One of mine has been a life-long search for God, in response to which God has revealed things to me. I am not especially good at articulating what I’ve been shown indeed I’m aware of many who write better and with greater wisdom & insight than I do; and I equally know many people who have far more faith than I do. I have done nothing to deserve knowing what I have learnt: it’s all been unwarranted gift. But the Message is more important than the messenger and for that reason I need to try and share it with any who are interested, while recognising that God might have revealed different insights to you.

These words have been brewing for a very long time, but my 80th birthday initiated a good deal of personal reflection on my life. I can now see more clearly my spiritual journey’s path. My reflections have also been helped in the past weeks by reading ‘The Great Search’ by John Philip Newell where the words of other people have helped me name what I already knew but hadn’t yet found words for. I cannot commend it too strongly.

Such spiritual wisdom as I process is based on my personal experience not in statements of faith.
1       There is a divine spark in each of us, our soul: that part of us that longs for connection with the divine, and for meaning & purpose in our lives. There are moments when we become aware of the existence of that connection with the immanent and transcendent God. Martin Buber talks about them as “I—Thou” moments: when we know ourselves to be in relationship with Another.

They come unsummoned, like the wind it blows but we don’t know where it comes from or where it is going. We cannot control it. But we can learn to be open to it, recognise it, and trust it. Then it will change and guide us. “Let your soul be your pilot” It nourishes us and brings us alive and we become people of faith, even if we are unbelievers, because we are being faithful and responding to the Divine spark within us, our soul. God has shown me that I can trust the wisdom it teaches.

2       Moments of spiritual insight can come to us in many different ways:

[a]  They can come in fleeting moments of connection with another person: simple eye connect in a fleeting encounter; in conversations and shared experiences at depth with another person; on reading a book or poem, listening to a piece of music, looking at a work of art; in finding oneself loved and loving; in dreams and visions; in intuitive knowings; through synchronicity and serendipity. They are not limited to individual experience but can also come in times of collective awareness, when we share in an experience with others.

[b]  My life was turned upside down by an unexpected experience of being ‘spoken to’ by God in a time of crisis. The words were of affirmation and support which touched something deep within me with an authority and authenticity I couldn’t doubt. I had never experienced anything like it: they changed me. I knew that I had to set them at the centre of my life and seek to live out of them. I knew that I would not be able to do that as a parish priest, which I then was.

Research led by Alister Hardy in the 1960s led to the conclusion that about half the adult population of Britain would claim to have a spirituality that is grounded on their personal experience. [A survey conducted in 2000 suggested that slightly more than 76% of the national population are now likely to admit to having had a spiritual or religious experience.] In-depth work where there was time to build up trust repeatedly showed that approximately two thirds of those interviewed were prepared to acknowledge and talk about their spirituality. They typically speak of one of the outcomes of their experience as an increasing desire to care for those close to them as well as a sense of responsibility for the larger community and the physical environment.

This is The God you already know of whom Roy Gregory and I wrote. If there is truth in this then the Church has its mission strategy wrong. It assumes that it has knowledge of God that others lack & need to be told about. The opposite appears to be true: that most people already have some experience of God, which doesn’t fit easily with what the Church teaches.

[c]  I’ve had a number of similar experiences since, as well as several in which I knew myself to be ‘spoken to’ by people whom I knew to be dead. The first occasion was ‘Damascus Road like’. It shook me rigid. Like the experiences above these too changed me, not least because they took away my anxiety about death and replaced it with a deep confidence that death is not the end.

[d] They can come in moments of revelation in the natural world. I remember going outside into his garden to pray in the middle of the night with my friend Adrian. The silence & stillness was profound, and it felt as if the stones, plants and trees in the garden were all in their way praying too, and that he & I were united with all of creation, including the stars, in prayer and worship. I still from time to time sit outside in the dark and open myself to the same thing.

I’ve taken recently to lying down on the earth and either closing my eyes or gazing up at the sky, simply watching the clouds moving slowly above me, while the earth beneath holds me to itself.

