Exploring the Emmaus road at Forest Church, with labyrinths to help us reflect on how Jesus walks alongside us. We baked communion bread on the fire, used one loaf for the Eucharist, and ate the rest with wild garlic butter ✝️🕯️⚓
Spring morning mist 🌳
Ice creams, pizza from pizza vending machine, a sunny spot by the swimming pool, pottering round a French town centre.
We love a cheap cheap caravan site for post Easter break.
Some of our family are setting off on the high seas (to a French caravan park!).
Plus walk in the forest and cousins playing monopoly 😊
Prayers 🙏
My church has this glorious tradition of busking the Hallelujah Chorus at the end of the Easter morning service. No rehearsals, just the organist, a couple of copies of the music, and enthusiasm. We wouldn't win any choral prizes but gosh it's fun.
Happy Easter! 🐣🐰
My day started with storytelling salvation round a fire before dawn, then the absolute joy of celebrating this marvellous mystery at the altar- second Easter as a priest and I'm still pinching myself. Our oven decided to break so we cooked lunch for family in the church hall! ✝️🕯️
Good Friday at @stpeterintheforest.bsky.social ✝️🕯️
Garden of Repose.
The Maundy Thursday liturgy is such a powerful emotional journey. ✝️⚓
I ran it once in a church hall maybe ten years ago, and again on zoom in 2021. So this was its third outing. I think it may be something I need to write up and get published somewhere so it can be used. It's so great.
We loved it so much that tonight we squeezed in a Holy Week bonus week, cooking with friends in Palestine, and @sgcjerusalem.bsky.social kindly joined us as well.
I really recommend this as a concept. It's brilliant.
We have had a wonderful Lent Cookalong zoom (how very 2020), fasting from our regular Weds night dinners to eat in solidarity with friends from Iran, Sudan, Nigeria, Pakistan, the Philippines. We've been joined each time by people from each country to laugh at our cooking attempts and pray for us. ✝️
Behind the scenes in Holy Week.
Burning the leftover holy oils before Chrism Mass tomorrow. ✝️⚓
Golden hour London forest 🌳
Brilliant to spend time on the streets yesterday at the @togetheralliance.bsky.social March. Felt like the perfect way to prepare for the story of Holy Week, which after all starts with crowds on the streets. 'Christian people, what are we for? A bigger table, an open door!'
A whole herd of hobby donkeys joined our Palm Sunday procession round to church, where we took part in a dramatised reading of the gospel, and made bracelets to remember each part of holy week (can you guess which colours represent which day?).
My late March London woods say hello.
I'm looking forward to speaking about 'Mud and Wonder: how we can explore our spirituality in nature', at this conference run by my friends as Grund School, Oradea, Romania, focussed on outdoor education and pedagogy. Booking link here: docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F...
Winds of Hope Greenbelt is a place where, like it or not, we are much more aware of the weather than usual. Join Rachel Summers to explore what God has to say about the wind, to play and create together as we make and fly kites as an act of worship. Sun 12.30 Shelter
The Hosts with the Most Join our partners Refugees at Home to hear stories from hosts who've volunteered with them to offer short-term stays for refugees. Fri 6.30 Hot House
Looking forward to @greenbeltfestival.bsky.social 🙌
If you're coming, pop these two things in your diary. Come and make kites with me as an act of worship, and listen to stories about hosting refugees with @refugeesathome.bsky.social
Message reads, 'we all missed you. We're shattered and that's between 5 of us running it between us'
I couldn't run my usual family retreat week this year, coz appendicitis 😭. My lovely friends all pitched in and got it done 🥰
Would just like to note that 1 Rachel carries the force of five people. ADHD ftw 💪
Huge thanks to Allan for writing the background stories to my childhood and my children's childhoods.
My favourites to read to my children were Peepo, which is a work of warm human genius, and Each Peach Pear Plum where the rhyme gallops along to a satisfying plum pie finale.
Build tiny house out of books?
There may well be reasons someone is overweight. Multiple ACEs show a 46% increase in adult obesity. Recovering from surgery is not the place to have this conversation 😂
📢 Would also once again like to remind health professionals that yes, I have eyes and know I'm overweight. Yes, I have a brain and know how to eat healthily. My weight didn't cause my appendicitis so we do not need to discuss it.
Feet in a hospital bed
Feet back home in a comfortable bed with the forest outside the window.
Spent my weekend having appendicitis. 💯 do not recommend.
It's good to be home, hoping for a boring and uneventful recovery.
Meanwhile in the Church of England...
(Full time is one day off a week. In my diocese we're encouraged to take *two days* off once a month 🙌)
Blackberries growing on a bush. Just a couple are ripe.
Woman priest and teen boy helper pick blackberries in the forest.
Glossy blackberries scattered in a dish with green and white slices of apple, bright yellow apricots, and red and yellow plums.
Crumble in a dish with jammy blackberry juice edges. It sits on a wooden table. There are shiny silver spoons, the spout of a teapot, and a glass of purple dahlias.
It's blackberry time!
Woman stands in damp forest. She wears a blue dress with orange patterns on.
Summer pond, very little water but what there is reflects a stunning cloudy sky. Pond plants grow bright green.
Bright green bracken under oak and hornbeam trees.
Beautiful London 🌳💚
Chalice with wine and paten with very rustic flat bread!
Fruit of the earth and work of human hands (our hands, we collected grains of wheat from ears of corn, threshed them, ground them, made dough and cooked it).
Fruit of the vine and work of human feet (we stomped on grapes in a ziplock and added to wine).
Blessed be God for ever!