Will?

I came upon a passing reference to a legacy document in certain expressions of Judaism termed an "ethical will." The term intrigued me so I did some searching and found this in my Jewish Learning:

For centuries, Jewish parents have passed down wisdom and values to their children by crafting end-of-life documents called tzava’ot or “ethical wills.” Much as a legal will enables one to dole out assets and possessions to one’s heirs, an ethical will gives the writer an opportunity to share their wealth of wisdom: lessons they’ve learned over a lifetime, where they found meaning in their lives, and what they may want for their loved ones going forward.

Traditionally, Jewish ethical wills contained a number of items, including burial instructions, debts and obligations to be paid, requests that family members carry on specific religious traditions, and blessings over the family. But modern ethical wills are less about accounting and instruction and more about imparting wisdom or wishes or simply reviewing one’s life. They are often written in the form of a letter and addressed to one’s children, but they can take many forms. There is no halachic (Jewish law) template or script they must follow.

In the Middle Ages, ethical wills were shared privately among families. One of the most famous ethical wills from this time was written by Spanish Jewish physician and scholar Judah ibn Tibbon to his son, Samuel when he died in France in the 12th century. It ran over 50 pages long and covered a wide range of topics, from the importance of books — he wrote the familiar line “let books be your companions; let bookcases and shelves be your pleasure grounds and gardens” — to a harsh rebuke of his son whom he felt wasn’t living up to his expectations.

 Yad Vashem, the Holocaust Museum and Memorial in Israel holds a number of ethical wills hastily written by Jews before they were killed at the hands of the Nazis. 

I hadn't heard about ethical wills before but the notion grabbed me. We have three adult children with partners as well as four grandchildren so during the pandemic we updated our will from decades ago, doing everything online. We were relieved to have attended to this legal housekeeping but it never occurred to us that we might create a complementary will conveying wisdom and values.

I'm pleased that all of them have adopted our love as nature, so this is already part of our legacy. We have encouraged Christian faith with the components of generosity and compassion and we see this to varying degrees in each household. We brought our children up to be respectful and welcoming to what we then called gays and lesbians. All of them have LGBTQ2S friends and are open in ways we couldn't have imagined when we were young. 

What would any of us include in our version of the tzava'ot or ethical will? I want to give this a lot more thought in the days ahead, because the clock is ticking! 

On Eagle's Wings at 50

 

Author, composer and professor Fr. Michael Joncas holding a June 2024 letter from former U.S. president Joe Biden by the bookcase where he framed and displayed the original 1976 score of "On Eagle's Wings," in his apartment in St. Paul, Minnesota, May 2026. (NCR photo/Camillo Barone)

In 1976  Jan Michael Joncas, a 24-year-old who had temporarily stepped away from a vocation to the priesthood wrote a hymn for a friend whose father had just died. It was sung at the funeral mass and quickly gained popularity that spread broadly over the past half century. The hymn, On Eagle's Wings, has been sung as an anthem and hymn in many churches, Protestant and Roman Catholic, in times of sorrow and joy. 

In Voices United, a United Church hymn resource, On Eagle's Wings is number 808, in the psalm section because it is based on Psalm 91, a source of comfort for Joncas when saying the daily office. He is still alive although serious health issues have left him unable to sing the way he once did or to play the guitar. 

The original 1976 score of "On Eagle's Wings" by Fr. Michael Joncas, framed and displayed on his bookcase in his apartment in St. Paul, Minnesota, May 2026. (NCR photo/Camillo Barone)

I read about Joncas in the National Catholic Register and here are a few paragraphs from the article" 

"I pray that God's will be done on earth as it is in heaven," Joncas said with a faint smile and watery eyes. "I just keep hoping that more and more we will respond to the spirit of God and have a transformation of our world."

Looking back, he says the most surreal moment for "On Eagle's Wings" may have been Nov. 7, 2020. While he was watching television, Joncas heard Biden quote the hymn during his victory speech. Later, Joncas wrote the president elect a letter explaining the song's origins.

"I have carried your words in my heart for decades and sung them at more Masses than I can remember," Biden wrote back. "When I meet families and communities who have experienced deep loss — from natural disasters, violence, and other circumstances out of their control — I often share your words with them as a blessing, with the hope that they will be comforted by them, as I have always been."

Imagine, a considerate and compassionate president!

