St Oswald's, Durham

Churches have begun observing this year’s Season of Creation (also called Creationtide), from Tuesday 1st September to Sunday 4th October. At a time when communities around the world battle extremes of floods and drought, this year’s theme of ‘Living Water’ is an important call to care for God’s creation and our common home.

The Season of Creation – with the ‘Feast of Creation in Christ’ taking place on either 1st September or the first Sunday of September (also known as Creation Sunday), as the centre - celebrates God as Creator, and invites churches to love and care for the gift of creation.

The observance was first established in 1989 by Ecumenical Patriarch Dimitrios I, who proclaimed 1st September as a Day of Prayer for Creation for the Orthodox Church. It was subsequently adopted by wider Christian Communions. In 2007, the Third European Ecumenical Assembly proposed extending the single day of prayer into a five-week ecumenical season, leading the World Council of Churches to invite global Christian communities to celebrate. Pope Francis established a Catholic World Day of Prayer in 2015 following his Encyclical Laudato Si’.

In 2026, the Feast of Creation in Christ has been adopted into the Revised Common Lectionary, which shapes the Christian year and liturgical calendar in many churches, including the Church of England, which as of earlier this year, now officially observes the first Sunday of September as the Feast of Creation in Christ.

Further information can be found by clicking on the YouTube video and links below.

***For details of local ecumenical services and events for this year's Season of Creation organized by Durham Churches Together, pease see the 'News and notices' section of this site. ***

The Prayer for the Season of Creation 2026:

Holy God, whose Spirit hovered over the waters at the beginning, we gather as part of your community of all creation, thirsty for your grace. We give thanks for the gift of water, the veins of our common home, that sustains the cedar and the whale, the pasture and the city. We are grateful for the local waters that nourish our homelands and our fellow creatures. We give thanks that in your well-watered garden, every drop is a sacred testament to your love.

Yet, we confess that we have treated this gift as a mere commodity. We have choked the seas with our waste and watched the warming tides rise in judgment. We lament the cracked earth of the drought-stricken and the salty tears of the climate refugee. Melt our frozen hearts, O God, and let the waters of repentance flow.

Lord of all Life, you promised that wherever the river flows, everything shall live. Stir in us a calling to care for the waters — to protect the watershed, defend the rights of water, and honour the dignity of the thirsty. May your Word be a spring within us, gushing forth for the healing of the nations.

May God our Father who brought water from the rock sustain us in the desert. May Christ our Lord who is Living Water refresh us for the work of restoration. And may the Holy Spirit carry us on currents of grace until justice rolls down like waters and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.

Amen.

Season of Creation (Resources)

St Oswald's, Durham

The Season of Creation has Arrived for 2026!

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