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Good Morning - and Bonjour, For today we thank France for its global promotion of the English countryside, as the world’s best bikers speed through England’s mostly green and pleasant land. Giving us a new appreciation of a landscape we all too often take for granted. A couple of years ago I chaired the Independent Panel on Forestry. We visited different woodlands around England. The first was the Forest of Dean. We were taken to a vantage point so that we could view the panorama of ancient oak trees. As I made some comment about the beauty of nature the local forester interrupted, “Bishop,” he protested, “That’s not a natural landscape you’re looking at. That’s a political landscape. Those trees were planted hundreds of years ago to build ships for the British Navy.” He made a telling point that all our landscapes tell a story and, more than that, reveal the values of the generation that created them. It was not by nature nor by accident that the County of Kent became the Garden of England. It was Henry the Eighth who ordered the grafting of apples, cherries and pears. The reason? Food Security. He was worried about England being too reliant on imported fruit. So even the orchards tell a story. The landscape of every nation has both a physical and a political geography – and some might add a moral and spiritual one too. Interestingly, when the people of Israel entered into the Promised Land they were ordered never ever to destroy a fruit bearing tree. It was as if God was telling them to be sure to turn the land into a Garden of Eden. A hope still to be realised. Well, today the cyclists reach the Capital. They’ll race past landmarks like Tower Bridge and the Houses of Parliament – and the River Thames. A natural landscape? Not quite! The river and the capital have been protected for over 30 years by the human intervention of the Thames Barrier. It was raised four times in the 1980s, 35 times in the 1990s and over 80 times since the turn of the millennium as we’ve had to respond to the changing climate and rising sea levels. So even the rivers tell a story. We are all of us a part of nature, not apart from it. For people of faith, that’s the way God has ordered the world. Humanity both changes the landscape and is challenged by it. As the French poet Baudelaire wrote in “Les Fleurs du Mal”, “Man walks through (nature) Among forests of symbols Which watch him with knowing eyes.”