Country Diary: Rituals And Redwings In A Hedgerow Communion | Rev Simon Lockett

Bredwardine, Golden Valley, Herefordshire: Sixty people have turned out for this annual event to celebrate St Brigid’s Day and the first day of Gaelic spring. It’s one of our most popular services of the year

Sunday afternoon, early February, and we have gathered between the churchyard of St Andrew’s in Bredwardine and the River Wye to mark time. We are here to celebrate St Brigid’s Day and Imbolc (the first day of Gaelic spring; the term means “ewe’s milk”), healing and fertility, with meditation and a hedgerow communion. In the sun and the warming air we walk in silence to the old fish ponds and the ancient settlement.

I have walked this way many times, often in winter, past the chestnuts, naked and stark against the grey sky, and out into the opening backed by oak trees leaning down to the river. Out of the silence, I hear the “tseep-tseep” of a solitary redwing amid the “chack-chack” of fieldfares. I catch a glimpse of its quizzical eye and cream eyebrow; the mottled, lynx-like feathers and the red flash. A split second of connection lifts the soul out of self-consciousness.