Below is submitted text for an article found, in modified form, in The Inquirer no. 7961. The ritual referred to can be found in the video of the 2019 GA Anniversary Service at 7m40s in.

During the GA Anniversary Service 2019 I performed a short ritual that, over the last few weeks, I have been performing every Sunday at Upper Chapel and also at chapels where I have been visiting preacher (notably Belper, Fulwood and Stannington). My intention is to continue doing this ritual in every act of Sunday worship that I lead. It has the title of ‘Tending the Earth’, and it involves watering a plant!

The essential idea arises from the need to keep our current planetary climate emergency, and specifically our intention to act, nearer the front of our minds, thus recognising our tendency to otherwise want to revert to ‘business as usual’ type behaviour. So, whilst the majority of services will not have an environmental theme, our hearts and minds may now be turned to this issue for a moment in each one. At Upper Chapel we have something of a precedent for this in our Peace Candle, that our long time member and Trustee Bill Emmingham (who sadly passed away last year) pioneered, as this is lit every Sunday to mark our commitment to Peace. Unfortunately, at least to my mind, an ‘Earth Candle’ would have non-ideal symbolism given that it essentially burns fuel and generates heat – actions which are causing humanity the very problems we seek to ameliorate and ultimately solve. Of course fuel and heat (and light) have beneficial symbolism under other circumstances and I am not anti-candle as such, holding our Unitarian flaming chalice dear. However a plant, the watering of which requires trust in life’s processes (as nothing very much happens visibly immediately upon watering), seems a more appropriate symbol for this critical issue. In many ways I liken it to the process in meditation when, aware that distractions have intruded and the attention has wandered away from the breath (or whatever focus), the meditator gently but firmly returns their attention to it and re-commits to the process without self-flagellation.

Performing this ritual is as much for me as for everyone else – it is most definitely not done from a place of self-righteousness: I still have behaviours to fix and I still need to gather my own courage for what needs to be done on this issue.

It is perhaps worth mentioning that the plant I have chosen to use is sage, though really the precise choice is not relevant to the ritual and hence I do not draw attention to it. Nevertheless there was some purpose in this choice, with the connotations of wisdom that goes with the name ‘sage’ and also the idea of wholeness and healing that goes with the salvia of the Latin name for the species (Salvia officinalis).

I would be delighted if other preachers wished to regularly do the same, or to do something similar that had greater symbolic power, and I include below the version used in the GA Anniversary Service.

Tending the Earth – GA Anniversary Service Version

Our thoughts now turn to she to whom we are responsible: the Earth, our home…

…a home that we are realizing, albeit in the face of nothing short of a planetary emergency, that we need to take great care of, that we need to tend to.

Yes, we recognise that physically, spiritually and politically we need to tend to the earth of our being and nurture the wonderful yet fragile life that is rooted in it. And so, mindful of the growing need for an abiding commitment to the earth and the continuation of organic life on this planet, I am going to water this plant, an action whose impact is not immediately obvious, an action that requires faith in life’s processes, and as I do so, I invite each of you to commit your hearts and minds to a more sustainable, more nurturing, more grounded life on the face of the Earth, our Mother.

(water it and then pause)

Let it be so.

A J Phillips, May 2019