I remember sitting by a river and being suddenly surprised when three otters, one after the other, popped up out of the water & looked at me as I looked at them. I felt richly blessed. Cats and dogs have an intuitive knack of knowing how we are feeling. I know of several people who when feeling very alone & even perhaps abandoned by God, found that their cat was unexpectedly curled up next to them.

Thomas Berry wrote that “every species is a unique revelation of the Divine’ and that must be true. The Bible testifies that God is able to ‘speak’ to us through absolutely anything. The world is a place of enchantment, in which animals are often angels [aka ‘messengers from God’]

3 We are born seeking relationships with others and Another, without which we will not survive. Many of the things that give value to life are based on relationships: love, security, sexuality, goodness, healing, hospitality, generosity, kindness, friendship, music, laughter, justice. Others are based on our search for Another: curiosity, creativity, vision, awe, wonder. Others reflect memories of whence we came: beauty, truth and peace.

All people seem to be aware of these things, although they are expressed variously at different times & in different cultures. They’re not easy to define in words, but you recognise them when you see them. How do we explain this? I sense that they are memories that we are born with.

John’s Gospel talks of Jesus having come from God before His birth & of returning to God at His death. I assume that if this is true of Jesus then its true for all human beings & that we all bring with us at birth some ‘Memories of the Home’ from which we’ve come and to which we’ll return when we die. Not surprisingly they make life meaningful, as well as shaping our expectation of whatever lies beyond death, of what ‘paradise’ is like.

I remember as a young child having a strong sense that I came originally from somewhere else, and I suspect that that’s not an uncommon experience. 

4 When the Gospels talk about faith they mean ‘trust’. People came to Jesus because they trusted Him, and He could do nothing if they didn’t. He never sought a credal statement from someone seeking His help.

Faith as ‘trust’ arises out of a relationship, faith as a credal statement is based upon rational understanding. Faith as trust deepens our relationship with God. Faith as understanding objectifies God as something apart from us that needs to be understood. We need to get back to Jesus’ understanding of faith.

Trusting God means accepting what life brings. As the saying puts it “God shelters us from nothing but sustains us in everything.”

5 After His baptism Jesus had a life changing experience of being ‘spoken to’ by God. He ‘heard’ God say to Him “You are my beloved son in whom I am well pleased.” It must have shaken him to his core & He took Himself into the wilderness to reflect on it. Could He trust what he’d heard? If so what did it mean? How should He respond?

He decided that He couldn’t but trust it. He knew that if God felt like that about Him then God presumably felt like that about everybody: all people are loved by God as God’s sons and daughters. That was a very different understanding of God from what He’d been brought up with: it changed everything.

How could He share it with others who hadn’t had that experience? He appears to have decided that He had on the one hand to speak about this “Good News’ and on the other to start treating people as if what God had said was true. He had to ‘incarnate’ the message in His dealings with people. And that is what he did. He spoke and acted out of His being a beloved son of a loving God, to men and women whom God equally loved, unconditionally.

6 Our call is to do likewise, to follow in Jesus’ way, by heeding our spiritual experience & trusting that God will open a way for us. It is less a matter of thinking that Jesus has done something for us, rather, seeing that Jesus has shown us the way for us to follow. We have inevitably put Jesus on a pedestal, and I’m not saying that is a mistake, but it becomes a distraction if it leads us to assume that Jesus has done it all for us and we just need to believe it and we will be saved.

7 My ministry in spiritual conversations [aka spiritual direction] has shown me that most people already know most of what they need to know about God, & what the ‘spiritual life’ entails. But the knowing frequently lies hidden, buried treasure within them, forgotten, and not trusted. It requires re-discovery, re-evaluating & often the letting go of what has been previously taught or learnt.

