麻豆约拍

A reflection and prayer to start the day with the Revd Dr Mark Clavier, canon theologian for the Diocese of Swansea and Brecon.

Good morning. My wife has become a bit of a forager. Our kitchen is filled with jars of wild mushrooms, everything from porcini and parasols to shaggy inkcaps and field mushrooms. We also have a bottle of rose syrup made from rosehips and petals. We should have more, but I accidentally poured it out when doing the dishes! Add these to the cobnuts and mountains of apples from our garden, and you can begin to imagine the state of our kitchen. I鈥檝e stuck to making tomato sauce and drying herbs.

Like gardening, foraging renews our gratitude to nature. Nothing we鈥檝e collected has cost the earth anything. It鈥檚 all included within her bounty, there for us to enjoy every bit as much as for any other creature. The mushrooms we gather today like Hobbits will be there next year; and there鈥檒l again be more rosehips to be turned into syrup for hapless husbands to pour down the drain. Next year, we may find time to gather chestnuts too.

The ecological benefits of this are obvious. But I most appreciate the way these activities make me feel even more at home. Like a stray dog settling down with the owner of the hand that feeds it, I have settled down deeply in these hills of plenty. Our foraging has enabled us to enjoy our countryside differently than before, which is saying something for people like us who spend so much time walking. Now, I know it to be not only beautiful, but positively delectable too.

Let us pray.
Heavenly Father, who is the treasury of all good things and giver of life, come and abide with us in the bounty of your creation; open our eyes to the nourishing beauty of that creation and teach us to enjoy and nurture it as a gift and token of your love. Amen.