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St Peter in the Forest, E17.

@stpeterintheforest.bsky.social
20 followers 13 following 51 posts

A friendly, community minded, inclusive church set within a forest glade in Walthamstow. All welcome, all the time.

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St Peter in the Forest, E17. @stpeterintheforest.bsky.social · 08/07/2025
If you feel your soul might benefit from an hour of peace and stillness, candles and incense, some chanting, meditation and breathwork, and anointing with oil for healing and wholeness, Threshold may be for you.
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St Peter in the Forest, E17. @stpeterintheforest.bsky.social · 25/06/2025
It's St Peter's day, the saint our church is named after, and our patronal festival! Come along this Sunday to explore St Peter's qualities and the ways we try to embody these as a church, while we make Rocky Road for Peter the Rock 🪨
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St Peter in the Forest, E17. @stpeterintheforest.bsky.social · 10/06/2025
Congratulations to our lovely churchwardens re-elected this year, and charged and blessed for the year ahead at a service this evening. ✝️
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St Peter in the Forest, E17. @stpeterintheforest.bsky.social · 08/06/2025
Happy Pentecost! 🔥🕊️🌬️ This morning in Forest Rocks we celebrated the coming of the Holy Spirit as wind and fire by making and flying kites, and by eating (a lot of!) toasted marshmallows 👌 Also congratulations to Joshua who got baptised 🕯️
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St Peter in the Forest, E17. @stpeterintheforest.bsky.social · 18/05/2025
Beautiful afternoon at Forest Church celebrating St Mary, who had the courage to be Jesus's mum.
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St Peter in the Forest, E17. @stpeterintheforest.bsky.social · 13/05/2025
It's Forest Church on Sunday, and we're going to make rosary beads from real roses! 🌹🩵💙 ✝️⚓
May Forest Church 3pm 18th May.

