Category: Uncategorized

Mindful Sauntering: Embracing the moment

There is a suggestion that a saunterer is a person walking to the Holy Land, coming from the French ‘à la sainte-terre’. So let’s consider sauntering to be a form of holy or blessed walking.

The scriptures give God many names as people try to describe their encounter with the presence of holiness. Such names – or descriptions – include beloved, father, mother, midwife and shepherd; or  rock, tower, shield, light and sun of righteousness. In our prayers we may talk of God as Father, Son and Holy Spirit or alternatively as Creator, Redeemer and Sustainer.

I wonder if we have our own particular name that describes our experience of the presence of holiness.

i thank You God by e e cummings 

i thank You God for most this amazing
day: for the leaping greenly spirits of trees
and a blue true dream of sky; and for everything
which is natural which is infinite which is yes
(i who have died am alive again today,
and this is the sun’s birthday; this is the birth
day of life and of love and wings: and of the gay
great happening illimitably earth)
how should tasting touching hearing seeing
breathing any—lifted from the no
of all nothing—human merely being
doubt unimaginable You?
(now the ears of my ears awake and
now the eyes of my eyes are opened)

The heavens are telling the glory of God; they are a marvellous display of his craftsmanship. Day and night they keep on telling about God.  Without a sound or word, silent in the skies, their message reaches out to all the world. Psalm 19:1-4a (Living Bible)

‘To pray is to walk in the full light of God, and to say simply, without holding back, ‘I am human and you are God’. Henri Nouwen

Mindful Sauntering: Pentecost 

Very truly, I tell you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit. John 12:24

“For a seed to achieve its greatest expression, it must come completely undone. The shell cracks, its insides come out and everything changes. To someone who doesn’t understand growth, it would look like complete destruction.”  Cynthia Occelli

Pentecost was in origin an agricultural festival celebrating the harvest of the abundance that each grain, sown in the spring, had produced. Today, at Pentecost, we celebrate the abundant riches of the Holy Spirit.

God’s Grandeur by Gerald Manley Hopkins 

The world is charged with the grandeur of God.

    It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;

    It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil

Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?

Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;

    And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;

    And wears man’s smudge and shares man’s smell: the soil

Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.

And for all this, nature is never spent;

    There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;

And though the last lights off the black West went

    Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs —

Because the Holy Ghost over the bent

    World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.

Reaper with wheat field and sun (part thereof) by Vincent Van Gogh

As we walk under the sky and on the earth, may God the Holy Spirit enfold us. Amen.

Counting on 2026 …. Day 40

11th May

‘Simplifying life is not a one-time decision, but an ongoing practice. It requires discernment, honesty and, often, a willingness to live differently from the dominant patterns around us. It also requires community. These shifts are difficult to sustain alone.’ (1) 

Living any counterculture lifestyle can, by definition, be lonely. If only living simply were not counter cultural but the norm! This is where finding your community – Green Christian/ Christian Climate Action/ Hazelnut Community etc – helps

(1) https://hazelnutcommunity.substack.com/p/the-life-we-miss-while-wanting-more?r=1r0y9l

Sixth Sunday of Easter

10th May 2026

Reflection with readings below

Earlier in the discourse that is recorded in John’s Gospel (chapter 13:4) Jesus gives his disciples a new commandment that they love one another, and this is presumably why Jesus is referring to in today’s reading when he says, ‘If you love me, keep my commandments.’ 

We are called to love Jesus who is God, and we are called to love one another  – and if we hear the words of Paul in Acts, one another becomes not just the person next to me, nor just fellow human beings, but all of creation. For in all that has been created, dwells God. If we love God, we cannot but love all God has created and in whom we have our being.

To love is surely the totality of Christianity. 

Yet we seem to live in a world full of hate. And if I am honest, loving everyone all the time is a hard challenge. In the letter of Peter we hear that baptism is not about washing away dirt – sins – but about creating within us a good conscience, a reminder – an alarm system even – that will prompt us to do what it right, to inhabit love. I guess like all alarm systems, we can ignore it. We can with practice, blank it out and not hear it. But conversely we can practice paying attention to our conscience so that inhabiting love becomes the norm. And we don’t do this alone. We have the Holy Spirit as our advocate – the one who can help us see the problem, can help us choose the best response, can strengthen our actions. 

Equally we should not forget that far outweighing our efforts to love, is God’s love for us. That love encompasses all that exists. That love cares deeply for every single being including those of us who still have hate within us. And God’s love will always far exceeds what we need for its is endless and eternal.

