The artist is Gustave Van de Woestijne (1881–1947), a Belgian expressionist painter. He entered the Benedictine order in Leuven in 1905, but quickly sensed that monastic life was not for him and left after four weeks. Maybe their pre-admission preparation was not up to the mark.

He remained a Christian. An expression of this is seen in this monumental portrayal of the Last Supper. It has something of the feral to it, don't you think? Through it he expresses criticism of convential artistic piety: "Away with this saccharine, stultifying, strait-laced religious art! We’ve had enough of it, and our Catholic Church is already crammed full of all kinds of such bland stuff. […] I am neither edified nor affected when I enter our churches and look at the modern ornaments, statues or paintings, on the contrary, I have the urge to curse".

His style was considered blasphemous by some. An encouraging sign. Fortunately, he found support from the van Buurens, Brussels art collectors who bought many of his works and, in 1927, sponsored a trip to Florence that allowed him to study fresco art. This canvas reflects his interest in fresco painting and his quest for modern religious art.

Why does it strike me so?

For a start, it is not mannered or pretty. No halos or pious expressions. No looking up, heavenwards. The proportions of the canvas (taller than it is wide) requires that the disciples huddle close. Something important is happening - draw near, it calls.

There is no iconography, only the essentials: wine and a loaf of bread. And the bread is an ordinary loaf, no delicate host. It belongs in the ordinary transaction of heavenly realities. The apostles depicted here could be miners or labourers or fishermen. Hairstyles are those of the 1920s, pitch black, neatly combed. There is a sad solemnity in their grave faces. Jesus’ passion happens every day again.

Jesus’ hair and beard are red, along with the wine and along with the hair of the figure on the lower left. Judas, maybe? Jesus looks towards him. I can't reliably read his expression.

Van De Woestijne's picture has no extras, only the essentials - table, people, bread, wine - needed to depict the Last Supper.  These betoken solidarity (God with us), tragedy, longing, love. The building bricks of our human adventure.
Hugh Valentine

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The Gospels are agreed that Jesus' ministry began after His baptism in the River Jordan by John the Baptist.  John had been ‘preaching a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins’. John’s baptism by full immersion in the river was a risky business, the person being baptised might not survive, that was the whole point of it. It symbolised a dying and a rising to new life.  But what did Jesus have to repent of?  It’s important to ask that question because whatever Jesus had to repent of provided the context for what came next.
 
After His Baptism Jesus had a spiritual experience that shook Him to the core, He heard God say, “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.” It must have been the last thing he’d expected to hear.  There is no record of anybody else having an experience even remotely like it after being baptised by John. It was this Call Experience, rather than the baptism, that was important for Jesus. It inaugurated a new vision of the nature of God.  The old one had, put very simply, seen the relationship between the people of Israel and God as that of a Lord and His vassal: ‘You can have this land, but you must do what I tell you or you will lose it’. The new one saw the relationship between God and humanity as one of unconditional love like that of a loving parent towards their children.
 
Let’s look at the accounts of Jesus Baptism in Mark, Matthew and Luke.
 
Mark:  In those days Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan. And just as he was coming up out of the water, he saw the heavens torn apart and the Spirit descending like a dove on him.And a voice came from heaven, ‘You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.’
 
Matthew: Then Jesus came from Galilee to John at the Jordan, to be baptized by him. John would have prevented him, saying, ‘I need to be baptized by you, and do you come to me?’ But Jesus answered him, ‘Let it be so now; for it is proper for us in this way to fulfil all righteousness.’ Then he consented. And when Jesus had been baptized, just as he came up from the water, suddenly the heavens were opened to him and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and alighting on him. And a voice from heaven said, ‘This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.’
 
Luke: Now when all the people were baptized, and when Jesus also had been baptized and was praying, the heaven was opened, and the Holy Spirit descended upon him in bodily form like a dove. And a voice came from heaven, ‘You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.’
 
Notice the following:

1. Mark and Matthew say that Jesus’ Call happened after He had come out of the water. Luke goes further in saying that it took place while Jesus was praying, after His baptism.  All three separate His Call Experience from His Baptism by John.
2. Mark and Luke say that the voice from heaven spoke to Jesus alone “You are my Son.”  Matthew says that the voice spoke to those who were present that “This is my Son”.
3. Mark and Matthew say that Jesus saw the heavens open and the Spirit descend upon Him.  Luke simply says that it happened, with the implication that all those present would have witnessed it.
4. Thus Mark is clear that this was an inner experience of Jesus’. Matthew says that the voice spoke publicly, and Luke implies that the opening of the heavens and the descent of the dove were public events.

 
How do we explain these discrepancies?  The simplest answer is that Jesus had an inner experience of which others were unaware, but that as the story was retold, there was a tendency to make the experience a public one.  The fact that the story of The Transfiguration in each of the Synoptic Gospels has a voice in the cloud proclaiming to Peter, James and John “This is my beloved Son, listen to him” suggests that they had not previously known that.
           
At His call God spoke directly and personally to Jesus, words of powerful acceptance, unconditional love and affirmation. From feeling like a sinner in need of repentance, He finds Himself hailed by God as His beloved Son. What is important here is that the main event was not His baptism by John but His experience of being personally addressed by God. At best His baptism was a necessary prelude to the main event, at worst it was an irrelevance.

No obligation is placed upon Jesus by God, He wasn’t, like Moses, given a list of commandments to keep but was offered an unconditional loving relationship. It implied that, as in a parent-child relationship, He would be trusted to learn what was necessary for Himself, with God’s help and support.
 
 
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Jesus must then have faced some related questions. He’d come to John seeking forgiveness and had experienced God’s unconditionally loving acceptance and affirmation. God didn’t seem to have spoken to other people as He’d spoken to Jesus. Why Him? Much as Mary must have felt ‘Why me?’ at The Annunciation. Unconditional Love can’t give an answer to that question, I don’t think. But Jesus, like Mary, did have a choice, to accept or decline their Calling. Unconditional Love can’t impose itself, it needs active acceptance. Was he ready to give that?
 
