nature

Take me to the river – a BBC Pause for Thought

/ Trey Hall / Leave a comment

Here’s the text for the 23 June 2025 “Pause for Thought” I offered on the Breakfast Show with Scott Mills on BBC Radio 2. Listen here.

When I visit a place that’s new to me, I like to explore it by walking ­– or running ­– along its water: the lochs of the Scottish Highlands, the reservoirs of the Elan Valley, Birmingham’s canals, the dykes of the Fens.

There’s something about the flow of water that tells the story of the land – what’s come before, what’s on the horizon. And it helps me get my bearings.

Maybe that’s why rivers show up in so many songs – Springsteen’s “The River”; Joni Mitchell’s, too; Tina Turner “rolling on the river”; Al Green asking to be taken to it. Water moves us – literally and spiritually.

I remember walking along the Thames in London once, near Blackfriars Bridge. A friend pointed out some bubbles rising in the currents near a metal grate. “That,” he said, “is the end of the River Fleet.”

The Fleet? I’d never heard of it. But it turns out that the Thames isn’t the only river in town. London is laced with hidden rivers – the Tyburn, the Walbrook, the Effra – all flowing underground, culverted into tunnels and pipes as the city has grown. You can’t see them, but they’re still there, moving quietly beneath the surface.

My spiritual searching as a Christian has helped me discover the hidden rivers in my own life. Buried beneath the noise of my anxiety, the concrete of my to-do list, the performance of my social-media feeds, there is a deeper stream. Something truer that I’ve forgotten, or concealed, or been told to hide. But still there, still flowing.

The nature writer Robert Macfarlane says a river is alive – “a gathering that seeks the sea”.

And the Gospel of Jesus says: “Out of human hearts will flow rivers of living water.” Real, spiritual rivers that, I believe, run through every single human being. Elemental currents that are in us – sometimes obvious, sometimes hidden – but never contained by us. We don’t own them so much as we partake of them. They flow through us. Their source and their destination is Something-More-Than-Us, Whom I call “God”.

So when I feel stuck or dry, lifeless or anxious, I meditate. I pray. I take a walk or a run. Or better yet, a swim. And I try to trace the river’s path through me, to feel its flow of freedom beneath my surface. And to trust, even when I can’t feel it or see it, that God is still moving. Alive, flowing, sacred in me and in everything.

A Web of Connection & Light – a BBC Pause for Thought

/ Trey Hall / Leave a comment

Here’s the text for the 24 March 2025 “Pause for Thought” I offered on the Breakfast Show with Scott Mills on BBC Radio 2. Listen here.

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My husband and I moved to South London last summer. As we unpacked boxes, a spider crawled in through the window to welcome us. Everyone’s pretty-friendly in South London, but this spider was so friendly, she spun her web in the corner of our bathroom and stuck around.

Every day, she was there. We gazed at each other. I did some research and identified her species: Amaurobius Fenestralis in Latin. In English: a lace-weaver-spider.

I told a friend, who said: “if it were my house, that spider would be dead.” But even my husband, who’s not exactly pro-spider, acknowledged she’d already moved into our hearts.

Autumn came and she wove an egg sac, which she guarded until Christmas, when her babies were born. Ten little infants hatched and played on our ceiling for a few weeks, practising their lace-weaving-skills. And then one-by-one they disappeared, leaving our spider alone again.

A few weeks later, while I was shaving one day, I noticed she’d moved down the wall, to my eye-level.

We took each other in; we saw each other. And I sensed that her mortal life was ebbing. And sure enough, the next morning we found her dead, poor thing, lying on the window-sill.

I laid her fragile body onto a cotton pad, so she could lie-in-state, so we could pay our respects. And also because I heard a trustworthy preacher once swear that a dead spider on her window-sill had suddenly come back to life.

So as I mourned, I also commanded our spider: in the name of God, rise up. But there was no resurrection, not one I could see anyway.

Finally, we carried her into the garden and buried her underneath the hydrangeas. We gave thanks for the way she praised God in her particular-spidery-nature. I said a Christian graveside prayer: We commend you, sister spider, to Almighty God. We commit your body to the ground, earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust.

In the Bible, Jesus teaches about a lot of big things – forgiveness, justice, eternity. But as the old Gospel song goes: his eye is on the sparrow, too. Even the little things like our spider are precious in God’s sight. In fact, Jesus says: Whoever can be trusted with small things can also be trusted with big things.

So thank you, sister spider. And thank you, Jesus – for teaching me how woven-together we are in this life ­– and how in the next life, I believe, absolutely all of Nature will rise up again into a heavenly web of light and goodness like no eye has ever seen.