Lambeth Environment Day
“The leaves of the trees are for the healing of the nations” Rev 22:2
The bishops and spouses travelled to Lambeth Palace in London for a day which combined experiencing the beauty of God’s creation with discussing the challenges of climate change
On arrival at the beautiful Lambeth gardens they were met with wonderful music from choirs, band and a harp player. They moved through the garden with a series of prayer stations.
Over lunch they discussed the environmental challenges being faced, and wrote their commitments and prayers onto leaves, which were then placed on leaves around the garden
The Bishops were challenged by three speakers – Archbishop Julio, Bishop Marinez (Amazon) and Liz Wathuti – a powerful young climate activist from Kenya. Her talk can be found here:
To launch the Anglican Communion Forest, a beautiful prayer liturgy was held with Archbishop Julio (Panama), Archbishop Thabo(ACSA), Rev Jacynthia Murray (Aotearoa), Bishop Marinez (Amazon) and Mandisa Gumada (ACSA) led us in singing ‘Thuma Mina” – Send me Jesus
The team who had worked on the project – Bishop Nick Drayson (N Argentina), Bishop Francisco Duque (colombia),, Bishop Marc Andrus (California), Bishop Graham Usher (UK) Canon Rachel Mash (ACSA) and Elizabeth Perry (UK) joined Archbishop Julio in blessing the symbolic first tree of the Communion Forest
Bishops are encouraged to include tree growing in their liturgies of confirmation, baptism, marriage and other events – as well as embarking on reforestation and forest protection projects in partnership with others.
More information can be found at https://www.communionforest.org/
Even in the beauty of the gardens we felt the impact of climate change in the burnt grass, the participants were overheating in the sun – many tried to shelter under the trees – which reminded us that we all want to stand in the shade- not everyone wants to plant the trees!
May the leaves of the trees be for the healing of the nations!
Photo credit – lambeth Conference
