Where the Birds Sing: Wild Places for the Soul

The hazel and hawthorn trees dapple the foxglove and campion.
The bracken breaks through like a bishop’s crook,
the brambles arch and the nettles gather.
They hold silence like a living quality of air,
broken by birdsong and bees’ hum
and the river stroking the stones in the hollow.
There is a magic quality to wild places that restores the soul.

Published by Onwards & Upwards Publishers
Available from Janeupchurch Books
or Contact Jane

There is a magic quality to wild places that restores the soul. They feed a need deep inside us for something beyond what we have created, something bigger than us, something untamed that can pry loose the knots in our psyche and blow away the dust. Most of us don’t live near places of uninterrupted wild. We have to make do with the pockets that patchwork our domain. And they are there if we look, if we notice. They are where the birds sing.

The ultimate in experiencing the wild is God. In the developed world God too has been cut out – or tamed to fit in. But just like wind-blown seeds, the Spirit has ways of finding our cracks and crevasses and making them green.

In this book Jane responds to the wild places she encounters – in the countryside, the weather, her garden, her God. Perhaps the pieces she has written will help you to discover wild places of your own.

Contemporary spirituality earthed in ancient roots, a book to lift you high and plant you deep – or just leave you wide awake to your living world.

Simon Reed, The Community of Aidan and Hilda.

Read pieces from Where the Birds Sing