If so, what next?  If He accepted the reality of His Call, what it revealed to Him about the nature of God, if it was true, changed everything and presumably for everybody not just him. It marked a seismic change in human beings understanding of God and thence of themselves.

It was a Call to being rather than to doing: to live as God’s beloved Son. What was an appropriate response? Was it His responsibility to share with others what God had shown Him? And if so, how? How do you communicate a personal life changing inner experience to other people who haven’t had such an experience? 
 
Jesus wasn’t led by the Spirit of God to visit the Temple in Jerusalem and consult religious leaders there, but to go alone into the wilderness, seeking answers to these questions. No priestly figure was involved, and it all took place outside of, and independent of, both Temple and synagogue. Indeed, it would seem to imply that both were now marginal if not irrelevant. The challenge was to live from His Call Experience, and to set it at the centre of his life. To trust that God would guide and look after Him, teaching Him what else He needed to know and do, as a loving earthly father would. Prayer would be key to nurturing the relationship between them. Perhaps the Lord’s Prayer was originally the prayer that Jesus prayed in response to His Call. 
 
The Temptations that the Gospels tell us beset Him in the wilderness offer clues as to what he learnt there: that his calling was to serve others rather than himself, He would go on to the provide bread for others but not for himself; that He should exercise His ministry quietly under the radar as God does, rather than with public displays of divine power; and that He should not seek worldly power over people but rather to empower them.
 
He returned from His time in the wilderness preaching a very different message from that of John the Baptist. He talked rather of the inauguration of the Kingdom of God, in which all people would find the unconditional love and acceptance of God, and where everyone whom religion and society excluded, would be welcome without exception. This was what His reflection on His Call Experience had shown him, and His task was now to proclaim that what He had learnt was true for him, was equally true for everyone. He spoke and acted from His experience and was inviting other people to trust/have faith in the God Whom He now knew from personal experience.  
 
That was quite a big ask, and He chose to encourage that trust by learning to show the same unconditional love and acceptance to others that God had shown him: He chose to “incarnate” God to them. He forgave peoples’ sins in God’s name, ate and spent time with those whom society looked down upon, and passed no judgement save on the religious people who spoke of a very different vision of God.
 
Jesus struggled at times to hand over His newfound faith to people who were close to him. Even He could not force anyone to believe! Gifted preacher that he was, He was helpless before the refusal of His own flesh and blood to believe in his words. The religious experts among the Jews mostly refused to believe in what He was saying.
 
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Jesus began His ministry by calling others whom He chose, to follow Him, and the Gospels tell us of some who did so. Significantly there is no suggestion that Jesus baptised them or indeed anyone else during His lifetime. Some He called, and some subsequently appear to have chosen to follow Him. Others, like Mary and Martha and the Samaritan woman, He told to stay in their homes and villages, and to share there what they had learnt from Him.
                       
Jesus rarely taught by quoting the scriptures. Rather I sense that His teaching came from what His Call Experience had taught him, His subsequent relationship with His unconditionally loving Heavenly Father, and from what God taught Him through everyday life. I think it likely that His teaching grew and developed during His ministry. I sense that in His ministry, in His storytelling and teaching He was simply sharing with others what he himself had learnt. So, when I read something He taught others my first question is ‘In what context did Jesus learn this Himself?’
 
He refused to judge people, preferring to forgive and challenge them, which is what He had experienced from God.  He tries to treat other people as if they too are beloved children of a God Who delights in them. He forgave His followers who didn’t understand Him and called them to practice forgiveness themselves. It is only religious people who don’t accept His Good news about God that He judges harshly, their religion burdens people while He knows that God wills to set them free.

• He forgives sins in God’s name. He welcomes outsiders, foreigners, and those whom society excludes.
• He teaches that his yoke is easy and his burden is light, that God requires mercy and not sacrifice.
• His compassion leads Him to heal people who are sick, but He doesn’t want people to have faith in Him based upon signs and wonders, so He asks them not to broadcast what he has done for them.

 
Some of His parables have Scriptural echoes but many don’t, they either flow from His reflection on His Call Experience or they’re drawn from what God taught Him from His observations of life. So, His Call Experience was for Him ‘the pearl of great price’, or the ‘treasure hidden in the field’; the importance of forgiveness underlies the parable of the the two debtors and the one about the unforgiving servant. He was disheartened by the mixed response to His teaching, but drew comfort from observing a sower, and the wisdom of ‘not casting your pearls before swine’ was probably learnt from bitter experience: some people simply weren’t going to accept what he offered and would likely turn on him.
 
He taught that God was a Father who loves all of his children; that He offers forgiveness and an ongoing relationship with all of humankind, none are excluded; and He desires His children to show a similar love to each other; that He is inaugurating His Kingdom now and desires their co-operation in doing so.
 
He invited people to trust Him, to have faith in Him and in His experience of God. Not everybody did, of course. His family seem not to have done so, thinking that he was out of his mind. Many, perhaps most, religious leaders didn’t. But some ordinary people did, including some of other faiths whose faith in Him delighted Him, for what He taught was ‘Good News’. Many of course rejected His teaching, some probably felt threatened by it and actively opposed Him. That was a cross that He discovered that He had to bear, and He taught His followers that they would too. Having faith in Him was a simple matter of trusting Him, and never a matter of a belief statement, Jesus never required a statement of belief from somebody seeking His help.
 
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Early in His ministry he went to Nazareth, where he had been brought up, and entered the synagogue on the sabbath day, as was his custom. He stood up to read, and the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was given to him. He unrolled the scroll and found the place where it was written:
‘The Spirit of the Lord is upon me because he has anointed me to:
bring good news to the poor.
to proclaim release to the captives
recovery of sight to the blind,
to let The oppressed go free,
to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour.
 
