laudable Practice

Amongst the days when the Benedicite should be used in place of Te Deum at Morning Prayer, Rogationtide must surely be included.  Surveying commentaries on the Prayer Book over the centuries, it is consistently recognised that the Benedicite is particularly appropriate when we are rejoicing in the natural world.  Sparrow's Rationale (first published in 1655) states: [when the lessons] set before us the wonderful handy-work of God in any of the Creatures ... Then it will be very seasonable to return this Song. Comber's A Companion to the Temple and the Closet (1676) similarly declares that Benedicite is "always proper to be used" when reflecting on the created order: it is always proper to be used after the History of the Creation ... And then we may in this Form learn the order of God's works, for the method is exact, and beginning with the Heavens and the hosts thereof descends to the air, the Earth and Sea reckoning up all the furniture of them; and concluding...

The theme for the Season of Creation 2021 is A Home for All, renewing the oikos of God. Oikos means 'home' or 'family' and is the root of our words starting with 'eco' like 'ecology' and 'economics'. The last year has been a wake up call to the need to restore our relationships with God, creation and each other. This description on the Church of England website of the theme for Creationtide 2021 caught my eye for two reasons.  The first is that it is suggestive of a response to those who might portray Creationtide as part of a 'woke' agenda in the churches.  In his How to Think Seriously about the Plant: The Case for an Environmental Conservatism (2012), the late Roger Scruton invoked the idea of "the love of the oikos " - "the shared love of a shared place" - as the basis for a conservatism serious about the environment: That, it seems to me, is the goal towards which serious environmentalism and serious conservat...

Following on from the recent post defending Creationtide , it might be wondered if 1662 has any place in its observance. We might think not, whether we are enthusiastic progressive supporters of the Season of Creation or those who bemoan it as another sign of the Church embracing a 'woke' agenda. Contrary to both, however, 1662 (here used as shorthand for the 'classical Prayer Book tradition') offers in three ways a liturgy with deep theological foundations significant for observing Creationtide. Firstly, a rich theology of creation is built into Mattins and Evensong.  The opening exhortation call on us "to ask those things which are requisite and necessary, as well for the body as the soul", reminding us that we embodied beings with creaturely, physical requirements dependent upon the environment. At Mattins, the Venite praises the God in whose "hands are all the corners of the earth ... and his hands prepared the dry land". The Te Deum rejoices th...

This was not a post I expected to be writing, not least because in the past I have been critical of Creationtide. My change of mind has been partly occasioned by reading some other critiques of the 'Season of Creation' and realizing that I fundamentally disagreed with the theological reasoning at work in those critiques.  I have also accepted that my previous view - a purist 'We have Rogationtide, Lammas, Harvest, and Ember Days, we don't need Creationtide' approach - has little relevance in a pastoral context in which, outside of Harvest, these observances have little practical significance. This is not to say that there are not weaknesses with Creationtide.  Some of the teaching and ecclesiastical commentary for Creationtide lacks theological depth and appears to be little more than an echo of particular political concerns.  The liturgical provision has often been - to put it charitably - poor.  The collect, for example, provided by the Church of England for a Ser...

During long months of the pandemic, millions of us turned to nature. Our research on the mental health impacts of the pandemic showed going for walks outside was one of our top coping strategies and 45% of us reported being in green spaces had been vital for our mental health. Websites which showed footage from webcams of wildlife saw hits increase by over 2000%. Wider studies also found that during lockdowns, people not only spent more time in nature but were noticing it more. It was as if we were re-discovering at our most fragile point our fundamental human need to connect with nature. So said the UK's Mental Health Foundation , introducing the theme of this year's Mental Health Awareness Week: nature.  This builds, of course, on an increasingly well-recognised body of research, ably summarised - with compelling personal accounts of mental health - by Lucy Jones in Losing Eden: Why Our Minds Need the Wild (2020) and Isabel Hardman The Natural Health Service: how nature can...