Acts 17:22-31

Paul stood in front of the Areopagus and said, “Athenians, I see how extremely religious you are in every way. For as I went through the city and looked carefully at the objects of your worship, I found among them an altar with the inscription, ‘To an unknown god.’ What therefore you worship as unknown, this I proclaim to you. The God who made the world and everything in it, he who is Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in shrines made by human hands, nor is he served by human hands, as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all mortals life and breath and all things. From one ancestor he made all nations to inhabit the whole earth, and he allotted the times of their existence and the boundaries of the places where they would live, so that they would search for God and perhaps grope for him and find him—though indeed he is not far from each one of us. For ‘In him we live and move and have our being’; as even some of your own poets have said, 

‘For we too are his offspring.’ 

Since we are God’s offspring, we ought not to think that the deity is like gold, or silver, or stone, an image formed by the art and imagination of mortals. While God has overlooked the times of human ignorance, now he commands all people everywhere to repent, because he has fixed a day on which he will have the world judged in righteousness by a man whom he has appointed, and of this he has given assurance to all by raising him from the dead.”

Psalm 66:7-18

7 Bless our God, you peoples; *
make the voice of his praise to be heard;

8 Who holds our souls in life, *
and will not allow our feet to slip.

9 For you, O God, have proved us; *
you have tried us just as silver is tried.

10 You brought us into the snare; *
you laid heavy burdens upon our backs.

11 You let enemies ride over our heads;
we went through fire and water; *
but you brought us out into a place of refreshment.

12 I will enter your house with burnt-offerings
and will pay you my vows, *
which I promised with my lips
and spoke with my mouth when I was in trouble.

13 I will offer you sacrifices of fat beasts
with the smoke of rams; *
I will give you oxen and goats.

14 Come and listen, all you who fear God, *
and I will tell you what he has done for me.

15 I called out to him with my mouth, *
and his praise was on my tongue.

16 If I had found evil in my heart, *
the Lord would not have heard me;

17 But in truth God has heard me; *
he has attended to the voice of my prayer.

18 Blessed be God, who has not rejected my prayer, *
nor withheld his love from me.

1 Peter 3:13-22

Now who will harm you if you are eager to do what is good? But even if you do suffer for doing what is right, you are blessed. Do not fear what they fear, and do not be intimidated, but in your hearts sanctify Christ as Lord. Always be ready to make your defence to anyone who demands from you an accounting for the hope that is in you; yet do it with gentleness and reverence. Keep your conscience clear, so that, when you are maligned, those who abuse you for your good conduct in Christ may be put to shame. For it is better to suffer for doing good, if suffering should be God’s will, than to suffer for doing evil. For Christ also suffered for sins once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, in order to bring you to God. He was put to death in the flesh, but made alive in the spirit, in which also he went and made a proclamation to the spirits in prison, who in former times did not obey, when God waited patiently in the days of Noah, during the building of the ark, in which a few, that is, eight persons, were saved through water. And baptism, which this prefigured, now saves you– not as a removal of dirt from the body, but as an appeal to God for a good conscience, through the resurrection of Jesus Christ, who has gone into heaven and is at the right hand of God, with angels, authorities, and powers made subject to him. 

John 14:15-21

Jesus said, ”If you love me, you will keep my commandments. And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate, to be with you forever. This is the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him. You know him, because he abides with you, and he will be in you.

”I will not leave you orphaned; I am coming to you. In a little while the world will no longer see me, but you will see me; because I live, you also will live. On that day you will know that I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you. They who have my commandments and keep them are those who love me; and those who love me will be loved by my Father, and I will love them and reveal myself to them.”

Love overcomes hate

9th May 2026

Love never fails. 1 Corinthians 13:8

You Lord, are the source of all good things: 

We praise you.

You call us to tend and care for your creation: 

May we strive to do your will.

You have made us as brothers and sisters with all that lives: 

May we live together in peace.

A reading from Matthew 5:43-47 (The Message)

 “You’re familiar with the old written law, ‘Love your friend,’ and its unwritten companion, ‘Hate your enemy.’ I’m challenging that. I’m telling you to love your enemies. Let them bring out the best in you, not the worst. When someone gives you a hard time, respond with the supple moves of prayer, for then you are working out of your true selves, your God-created selves. This is what God does. She gives her best—the sun to warm and the rain to nourish—to everyone, regardless: the good and bad, the nice and nasty. If all you do is love the lovable, do you expect a bonus? Anybody can do that. If you simply say hello to those who greet you, do you expect a medal? Any run-of-the-mill sinner does that.