Mary is shown surrounded by silhouettes of flowers on a blue background.
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St Peter in the Forest, E17. @stpeterintheforest.bsky.social · 11/05/2025
Exploring the story of Noah outside in Forest Rocks this morning 🌈
Bark boat in a tuffspot floodMan holds paper dove on a stringCaterpillars made of saltdough
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St Peter in the Forest, E17. @stpeterintheforest.bsky.social · 20/04/2025
We have two Easter gardens in church. One to look at, for people to use for reflection, and one made by the children on Good Friday that is already being well loved and played with by the littles at church 🤗 ✝️⚓
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St Peter in the Forest, E17. @stpeterintheforest.bsky.social · 20/04/2025
Happy Easter from Forest Church, where we made garlic butter from the three cornered leek in the churchyard 🌱, and spread it on toasted crumpets, and wet felted eggs as a sign of new life 🐣 Such a special worship community. 3pm last Sunday of every month. Join us!
Campfire toasted muffins spread with fresh garlic (three cornered leek) butter. So so goooood.Five wet felted eggs on a log.
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St Peter in the Forest, E17. @stpeterintheforest.bsky.social · 18/04/2025
So special to remember the death and resurrection of Jesus around our firepit this Good Friday. Please do join us to celebrate Easter on Sunday: 🌸 6am round the firepit for storytelling and moving into church for vigil service, followed by breakfast 🍳
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St Peter in the Forest, E17. @stpeterintheforest.bsky.social · 17/04/2025
Churchyard is looking beautiful.
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St Peter in the Forest, E17. @stpeterintheforest.bsky.social · 15/04/2025
Easter Forest Church, round the fire pit, Easter Sunday 3pm.
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St Peter in the Forest, E17. @stpeterintheforest.bsky.social · 15/04/2025
Good Friday activities round the firepit 11-12noon. ✝️⚓
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St Peter in the Forest, E17. @stpeterintheforest.bsky.social · 13/04/2025
Wonderful to have a real* donkey for Palm Sunday today!
Homemade hobbydonkey and palm cross processing past a church.
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St Peter in the Forest, E17. @stpeterintheforest.bsky.social · 10/04/2025
We are really looking forward to offering confirmation classes for anyone aged 11 or above, who is interested in exploring this step in their faith. www.churchofengland.org/life-events/...
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St Peter in the Forest, E17. @stpeterintheforest.bsky.social · 07/04/2025
Join us at the earlier time of 9.30am outside Peterhouse to make hobbydonkeys (yes, that's hobbyhorses but the donkey version!) and listen to the story of Palm Sunday, before joining the procession to the church where we'll have more Forest Rocks activities round the firepit. Sunday 13th April. ✝️⚓
Palm Sunday 
Forest Rocks 
Join us at the earlier time of 9.30am,
outside Peterhouse, where we will make 
hobbydonkeys and hear the story of Palm Sunday 
before we head to the
firepit for more fun.
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St Peter in the Forest, E17. @stpeterintheforest.bsky.social · 30/03/2025
Reflecting on weaving baskets, the basket Moses' mother wove for him, the way Jesus wove his mother and his friend into a new family from the cross, the way God weaves all of us into a family of love and care within his church...
Hands weaving a raffia basketA chain of paper dolls Paper heart basketsHands cutting paper dolls
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Reposted by St Peter in the Forest, E17.
Waltham Forest Archives @lbwfarchives.bsky.social · 26/03/2025
Walthamstow's @stpeterintheforest.bsky.social in early 20th cent. Leytonstone resident Elizabeth Amy Green (c1824-1904) was buried at St Peter's on 26 Sep 1904. A volunteer nurse during the Crimean War, her service at Scutari is recorded on her gravestone. Info thanks to Waltham Forest FHS. #WHM2025
Postcard image of the parish church of St Peter in the Forest, Walthamstow, in early 20th century. Entries from Walthamstow, St Peter's burial register 1885-1905, showing the burial of Elizabeth Amy Green aged 80, on 26 Sep 1904
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St Peter in the Forest, E17. @stpeterintheforest.bsky.social · 24/03/2025
Have you ever wondered about sewing a deacon's or priest's stole? Do you fancy a day retreat doing just that?
Stole making day retreat advert
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St Peter in the Forest, E17. @stpeterintheforest.bsky.social · 17/03/2025
Did you know that Fr Alex and Mthr Rachel both have ADHD? At St Peter in the Forest, we rejoice in the way God has created all of us, in all our wonderful variety of neurotypes.
Neurodiversity Celebration Week 
I praise you, because I am fearfully and wonderfully made.
Psalm 139.
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St Peter in the Forest, E17. @stpeterintheforest.bsky.social · 16/03/2025
A fabulous Forest Church to celebrate St Patrick's Day- we sang, prayed, listened to the bible, created green shamrocks ☘️, made green bracelets ('I bind unto myself today...'), and cooked potato farls over the campfire. Next Forest Church is on Easter Sunday at 3pm- can't wait to see you there!
Child holds a fabric shamrock Child's wrist with green woven band round it.Potato farls cooking on a campfire A group of mixed age people doing Nordic slinging braids under an oak tree in a churchyard.
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Reposted by St Peter in the Forest, E17.
Rachel Summers @curiouswilds.bsky.social · 09/03/2025
The word is near you, on your lips! This morning we made lip balm over the fire and put it in tiny containers which we'd decorated with words of faith, so that when folk from @stpeterintheforest.bsky.social put it on their lips, they'll remember the word of faith that we proclaim. ✝️⚓
Tiny pots reading things like 'smile, God loves you!' and 'Grace'.Pot on fire with lumpy white coconut oil, and nuggets of yellow beeswax.Melting wax and oil in a bain marie on the fire.Tiny pots full of solidifying lip balm
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St Peter in the Forest, E17. @stpeterintheforest.bsky.social · 05/03/2025
Every week in Lent, we will share a reflection from #WildLent Why not try it out, pop back on here, let us know what you made of it, and join the conversation? ✝️⚓
RACHEL SUMMERS

WILD LENT

DISCOVERING GOD THROUGH CREATION

#WildLent

Have you decided what you are giving up or taking on for Lent this year? For Christians, the five weeks before Easter are a time to fast- from food, from unkind thoughts, from acting selfishly- and a time to pray. Lots of Christians decide to take on a spiritual practice over Lent, a spring clean of their souls, if you like.

You are invited to take part in #WildLent. In this booklet, there are ideas for each week of Lent. These will be shared on @StPeterE17 on facebook, @st_peter_in_the_forest on Instagram, and @stpeterintheforest.bsky.social and you are very much invited to try them out and be part of the conversation!

Week 1: Putting Down

Do you feel grateful for trees? Through photosynthesis, they turn water and carbon dioxide into oxygen. Their leaves and branches shade us from the sun and from rainy downpours. Some produce fruit or nuts for us to eat, or seeds that are fun to play with. They house and shelter hundreds or thousands of creatures. Their roots help to keep the soil together.

Many of the trees around you may well be older than you are. Imagine them curled up inside their seed, waiting to grow, putting down tiny roots. Imagine them surviving the threat of being trodden on or eaten, and patiently growing, year on year. Recent studies seem to show that trees are connected under the soil by fungus mycelium, which enables them to pass on information about threats, and to pass on carbon from a taller, older tree, to a younger smaller one struggling for light underneath the canopy.

