A letter from Bewcastle – December 2025

Dear Friends,

A wild and wet wind is howling outside. Branches, stripped of leaves in the fallow time of year, toss and shake, bend, not break, as the dark sky thunders across the bleak fells encircling the Bewcastle bowl. Rooks and ravens, jackdaws and crows play, lifting on the gust, then, folding wings, tumble down, round, and up again, thrilling to the ride – its difficult not to smile when watching them. A smile. Who would have thought it in conditions such as these? Perhaps its easier to be on the wing than balancing in a violent tree; but the ground, sodden and soft as it maybe, is still at least stable. Yet they rather choose the air…

Our summer visitors have long gone; the swifts and swallows, the martins, willow warblers and chiff-chaffs, all chasing the sun across the desert to sub-Saharan Africa. And our winter visitors are here now; the fieldfares and redwings arrived from Scandinavia on 14th October, and the first yapping skeins of Barnacle Geese overhead from Svalbard a week or so before. This year we also have a small flock of friendly redpolls for the first time, who flit along the hedgerows on the roadside, feeding on the fluffy seeds of the uncut rosebay willowherb. But what have all these come here chasing? The gales and the rain? Or perhaps just the haw and rowan berries. [Update: since the roadside verges were all ‘tidied up’ a few weeks ago, the hedges cut and the dead thistles and willowherb mowed down, the redpolls have heartbreakingly disappeared. Where?]

Berries and fruit. This has been a year of overwhelming abundance, a ‘mast’ year, one of those occasions when many trees seem to agree that this would be a good time to bless the earth. Apples, quince, hazels, oaks, horse chestnuts, beech, and many more, all have had a heavy crop (although that didn’t stop the grey squirrels from taking every nut from our many cob and hazel shrubs). ‘Agree’? How do trees and shrubs, across huge areas like the whole of northern Europe, coordinate to synchronise their year of abundance? Spring weather alone isn’t enough to explain it. No one knows. It seems that plants are able to communicate with each other in ways we know little about – part of a vast, interconnected network of living beings in a complex relational ecosystem. Its a salutary reminder of how little we actually understand the world of which we are a part.

Perhaps one of the most obvious and exhilarating examples of this wonder of communication is the murmurations of the starlings. They started flocking in late October in the fields around us, small groups that fly in from different directions to expand the already sizeable, restless flock gathered on the pasture. Waves of birds rising and falling over the grass, like dark swells on a green sea. And then as I stand still, watching, listening, the soft swishing and hissing as they circle overhead in a twisting, turning cloud like an unfurled flag flapping in slow motion on a strong breeze. Then down again, like a rippling carpet over the ground. It is difficult not to be in awe and moved with an aching love for such beauty.

Most mornings I sing an ancient song called ‘Benedicite, Omnia Opera’, or just ‘The Benedicite’ for short (pronounced ben-e-dye-city). It is well over two thousand years old and the title literally means ‘O bless ye, all works’. It has these lines in it, ‘O ye mountains and hills bless ye the Lord, O all ye green things upon the earth bless ye the Lord, O all ye fowls of the air bless ye the Lord, praise him and magnify him forever.’ It is a wonderful song to sing walking through the fields and down the lonnings, not just in Advent but throughout the year, giving voice to our role as that part of this web of creation called to wittingly lift worship to God on behalf of the whole created order.

It seems a very long way from the horrific sectarian violence that we see in different places around the world, where human pride, greed, ignorance, and fear are used to propagate stories of resentment and bitterness, difference and exclusion, reaching even to our own streets. And from the depressing political and economic systems we have adopted, that treat this intricately interconnected and living creation as nothing more than an inert, unlimited and uncosted material resource to be exploited for capital gain and profligate profit, of which the arrogant denial of anthropogenic climate change is just another expression.

And yet this is exactly why Christmas exists. In the midst of all this hubris and turmoil, a single grain of wheat falls to be cradled in the earth, and dies to give life to countless others. God comes to us in the depth of our darkness, in the wilderness of our winter, vulnerable, helpless, dependent on the love of a gentle mother and a concerned father, and the meagre hospitality of an overstretched innkeeper. This is how the world-changing fire begins…

‘O all ye works of the Lord, bless ye the Lord.’ A song and a smile, and a burning hope.

Wishing you a peaceful and joyous Christmas. And do please join us to lift your voice, too, in worship and wonder at one of our Christmas services.

Your friend and priest,

Robert.