We’re enjoying re-visiting the same woodland each month and getting a sense of the changing seasons. At September’s gathering, we went looking for spider webs. Spiders are busy at this time of year, but the windy weather meant it was hard to find webs that had survived by mid-afternoon. Webs are hard to find anyway, and sometimes it’s only by focusing on the middle-distance, or un-focusing your eyes altogether, that you spot something tiny fluttering in the wind and when you look more closely you see that it’s a speck of leaf caught on a web. Our connections – with God, with humans, with nature – can be just as elusive but they are still there, and sometimes you have to change your focus in order to notice them.
We made a web of rope, with each person holding a point of it. We thought about the web of life that connects us all, and the impacts we have on other beings and their impacts on us. Forest Church may be a way we can change our focus and become more aware of our place in the community of nature, and so develop a more gentle, loving, creative impact.