8 The other mark of a ‘faithful unbeliever’ of course is the presence of Love. I give it a capital letter to denote its divine origin, but its present in the immanent God within each of us. We’re not likely to be able to match the unconditional love of God, although we might try & sometimes come close. But despite what the newspapers might tell us, there is an enormous amount of love being shown in our world on a daily basis, most of it hidden and unremarked upon. I’m talking about the love of parents for their children, love shown to those who are sick or handicapped in some way, the love shown to refugees, by those who visit family members with dementia…..the list is endless, and it includes those of all the faith traditions and those of none. In loving and being loved we are faithful followers of Jesus.

9 All faiths are manifestation of that universal divine spark in all, and in everything. It is expressed in different ways in different times and in different cultures: there is a richness and variety in its modes of expression, reflecting the richness and immensity of God. But they are common paths up the same mountain. There is no competition. We need to learn from each other. It is a message that the world urgently needs.

It has been my discovery that prayer moves away from nonsense when it begins with its nose firmly rubbed in my own hapless complicity in the misfortunes, agonies and muddles of our troubled and troubling world. Spare me the generalities, the indiscriminate balm, the soporific sonorities of the sentimental delivery. Let public intercessions become a little feral, and instead sing a song of greater authenticity.    Hugh Valentine

Henry writes: When I was a young man beginning to study The Bible, the story of The Annunciation [Luke 1:26-38] always left me cold and mystified. I was very doubtful about the existence of angels, and the idea that one might ‘appear’ to Mary to announce her forthcoming pregnancy sounded ridiculous. The story made no sense.  But all that changed when I saw a print of Fra Angelico’s painting of it.

We see an angel bowing before a seated figure in an otherwise empty enclosed space


It was the silence and stillness of his image that spoke to me. I could understand that anyone, in this case a young woman, might suddenly and inexplicably know something, be changed by the experience and realise that her understanding came somehow from outside her, and thence from God. Indeed I’d had an experience or two like that myself.

I re-read the story, and it now began to make sense, as it tells how Mary is deeply troubled by the experience, frightened even, doubts and questions, before finally graciously accepting it. Yes, I can recognise that pattern too, and suspect that for Mary, that was a sequence she probably went through many times over: fear, doubt, questioning, before quiet acceptance.

The story as Luke tells it is made up almost entirely of the dialogue between Mary and the angel, which presents an artist with a problem as he/she has no visual clues to go on. A painting relies almost entirely on their imagination. That in itself is intriguing, that a Biblical text only came alive for me through the imaginative skill of an artist, the text by itself being insufficient.

The story now, from being one of no significance for me, became one of overwhelming significance.

Partly because it made me aware that God often speaks to me, and presumably to others, through art as through words, or indeed anything else, using our imaginations. There is seemingly, nothing through which God cannot speak.

Partly because the word ‘angel’ simply means ‘messenger’, and thus can be used to describe any person or thing through which God speaks.

Partly because it encourages me to take my own experience of God speaking to me seriously as Mary did. That is a risky business of course, for some people have done terrible things on the basis of thinking themselves to have been spoken to by God, on the other hand it’s also risky not to heed my experience. I need to have some means of discerning what really is of God and what is not.

And partly because Mary has now, not surprisingly, become a much more important person for me. I discovered that some writers talk of her as ‘the first’ of Jesus’ disciples, because she was the first person to put her trust/faith in Him and I am happy to go with that.

Some years ago I had a sabbatical and, in the months before I drafted a list of things but I might do on it, but as it drew near all of those things had either fallen off the list or ceased to engage me. One day I was wondering around the National Gallery in London when I saw a painting by Bernardo Daddi entitled ‘The Coronation of the Virgin’, it took me by surprise and spoke to me.

We see Mary kneeling before Jesus Who is placing a crown on her head - see below

If Mary is the first disciple of Jesus then what happens to her is what happens to all other of His disciples. If she is enthroned will we not be also when we return to the God from whom we came at our births?  ‘The Coronation of the Virgin’ is important as it expresses a hope for all.

Over the years I have come to think of Mary not only as the first disciple of Jesus, but also as the feminine face of God. There have been times in my life when it has felt easier and more appropriate to pray to a feminine face of God rather than a masculine one and to assume that the God who prays for me and holds me in love has a feminine as well as a masculine face.