The Face & a "Glass Darkly"

 

 For now we see only a reflection, as in a mirror, but then we will see face to face. Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known. And now faith, hope, and love remain, these three, and the greatest of these is love.

For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.  And now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three; but the greatest of these is charity.

                                           1 Corinthians 13: 12-13 NRSV, KJV

Ten days ago I listened to a fascinating interview on CBC Radio Sunday Morning with Fay Bound Alberti on our millennia old preoccupation with the human face. The podcast teaser describes the conversation this way: 

Selfies, social media and facial recognition have made us hyper aware – and hyper critical – of our own faces. But Fay Bound-Alberti says these innovations are just the latest examples of technology re-shaping our relationship with our faces. The historian and founder of King’s College London's Centre for Technology and the Body joins Piya Chattopadhyay to chart how mirrors and portraiture gave way to modern phenomena like "Zoom dysmorphia" and "looksmaxxing".

If you have any awareness of social media you'll be aware of the myriad "influencers" who set crazy expectations for personal appearance, particularly the face. Many of them are women although lots of men are involved in the online preening. As Bound Alberti reminded us, AI and filters and cosmetic surgery are employed to create the perfect image. 

I have noticed over time that there are many untimely deaths amongst these influencers, sometimes from surgery gone wrong or drug overdoses. It also seems that some of them die by their own hands at young ages, perhaps overwhelmed by the impossible standards they have set and can no longer maintain. At the gym there has been a growing presence of teens whose workouts include a lot of checking out their physiques in the mirror-lined walls. 

As I venture deeper into the "face like 50 miles of bad road" phase of life I am certainly aware that looks are fleeting. 

I think too of the passage of scripture from 1 Corinthians called the Love Passage so often included in Christian marriage ceremonies. As the wedding party would stand before me, often having spent a fortune on makeup, we would hear about the deeper qualities of love and the truth that we only have a partial image of life's meaning now with the implication that the day will come when we are fully understood, truly seen, by God's mercy. 

Decades ago I saw ancient mirrors in the Israel Museum which would have been possessions of the wealthy. Even still, they were made of polished metal and lighting would have poor by our standards so the reflected images which were far from perfect. 

It turns out that Faye Bound Alberti lives with prosopagnosia, or face blindness. When host Piya Chattopadhyay asked her what she would leave listeners with she suggested that we need to be kind to ourselves. Good advice. 

 Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable; it keeps no record of wrongs; it does not rejoice in wrongdoing but rejoices in the truth.  It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

                                      I Corinthians 13: 4-7 NRSVue

                                                Mirrors in the Israel Museum 

Manitoba Water-pocalypse Now

 

Last Tuesday I flew to Winnipeg and met Ruth there for a few days. She was returning from a week with friends in British Columbia so I made my way to Manitoba so that we could spend time with her brother and sister-in-law. 

I landed at 2:00 in the afternoon with a storm warning in effect. By 4:00 we were aware of the continuous thunder and lightning that did not relent for 10 hours. Tornado alerts continued through the night. Flights coming in then sat on the runway for hours with passengers who couldn't disembark because ground crews couldn't go out in the lightning and baseball sized hail. 

The next day we discovered that 70 millimetres of rain had fallen at their home and more than 200 just north and west of the city. Downtown Winnipeg was without power for a day and the rivers were torrents. When we ventured into the countryside to explore a couple of spots the highways were ribbons in the midst of a vast lake meaning that crops were destroyed. At points the highways themselves were covered in water and farmsteads were islands.  Our in-laws said that in 40 years living there (how's that for a biblical number?) they had never experienced such an intense storm. 

We all knew that this is yet another weather event intensified by the climate emergency. Storms happen in the prairies and some are whoppers but this was intense and extreme. We realize that people in other parts of the country aren't really aware of the severity of this event. And here we were concerned about possible wildfires. 

Yet again I ponder what we as people of faith who want to honour Creation and our planetary home need to do.  Flying less is an aspect of "living with respect in Creation" and as always I wrestle with this.

In the end we had an enjoyable few days including a trip to Riding Mountain National Park where we saw a herd of bison with calves and seven bears -- no Goldilocks. 

We can say prayers for those who are recovering from the flooding, especially for those farmers who have essentially lost this growing season. 

Moonshot

Deep peace of the running wave to you.

            Deep peace of the flowing air to you.

Deep peace of the quiet earth to you

            Deep peace of the shining stars to you

Deep peace of the gentle night to you

            Moon and stars pour their healing light on you

                        Deep peace of Christ, the light of the world to you. 