In similar vein is His Sermon on the Mount:
“Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.
Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.
Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.
Blessed are the merciful, for they will receive mercy.
Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.
Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God.
Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Blessed are you when people revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.”
 
Eventually He felt bound to take His teaching to Jerusalem, so that there was an an opportunity for the religious leaders to embrace it. He was probably not hopeful but felt obliged to try. When they rejected Him and conspired at His death He accepts his fate and dies speaking words of forgiveness, and concern for His closest friends. He died as He had lived.
 
The Gospels have a number of stories of how the crucified Jesus appeared to His followers after His death. The stories don’t make a great deal of His triumph over death (that would come later) rather they are concerned that those who had betrayed and abandoned Him might experience the forgiveness, acceptance and affirmation that He had experienced from His Heavenly Father at His Call.  Plus the assurance of His continuing presence and support in their lives, and a commissioning to continue His Calling and teaching about the Kingdom of God. The Resurrection stories and Paul’s subsequent conversion experience became the equivalent for His followers of what He had experienced at His Call, and maybe it was the realisation that they had experienced that in Him that led them to see that he had incarnated God to them.

This pattern of failure, a felt need to repent, and subsequently being surprised by God’s affirmation continued, as it still does.

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I continue to ponder the fact that Jesus needed to go to John seeking a baptism of repentance. What might He have felt the need to repent of? While we can never answer that question with confidence, it remains important. Not least because it provides the context for His Calling and is therefore likely to have influenced His life and teaching. Its not difficult to see how such a need would have been forgotten later, but are there some hidden clues as to what Jesus might have felt a need to repent of?  I think that there could be.
 
Two parables stand out in the Gospels, both in Luke. They are many peoples’ favourites, not least because they contain much detail that is seemingly not strictly necessary. The most effective and powerful stories that we share with others are those that come from our own personal experience. I suspect that these two parables were personal experiences of Jesus: The Good Samaritan and the Prodigal Son
 
There are obvious parallels between the story of the Prodigal Son and Jesus’ Call. The son returning to his father, penitent, and hoping to be treated as a hired servant, echoes Jesus seeking repentance with John but finding Himself accepted and loved by God at His Calling. 

Jesus heard a voice: “You are my beloved son, in whom I am well pleased” could be the words spoken by the prodigal’s father for the latter says much the same by his actions.  ‘Put a fine coat on him, kill the fatted calf and let’s have a party.’ 

The story sounds like a secular version of Jesus’ Call. Now that surely can’t be a coincidence, so what’s going on here?  I can see two possible explanations:

1. Jesus felt the need to seek the forgiveness of His earthly father as well as His Heavenly One. The secular one happened to Jesus either before or after His Call.
   
2. Reluctant to share His Call experience with anyone beyond His inner circle but wanting to communicate its message to all, He told it as a secular story?
   

 
Intriguingly Jesus refers to the prophet Jonah in both Matthew [12;38-42] and Luke [11;29;32}. Why did He choose Jonah out of all the Old Testament prophets who called the people to repent?

Jonah was called by God to preach repentance and was later surprised by God’s mercy when people did.

He ran away from his call and only returned to it after a near death experience in a whale. Did Jesus run away from God, like the prodigal son? Was it that that needed repentance?

The son was near to death and was forced to feed pigs (an unclean animal). Was that how Jesus learnt that its not wise to feed pearls to swine? How else would a Jew have known that, when they would have avoided all contact with pigs?

When Jesus crossed the lake into gentile territory [Mark 5:1-20], healing a man possessed and causing a herd of swine to rush into the lake, might he have been returning to the place he’d run to?
 
If Jesus had seen himself having behaved like Jonah, then that might explain why He chose to quote him, and when the reason was forgotten, the early followers of Jesus would have easily made the connection with Jesus’ Resurrection and Jonah’s time in the whale.
 
If there is truth in the above, then Jesus would not have been surprised when His disciples ran away at the crucifixion, because that is what He had done earlier. And it would have been a source of joy and wonder for Him to appear to them with a message not unlike the one He had heard at His calling. It would have affirmed His attempt to incarnate God in His life and ministry. 
 
All this is just my speculation but I sense that there is truth in it.
 
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What are the implications of the above?
 

1. We should focus on Jesus’ Call not His Baptism. To focus on Jesus’ Baptism focuses us on sin and repentance, and makes us followers of John the Baptist, while to focus on Jesus’ Call focuses us on His and our divine calling as beloved children of God and makes us followers of Jesus.
   
2. Following Jesus means trusting Him and what He incarnated, rather than focusing on statements of belief about Him.
   
3. Jesus incarnated the God He knew, and we are called to do the same. This will mean life-long learning.
   
4. Institutional religion will find this challenging now as it did then.
   
5. We will find supporters and fellow travellers in many unexpected places, as Jesus did.
   

 And…    

‘The Wounded Angel’ is by the Finnish artist Hugo Simberg, and I saw it as a postcard on my first visit to Helsinki many years ago. It hit me like a brick, I’d never seen anything remotely like it before: “A Wounded Angel”? How could that be? 

It is Finland’s favourite work of art. Simberg painted two versions, at the beginning of the 20th century just prior to Finland achieving independence, (which might or might not be significant): one is in The Ateneum in Helsinki, the other is a fresco on the wall of the cathedral in Tampere, a town in western Finland.
 
Apparently he had planned a large image of a wounded angel for many years but struggled for the right approach.  First he drew a sick angel, who is given medicine to drink by two small devils; in the next image the devils decide to find expert help and lift the angel on to a wheelbarrow; the wheelbarrow is gradually replaced by a stretcher, which the devils carry, then the bearers become human children, and the route becomes established, a lonely road along the bank of a narrow river.
 
