Last month, fellow Trustee Jill Smith and I had the huge pleasure of spending a day
with one of our patrons, Terry Hershey, together with his wife Nancy. Terry was
spending a couple of weeks touring the UK and we found an opportunity to meet at
Holland House.
Terry is known for his inspirational writings about the human need to pause, rest and
spend time in the present moment. From his base in the north-west of the United
States, he writes and preaches on this together with creating his own and other
gardens to facilitate an inner peace.
Our conversation turned to exploring how we can develop the outreach of the Quiet
Garden Movement, to be more visible and have a greater presence in more people’s
lives. Gardens are of course one of the greatest enablers to letting people pause
and be still. Terry talked of the enormous culture and tradition we have around
gardens here in the UK, we have the spaces; we just need to make them more
visible and available. Following on from this we explored the opportunities for
outreach beyond our usual sphere of operation. How can we use public gardens
and green spaces to bring a sense of peace to those who may not yet be on any
deep journey of faith? Perhaps, just by simply placing a bench and an invitation to
stop here and pause will sow a mustard seed in someone’s life. We explored a
potential role here for our small rural churches, often found in beautiful green
surroundings. These sometimes isolated places struggle with continuing in their
traditional role as a centre for regular parish worship, but perhaps their quiet and
green locations, far away from the bustle of everyday modern life is in fact a huge
asset. A new, fresh and much needed role for rural churches for today’s world.
We visited just such a church, St Nicholas Dormston, deep in rural Worcestershire;
incidentally in a village that was inspirational to J R Tolkien in writing the Lord of the
Rings. It’s easy to imagine this village as Tolkien’s blissful, peaceful “Shire”. Terry
was in awe of the place and he reiterated how, in this country, we are blessed with
so many assets which can enable moments of calm in people’s lives.
Altogether an uplifting and useful day. We, as Trustees, are already exploring ways
of expanding our outreach in this sort of way. There is a greater need than ever for
peace and mindfulness in today’s world; our mission is to enable that for as many
people as we can. Patrick Swan. Trustee.