Mystical Church Forests of Ethiopia

I've written about church forests in Ethiopia and that our good friend Carmen visited some while on a trip there last year which was primarily focused on hiking and scrambling up to churches carved into cliffs -- no thank you on the latter!

I've sent him the link to a new and remarkable essay in Emergence magazine  about church forests by Fred Bahnson, who is something of a faith/Christian writing hero for me. A hundred years ago Ethiopia was covered in trees but the forest was relentlessly whittled away for agricultural land. While there has been a massive effort to replant trees in the past couple of years the remaining intact and bio-diverse islands of forest surround churches, where they have been protected. There are several thousand of these small oases and there is a current joint project to study and revitalize forty of them involving forest ecologists Dr. Alemayehu Wassie and Dr. Meg Lowman alongside the Ethiopian Orthodox priests of these congregations. 



Dr. Almeyehu Wassie

Bahnson visited some of these churches and met with Alemeyehu for his essay and the companion film. At one point he observed an elderly woman making the sign of the cross and bowing as she entered the forest. He reflects:

Perhaps I was witnessing more than gestures of devotoin, important as they were. Maybe they were also the secret to conserving the forest, small acts that together with hundreds of other gestures like them formed an invisible shield around the forests of Zajor...Our Western conceptions of belief are almost entirely inward and private.Here, and at other points on my journey into these forests, I was witnessing the performance of a mystical geography, the soul's journey to God made visible in the landscape. 

I love the mystical quality of these words and they make me wonder if we might all acknowledge God, Creator, Incarnate Christ, and Holy Breath when we enter a woodland or forest. Would making  the sign of the cross and bowing in reverence be the simple acts which remind us that trees are a gift from God which deserve respect and protection? 

Perhaps it would be best for you to read the essay and watch the film yourselves. I encourage you to take the time to do so. 

https://emergencemagazine.org/story/the-church-forests-of-ethiopia/