The Seed Disperser - August 2022
Getting outdoors in the Season of Creation
What’s in this month’s Seed Disperser
Book of the month
Hymns from the Heart
Coming up
Stroll for Your Soul
Stroll for Your Soul pick your own discount
Inspiration this month
Season of Creation
Getting outdoors
Kereru news
Lectionary
Bundles
Special offers
Taking Flight 10% discount to first time subscribers
On a personal note
A Pinch of Spice
Bookshops, bookshelves and Jolabokaflod
A recommended read
Book of the Month - Hymns from the Heart
Hymns from the Heart is the work of Jan Chamberlin. Jan is a lyricist, taking familiar words and imagery and creating songs with lyrics for our contemporary world, while making suggestions on using the tunes from well-known traditional hymns. Her book covers the seasons of the Church year.
Jan’s work has been enjoyed in New Zealand and Australia and beyond. Use the code HYMNS22 at the checkout or click on this link to get 10% discount.
I first learned of you in childhood,
saw you in the sky above,
your creation in the sunrise,
trees and lakes and lofty mountains:
gave to you my springtime love.
Take, O God, my springtime love.
- Jan Chamberlin from the Hymn, “All my Seasons” (Hymns from the Heart)
Coming up
Stroll for Your Soul
Spring Stroll starting 3 September 2022
Looking for a little bit of encouragement as we get to the end of winter? Needing a focus to inspire your thoughts as you walk? Wanting some daily faith inspiration but don’t have a lot of time to spend finding something to read? Inspired by the changing spring weather to head outdoors? Stroll for Your Soul is offered for three weeks every September in the southern hemisphere and May in the northern hemisphere. Our September spring Stroll is a repeat of the May Stroll where we had over 700 strollers from the northern hemisphere.
This year’s Stroll theme is Weather. Each daily email includes a short reflection and a suggested practice. Read the email and then head outdoors to Stroll and enjoy looking for signs of spring. If getting out walking isn’t an option, sit at a window, on a deck or in a garden and contemplate.
Stroll for Your Soul - Pick your discount
We know the current cost of living crisis is hard and is affecting our subscribers. We’re seeing and hearing this across all our subscription based resources. We’ve made the decision that in offering Stroll for Your Soul we have an opportunity this September for us to give something to help in these times.
We’re offering a ‘pick your discount’ option, including 10%, 25%, 50%, 75% and a 100% free option. Use our easy sign up form and choose your preferred discount. You’ll be instantly signed up to the resource and we’ll send you an invoice with several payment options available including Paypal, credit card and direct credit.
If you’d prefer to purchase through our website we’re offering a 25% discount option by clicking on the button below. The discount will be automatically applied at the checkout.
Caroline’s first Stroll for Your Soul
Caroline first Strolled in May 2018 after seeing it mentioned on Instagram. The following year, Janice from The Prayer Bench invited her to co-write Stroll and they’ve been writing together ever since. Listen to Caroline’s reflections on her first Stroll experience.
Janice and Caroline co-write two seasonal resources. If you’re in the northern hemisphere, about to enter autumn/fall you might like to sign up for the October Autumn Rambles via The Prayer Bench. This is a repeat of the Autumn Rambles previously offered in April this year in the southern hemsiphere by Kereru Publishing.
Inspiration this month
Season of Creation
September is the time when Christians around the world turn their attention to God as the creator and think about our relationship with the whole of creation. The Season of Creation had its beginnings when the Ecumenical Patriarch of the Orthodox Church, Dimitrios 1, in 1989, proclaimed 1 September as a day for prayer for creation. Then, in 2000, the Lutheran Church in Australia began to observe the month of September as a Season of Creation in response to the environmental crisis. Since then, this opportunity for the church to examine creation-based themes has spread to many different denominations and around the world.
Taking Flight - Season of Creation
The Lectionary provides us with alternative creation-focused readings and themes for the month. Taking Flight, our weekly lectionary resource, will follow these readings and themes as follows:
4 September - Ocean Sunday
11 September - Flora and fauna Sunday
18 September - Storm Sunday
25 September - Cosmos Sunday
2 October - Blessing of the Animals/ St Francis of Assisi
Taking Flight is distributed via Substack. You can subscribe via our website or by clicking the button below. If you only want to subscribe for the Season of Creation, you can subscribe for a month and then pause your paid subscription.