On the sabbatical, I mentioned earlier, my wife and I spent some time in Assisi in Italy and one day made a trip to San Sepulchro to see Piero della Francesco’s painting of Jesus‘s Resurrection. I also saw a print of Piero’s painting ‘The Madonna of Mercy’ which is part of a large altarpiece.

We see a huge figure of Mary wearing a cloak that protects a group of men and women kneeling before her. See below.

The central figure of Mary stands with her cloak open protecting a group of men and women who were part of a fraternity who cared for those in need in their town. There would’ve been several such fraternities in the town exercising what we would think of social services. The image suggests that Mary cares for these men and women as they exercise care for those in need in their community. I found it a strange but very moving image and now often look at it and learn from it.

Thus has my understanding and appreciation of Mary been transformed in the course of my life. And there has been more. On that same sabbatical, on our return from Assisi, one night I had a dream and in it an older female figure whom I took to be my ‘anima’ spoke wise words to me that I heeded and continue to heed. From time to time, I continue to sense the presence of my ‘anima’ and hear her loving and wise words. I assume that she and Mary are one and the same, or perhaps different aspects of the feminine face of God.

A painting that sums this is up for me is ‘The Mystical Boat’ by Odilon Redon,
Sister Wendy Beckett has written about it thus:

“At first we hardly see the sailor, still less that there is a companion. Both are lost, hidden, secret within the boat’s blueness, the colour of heaven. The two -because the mystic heart is never alone, an angelic Presence, the hidden God, is always there – do not steer the boat, do not even try to direct it. They sit surrendered, allowing the Spirit to take them where He chooses. The sea …….heaves and is turbulent, but the tossing of the boat is part of the mystic journey. It is the outward stress that makes the surrender of trust vital. The sail alone catches the full brightness of God, and it is that brightness, overhead, not tangible, that dominates the picture. But the brightness blinds the sailor, who cannot see where the Spirit is taking them, and he leans back, at rest, content in His spiritual choice.” 

Quite a spiritual journey from my youthful scepticism, and art, and God speaking to me through art, has played a vital and creative role for which I give thanks.
Henry

In el Greco’s ‘Visitation’ we see two women, moving to embrace each other in welcome. Indeed are they about to dance?

They are of a similar build and height. You can glimpse the face of one more than the other. They wear identical shiny blue robes. Why? Are they in some sense one & the same? The one on the right has some red edging to her garment.

They stand on a plinth, and again I wonder why? The figure left is coming out of a decorative doorway. It might even be the entrance of an elaborate tomb. If she is Elizabeth then her womb had been a tomb, and the kicking of her child in response to Mary, might be the first sign of the new life within it.

The picture is divided vertically into three: the tomb on the left, a blank meeting space in the middle, and on the right, a place of resurrection light. 

The meeting has two women supporting each other into new life under God: they are engaging in a spiritual conversation.

In Odilon Redon’s ‘Mystical Conversation’, we see two women meeting, in the centre of the image, slightly offset to the left.

The woman on the left is in a blue dress with a gold overgarment that also covers her head. Her left arm is by her side, but the fore finger of her right arm is pointing at the second woman, as if advising her about something. [Her forefinger reminds me of Michelangelo’s ‘Creation’ painting.

Might she be an angel? Her right foot points forward, as if she is encouraging the other to move forward into the new life and colourful beauty ahead of her.

The woman on the right is dressed in a garment of various light colours, shades of blue & gold. Her head is bowed & she appears to be the younger of the two. Her right arm is almost touching/holding the other woman’s left hand. Her left arm, pointing straight down might be holding something, but it isn’t clear what. She is paying attention to what the other is telling her.
They stand, framed by two pillars, in what looks like the external framework of a building on the right, on a plinth which can just be discerned. On the ground in front of them is an impressionist collection of flowers into which the younger woman is being encouraged to advance. There is blue sky in the background, with white & pinkish clouds.