The highly symbolic group move in a realistic setting. The background is taken from the Elaintarha Park in Helsinki, which was popular amongst Helsinki’s working class as a place of leisure - the upper classes preferred another park in the south of the city. In The Wounded Angel healthy boys carry an injured girl toward the Disabled Persons Mansion and School for Blind Girls.
 
The angel girl is not seriously hurt. Her ‘wing’ is slightly broken, and she has a bandage covering her forehead. The angel could fly, but won’t. It could also look around but keeps its eyes glued to the ground. She wants to be helped.
 
The painting was an important work for Simberg, who did not try to explain it, nor did he give it a title. So how do we proceed?  I have a print in my shed, and over the years it has sometimes provoked strong emotions. Some are moved to compassion, others get very angry. One person said, ‘Why doesn’t that silly woman get down and walk’ and asked for the picture to be turned back to front while we talked.  Most, but not all visitors, assume the angel is female, but not everyone.
 
What do we see?  Two teenage boys carry an angel sitting on a makeshift stretcher on a path from right to left. How do they come to be doing this? Are they willing, or were they coerced? The boy in front is dressed in a black suit and is quite short. The other wears a brown jacket, black trousers and boots, and is taller. He looks at us. What does his look ask?  Does he accuse us of being responsible for the angel’s wounds?
 
The angel is dressed all in white, with a dress that trails to the ground, white wings, and a white bandage/blindfold over her eyes. She appears to be a young girl, perhaps a bit younger than the boys. She has blonde hair to below her shoulders.

There are just two poles and a cross piece for the angel to sit on, and she holds onto the poles. Her head is bowed. Her right hand holds some small white flowers. Her white wings have a brush of red on them, which might be blood.

What does she need?  Where have they come from, and where are they going?
 
How could an angel, God’s messenger, be wounded?   If not recognised, heard or accepted, maybe. But God would not wound one of Her angels. So the wound must be inflicted by a human. As an act of rage against God?
 
Another question might be ‘Can a wounded person be an angel’? Or even, given God’s Biblical concern for the poor, the outsider, ‘Is any wounded person an angel, a messenger from God, like immigrants, the hungry etc’. “As you do it unto one of these, you do it unto me.”
 
Might you or I be a wounded angel? Do our wounds prevent us being used by God as messengers, or might God speak through them? Indeed, given the example of Jesus, who was certainly a messenger from God, might God be incarnate in a wounded angel?
 
Or might we be one of the boys carrying her? Would we be doing that willingly? Is she a cross we’d accept?

Interestingly in writing this I have often mis-written ‘wounded’ as ‘wonder’ and realised that wonder and wounded are very similar! Here is a modern version of the painting by Pekka Vuorilehto:

Henry went to university to read Theology, having already felt he had a calling to be ordained, I went to read Theology and Philosophy, being less convinced but still feeling a similar calling. At the end of my first year at university, I switched to the single honours Philosophy course on the basis of a stronger calling and the possibility of completing a Theology degree while at theological college.

At the beginning of my third year at university, I obtained the sponsorship of the diocese where Henry was a curate, places at two theological colleges and attended an Advisory Council for the Church’s Ministry (ACCM) Conference for acceptance for training for ordination. As I recall, an ACCM Conference could either accept you for training, reject you or decide it wasn’t sure and suggest you go away and think about it and possibly reapply after at least two years– it my case, they chose the latter! The reason I was given for this was my lack of any involvement or commitment to a congregation. My parents had moved from London to the Sussex coast as I went to university so I lost contact with the congregation I’d grown up with, university terms meant I wasn’t able to form real links with the church either in Sussex or where Henry was a curate and I wasn’t comfortable in the Anglican community at university. Perhaps I’d gone “feral” at an early age!

Having thought about it, for less than two years if I’m honest, I concluded the decision to question my calling was the correct one; I didn’t have one, or at least not to be ordained. While at university, I’d been introduced by a friend of Henry’s to the Richmond Fellowship and became interested in social work, an interest I pursued on graduating, initially as a residential worker with adolescent boys. This felt more in tune with what I felt called to do, and I qualified as a social worker and moved into generic field work.

Although I wouldn’t have expressed it in these terms at the time, looking back at it, the reasons social work enabled me to do what I felt God wanted me to do were threefold:

• philosophical – a simple existentialist view of human beings as the only creatures on earth who are “who” they are, not “what” they are. We aren’t just social workers, teachers, shop assistants or waiters as in Sartre’s example, nor are we just sons, daughters, husbands, wives etc. We can choose how we behave and interact with the rest of creation, something that isn’t true of any other creature – to our knowledge! We can change!
  
• political – despite a very middle-class background and upbringing, the conversion of my grammar to a comprehensive school as I entered the VIth form opened my eyes to some of the inequality and oppression that society imposes on some people and lowers their expectations of what they can achieve or even aspire to. My awareness of this grew during my time at university, as did my conviction that the inequality and oppression was structural in its origin and maintenance within society. We need to change it!
  
•  theological - linked to the above was a growing awareness within myself of the reality of “that of God in everyone”, to misquote a fundamental principle underlying the Quakers. We have a template on which  to make those changes!
  

Social Workers can sometimes fail to recognise that their role can require them to be agents of personal change and societal change but can also require them to be agents of social control, imposing actions on people against their wishes – compulsory admissions to psychiatric hospital or the removal of children from abusive situations for example. Keeping an awareness of those three drivers behind my “vocation” help me to balance those three different roles. They also enable me to be “feral” as a social worker, not constrained by the organisation that I work for, be that a local authority as it used to be, or Safeguarding Adults Boards or Support and Housing providers as it is now, but supported by a professional ethos and professional standards. That “feral” approach also enables me to maintain a personal relationship with God without feeling restricted by membership of an organised church or group.

