Harvest festival

Today was our ‘All Age Service’ for harvest. Not quite the harvest festival of tradition with every window decorated with flowers, fruits and produce but this decoration in front of the small alter is a nod to Harvest Festivals of old. 

I took this picture before everyone arrived and soon it was surrounded by large plastic carrier bags full of tins and packets. At the end of the service they were all loaded into the back of  Chris’s car to be delivered to Bingley Food Bank on Tuesday morning.

The box full of fresh foods here will go to the Community Kitchen also in Bingley which is good but a rather sad reflection of our current society’s needs. 
There are school harvest festivals coming in up in all our churches in the next weeks and there will be lots more donations being made.

For the last two years I have been privileged to attend Eda’s school harvest celebrations which have been delightful. This morning Richard, our Rector,  had us singing Harvest Samba. A great song that I was instantly familiar with from Eda’s services. Great that these songs may be come a part of the children's legacy in the same way that ‘We Plough the Fields and Scatter’ is probably a part of many of us of my generation.