Could these two women be Elizabeth and Mary? I guess that they could, but they might very well not be.  Luke provides so few visual clues about their meeting, that almost any image of two women talking could be a ‘Visitation’.

In ‘The Two Friends’ by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, we see two women, of similar age, seated on a couch/ settee, reddish brown in colour. The floor is red, the walls a light brown. There is a pink frame on the wall facing us
The woman nearest to us has a warm garment wrapped around her upper body and her arms, as if she is not well. It is light purple in colour.  She has a light blue dress, black stockings, and high heeled shoes. Her reddish-brown hair is brushed back. Her face is looking down and her eyes appear closed. She doesn’t speak & appears immersed in her own inner world.
The woman furthest away from us has her left arm resting on the others right hip. She wears a dress of the same light blue colour and a jumper of the same light purple. She has blonde hair, brushed up. She sits upright and is concerned and caring of her friend. They converse by their close proximity to each other and through touch. I wonder why are they dressed so alike?
Could this be a painting of Elizabeth and Mary? Probably not, but maybe it could be.?

In Elin Danielson-Gambogi’s painting ‘Mother’, we see a young woman sitting on the edge of a double bed, on which there are two sets of double pillows. Each with white pillowcases covering a striped pillow.
The young woman’s hair is tied up. She wears a white blouse, & a dark green skirt. She looks down at the child her left breast is feeding. She is totally focused on her baby. Her left arm holds the child. Her right encourages the connection of her breast with the child’s mouth, who is clothed in white. At her feet is a dark wooden cot, with white material within it.
Behind her on the right is a long window with white gauze curtains. Directly behind her is a wall painted a green lighter than her skirt. Above the bed the green wall merges into yellow. The headboard is of a polished darker wood. Next to it is a wooden table on which is a round tray with a light blue bottle and glass on it.
The room is a safe place for the woman, and her embrace and breast is the best possible safe place for her baby. As the mother looks and the baby sucks is this not also a spiritual conversation, albeit again one without words?
There is much emphasis in the Church these day on spiritual directors needing to have been trained & supervised, being in receipt of DBS clearance and having undergone safeguarding training. I can understand why. But most of the people I look to for a spiritual conversation satisfy none of these requirements, and some of those who would, I steer clear of.  Spiritual conversations, ones where God is present, are taking place all the time mostly between people who wouldn’t name them thus. Such is the gracious activity of the God Who is present in all of creation. The conversations don’t require words to be spoken, and don’t even require another person to be present. I’ve had meaningful spiritual conversations with a dog, a cat, a rabbit, a painting, a piece of music, a poem. I even had one this morning with some trees as I strolled down a leafy path.  Henry

Some object to this claim. The ways of organised religion (here I am concerned only with Christianity) have, they say, only beneficial effects upon believers. I don’t disagree that following the practices of organised Christianity can have beneficial effects. I have known them myself. I have been valuably shaped by patterns of prayer and liturgical life over decades, before and after I was ordained priest, and in that adventure I have met many impressive and wonderful friends. Without doubt that exposure has made me a better person, a listener and lover of silence, more able to escape the gravitation pull of my ego, better able to serve and love others, more able to respond to the wonder of being alive in this glorious but perplexing creation. It hasn’t lessened any suffering that has come my way, but it has placed it in a context.
 
Yet organised religion brings dangers. Do they really need to be spelled out I wonder? Seemingly yes. One of them is conformity. Never underestimate the power that religious organisations exert over the individual to conform to dominant orthodoxies and behaviours. Or the subtle (sometimes not too subtle) means by which waverers are dealt with. ‘Othering’ and ‘gaslighting’ are not new. Church life can be cruel, even brutal. Just ask the casualties.
 