 I listened to an interview with Reid Wiseman, the commander of the Artemis spacecraft mission to the moon, including taking a gander at the side of Earth's satellite not visible from our planet.. He was enthusiastic and quite interesting as he explained the years of preparation and the challenges of that dedication as a single parent. 

He mentioned that part of that prep was learning about the significance of the moon in different cultures around the world. I have mentioned that the Canadian on the team, Jeremy Hansen did a vision quest as part of his preparation and I imagine that he learned about the moon from an Indigenous perspective. I was pleasantly surprised that this was part of their education for the mission, given that it isn't of scientific benefit. We are spiritual and cultural beings and this was acknowledged. 

I've noted before that Jesus was likely in a Garden of Gethsemane bathed in moonlight the night before he was arrested and crucified the following day. He was in Jerusalem for Passover, a festival connected to the full moon of the Spring Equinox and Christian Easter is a moon-related celebration as well. 

We're still a couple of weeks away from the June full moon but here are the phases for the month.

A Tree Comes to Downtown Belleville

We shall not be moved

On the road to freedom
We shall not be moved
Just like a tree that's standing by the water side
We shall not be moved

We Shall Not Be Moved", is an African-American spiritual hymn and protest song  dating to the early 19th century American south

A couple of weeks ago we stopped to pick up a pizza at the excellent Bourbon St. Pizza which is actually just off Market Square. We rolled up to see several people installing a large and intriguing mural with a tree featuring prominently in the design. We brake for trees, or at least admire them, but it wasn't until a few days later that we learned its origins: 

The mural is part of Canada Connects: Nature’s Canvas National Mural, a large-scale collaborative artwork designed by Canadian muralist Lewis Lavoie.

The completed 12-by-24-foot mural is made up of 4,000 hand-painted tiles from communities across Canada, including 150 tiles painted by local participants from the Quinte region.

“Downtown Belleville is proud to celebrate creativity in the heart of our community, and this mural is a beautiful example of what can happen when people come together through art,” said Danielle Hanoman, executive director for the Downtown Belleville BIA.  “To be part of a project that connects our community to a larger national movement is incredibly meaningful.  This mural not only showcases local talent and participation, but also reminds us that we are all connected through creativity, collaboration, and a shared sense of place.”

This mural is a cool initiative and I hope people in Belleville will search it out.  

Of course, there are Trees of Life in many cultures, including the Judeo/Christian tradition and trees are just about everywhere in the bible from Genesis to Revelation. The Psalms begin with a tree and in one story that will always baffle me, Jesus curses a fig tree. I think something got lost in the story-telling. 

Who Benefits from the World Cup?

 

The FIFA World Cup of Football (soccer to North Americans) begins today in this country, and isn't Canada lucky to be one of the host countries for the largest sporting event on the planet?  You may or may not support that question and maybe our answers would be influenced by our appreciation of "the beautiful game." 

The World Cup will also rival the Olympics as having the largest carbon footprint of any sporting event. And it will provide the biggest betting spree of any event. Hmm. 

Still, lots of cities in Mexico, the United States, and Canada got on board with hosting the World Cup including Toronto and Vancouver. As the tournament drew closer lots of those venues began to realize that the promise of packed stadiums may not be fulfilled. One reason is that the FIFA tickets are incredibly expensive and in Canada there are a number of meh match-ups. Hoteliers and restaurateurs are frustrated that bookings aren't what they were hoping for. 

We've learned that about a billion dollars in federal funding has gone into the World Cup and given the cost to fans we have to wonder why. Methinks there are lots of people benefitting from the event and they aren't regular folk. 

At the risk of making shallow "either/or" comparisons, how far would a billion bucks go toward fulfilling Canada's commitments to Indigenous communities to bring safe drinking water? We know that the federal government has spent lots of money on lawyers to fight payouts for Indigenous education and reparations to certain groups of school survivors. Of course doing so wouldn't make us "world class" as a nation, supposedly, even though these would be steps toward Truth and Reconciliation. As a Christian and member of the United Church I want these commitments to be fulfilled. 

How do we get hornswoggled into financing activities such as these with public money and then exclude the vast majority of taxpayers from participating? 

We have four grandchildren and all of them have played soccer, the most popular sport for children in Canada. It's a great activity and one of the least expensive for kids. So far none of them has expressed excitement over the World Cup but maybe that will come. 

