Leonard Stanley

Why do we all flock again and again to see the same well-known sights, when there are so many minor miracles waiting for us to experience? I must have driven along the A419 passing less than a mile North of Leonard Stanley a hundred times, but never once, in nearly 40 years as a Gloucestershire resident, have I entered the village before today. And the best way is clearly on foot - not difficult, with Stonehouse station such a short distance away. St Swithun's, the church, "contains much very good work," Pevsner (under)states. Above an aumbry in the Chancel is this most curious 12th Century representation of Adam and Eve as animals: Eve-bitch holds the apple in one paw and the serpent's body in the other. Tomcat-Adam looks on questioningly: shall I/shalln't I? It's crude work, but brilliantly anarchic. Two more conventional, and even finer, Norman sculptures adorn the ends of the central shafts further down the Chancel.

"Never again..."

For today's meeting of the Gloucestershire Churches Environmental Justice Network, we travelled to Wallsworth Hall as guests of Nature in Art. Simon Trapnell, its Director, joined us for part of our discussion.

What a vision! To take on that vast building (set in the middle of nowhere at the end of a long drive) and to establish within it a vibrant collection of works depicting things bright and beautiful, and in particular all creatures great and small!

So as to mark the second anniversary of the dire flooding in this part of Gloucestershire, we read together familiar words from the Book of Genesis about Noah, "a man of integrity among his contemporaries." God's covenant (made after the flood subsided) was: "Never again will I curse the earth because of man... Never again will I strike down every living thing as I have done. As long as earth lasts, sowing and reaping, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night shall cease no more."

In these days many prophesy the end of humanity as a consequence of human greed. In his latest encyclical, Pope Benedict says that if people destroy their environment, they will also destroy their own life source. No complacency in virtue of Genesis 8!