Movie recommendation - David Attenborough: A Life on our Planet
We recommend for personal viewing, or for a church movie night, the documentary movie David Attenborough: A Life on Our Planet (2020 - PG). English broadcaster, biologist, natural historian and author, David Attenborough at 93 years old has become somewhat of a prophet for the environmental cause. Accompanied by stunningly beautiful natural film footage, in clear and concise language Attenborough shares his concern for the current state of the planet due to humanity's impact on nature and his hopes for the future. (Currently available in New Zealand in Netflix.)
Music suggestions - Olivia Newton John
The recent death of Dame Olivia Newton-John has brought her music back into the spotlight. As an environmental and animal rights activist many of her songs, including several she wrote herself, include themes suitable for the Season of Creation. The Promise (The Dolphin Song) was written and recorded in 1981 and explores our responsibility to love the planet. Let’s Talk About Tomorrow from 1988 is about the legacy we leave for future generations. Don’t Cut Me Down was released in 1994 and is a song about trees. Her most recent release Window in the Wall was recorded as a duet with her daughter, Chloe Lattanzi in 2021. It offers hope for us to take action in our world right now and do our part to heal creation. Olivia embraced an inter-faith spirituality and this is reflected in songs Grace and Gratitude and Let Go and Let God from her 2006 album Grace and Gratitude.
Getting outdoors
How often in the gospels we meet Jesus in outdoor settings on a mountainside or by a lake. How seldom indoors. Yet people often associate meeting with God with indoor settings – they seek him in churches, cathedrals and chapels.
Taking time to get outdoors, to spend time in nature invites a sense of meeting with the God of creation. Whether gathering for Church worship, or with a small group of friends, or taking time out to replenish yourself, here’s a few ideas that can be adapted and used outdoors this coming September.
Do you bow your head when you pray or do you look
up into that blue space?
Take your choice, prayers fly from all directions.
And don’t worry about what language you use,
God no doubt understands them all.
Even when the swans are flying north and making
such a ruckus of noise, God is surely listening
and understanding.- Mary Oliver, excerpt from Whistling Swans
Waldeinsamkeit - Solitude alone in the forest from Germany
In Germany they have a word ‘waldeinsamkeit’ which doesn’t easily translate into English. It is the feeling of being alone in the forest and finding a sense of joy and calmness. During the pandemic interest in waldeinsamkeit has grown in Germany as people have had the space and time to seek out forest places and find comfort in this solitary experience.
Story Chaplain & Wild Pottering from UK
Charlotte set up Story Chaplain as a collection of projects encouraging everyday creativity and quality time with people living with dementia, carers, and everyone. Her focus is on encouraging people to make connections both with themselves and others, and to help people to tell their story or parts of their story and what matters most in their lives.
We love her creative approach in supporting others by connecting nature, the seasons and words of wellbeing with her faith.
Her whole website is worth some time spent exploring, not just for those who live with dementia, but for everyone. Check out her page on Wild Pottering and if you’re on Instagram you’ll find her at storychaplain. Try your own wild pottering sometime during the month ahead.
The heart of wild pottering is simply being present and noticing, whether for a few moments or an afternoon.
- Charlotte, Story Chaplain
Wild Church from North America
The Wild Church network started in North America. Churches and groups are diverse in expression, style and theology but share a united sense of calling, purpose and roots:
Nature as beloved community
From the Christ tradition
Inner-Outer Transformation
The emphasis is on gathering together, leaving buildings and connecting instead with the natural world.
Gathering in this way is more than connecting with the natural world in order to reduce your blood pressure or obtain any of the other proven benefits of time spent in nature. It’s not even a sneaky way to get religious people to care about climate change. It is a movement of people who are taking seriously the call from Spirit and from Earth to restore a dangerous fissure. Spirituality and nature are not separate.
- Victoria Loorz, Church of the Wild: How Nature Invites Us into the Sacred
The Wild Church website has several free resources available to download.
