Today marks the summer solstice, the longest day of the year in the northern hemisphere. It is a time of vibrance and growth. Psalm 85:12 says, “God gives Goodness and Beauty; our land responds with Bounty and Blessing.” This kind of green bounty and beauty can also be described by the Latin word Veriditas, a word associated with Hildegard von Bingen, a 11th century German abbess and theologian.

At our forest church gathering, before our wandering time, we listened to the words below, written by Hildegard, and then went off on our own to notice signs of the "Greening Force."

Where are you noticing the Greening Force around you in this summer season?

 This week I picked up a new book I had been waiting for, called Watch and Wonder: Birding as a Spiritual Practice, by Ragan Sutterfield. I’ve just barely started reading, but there were a few excerpts I shared in our worship gathering: 

• Spiritual practices, at their best, are activities that help us become the kinds of people the world needs right now. (ix)
  
• One of the formative realities of birding is the way it helps us to inhabit time. Paying attention to birds puts us in contact with the seasons in a world where so much of our life is disconnected from natural rhythms. (x)
  
• Birding is a way to enter the rhythm at the heart of the world. (20) 
• Learning to listen is an essential practice in a birder's life. It is a form of radical attention. When we pay attention to birds, we are not just listening to pleasant sounds. We are encountering an act of communication. Learning to understand, at least at some level, teaches us about the world around us, and leads to connection. (77)

Take time to wander and wonder, to pay attention and listen -- to birds if you can, or to plants, animals or fish -- and see what you hear. Listen as a prayerful act, as a means of connection. Listen for a theophany -- a sounding of God here in this place, on this day.

Earlier this week we stopped for a walk in a forest
just a bit north of here. The ferns were just
coming up, and they inspired this blessing.

This blessing is ancient.
This blessing began millennia 
before you or I and will 
continue long after we're gone.
This green blessing curls 
up from the soil among community 
of trees, ephemerals, decay.

This blessing uncurls 
fronds to the heavens,
catching the spring sunlight
spring after spring after spring,
holding space and keeping time
with grace and purpose.
Blessings of opening.
Blessings of beauty.
Blessings of life.
​
- Wendy Janzen

On March 6, 2026, we marked ten years since our first worship gathering at Breithaupt Park. Here's a timeline with a few highlights of the past decade (and a couple of years leading up to our first gathering).

These contributions are by participants in the Burning Bush Forest Church, 2026 book study. We read and shared reflections about the book, ‘Active Hope: How to Face the Mess We’re In with Unexpected Resilience and Creative Power’ by Joanna Macy and Chris Johnstone, published as a
revised edition, in 2022.
​
With reference to Chapter 6, ‘A Different Kind of Power,’ on pp. 112-13 we responded to these
lines. “Recognizing ourselves as part of the larger web of life expands our view. Just as we can
experience our pain for the world as the Earth crying within us, we can experience the earth
thinking within us as a guiding impulse pulling us in a particular direction. We can view this as
co-intelligence, an ability to think and feel with our world. Developing a partnership with the
Earth involves listening for guiding signals and taking them seriously when we hear them.”

“If Earth could speak to us, what would she say? We can take a step toward finding out by
imagining Earth leaving a voice mail for us. Start a voice mail to yourself. ‘This is your
mother Gaia ...’”

1)
This is your mother Gaia. I delight in the delight you take in me, which fills you at times with
wonder;

• our early morning visits while you sit in your bedroom window alcove, greeting the dawn
• the early signs of budding trees in Spring
• your regular walks in the nearby forest to check in on Spring flowers appearing
• the dazzling sunlight through frost-coated trees
• the beauty of freshly fallen snow –
• your eagerly awaited return of the hummingbirds

I notice that you become more child-like in your eagerness to witness these signs.
I also see your efforts to live with a smaller footprint. The steps you have taken are not merely
"ethical checkmarks" on a scoresheet; they are expressions of the mutual relationship we enjoy.
Yet, there is more work to be done. I am in crisis, as are future generations. I want you to know
that you are not alone in this work; you are part of a much larger and deeper web of global
interconnections than you can see beyond your personal actions. Thank you for taking the time to read and learn. And don't give up! Future generations will be grateful for these actions on behalf of your shared habitat.

2)
This is your mother, Gaia, writing. Don’t worry about how, but the when is now. Some work /
play / connection is already started. For millennia, your Relations – the tree people, water, four
legged, flying, two legged and swimming siblings - have been in Conversation - mostly with the
original Turtle Island part of the human relatives. But there is room and you will figure it out.
Don’t get distracted! The distractions have their own power. Resist Empire and all the extracted loot! Remember who you are and that you belong to me. Connect and practice wisely! With Love, G.

3)
Dear one, this is your mother Gaia. Remember to breathe. You don’t need to accomplish too
much. You can spend more time with people, with yourself, and with me. All will be well.

4)
There is no time to waste. I am feeling humans' destructive steps walking toward my tipping
point. My tipping point means humans cannot survive as part of me. I am resilient. I will survive.
Humans, define your success by honouring your interconnectedness with me, your Mother, Gaia. Work collaboratively. Connect deeply to the web of life.

