Harvest Festival at HT
Posted Monday 5 October 2009 ~ 8:22pm
decorations in side chapel
view from the door
Last Sunday we celebrated harvest with thanksgiving in great style. There were many beautiful displays of fruit and flowers all round the church; we sang harvest hymns and had a congregational lunch after. Maurice preached about nature and our part in it as “Participation, not ownership” He described a walk on holiday among the oldest living things on the planet - the sequoia trees at Yosemite Park and included this poem from Mary Oliver:
There are things you can’t reach. But
you can reach out to them, and all day long.
The wind, the bird flying away. The idea of God.
And it can keep you as busy as anything else, and happier.
The snake slides away; the fish jumps, like a little lily,
out of the water and back in; the goldfinches sing
from the unreachable top of the tree.
I look; morning to night I am never done with looking.
Looking I mean not just standing around, but standing around
as though with your arms open.
And thinking: maybe something will come, some
shining coil of wind,
or a few leaves from any old tree –
they are all in this too.
And now I will tell you the truth.
Everything in the world
comes.
At least, closer.
And, cordially.
Like the nibbling, tinsel-eyed fish; the unlooping snake.
Like goldfinches, little dolls of gold
fluttering around the corner of the sky
of God, the blue air.
Categories: Groups, Flower Guild