Shinrin-yoku (forest bathing) from Japan
Shinrin-yoku is the practice of forest bathing. Known for helping with stress and also for pre-empting stress, the practice started in the 1980s in Japan as a national health initiative. The practice is not rooted in Christianity, yet the practice easily fits within a Christian contemplative framework.
One of the beautiful aspects to forest bathing is the accessibiltiy for those with disabilities and for all ages. This is not a test of fitness or endurance or a purposeful walk in the bush.
You can find qualified guides for forest bathing all over the world, but you don’t need a guide to try it yourself. There are also many articles on the internet and books written with guided practices but the basic steps are:
Step 1 - Find a piece of bush or forest, or a clump of trees, near to where we live or work. Take notice of our surroundings. Let our thoughts flow away from the distractions of home and the pressures around us.
Step 2 - Use our senses to immerse ourselves in the environment. Let our eyes soak in the view. Listen to the sounds of the forest. Smell the damp earth. Taste the fresh air by taking deep breaths. Touch a leaf or a flower or a tree.
Step 3 - Be present in the forest. Sit with God. Pray. Listen. Refresh.
Step 4 - Before returning to everyday life and activities take time to transition. The Japanese tradition is to drink tea. If we’ve been forest bathing with others, we can take time to share our experiences together.
Kereru News
Lectionary
2022-2023 Lectionary
The lectionary of the coming year (Year A – Matthew) starting with Advent, 27 November 2022, is now available for free from our website in epub or pdf. This is the lectionary prepared for the Methodist and Presbyterian Churches of New Zealand and is based on the Revised Common Lectionary. The lectionary for the current year 2021-22 (Year C – Luke) is also available for free download.
Kereru Bundles
With Stroll for Your Soul about to start in September, followed by Counting Down to Christmas in November, then Sensory Lent and Easter in February 2023, now is the perfect time to sign up for a Kereru Bundle.
Get all your organising done in one go by subscribing to a bundle of subscriptions. We have three bundle options available. The sign up process, particularly for group subscriptions is streamlined and will save both time and money. Find out more on our website about each of the bundle options and the additional free resources included.
Special offers
Taking Flight 10% discount to first time subscribers
Join our weekly Lectionary subscription, Taking Flight, particularly suited for those planning and preparing Lectionary based worship. Written by Andrew, this resource is the cornerstone of what we offer at Kereru Publishing. Read more about Taking Flight on our website and if you’ve never previously subscribed to Taking Flight, take advantage of our 10% discount valid until the end of September.
On a personal note
A Pinch of Spice
Caroline has been busy writing the next Counting Down to Christmas. The theme for this year is ‘A pinch of spice’. We’ll reveal more details in our next edition of The Seed Disperser as it still feels like Christmas is a long way off. Caroline recently attended the Storylines New Zealand Children's Writers and Illustrators' National Hui. She has been feeling very inspired to keep working on a children’s novel that has been brewing for some time. The challenge in any week is to find writing time for the many writing projects she is working on.
Bookshops, bookshelves and Jolabokaflod
Andrew is back to volunteering at the Red Beach Methodist Church bookshop once a week where he enjoys the opportunity to be surrounded by books. The ongoing task of going through our own bookshelves at home to reduce our collection continues.
We might publish e-books, but we are a household of booklovers particularly of the paper variety. Last year we started a mid-winter tradition of celebrating Jolabokaflod in July. This is an Icelandic tradition, the word meaning ‘flood of books’. In Iceland on Christmas Eve, new books are given as gifts to each other and everyone in the household curls up in front of the fire and eats or drinks chocolate and reads. We’ve adopted and adapted the tradition in our household for our winter. Instead of new books, we purchase for each other three books each from the secondhand bookstore, and as we don’t have a fireplace, we play a video of fire on our TV and eat chocolate together.
Here’s something worth reading
You may be familiar with the work of Toby Morris and the collaborations he did with Siouxsie Wiles which received worldwide attention at the start of the Covid pandemic. Toby Morris is creative director at The Spinoff and produces a monthly comic. His latest contribution The Side Eye’s Two New Zealands: The Table is worth a read.
On the journey
Andrew and Caroline