I would be happy for a miracle where Canada won a game. 

Some of Your Beeswax!

Have you watched the two-part National Geographic series, Secrets of the Bees. As a "once upon a time" beekeeper I was intrigued and it really is astonishing, particularly the first episode. The team of film-makers worked for three years with the very best of equipment to capture a world unknown to most of us, including the most experienced beekeepers. Even though they focus on the complex society of a honey bee hive they remind us that there roughly 20,000 species and are arguably the most important animal on Earth. They pollinate a third of the food we eat and we might starve without their industry. 

Watching Secrets of the Bees got me searching for the spiritual importance of bees in various cultures and to my surprise I found out that the Christian Easter Vigil Exsultet, the prayer for the worship service the night before Resurrection morning, praises the bees who provide the wax for the large Paschal Candle and therefore the light it provides:

O holy Father, the evening sacrifice of this incense,
which holy Church renders to Thee
by the hands of Thy ministers
in the solemn offering of this wax candle,
made out of the work of bees.

Now also we know the praises of this pillar,
which the shining fire enkindles to the honour of God.
Which fire, although divided into parts,
suffers no loss from its light being borrowed.
For it is nourished by the melting wax,
which the mother bee produced
for the substance of this precious light.

                                           Bee hive design on a Paschal Candle

High praise for the little critters! For several years while in Sudbury a number of  congregations worked together hosting an Easter Vigil service and we used traditional liturgical elements. I don't remember the bees at all and that's because this section was omitted for a time but it is making a comeback in some parishes, deservedly so. 

There is currently an exhibit at the Royal Ontario Museum called Bees: A Story of Survival and I think I/we must go:

This visually stunning exhibition – created by the National Museums Liverpool with award-winning sculptor Wolfgang Buttress – tells the remarkable story of bee adaptations and survival, as well as their relationship to humans and the natural world. 

Now I need to find out why when I was a lad we would rebuff a nosy person with the curious phrase: "None of your beeswax!" 

"Problem" Women in the Southern Baptist Convention

 

                                                       Messengers at last year's Baptist Convention 

I commend to you our sister Phoebe, a deacon of the church at Cenchreae, so that you may welcome her in the Lord, as is fitting for the saints, and help her in whatever she may require from you, for she has been a benefactor of many and of myself as well.

Greet Prisca and Aquila, my coworkers in Christ Jesus, who risked their necks for my life, to whom not only I give thanks but also all the churches of the gentiles. Greet also the church in their house. Greet my beloved Epaenetus, who was the first convert in Asia for Christ.  Greet Mary, who has worked very hard for you.  Greet Andronicus and Junia, my fellow Israelites who were in prison with me; they are prominent among the apostles, and they were in Christ before I was.

Romans 16: 1-7 NRSVue

I have to be blunt in saying that some Christian groups are so consistently cruel and in such stark contravention of what I consider the gospel of Christ that I'm almost embarrassed to admit I'm in the same spiritual species. Honestly, I don't think I am, as much as I want to be generous about the "big tent" of Christian faith. 

This has risen to the surface again as the Southern Baptists of the United States prepare to gather Tuesday in Florida for their annual meeting. There they’ll debate for the fourth year in a row whether to formally ban churches with a woman serving in any role resembling that of  pastor — not just the top position in a congregation. The Southern Baptist Convention has become increasingly conservative over the past 50 years and the right-wing of the denomination has pushed out moderates, expelling some of their biggest congregations which have given women positions of leadership. 

This year, an amendment proposed by Albert Mohler, president of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, would exclude any church that acts “to affirm, appoint, or endorse a woman serving in the office or function of a pastor/elder/overseer, specifically preaching to the assembled congregation.” Not long ago Mohler said it would even be a “problem” for a church podcast to include a woman answering questions about that week’s sermon.

There are so many reasons to find this stifling of women to be reprehensible, including the respect the Apostle Paul expressed for female leaders at the conclusion of his letter to the Romans. He goes so far as to describe Phoebe as a deacon and Junia as an apostle.

Another is the level of hypocrisy by a church that covered up hundreds of situations of sexual abuse by male pastors for decades, until the SBC was outed by the investigation by the Houston Chronicle newspaper. 

We have Southern Baptist family members in the States whom we love yet we are baffled by their willingness to stay in this denomination. The women are far from subservient. 

 And we won't get started on the strong support for Trump within the denomination. 