Hate or love?

Hate smoulders and burns.

It reduces cheer to ash and clinker..

Love soothes the flaming rage,

And untangles twisted thoughts.

Hate rides roughshod over compassion.

It disregards the truth.

.

Love reads between the lines,

And hears the hidden words of hope..

Hate erects rigid boundaries.

It ring-fences every option.  

Love sees beyond the corner,

And stretches out new horizons.

Hate casts an evil guise over every action.

It masks every sign of joy.

Love lifts the veil, 

And finds the hidden virtue.

Hate feeds on anger. 

Its rapacious appetite knows no limit. 

Love expands with humility, 

And grows with easy care.

Hate is all consuming – 

Till nothing true remains.

Love is all consuming – 

Till only truth remains. 

Prayers

Holy God of love,

Heal the wounds where hate festers.

Renew our trust in one another.

Holy God of love,

Remove the log that blinds the eye. 

Restore our vision of the world aright.

Holy God of love,

Open the ears that are stopped.

Retune our understanding of forgiveness.

Holy God of love,

Cut through warfare and  vengeance –

In streets and cities in the UK.

In Palestine and in Isreal.

In Lebanon.

In Iran and in the USA.

In North  Sudan.

In Ukraine and in Russia.

Cut through war and vengeance –

wherever it is found.

Replant the seeds of peace,

Water them with  love,  

with compassion, 

sustain them with justice,

and feed them with vigorous determination. 

The Lord’s Prayer

Counting on 2026 …. Day 39

8th May

Living simply “creates space for peace, not as escape from the world, but as rightly ordered life within it. When attention is no longer constantly divided, there is greater capacity for presence.” (1) 

Peace is what I seek by living simply. Peace being that place or space where I don’t feel conflicted and stressed; where I feel in tune with the natural world, in tune with my neighbours; where I feel whole; where I have time to enjoy life; where I feel in tune with God – part of God’s kingdom.

Is this  a peace that can ripple out into a wider environ?

(1) https://hazelnutcommunity.substack.com/p/the-life-we-miss-while-wanting-more?r=1r0y9l

Counting on 2026 …. Day 38

7th May

Simple living ‘is also an act of resistance. It pushes back against the assumption that more is always better, and that growth must always be pursued..’ (1)

Living simply is not just cutting back on what we consume and withdrawing in on ourselves. It is about living life where we choose different priorities. 

Rather than a meat based diet or a diet of ready made meals, I choose a plant-based diet that is largely cooked from scratch. I choose to keep a sour dough starter going and to use that to make crumpets (with the daily excess of starter) and bread. It is more time consuming than going to the shop but it feels more rooted in what is natural and sustainable. 

I choose to buy from local businesses – a refill shop so avoiding excess waste, a health food shop, the independent bookshop, the post office, and a independent cafe for coffee beans. I could just nip into the supermarket and do one big shop, but this feels more sustainable, supporting the local economy and therefore local community. It also feels more human in scale: small shops with people I recognise behind the counter and with whom I can have a conversation.

I choose to buy vegetables by the box from Riverford farm as it is a company that pays its staff fairly (and engages them in decision making) and farms organically and sustainably. 

I choose not to buy new clothes but rather to buy from local charity shops where I can prevent other clothes being thrown out as waste. I choose to repair the clothes I wear rather than throwing them away when they tear or develop holes. 

When I do buy new clothes, I choose to spend more in order to buy items that will last and to buy items where I have some confidence that those who made them have been fairly rewarded. 

I choose not to buy each kitchen gadget that comes along. I choose not to upgrade my phone/ iPad on a regular basis. I choose to resist advertising and social trends. 

(1) https://hazelnutcommunity.substack.com/p/the-life-we-miss-while-wanting-more?r=1r0y9l

Counting on 2026 … day 7

15th  January 

Land system change – “The transformation of forests, grasslands, and other natural areas through land use and other human actions.” (1) Land system change is another of the nine planetary boundaries that marks whether life on Earth is sustainable.