I do have one problem with the concept of being “feral” however. The term has several definitions, but common to them all is the notion of a return from a state of domestication, yet domestication, in the sense of being adapted to living with human beings, is exactly what I need to be in order to function as a social worker. Empathy, being able to get alongside those I work with is key, in my view, to good quality social work. The same applies, again in my view, to the lives of theists – not just Christians - in manifesting their beliefs in the existence and love of God; and if those beliefs aren’t manifested in their interaction with their fellow human beings and the rest of this glorious creation, then I would have to question the validity and reality of those beliefs.

That is the nub of my issue with the concept of “feral spirituality”; social work does have a specific ethos and a code of practice, perhaps “feral spirituality” needs to develop something similar, not to define and restrict spiritual belief and activity but to set parameters within which it can be practised.

Pete Morgan
May 2023

I opened my case for the defence by suggesting that Jesus had been a feral Jew, albeit totally inspired, and almost certainly John the Baptist was feral (an early manifestation of Dominic Cummings maybe!).  Not least, our principal and founder, St. Francis of Assisi, surely acted outside the confines of the structured Church of the day and ministered to people on the edge of society (to lepers, for example) at a time when inter-urban frictions were rife and as a result of which he spent time in prison.  He stole a bolt of cloth belonging to his father and sold it to fund the repair of a local church and thereafter “extolled the virtues of Lady Poverty”. 
 
The history of the development and growth of the Church is sprinkled with the presence of visionaries from Martin Luther of Reformation fame through to Canon Giles Fraser, the so-called ‘Loose Canon’ of radio and TV fame who fell out with the authorities at St.Paul’s Cathedral while he held office there, not forgetting the Wesleys, John Henry Newman of the Oxford Movement, Bishop John Robinson (and his book Honest to God), and David Jenkins (one time Bishop of Durham). They were all, I’m sure, prompted by the Spirit to highlight some aspect of potential growth and development which the structures of the established church seemed to be overlooking or ignoring.
 
We then diversified and discussed “feral children” and related that image to the Channel 5 TV family featured in “Our Yorkshire Farm” where Amanda and Clive Owen share nine children between them.  They live in the wilds of Upper Swaledale in North Yorkshire near to the village of Keld.  At first sight the family appears wild and free verging on the uncontrollable as they attempt all sorts of exciting exploits with very little consideration for health and safety.  These children have a rounded and exciting upbringing including a great understanding of the natural world, a practical experience of motor mechanics, animal husbandry and housekeeping, and a complete ignorance of fashion trends which all-in-all results in a thrifty and sustainable life style.
 
Very little of what these children experience and learn at home will meet Ofsted requirements but the end result produces a practical, rounded, confident and experienced individual fully equipped to go out into the big wide world as a grounded citizen, mostly developed outside of the formal education system.
 
By way of conclusion, in his new book Justin Welby says that throughout Christian history the response to radical change in circumstances has been a process of rethinking theologically the mission and action of the global Church, and the source of all good imagination is God.  He says the test of genuine reimagining is that it reflects the love of God as revealed in Jesus Christ and testified to by the Bible.*
 
……. Enter stage left “the feral Christian”.
 
 
Bill Page
 
*”The Power of Reconciliation” by Justin Welby, published by Bloomsbury Continuum 2022, pages 231-232

The word ‘feral’ to me is akin to ‘wild’ and I think many people could associate ‘wild’ with negative words such as disorderly, chaotic, unmanaged or a state of raw nature. However nature is far from wild and disorderly! Ecosystems are (often*) held in balance by negative feedbacks; the living and non-living components of the ecosystem respond to each other and adapt to each other. Therefore in the context of an ecosystem analogy I would interpret feral spirituality/wild spirituality as a natural, intuitive and aware response to the world around us, i.e. not at all a disordered approach to religious and spiritual life. It requires confidence to respond to the world around us without the checks and balances of organized and prescribed doctrines, liturgies and creeds**.

As a Quaker feral spirituality doesn’t feel an alien concept to me. Since becoming a Quaker I feel have taken a greater personal responsibility towards understanding (my) spirituality than I ever have before. I am currently excited by how Buddhism is enriching my Quakerism. For fear of the ecosystem analogy being the tail that wags to dog, I would say that Christianity is the soil and habitat in which I am rooted but I am adapting and thriving as I respond to new insights***. Would I have been on this exciting journey if I hadn’t gone a bit wild? Is this feral spirituality?

PS: I have got a whole new train of thoughts now surrounding the beauty of formal gardens, their purpose and the joy they bring (managed spirituality/religion) and the difference between these gardens and the beauty, purpose and joy of unmanaged spaces (feral spirituality). Surely we need both these places in our spiritual lives?   
 
*Ecosystems can reach thresholds, tipping points and there are also positive feedbacks. How might this relate to feral spirituality? Are there any dangers in feral spirituality?     
**How can we develop an intuitive response? Mindful awareness? Loving kindness meditation? Silent waiting? Prayer? Spending time with the people, or doing the things, or being in the places where we feel close to God?
***’Take heed, dear Friends, to the promptings of love and truth in your hearts. Trust them as the leadings of God whose Light shows us our darkness and brings us to new life’, Quaker Faith and Practice (5th Edition) paragraph 1.02.

I don’t know what it was this year, but for various reasons my form arrived late. I filled in sections of my form and, I would say fairly efficiently, until I came to the section asking for my priorities. By Sunday evening, those parts were still empty, but with the form needing to be emailed I sent it off with a single sentence promising I would work on these before the day of my interview. Over the next four days, as I considered the question, little rose to the surface. Come the day, having reflected further, I thought, Why can’t I take a Zen approach with this? How about the priority of no priorities?
 
