Rewilding The Dales – Part 3: The Great Rewilder

Farmed fields, even those sown with mixed crops, sustain only a few species of plants and animals compared to their wild equivalent. Our heather-capped moors similarly support a shorter list of living things than the mixed forests that once covered these hills. Equally, the Biblical vision for the church was always for a community where…

Rewilding The Dales – Part 2: Church

If the idea of rewilding our countryside evokes emotive images, both positive and negative, with many of us who live and work in and around these Dales, then the notion of rewilding the church of the Dales is equally likely to elicit emotional responses. If you like to imagine how things might be in the…

Turning Tables and Temples

Isn’t it amazing what you can see through an image formed in an artist’s imagination and the graphic crafted by the skill of their hands? My thanks go to Chris Bambrough for his skill and for allowing me to share the picture he created. The Jerusalem temple was certainly one of the ancient world’s most…

Soil, Plants and Shoots

If asked what substance is of greatest value in this world most of us would come up with a list of rare gemstones and precious metals, valued because of their beauty, purity, and scarcity. Today we might think of lithium for batteries or plutonium for reactors alongside gold and diamonds. But I would imagine that…

What Is He Doing Here?

“This conversation was going well until someone brought God into it”. We don’t need God, because we can manage perfectly well without him, it seems! As we look around this country, and at the towns and villages in these North Yorkshire Dales it sometimes appears that God has taken the hint, and has left the building. But yet, as I drive along our dales roads, and speak with you, its people, it is clear to me that God is still in this place.