Dear friends,

St Ethelburga’s Feast Day is coming up on the 11th October, and as it approaches, my attention has been drawn to the wonderful stained-glass window at St Ethelburga’s. In it, Ethelburga is seen striding through the cloisters, with her cloak billowing out behind her. The window was designed by renowned stained-glass artist Helen Whittaker after the destruction of the church in the Bishopsgate bombing of 1993. One of the most striking aspects of the window is St Ethelburga’s cloak—made up of vibrant fragments of the shattered glass of the original window—a particularly apt metaphor for the work we do at St Ethelburga’s. But in the bottom left corner there is another feature that I found myself wondering about—a bush growing from the dark ground. On looking up the design notes for the window, I discovered it was a hazel tree: “From a crack in the tiled floor of the first light grows a hazel bush (Corylus avellana) shedding leaves and fruit—a symbol of peace and reconciliation.”

Many years ago, I attended a traditional apprenticeship in a stained-glass studio. It was a fascinating process, defined by the distinct roles each adding to the one before—design work, selecting and cutting glass, painting, firing, leading, cement finishing. We spent a week in each room, learning each craft separately before we were ready to create our own small window. Our window was inspired by the traditional style of the studio, but its intended home was a South African indigenous project (the Bushman Heritage Museum), and it depicted the annual New Year celebration: a lantern parade bringing light to a struggling community. At the time, and then years later when I first saw the St Ethelburga’s window, I was struck by how stained glass so effortlessly holds difference: ancient tradition and contemporary concerns, darkness and light, destruction and new life, grief and hope—and as an art form, how well suited it is to the collaborative creativity of many hands.

At our Spiritual Ecology Overnight Pilgrimage last June, we walked through the night, with rest stops hosted in diverse places of worship and hidden community gardens, at each of which we planted a tree. We ended the pilgrimage at St Ethelburga’s in the early morning light, and together planted a hazel tree, not realising how directly we reflected the scene in the window above us. The hazel tree connects us with the tens of thousands of hazels, hawthorns, and other species we’ve planted in hedgerows and woodlands across the country in recent years. As we settle into autumn, we welcome a new cohort of volunteer leaders who will be gathering volunteers from across their diverse communities for another season of hedgerow planting in a collaborative act of creativity and faith. If you’d like to support more people to participate, please do consider ‘pledging a hedge’ with a donation here. Or, if you’d like to organise a team volunteering day for your organisation, we have now launched our team tree-planting days—please see here for more information and get in touch!

Please join us to honour St Ethelburga’s Feast Day on Tuesday 13 October with a special Contemplative Practice—an evening of silence, story, and simple celebration.

Also coming up at St Ethelburga’s this autumn: there are just a few places left on Nonviolent Communication & Conflict Transformation and our three-day Holding a Radical Centre: depolarisation intensive, so do book soon if you’d like to join us. You can also take part in Soul Space online, or explore our ever-popular Conflict Coaching, available both in person and online.

Looking forward to seeing you at one of our events soon.

With all good wishes,

Tarot Couzyn and the St Ethelburga’s team

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