This was a serious point. What if sometimes you just can’t put your finger on any priorities? Not through idleness or rebellion, but because you feel that your spirit is inhabiting a different space? Then, I remembered a previous review, when the same questions on the form had niggled me.  At that time I printed a copy of the page headed, Goals for the Coming Year, and in the six boxes I printed in large letters three lines from Eileen Myles’ poem, Peanut Butter, which read: “I am absolutely in opposition to all kinds of goals.”
 
I want to hold on to what I’m beginning to discover here. It’s partly what attracts me to this idea of feral spirituality. As I watch my very non-feral dog laying in a sunspot scratching his ear, I think I can identify with that itch. At 56 years old, and especially in this long emergence out of a pandemic, the Spirit is revealing something worth exploring. A time to keep and a time to throw away, a time to speak and a time to be silent.
 
Thankfully, I know it’s not all about me. The Covid experience has unsettled many, but in a good way. Has disrupted a lot, but creatively. From the early days of the first lockdown I have come across parishioners wanting to challenge the former ways, the standard liturgies, and the inherited expectations in church life. They are ordinary people, who may not have heard the phrase feral spirituality, but they are beginning to breathe the oxygen of honest questioning. They’re scratching their own itches and I have no doubt that this is the itch of the Spirit. If feral spirituality is worth our time, then there’s a good chance that Jesus got there first. Who can forget his conversation with Nicodemus in John, chapter three? When he says, “The wind blows wherever it pleases. You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit.”
 
Keith Griffin
West Yorkshire

I was fortunate to start my NSM ministry in a diocese that on the whole welcomed women priests, if a little nervously. It wasn’t always male clergy who could be unaccepting as the laity. Initially a few wouldn’t take communion from me, let me marry them or baptise their children.  Some felt the need to check me out; like the couple who genuinely thanked me for my sermon adding that they had spoken with the vicar who had confirmed what I’d said. 
 
The Church, which aims to be ‘a light to the Gentiles,’ was in fact lagging behind the secular world when it came to gender, sexuality and race.  It was stuck in a furrow it had ploughed for itself. This came across in the liturgy and prayers buttering-up Almighty and Everlasting God by us miserable sinners in order to keep on the right side of the Holy One.  Every Sunday we trotted out the same stuff as if by rote.  I do believe it was meaningful to some, but for others it seemed like a social occasion and way to get your child into the right school.  God created man and man created the Church.
 
Everything seemed so earth-bound and lacking in real spirituality.  I was reminded of the words of Richard Holloway, that ‘the Church was like a swimming pool – all the noise was down the shallow end!” 
 
Since retirement and moving south I have not sought a PTO allowing me to be wheeled out when a gap needed filling; but like Jesus to seek my spiritual life elsewhere.
 
So the word ‘feral' just fits what I felt and experienced in my first church. It was then that  I realised that my clerical collar (‘dog-collar’)  was keeping me as a tamed priest on a restricted lead.  But books I had read and talks by others convinced me that, in the words of Freddie Mercury, “I had 'to break free'."
Meg
Worthing UK

Of course I am a feral priest: called to escape the captivity of the institutional Church many years ago by God, and who has since exercised a ministry mainly in spiritual direction outside its domestication. I remember well how scary it felt to leave.  A friend described me ‘as a man about to jump off a cliff’ and so it felt. And yet it also seemed that there was no real alternative. And I remember to my great surprise how no longer being a stipendiary clergyman of the Church of England felt a huge relief. I was free: scared but free! I remember how it seemed as if scales fell from my eyes and I beheld a world in glorious colour which previously had been in black and white. And I realised something of what captivity and domestication had done to me.
 
As a feral priest I’ve had to learn a different set of skills. I’ve learnt to place my trust in God where previously the unstated assumption was that I should trust the institution and its leaders. I’ve learnt to trust God to provide, through the agency of Her children, enough money to survive, a roof over my head, and the means to exercise the ministry to which He was calling me.
 
I’ve also learnt to trust myself, my own intuitive sense of what priesthood means. I often talk about ‘internalised’ priesthood, as the state in which I have learnt to trust that because God has called me to be a priest there must be something essentially ‘priestly’ about me. And if I try to be truly myself then that priesthood will flow out through me without much conscious effort on my part. I am no longer dependent upon the external props of ‘priesthood’ as once I was. 
 
Jesus, of course was ‘feral’. He exercised His ministry on the edge of, or outside the religious institution in which He had grown up, and by implication challenged it. So did Francis of Assisi. So do increasing numbers of men and women today: and not just priests, indeed mainly not priests. It is one of the joys of spiritual direction to see someone escape the domestication of what they’ve been taught they should think and do, for the freedom of learning to trust what they deep down know already. There are large numbers of ‘feral Christians’ on the loose, indeed I suspect there are ‘ferals’ of every religious tradition, and in many different countries. Moreover I reckon there are as many ‘ferals’ coming from the opposite direction, seeking a spirituality but not a religion.  George Monbiot might be encouraged: the process of ‘feralisation’ is a bigger one than he perhaps imagined.
 
I’m reminded of a phrase which I think Richard Holloway used, who spoke about feeling himself to be part of a church ‘ in exile’. But his phrase doesn’t carry the same sort of energy for me as ‘feral’. To be ‘in exile’ in a Biblical sense carries overtones of being cast out against one’s will, excluded from what feels like home, and sent to a place to which one does not want to go and where one feels a stranger. It’s a place of pain. To go ‘feral’ may include experiencing all of the above, but for me it also means a sense of call into something rather than exclusion from something, and it points to a sense of freedom and delight in what has been newly discovered. It’s a place of precarious, gracious joy. 
 
It’s also, somewhat inevitably, a lonely place in which to find yourself, unless you are able to recognise the presence of other ferals, named or not named, around you.   On this web-site we hope to raise a modest feral spirituality flag around which people can gather, that will help men and women be aware that ‘feral’ is a positive calling to be proud of; that they may find a sense of fellowship with others, and where questions, wisdom and resources can be shared.