Nature for Healing and Wholeness

                                                   Along the Belleville Waterfront

1 Touch the earth lightly, use the earth gently,

nourish the life of the world in our care:

gift of great wonder, ours to surrender,

trust for the children tomorrow will bear.

4 God of all living, God of all loving,

God of the seedling, the snow and the sun,

teach us, deflect us, Christ reconnect us,

using us gently and making us one.

                                      Voices United 307

 From time to time our son Isaac, pastor at Trenton United Church, asks if I might visit a member of the congregation in Belleville Hospital. I am what the UCC terms a Voluntary Associate Minister with all the appropriate shots and paperwork.

This doesn't happen often because Isaac is a conscientious visitor to his flock but he lives and works half an hour away and we are five minutes from the Belleville Hospital. So. the other day I stopped in on two people, one in their eighties and the other not far off one hundred. Both have demanding medical needs but I was touched by their positive outlooks and determination to get back to church again. They both new me before the visits so we were able to chat openly and pray at the conclusion. 

The person in her late nineties is in a room overlooking the marvelous waterfront trail at the edge of the Bay of Quinte, an arm of Lake Ontario. Ruth and I regularly cycle along this path. We love the vistas but the view from several storeys up is spectacular on a sunny late Spring day. 

As I admired the view I commented that studies have shown that looking out to trees and water contributes to recovery for hospital patients. This charming person, remarkably lucid and engaged, agreed enthusiastically. It was obvious in our conversation that she loves the natural world, including the variety of birds at her home feeders. 

We have come to understand how important it is to encourage children to enjoy the outdoors and what we term Creation in our Christian faith. A friend and former parishioner is an interpreter at a Conservation Area not far away and he has commented on the ways in which kids open up to wonder in that setting. I've met children on the boardwalk there and even though I'm a total stranger they are bursting to share what they have seen and heard. 

Surely this is true throughout the seasons of life. And we should ensure that this is part of the design of our healthcare institutions. The Hospice facility for Quinte has rooms which open onto a green space with sliding patio doors in each room so that patients can experience nature to the very end of their days. 

I figure that Belleville Council should send a photographer to the roof of the hospital for photos to promote the city and this time of greening would be ideal. 

PS: As I write this blog entry the birch trees outside my study window are dancing in the breeze and I getting occasional whiffs of the nearby lilacs. 

Hope for a Trenton Little Forest

A drone view of the Yakama Nation's Healing Forest, which is in the shape of a medicine wheel, in Toppenish, Washington State

Recently  I have seen a number of articles about Little Forests or Pocket Forests or Miyawaki Forests, named after the Japanese botanist who founded the movement in the 1970s. The concept is planting a relatively dense and complementary patch of trees and plants in smaller areas, often in urban settings. One of the studies suggests that these small forests had limited value for reforestation and the outcomes can't be generally verified. But this seems to be missing the point that they are intended to be tucked into places where little else is growing and people are engaged in establishing them. Most of the articles are uplifting. 

Miyawaki worked with Japanese companies, including Nippon Steel and Mitsubishi, offering workshops for employees to teach them how to turn barren land into mature forests. Now there are Little Forests around the globe.

A couple of years ago I attended a Kingston Little Forest Seminar in Napanee and left enthused by the concept. I was a Sunday worship leader at Trenton United a short time later so I focused on the many passages of scripture about trees in the bible, from start to finish, and I shared my Little Forest seminar experience.

Money was raised at Trenton United to purchase specific trees and during last summer's drought a dedicated member nursed them along at her home. Then in the Fall a determined group of organizers and congregation members of all ages from TUC planted a variety of native trees in an area by the Trent River designated by the Conservation Authority.  Ruth and I went to take a look in late April and we were delighted to see that most of them were budding and leafing out. 

There is also a plaque describing what the trees represent and naming Trenton United as a source for the project. I feel that this is an important Christian outreach and witness by the congregation and maybe we need to organize a return group junket to see how our saplings are doing. 

Ecologist Akira Miyawaki developed this planting method to re-create lush native forests preserved in sacred areas near temples and shrines in Japan. He was a scientist (he died in 2021) but there was also a spiritual aspect. Whatever our faith tradition, we can find practical ways to "live with respect in Creation" (UCC New Creed) and see the sacred forest and the trees. 

