Dear Friends

It was lovely to see a good turnout for our Harvest services last Sunday. Many thanks to those who have already contributed generously to our Harvest arboretum project which will involve planting some more trees (please see below for further details). If you haven’t already done so it’s not too late to contribute now! 
We are fortunate to have so many green spaces in this part of London and they have been particularly enriching for us during these last few difficult months. Our trees are looking especially beautiful at the moment in their glorious autumn colours.

In the words of Gerard Manley Hopkins:

The world is charged with the grandeur of God.
    It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;
    It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil
Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?
Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;
    And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;
    And wears man’s smudge and shares man’s smell: the soil
Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.

And for all this, nature is never spent;
    There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;
And though the last lights off the black West went
    Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs —
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
    World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.

With every blessing 

Mother Eileen