PS (19/11/2022):
My father was a pacifist and registered as a conscientious objector in the Second World War. He’d been brought up as an Anglican, but not finding the Church of England a comfortable place to be as a pacifist, he joined the Quakers. My mother was brought up an Anglican, and I grew up as an Anglican, knowing him as a Quaker. He never spoke about why he was a Quaker, and I only knew because Mum told me.

As I grew up I often tried to get him to tell me his story, but he never would. Then one day, in my mid forties, I visited them on Mothering Sunday as usual, and, sat down after lunch, he began talking about why he’d become a Quaker all those years ago, as if it was a matter he talked about regularly.  I was astonished, & so was my mother.  I ‘floated’ home feeling greatly blessed.  He never spoke to me about it again, ever.  

I have often wondered what triggered him to talk, and why then?   I had no idea.  Recently I have begun to wonder if he was, consciously or unconsciously,
telling me about a time when he went ‘feral’, although that wouldn’t have been a word that he’d have used.  But he spoke of a time when he listened to his own voice rather than the voices of others around him, & acted on it.  It cant have been easy, must have been costly, although he spoke lightly of it.

I went back and read again my notes of that Mothering Sunday conversation, and noticing that the date was March 25th 2001, the Feast of the Annunciation, I made a connection that I hadn’t before.  Some years previously, I too had similarly acted on my own inner voice by stepping out of stipendiary ministry in the Church of England, to go freelance, setting up The Annunciation Trust in the process.  So on that Sunday, consciously or unconsciously he was sharing with me that he had done something similar many years previously and was thus giving me his blessing. ‘Feral’ is a calling that he & I share, that binds us.  No wonder I floated home

He died 20 years ago. I know I have his prayerful support both as a father and as a fellow feral: that I’m walking a path that he began many years previously. Maybe there were others before him who were also, in some way, ‘feral’, that we stand in a long line. Certainly others will come after us.

Henry Morgan (Worcester)
See also my Going Feral post on the Annunciation Trust website

It took about forty years to realise that 'designated' Church buildings had no more (or less) spirituality than other spaces I frequented in life; indeed, in terms of exposure to goodness, I was far more likely to find this outside a designated place of faith. This simple, but also profound realisation, led me to question other assumptions and impressions I had been fed (mainly by established Church institutions) of what 'faith', 'belief' and in its wider sense 'Christianity' really looked like. I therefore set out on a journey to discover how living the message of Christ could be more  meaningfully  expressed in my day to day life and work. 

Some thoughts and questions I ask myself and may be also of assistance to others with a feral instinct: 

• church institutions are obsessed with buildings - often at the expense of mission. For many a church building is a barrier, not a facilitator of faith.  Has the Church become obsessed with 'numbers of people in buildings' at the price of what it has it has traditionally done so well - being a voice for the vulnerable and marginalised in society? Is it doing things that the majority of 'church goers' might not like, to ensure it  reaches people who are not like them? 
  
• does the established Church embrace and encourage change?  
• when faced with scandal and abuse is its focus on actively learning from these issues; or does it appear to do so, while maintaining the status quo processes and attitudes to 'vocation'  that created the conditions for such abuse in the first place?  Are the needs of the institution, as opposed to protecting the vulnerable, of paramount importance? 
  

When the Church  speaks to people who are not its 'followers' it is then (in my view) truly 'growing'. For me a feral approach to faith is about transforming lives, not enshrining traditions. It requires new approaches, conducting ministry in new ways and pursuing opportunities outside 'the building' with attitudes, perceptions and methods never before considered. When the goal is bringing people to God instead of keeping us safe with her inside, the Church (in its widest sense)  thrives as it changes and grows. And there’s nothing institutional about that. 
Les

But it can’t be denied that such familiarity can also dull and distort. My friend, the priest John Rowe, reflecting on what he thought to be the too frequent celebration of the Eucharist, spoke of ‘trivialisation by repetition’ and lamented the gap so often found between church life and praxis.
 
In over three decades in which I frequently celebrated the Eucharist I was ever aware of the privilege. I was also aware of the risk that ought to accompany every celebration, for celebrant and participants. The words, the claims, the promises, the challenges. Yet how often it is a tamed, and taming, exchange. If asked if I’d presided at the Eucharist on such-and-such an occasion, I’d say ‘yes, and no one was hurt’. The aim was to point to its explosive potential. It is something I wrote about on my blog.
 
What can be done to counter the taming and domesticating effects of the life of the church on serious followers, laity and clergy alike? Conscientious clergy try hard with that, imaginatively seeking new ways to bring to life old and familiar formulas. But however hard they try, and however gifted they may be in the trying, the problem clandestinely remains: church life can dull senses, insulate the high voltage ‘current’ of the Gospel from those who wish, or need, to experience it, and become a tomb of sorts.
 
I was interested from the first moment Henry mentioned his musings on the idea of feral spirituality. It provided a ‘model’ – a metaphor I now think – for what had long fascinated me: how the Gospel might survive the church. ‘Feral’ most often means to revert to an untamed state after escape from captivity or domestication. As with all metaphors and figures of speech, it can be pushed too far. Best to take from it what is helpful and see where it leads. 'Feral' does not necessarily mean leaving the church. It will more often involve being the church, differently.

The sown seed has grown and blossomed since retirement at the end 2021. There has been a sense of being ‘released from captivity’ but with it has come a sense of isolation and purposelessness as I have moved from the diocese I last served in for 12 years prior to retirement.  However, although I don’t know how many others have the same experience as me, I know there are some and it would be good to share with them in a positive and supportive way.

Although I have retired, my vocation has not. So I have been pondering the question: should I apply for PTO (permission to officiate) through the diocese I now live in or is there another way to exercise my vocation? The possibility of the proposed website is potentially a means to honouring the vocation gifted to me by God – at least a step in the right direction. I recognise that this vocation is a ‘priestly’ one, which was affirmed recently when taking my mother-in-law’s funeral service.