It is likely these trees will still be growing here after you have died. For a while, you both inhabit the same place and the same time. Yet you have such a different experience of the world. The tree experiences a world of height and of constant movement while staying fixed in one place. The world changes around it. Visitors come to it. Our vision is set lower, while we travel from place to place, changing the world as much as being changed by it. It doesn't hurt us to sometimes spend a few moments being like a tree- still, and with the world just happening around us. Find a tree and spend some time with it. Touch its bark. Stretch your arms around it. Sit with your back against it. Climb it if it's big enough and you have good enough balance!It is what trees put down that holds them steady. Their root system is as large and complex as the branches overhead. The tree that we can see is only half the organism. We tend to forget about its roots unless they are poking out of the ground and tripping us up, or if we have to grub out a sapling from the garden. I'm writing this at the edge of Epping Forest, looking out onto acres of trees as far as I can see, and yet below the ground that's matched by the immensity of their root systems. As well as letting go of things this Lent, what is it you do now that keeps you grounded, keeps you steady, and feeds you?

Lord, let my roots sink deep into you, drawing up your life giving water, and holding me firm in your love. Amen.
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St Peter in the Forest, E17. @stpeterintheforest.bsky.social · 04/03/2025
It's Forest Rocks this week! Join us round the firepit as part of the 10am Eucharist this Sunday as we play and explore the bible together, and share campfire snacks. This week we'll be making beeswax lip balm, and sawing wood cookie necklaces.
Pink background with hearts and lips.

Reads, 'The word is near you, on your lips and in your heart.'
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St Peter in the Forest, E17. @stpeterintheforest.bsky.social · 02/03/2025
Campfire songs and pancakes on Tuesday at 5pm. 🥞 Ash Weds firepit service on Weds at 5pm. ✝️ #walthamstow
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St Peter in the Forest, E17. @stpeterintheforest.bsky.social · 02/03/2025
Our Lent course offerings- one five week group exploring eco church, and the start of a one year group reading the bible in a year.
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St Peter in the Forest, E17. @stpeterintheforest.bsky.social · 23/02/2025
At Creative Sunday today we enjoyed making bubble art, working with clay, and planting seeds in the sermon, and making boats in our intercessions, as we thought about how the God who makes the universe and all that is in it knows and loves us...
Blue bubbley paint with a red and white strawChild holds bubble paintingChild's hands put soil in a potTeen's hands shape a flower from clay
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St Peter in the Forest, E17. @stpeterintheforest.bsky.social · 20/02/2025
It's Creative Sunday this week. We have creative activities to explore and reflect with throughout the Eucharist. If you're in #E17 or nearby, we'd love to see you.
Advert shows world in two hands.

God's World
Exploring creation through creative activities in the Eucharist.
Sunday 23rd Feb 10am
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St Peter in the Forest, E17. @stpeterintheforest.bsky.social · 16/02/2025
God is love, and those who live in love, live in God. Celebrating all the love that surrounds us 💞 at Forest Church this afternoon by making wire hearts, bendy wood hearts, and pride flags, singing and praying together, and toasting crumpets over the fire which we spread with tasty strawberry jam 🍓
Heart made of wire. The card heart inside was burnt leaving the wire shaped around it.Flag with multicoloured hearts, reads 'LOVE' in pink.Flag printed with multicoloured dots from leaves and flowers.Crumpet with jam beside a fire.
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St Peter in the Forest, E17. @stpeterintheforest.bsky.social · 14/02/2025
It's our monthly Forest Church this Sunday, and you'd be very welcome to join us! #walthamstow #E17 ✝️⚓
Forest church 
Exploring and celebrating love in all its forms and the God who loves us.
Sunday 16th February 
St Peter in the Forest.

Photos of a heart made of sticks and a Choose Love poster
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St Peter in the Forest, E17. @stpeterintheforest.bsky.social · 12/02/2025
At St Peter's we are proud to be members of @inclusivechurch.bsky.social , working to ensure that everyone feels welcome and knows they're loved. ❤️🧡💛💚🩵💙💜🤎🖤
Choose Love is written in rainbow font around a rainbow heart. 'God is love and whoever abides in love abides in God. 1 John, The Bible.'A rainbow ribbon flows across the top, a mixed crowd of illustrated people cover the bottom. Text reads, 'You are fearfully and wonderfully made. Psalm 139'Text reads, 'LGBT+ History Month'. The + is in pride colours.
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