Wild Saints & Wild Christianity

 

It was roughly 30 years ago that I drove with son Isaac, just emerging as a teen, from Sudbury to Toronto to attend a seminar with the Rev Herbert O'Driscoll. He was an Irish-Canadian Anglican writing regularly in the United Church Observer magazine but we made the trek because he was speaking about Celtic Christianity, a relatively new area of exploration at the time. O'Driscoll had recently published a memoir The Leap of the Deer: Memories of a Celtic Childhood. He was a fine presenter and he had lots to say about the Celtic saints who were known for their love and immersion in the natural world or Creation. 

Through the years I have been fascinated by the legends of these hermits who communed with birds and otters and other creatures. On one level they are highly improbable and on another they remind us that these Christians had adopted the sense of interconnectedness with nature that they took on from the Druids and is also part of our biblical story. 

I see that writer/theologian Paul Kingsnorth, now living in Ireland, is writing The Book of Wild Saints, and I can hardly wait for it to be published. Kingsnorth is an admirer of St. Kevin, one of my favourite Celtic saints as well. Here are a few paragraphs from a piece he wrote for his substack earlier this month. 

Yesterday was the feast day of St Kevin of Glendalough. Kevin, or Coemgen, whose story I told here in April, was one of the Christian wilderness ascetics who I’ve taken to calling ‘wild saints.’ I am fascinated with these people. Why? Well, partly because I think they bring the Christian Way to its purest expression. Partly because their stories are so intriguing and eccentric and sometimes even inexplicable. There’s a deep mystery to them. And finally because I have a strong intuition that they have something important to tell us today.

What could that be? I tried to get at the answer in an essay I wrote last year for First Things magazine, entitled A Wild Christianity. In that essay, I wrote that we are living in what we might call a ‘desert time’: a time of collapse and change and radical reinvention. If that is true, then these old Fathers and Mothers of the desert might have something to tell us about how to live in it:

I feel like I am being firmly pointed, day after day, back toward the green desert that forms my Christian inheritance … Back to the song that is sung quietly through the land by its maker, the song that is in the stream running, in the mist wreathing the crags, the growling of the rooks, the thunder over the mountains. Back to the caves, to the skelligs, to the deserts green and brown … I feel that in another time of crisis and confusion we need to go back to our roots, both literal and spiritual. To flee from the gaze of a civilised centre that denies God and launches salvo after salvo daily against the human soul. To seek out a wild Christianity, which will see us praying for hours in the sea as the otters play around us. To understand—to remember—that the Earth and the world are not the same thing.

In recent years I've come to appreciate Indigenous spirituality and have been humbled by how dismissive colonial culture has been, of this gift, including the Christian church. I do want to rekindle my love of the Celtic saints as well. 

At this time of year we to endeavour to be outside as much as possible, although this year the mosquitoes are not creatures I am willing to embrace as a treasure from the Creator. 

Ebola and Burying the Dead

 Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse them.

 Rejoice with those who rejoice; weep with those who weep. 

                                                      Romans 12: 14-15 NRSVue

I listened to a brave science and medicine reporter for the New York Times describe the circumstances in the region of the DR Congo where the Ebola virus is sickening and killing hundreds and perhaps thousands. There are many issues including lack of medical supplies and isolation. Another is the funeral practices of families who have lost loved ones. Not only to they want to bury the deceased, it is customary for mourners to touch the face of the person, a disaster with a highly infectious disease. It has been very difficult for officials to dissuade families from doing this and conspiracy theories abound. 

We saw how traumatic it was for those who couldn't be with loved ones as they died during the COVID pandemic and funeral gatherings weren't allowed. It seems that this disrupted burial practices here in Canada that we are still experiencing.

I thought about my first pastoral charge in ministry beginning in 1980. I've described it as a Maritime Green Acres because I was the minister from the big city of Toronto arriving at my five preaching points in outport Newfoundland. So much there was different from what I took for granted about religious practice and I was the odd person. God help me when I naively messed with those conventions. 

I was quietly appalled at the custom for mourners to touch the face of a deceased person as the body lay in the casket at the back of the church. Funeral homes were an hour way back then so folks filed in, some of them weeping dramatically, all of them touching the dearly departed. I actually came to respect these customs to a degree even though they were a departure from the stoic funerals and memorials I grew up with. Why wouldn't we weep at the loss of someone who was precious to us? 

We can pray that this Ebola outbreak will be brought under control soon, although it is proving to be a challenge. I suppose we can all ask what customs and observances we would want when we're "promoted to glory."