Tree hugging and queer reflecting (Lent 2022)

The 40 days of Lent can be awfully long if you're trying to do something (or not do something) every day. Here are a couple of things I found this year which I thought I might actually be able to keep up with. One has a very small action each day, and the other is something to read and think about - but only on Sundays, until you get to Holy Week.

Get Outside in Lent

Christian environmental charity A Rocha has provided six weeks of ideas to get you and your family outside in Lent. The PDF is here: https://bit.ly/ECGetOutsideforLent. There are six activities each week (and yes, the first one really is "Hug a tree") and a suggestion for a celebration and prayer on Sundays.

The logical way to do six weeks seems to be to start next Monday, but then the final Sunday is Easter Sunday. So I guess you could also start today (or tomorrow) and finish on the Thursday before Easter. There are no dates, making it pretty flexible.

Ashes to Rainbows: A Queer Lenten Devotional

Unbound, a Christian social justice journal, offers two series of devotions for Lent. I'm reading the 2020 one, Ashes to Rainbows, written by LGBTQIA+ people of faith and allies. The other is Disabling Lent: An Anti-Ableist Lenten Devotional.

Both include reflections for Ash Wednesday, each Sunday of Lent, and every day of Holy Week - so not a whole lot of reading until you get to the end. I think these are likely to challenge some of my assumptions about faith, as I hear from different perspectives.

Are you doing, reading, or listening to anything new this Lent? Let me know!

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Easter holidays 2025

It felt like a busy Easter holiday this year - a nice mixture of household jobs, time in the sunshine, and family celebrations. Here are a few highlights. Birthday cake Graham's mum had a big birthday, so Graham and his sister secretly organised a few friends to come to dinner with her. She was surprised - and pleased! - when a small family meal at the pub turned out to include fifteen extra people. Theo baked and decorated this amazing cake all by himself. My sole involvement was cutting it up at the end. The event was a big success. thanks to my mum for the photo Days out We had a family day out at Peak Wildlife Park , in the Staffordshire countryside. It's been a few years since we last went; the penguins and lemurs were familiar, but the zoo has acquired a couple of polar bears. Believe it or not, these two are only half-grown. They're about three years old. playfighting polar bears lemurs penguins otters I persuaded Toby and Theo to come to a garden with me with the ...

The Churnet Way: a wonderful walk

The loop from Oakamoor to Froghall and back was one of the most enjoyable walks I've done in a long time. It had a bit of everything: woods, ponds, rivers and railways; steep climbs and sweeping views; an unusual church, an ex-industrial wharf, and, as a final bonus, car parks with toilets. Of course, the sunny weather helped too. I parked in Oakamoor and set off along a quiet lane called Stoney Dale. This is the route of the Churnet Way, which deviates away from the river for a couple of miles. After a while I turned right and climbed up through the woods on a gravelly path, then dropped down to the B5417. a spring in Oakamoor Crossing the road, I entered Hawksmoor Nature Reserve. It has some fine gateposts commemorating John Richard Beech Masefield, "a great naturalist". I found a photo of the opening of the gateway in 1933; unsurprisingly, the trees have grown a lot since then! A track took me down through the woods to East Wall Farm. Lovely view! Nice duck pond as ...

One hundred churches

About the middle of January, I was walking to school one afternoon when it occurred to me that I must have visited quite a few churches on my explorations. I started counting them. But I quickly ran out of fingers, so when I got home I plotted them on Google Maps. Not only was the number much higher than I was expecting, it was also tantalisingly close to one hundred. Only a few dozen to go. So of course, every walk since then has had to include at least one church! Last Monday I visited my hundredth church: St John the Baptist, Dethick. It was a beautiful little 13-century building with an unusual tower - I was glad it had claimed the 100 spot. I haven't been inside every church. Sometimes they were locked; sometimes I was in a hurry and didn't try the door. St Leonard's Church in Alton had bellringers practicing, and I almost interrupted a funeral when I stuck my head through the door of St Mary's, Marston-on-Dove. A few, such as St Oswald's, Ashbourne, and St Wys...

Martha's Marvellous Munchies

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