laudable Practice

Early October. The colours of Autumn can be seen. Leaves begin to fall. The days are shortening. And yesterday it was Harvest Thanksgiving in the parish. Beginning in September, increasing in early- and mid-October, with some found here and there in late-October, many churches across these Islands have observed or will observe Harvest Thanksgiving. The Sundays of mid-Autumn, then, ring out with the collect of harvest, "we yield thee humble and hearty thanks for this thy bounty"; with the singing of 'Come, ye thankful people, come'; and with the words of Deuteronomy, "When thou hast eaten and art full, then thou shalt bless the Lord thy God for the good land which he hath given thee". It is a time of year I particularly enjoy. The evocative colours of Autumn, the mists and the apples, the colder mornings and early evening sunsets, the chestnuts and pumpkins: it is a time to give thanks for the richness and bounty of the year. It is also fitting to give thanks...

From a Harvest sermon preached by Old High William Jacobson (received orders in 1830, appointed Regius Professor of Divinity, Oxford in 1848, appointed Bishop of Chester in 1865) in the parish church of Iffley, Oxford, in 1839: All Thy works praise Thee, O Lord. These words we repeat in their course when we come to them in their place in the Psalms, with a sort of general notion that they are true; but when the Heavens are black with clouds and wind, when the voice of God's thunder is heard round about, and His lightnings shine upon the ground, then, indeed, we feel that His works are praising the power and majesty of God. Or, to take one other instance, when the vallies stand so thick with corn that they seem to laugh and sing, when it appears as though the clouds in months past had indeed dropped fatness, and when God is crowning the year with His goodness before our eyes; we feel then that the works of the Lord do indeed praise Him by setting forth the greatness and abundance o...

Now it is Autumn. The leaves are already turning in Jeremy Taylor country, mists greet us in the morning, apples are on sale from the abundant local supply, and the sun sets in early evening. During the days of Autumn, the words of the Book of Common Prayer can be heard afresh, illumining and giving deeper meaning to the thoughts evoked by the season.  ... this peace of the dying season,  this vibrancy of quiet rest,  in autumn's arriving night - Christopher Yokel, 'Lux in Tenebris' As the days grow shorter, with mornings slowly becoming darker and the sun setting in early evening, soon to be late afternoon, autumnal darkness gathers around Matins and Evensong. 'Autumn's arriving night' can give a renewed meaning to familiar words. At Matins, in the Benedictus, as mornings grow darker, we hail the One who is the Light in all our experiences of darkness: To give light to them that sit in darkness, and in the shadow of death ... At Evening Prayer, words we have of...

And Is it not enough that every year A richly laden autumn should unfold And shimmer into being leaf by leaf ... All Hallows' Eve and words from Malcolm Guite's poem for Autumn come to mind. Today we bring the season of Harvest Thanksgiving, our yearly rejoicing in "A richly laden autumn," to a close. The pumpkins, nuts, and apples which decorated our churches for the Harvest festival now decorate our homes. Pumpkin soup and apple pie sit on the table. It is one last day of rejoicing in Autumn's bounty and the Harvest season, looking back on weeks when we have delighted in the divine goodness which has, for another year, "graciously given unto us the fruits of the earth in their season". Sky and hills and woods are one, grey and dead. Hard to believe there be daffodils, That green things will happen again. At night houses shine out in cries across fields of floodwater, The cold of wet and wind like the cut of a spade in a bare hand. With All Hallow'...

It was Harvest Thanksgiving in the parish yesterday: the fruits of the earth decorating the parish church; the festive hymns of harvest; a Sunday in early Autumn marked by gratitude and thanksgiving.  Presiding at the early Eucharist, it was clear that the days of late Summer were now past. I left the house at 8am, less than thirty minutes after sunrise. Along the roadsides of Jeremy Taylor country, fallen leaves were abundant. The hues and tones of Autumn were beginning to show in the churchyard. The collect of Harvest Thanksgiving, as always, beautifully captured the occasion: Eternal God, you crown the year with your goodness and give us the fruits of the earth in their season ... The collect evokes the joyous delight of the Psalmist and the abundance of the opening chapter of Genesis, words that have resonated over centuries at this time of the year ; the reference to 'season' recognises that it is in the Harvest Thanksgiving of Autumn that such delight and abundance finds ...

On this Wednesday of September Embertide, my thoughts turn to the impending arrival of Autumn. We are now in the very last days of Summer, with cooler mornings and darker evenings already having an autumnal character. On Saturday, with the autumnal equinox, we enter into Autumn. That the days of September Embertide should fall now is, of course, no coincidence. The Ember Days are, as the Prayer Book tells us, "at the Four Seasons", marking the movement into each new season with penitence and abstinence. A time of penitence and abstinence before entering into Autumn prepares us to receive the gifts of the season. Indeed, such a time of penitence draws us into discernment, appropriate for Autumn's quieter days, mellow scenes, and - with the decline of the year - air of melancholy. Penitence drawing us into discernment prepares us to still and quieten ourselves for a more reflective time of year, even amidst the work September and the months ahead bring; to see the beauty of...

Harvest Thanksgiving is a more modern addition to the church calendar. Its origins are usually traced to the adaptation in 1843 of Lammas Day by the Revd R. S. Hawker, a parish priest in Cornwall ... An annual church celebration of the harvest ... was first recognized officially in the Church of England in 1862. So says the Church of England's Common Worship provision for the Agricultural Year . It is a view which can be used by those critical of the festival of Harvest Thanksgiving, dismissing it as a 19th century invention, now inherently compromised by reactionary nostalgia.   What this account ignores is the fact that observance of harvest was well-established in the Church of England long before 1862.  Throughout the later 16th, 17th, and 18th centuries, the Sunday closest to Michaelmas was a Sacrament Sunday, marking the end of harvest.  What is more, official recognition of harvest thanksgiving also significantly pre-dates the mid-19th century. For example, a ...

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...

The days are noticeably shorter and colder.  The leaves are gathering on roads and footpaths.  We are in the midst of Autumn, with its transitory richness both a moment of joy but also an intimation of our mortality. Fall, leaves, fall; die, flowers, away; Lengthen night and shorten day; Every leaf speaks bliss to me Fluttering from the autumn tree - Emily Bronte, ' Fall, leaves, fall '. October is also the season of Harvest Thanksgiving in these Islands, with parish churches giving thanks for the bounty of the harvest. We yield thee hearty thanks that thou hast safely brought us to the season of harvest visiting the earth and blessing it, and crowning the year with thy goodness - Church of Ireland BCP 1926, A Form of Thanksgiving for the Blessings of Harvest. In Canada, today is Thanksgiving Day, celebrated amidst the bounty of Fall and harvest.   O MOST merciful Father, we humbly thank thee for all thy gifts so freely bestowed upon us - Canadian BCP 1962, Collect f...