Category: Feral
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104. Spiritual conversations
June 2022 I’ve been blessed with two very good spiritual directors over the years, but I struggled when the last one died. It was probably not a bad idea to have a break for a while, but finding a new one, someone who would encourage, stimulate and challenge me spiritually, proved depressingly difficult. Then, one evening,…
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82. The One God Whom we already know 2
May 2020 If the women and men of prayer across all the world faiths experience the same Ultimate Reality when they pray, then they all encounter what Christians call God. When a mixed group of Christians, for whom working together would seem like a miracle, instead share their experience of God they find themselves deeply united. How do…
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81. The One God Whom we already know 1
April 2020 Last summer my friend Paul told me about The Snowmass Agreement, which I hadn’t heard of. I checked it out on-line and found that this is what it is: “In 1984 Father Thomas Keating invited a small group of contemplatives from eight different religious traditions—Buddhist, Hindu, Jewish, Islamic, Native American, Russian Orthodox, Protestant,…
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72. Feral spiritual direction
July 2019 I think of spiritual direction as one person helping another to recognise where God is speaking to them, and walking with them as they seek to respond. There’s often a degree of mutuality about it. My friend Keith and I have been meeting in that way for a long time. But he couldn’t make…
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64. The Otters
May 2019 We live quite near a river, and I can walk down a lane and across some fields to get to it in about 20 minutes. I often do so, for there is one particular spot that I recognise as a holy place, and I love to go there to sit, listen, look, and…
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61. Bring it on
November 2018 Last night I slept till just after midnight, when I awoke remembering that I hadn’t completed my prayers before falling asleep, so I did so. When I had finished I was fully awake so I went downstairs, made a cup of tea, and sat in Sarah’s chair [a chair we bought recently and…
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60. Going Feral
October 2018 In September of this year I marked the 48th anniversary of my ordination by writing to my Bishop and returning the Permission to Officiate [PTO] that he kindly gave me when we moved into his Diocese some years ago. It seemed in some ways like a very small thing to be doing, although in…
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34. What have I learnt?
August 2016 I’m just over half way through my course of chemotherapy, and having determined to try and use these six months as a sabbatical space, as best I could, found myself wondering what this time has taught me so far. I then broadened the question so that it became ‘what has life taught me…
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21. A New Vision of Christianity
December 2015 A friend of mine, Les Acklam, recently introduced me to some words by John Spong in the introduction to his most recent book “The Fourth Gospel: Tales of a Jewish Mystic”. I found these words compelling and have shared them with others who have also found that they speak to their experience, so I…
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19. Feral
November 2015 On holiday in Falmouth this summer, and wandering through the town, I was irresistibly drawn to a bookshop, as I sometimes am. There on the shelf I saw a book by George Monbiot who writes for ‘The Guardian’ on environmental matters. In it he makes an eloquent plea for the re-wilding of some…
A CONTEMPORARY SPIRITUALITY 