Humans have long been transforming the landscapes,  from our earliest beginnings in agriculture when other plants including trees, were removed to make way for our own choice of plants. Clearings in forests made space for homes to be built, crops sown and animals corralled. And agriculture is still the biggest driver of land system (or land use) change. Whilst the ploughing up of grassland to sow crops, or the replacing of wildflower meadows with cultivated grass, or building houses on green fields, clearly constitutes land use change, it is in the clearing of forests that the most damage is done. Forests are key parts of the ecosystem that regulate rainfall and flooding, that hold soils intact, that provide shelter from both heat and winds, and which are home to a huge diversity and density of wildlife. When forests are lost, rainfall patterns change, soils dry up and maybe either washed or blown away, rivers dry up and vast quantities of carbon are no longer locked away. 

In many regions, deforestation begins with logging – often illegally – and which leads to roadways being created. Land that has been logged gives way to pasture and then cattle ranching, or the  growing of crops for animal food or for bio-energy. 

The safe limit for land system change is deemed to be when at least 75% of the Earth’s original forest cover remains unviolated. Humanity passed this limit in the 1990s  and original forest cover today stands at 60% (2) 

Land use changes impacts most of the other planetary boundaries: freshwater levels are negatively impacted by deforestation; switching from trees to crops increases the use of fertilisers and disrupts  biogeochemical boundaries; the increased use of pesticides increases the number of novel entities in the Earth’s systems; another side effect of the increased use of pesticides and fertilisers – and the burning of stubble etc –  is an increase in airborne particles; increasing  livestock farming increases the amount of methane and other greenhouse gases in the atmosphere; whilst at the same time agriculture often leads to a reduction in biodiversity and the diminution of a living spaces for wildlife.

And to compound this current agricultural practices do not produce enough food to ensure a healthy diet for a growing global population (something that could be achieved if different methods of farming were practiced and different diets followed).

Replacing damaging farming practices with more sustainable ones – and switching to more sustainable and healthier diets – is essential. Such transformative action needs to done in ways that are fair and just, benefitting small as well as large farmers, benefitting women as well as men, benefitting, developing as well as developed countries, benefitting poorer as well as wealthier consumers. 

  1. https://www.planetaryhealthcheck.org/boundary/land-system-change/

(2) https://news.mongabay.com/2024/12/land-use-change-impacting-seven-planetary-boundaries-solutions-urgent-say-scientists/

Counting on 2026 …. Day 37

6th May

The stress and strain of modern life or ‘disorientation’  “is shaped not only by personal choices, but by the systems of power and wealth that tell us what we need to be happy, systems that tell us we need to consume for a better life.”(1) 

Living simply is about choosing not to dance to the tune of advertisers, not blindly following tradition, not getting caught up in the system that says more – and bigger – is better. And therefore living simply may also be about challenging those systems and providing a counter story. 

For example is the purpose of education simply to get a job or is it to be more engaged with life?

Is the purpose of a job just to get a pension so that you can then stop working? Is it necessary to buy a yet bigger house/ bigger kitchen/ bigger car? Will it make you happier?

Living simply is making choices that you have thought through for yourself, choices that are appropriate for you, choices that don’t cost the earth. 

Of course it is possible that simple living itself will become a system!

(1) https://hazelnutcommunity.substack.com/p/the-life-we-miss-while-wanting-more?r=1r0y9l

Mindful Sauntering – between Heaven and Earth

A collage variation of Chagall’s Jacob’s Ladder (source unknown)

And Jacob dreamed that there was a ladder set up on the earth, the top of it reaching to heaven; and the angels of God were ascending and descending on it. Genesis 28:12

Heaven and Earth are only three feet apart, but in thin places that distance is even smaller. A thin place is where the veil that separates Heaven and Earth is lifted and one is able to receive a glimpse of the glory of God. (Celtic tradition)

Nothing Is Far

BY ROBERT FRANCIS

Though I have never caught the word

Of God from any calling bird,

I hear all that the ancients heard.

Though I have seen no deity

Enter or leave a twilit tree,

I see all that the seers see.

A common stone can still reveal

Something not stone, not seen, yet real.

What may a common stone conceal?

Nothing is far that once was near.

Nothing is hid that once was clear.

Nothing was God that is not here.

Here is the bird, the tree, the stone.

Here in the sun I sit alone

Between the known and the unknown.

And Jesus said, ‘Very truly, I tell you, you will see heaven opened and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of Man.’ John 1:51

Christ came down to raise us up, for Christ joins Earth with Heaven.

Lord Jesus Christ, through your life and death, you opened wide the way between Heaven and Earth, come close to us now that we may glimpse Heaven on Earth and so be inspired to lift our lives up to you. Amen.