5)
Dear Child,
This is your mother, Gaia, calling. I haven’t heard from you much lately – really not consistently
since you were a kid. In fact, I don’t hear from many of my children of your species anymore.
Try spending more time in nature --- that might help remind you to call.
The real reason I am calling is to offer a warning. The beautiful gifts I have provided your
species have, for the most part, been misused and exploited. Humans have taken far more than their share, and even among themselves, many have taken more than others. This is not
sustainable and the great web of life, in all of its inter-connections is being harmed, in many
cases irrevocably.
In light of what some of you are calling The Great Turning, my advice is to build your resilience
– learn how to grow food and save seeds for next year’s harvest; build things with your hands;
gather with like-minded people and create strong communities; learn how to mediate conflict and make healthy community decisions; teach those who come after you to love and respect the earth; and practice gratitude, daily.
If your species is lucky it may survive – other species have not faired so well. Use wisely the
gifts I have given you. You will need creativity to innovate, love to build community, and 
resilience to weather the hardships. You will experience grief but also love. You will face
tremendous challenges but also successes.
Go forth and forge a new way of being human, as one species among many in our web of life.
Good luck, call soon, call often.
Mother Gaia

6)
This is your mother Gaia calling. You know we’ve crossed 7 of 9 planetary boundaries and that I am in poor health. The excess of novel entities such as micro- and nano plastics, PFAS and other chemicals are making me sick and as GHGs increase, my fever is worsening. I grieve that I can no longer be a mother to so many species and individuals of those species who have disappeared.
As tipping points approach and I lose ecosystem functioning, I fear the loss of more, including
many human individuals and perhaps the human species. I appreciate that you keep trying to
connect with my creatures and to see beauty. You are aware that hope means being active with your gifts and to keep contributing, regardless of outcome, even knowing the outcome may be dire. We persist with patience as long as we can.

7)
This is your mother, Gaia. Times are tough, I know, for you and me both. There is so much
hubris among humans, so much greed, indifference, and blindness. It breaks my heart. I notice, though, what you all are up to with forest church, and I love spending time with you there on holy ground. Keep your eyes and heart open and pay attention to the beauty and the brokenness around you. Look for acts and signs of hope, and join in. Come alongside the ways that lead to life. You'll find me there. Gaia.

On March 7, Wendy Janzen is speaking on a panel at an event called Churches Caring for Creation: An Idea Exchange hosted by A Rocha Ontario and Mennonite Church Eastern Canada. This is a list of resources that she shared there.​

​CommonWord Resource Centre
https://www.commonword.ca/QuickSearch?search=forest+church&sort=relevance ​

Faith Climate Justice WR
https://www.faithclimatejustice.ca/

Wild Church Network
https://www.faithclimatejustice.ca/

Center for Spirituality in Nature
https://www.centerforspiritualityinnature.org/

Anabaptist Climate Collaborative
https://www.anabaptistclimate.org/

Faith & the Common Good
https://www.faithcommongood.org/

Emissions Reduction Grant - Mennonite Church Canada
https://www.mennonitechurch.ca/climate-action/ERG

On February 15 we co-hosted a Climate Emergency Vigil with Faith Climate Justice Waterloo Region. It was a beautiful February afternoon, and we reflected on this quote from Andreas Weber's book Matter and Desire:

For our wandering time, we reflected on the ways we love the Earth, and in particular, this place and the waters and creatures that we share it with. We also wondered about how it changes us if we believe that the Earth loves us back. 

We also learned that we are on the precipice of using all the water in the Waterloo Moraine – the lifeblood of Waterloo Region. There is no more water for expansion of housing or businesses.  How do we love our watershed, and how does that love affect how we live here?

We were given three calls to action: ​learning about a local “Blueprint for a Bluebelt in Waterloo Region,” along with calls to sign these letters to our federal government, Give Peace A Chance, and Turn Debt into Hope.  

Our first worship gathering of 2026 found us in fluffy fresh snow. The air was brisk but there was little wind. We gathered around a circle near the banks of Laurel Creek which was partially ice covered but still flowing. The sound of flowing water almost blocked out the sound of the traffic flowing on the expressway in the distance.

This place has become a sacred place for us. We have gathered here monthly for worship, along this particular bend in Laurel Creek, for much of the past ten. It is our sanctuary, and we have watched it change over the seasons and years. At one time, there was a dead Beech tree standing right here that was eventually cut down. The stump was left, and we used it as an altar, and the log sat just over here for years and we used it as a bench, a table, and for serving communion. This summer, it completely decayed and returned to the earth. 

In Genesis 28:16, Jacob was on a journey and stopped to sleep for the night under the stars, using a stone for a pillow. As he slept he had a dream in which God showed up and gave him a message. When he woke up in the morning he said, ' Surely, God was in this place and I didn't even know it.' And then he built an altar to honour God’s presence.

Barbara Brown Taylor writes in her book, An Altar in the World, "Earth is so thick with divine possibility that it is a wonder we can walk anywhere without cracking our shins on altars."
​
Surely, God is here in this place. And, surely there are altars everywhere.

Our invitation is to look for altars: places thick with divine possibility, something that invites you to pause and pay attention, something that makes you wonder, something that reminds you that God is present, even in the dead of winter!