My hope is that the proposed website would be a creative sharing platform for both those with an ordained vocation and those whose vocation is exercised in other spheres of life, and would also be open to those of other faith traditions and those journeying with alternative spiritual insights.

My suggestion for a logo would be an eagle in flight inspired by Isaiah 40:31, ‘They who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings like eagles.’
 
Mike Catling
Teesdale

Don’t get me wrong, I enjoyed being a parish priest and I was willing (and glad) to be carer, first for my mother and then for my sister, as they went through lengthy terminal illnesses, but I often felt that the real me wasn’t getting much of a chance.

I had to take early retirement on grounds of ill health but quickly found myself in demand every Sunday.  I protected each Saturday as a Sabbath, but all the while that “Oh Sod It” feeling was there, suggesting that there was some other way of being.

Then came covid!  I was “vulnerable” so I withdrew far longer than we had formal lockdowns.  I have no close family, no-one with whom to “bubble” so it was just me.  Or rather, me and God.

And things started to happen.  Probably the first thing was deciding to scan all my old photographs.  That made me think about the Mary who had been in each one.  I rejoiced in the unique path I have travelled. I sorted my stuff and got rid of the things which were only relevant to an old me so that a new Mary could emerge.  Both these activities will probably not cease until the day I die.  I hope they don’t.

I wasn’t available to lead Sunday worship and for a long time I couldn’t even get to church.  In that time something new happened. The Mary who could no longer celebrate the Eucharist most Sundays found herself far more contented just being.  Being not doing.

The pandemic restrictions are mostly over but I find myself “no longer at ease in the old dispensation”.  I still have permission to officiate but am far more reluctant to do so. The stillness and creativity where I met God so deeply in those long months are still the places I meet him/her today.  I value the person I was but I am no longer that woman today.  I am an explorer.

Mary Dawson
Lincolnshire
 https://trundlingthroughlife.blogspot.com/

Jesus seemed to have a means of embracing people from all manner of backgrounds and beliefs; He was willing to socialise with many of the ‘wrong’ people, speak prophetically to the ‘wrong’ people and administer miraculous healing to the ‘wrong’ people. He seemed not to have the kind of limiting boundaries that I used to apply through reasons of ‘faith’.
 
Jesus seemed to find God in a wide variety of settings and experiences – he enjoyed solitude, was tested and affirmed through His desert experience, enjoyed the ongoing friendship and hospitality of Mary, Martha and Lazarus and kept company with an eclectic bunch of societal misfits. He seemed to enjoy nature and used it to illustrate many of his teachings. He enjoyed parties and good wine (it seems). None of that feels like the religion I followed for a good part of my adult years; its aim (and mine) was not to risk any behavioural misgivings from my own faith community; it was very important to do and say (and be seen to be doing & saying) the right things. Consequently, my faith became very narrow, dry and fearful.
 
Being led from that place has been a difficult process and has required much encouragement to trust myself, my own spiritual discernment and to recognise the many ways in which I experience communion with God. I have learned that nature is important to me, art, music and beauty stirs me, silence and solitude refreshes me and a fine glass of whisky or wine stimulates me. I find worship and thankfulness fill my soul in all of these things.
 
I find much stimulation in people who represent a huge spectrum of opinion, belief and practice. I read much more widely than previously and enjoy listening to many sides of contemporary and historical argument. I want to understand other points of view and experiences and allow my own beliefs, biases and closed-mindedness to be challenged. When I better understand where someone is coming from, I am more able to see how to build real relationship with them. My intent is not to change them but to build bridges with them and to let them change me. In that spirit, I encounter God – His compassion, wisdom and guidance. When I open myself to my interactions with the world, I find that I am more able to be moved by God’s Spirit and His purposes for me and for those that my life touches. I am still taking baby steps in all of this, but I sense possibility and excitement now where there had previously been dullness.
 
Dave Broome
Herefordshire

A feral Christian might be described as one called by God to escape the captivity and domestication of the institutional Church. Jesus exercised his ministry on the edge of, or outside the religious institution in which he had grown up. Today there are increasing numbers of ‘feral Christians’ on the loose. Feral might also well describe the various tribal groupings to be found in the Anglican Communion, tribes that have been at war among themselves over women, sexuality and gender.

Christians with a feral ministry, living under the radar, away from the gaze of bishops who have sold their souls to yet more process and discussion about my sexuality with no commitment to significant change in church teaching and practice. I sense subversion in the air, people, lay and ordained, go ahead despite the bishops’ rules, blessing unconditionally and distributing sacraments lavishly, as is the way of Jesus before he was tamed by the Church.

Over the past two decades, I have felt more acutely a sense of Christian things falling apart. I find myself roaming about in once familiar places where I now feel less comfortable or welcome - and more free to roam around in taboo areas in thought and imagination.

My faith is rooted in my experience of God and the practice of Christianity as exemplified by Jesus, focused on unconditional love, wisdom, justice, truth, goodness, self-giving, compassion, and the glory of living life in all its fullness. I am a member of a feral tribe, increasingly marginalised in the church, continuing to flourish but under the radar, no longer valued by the church institution, sitting lose to creeds and dogma, deeply valuing the elusive, the Mystery, the not-knowing, the deep-down intuitive truthfulness of life.

Richard Holloway speaks about feeling himself to be part of a church ‘in exile’. Biblically this carries overtones of being cast out against one’s will, excluded from what feels like home, sent to a place to which you do not want to go and where you feel a stranger. To go feral carries a strong sense of call in contrast to exclusion, leading to a capacity for freedom and delight in what is being newly discovered. It is follow a vocation in which energies are released and visions flow abundantly, placing trust in the elusive, always present holy Mystery.

The Revd Colin Coward MBE
Devizes
www.unadulteratedlove.net