Another dimension is the way church life domesticates God. We may mockingly cite the mantra of ‘gentle Jesus meek and mild’ yet look at some of what we do to this uncontained, unconstrained source of all being: we talk (and behave sometimes) as though S/he resides only in churches, rarely venturing out. In different branches of the church, we may confine Him/her to the sanctuary, or hidden behind an iconostasis, or insist He/She is primarily encountered in the consecrated host. God is packaged, commodified, confined in so many ways. I understand how and why these habits develop (an unpredictable God can be scary, and a problem), but the unintended consequence is to suggest that this untamed, fierce, loving God is not really to be found abroad, in our homes or workplaces, or in the routine muck and muddle of our daily lives.
 
Yet another aspect is how power – authority if you prefer - is distributed in the life of the church-as-institution. For the most part it resides in the ordained class. Some church people find this an extraordinary and ridiculous claim, presumably because the laity and clergy model is one so familiar and ‘normal’ to them. To me it is plainly the case that clergy are seen as the professionals in the adventure of faith. This has been at the expense of the laity.
 
What I am trying to express may be this: the practice or organised religion can lead to a gentrification of the spirit and heart which occludes the elements of enquiry, curiosity, exploratory playfulness, and even godly recklessness which the true life of the spirit requires.  I accept that this is a broad-brush claim. There are countless examples amongst both clergy and laity that dodge these oppressive features.
 
Does cultivating a feral spirit bring anything useful to the adventure of faith? Yes, when understood as a move to (re)connect with the edgy spirit of the Gospels and escape (some of) the domesticating effects of church life. View it as a tool in the spiritual adventure, or more precisely, in seeking to know and follow Christ.

The Christmas stories of Luke and Matthew are in some ways quite different, but with respect to these two questions they are singing off the same song sheet, and it’s one we know from experience ourselves. In both Christmas stories God is present in our world in quiet hidden ways, amongst ordinary men and women, and very much under the radar. In Luke She comes as a baby born to travelling parents in a hidden place where they seek shelter. Hardly anybody notices. In Matthew He comes at home in Bethlehem and is recognised only by migrant travellers with a belief in astrology. Once the local power brokers become aware of His birth, they seek to have Him killed.
 
We will remember that during lockdown, which was such a painful time for many, there was an uprising of mutual support and care in many places as ordinary men and women looked after each other in unexpected ways. Much the same seems to have taken place during the blitz in the Second World War. I assume that there is a lot of the same thing continuing to happen in our own country now, and in the Ukraine and in Israel and Palestine.  But hardly anybody notices. Luke and Matthew tell us that that is where God is always to be found.  It is a feral God who is at work in quiet, loving, hidden creative ways all the time. It’s up to us to notice and name this incarnate God present in our world and hopefully to nurture Him/Her in each of us.
 
I’m reminded of some words of Walter Wink. “Transfiguration is living by vision: standing foursquare in the midst of a broken, tortured, oppressed, starving, dehumanising reality, yet seeing the invisible, calling to it to come, behaving as if it is on the way, sustained by elements of it that have come already, within and among us. In those moments when people are healed, transformed, freed from addictions, obsessions, destructiveness, self-worship or when groups or communities or-even, rarely, whole nations glimpse the light of the transcendent in their midst, there the New Creation has come upon us. The world for one brief moment is transfigured. The beyond shines in our midst-on the way to the cross.”
 
Happy Christmas. Henry

Titles have included: Sounds Like Christmas, Countdown to Christmas, Light of The World, Christmas Around the World, Peace at Christmas, Follow the Star, and last year, Coming Home For Christmas. The formula has hardly changed at all. Every September letters of invitation are sent out around the parish: to the Junior School, the Football Club, the Art Group, the Mothers’ Union, the Pre-school, the Badminton Club, the Bell Ringers, and the Methodist Church. A few local artists are included: a ceramicist, a calligrapher, and someone who sculpts in metal.
 
But the vast majority would consider themselves absolute amateurs, and this is where the magic is to be found. Come the second weekend of December every window sill, corner, altar, and flat surface in the church is full. You might spot a model which someone has clearly spent many hours working on. There’s probably something knitted. An exhibit from the school may well have photos of the children included. Someone might offer a piece of abstract art, or a poem. Coming Home For Christmas saw a couple of cosy, domestic scenes, but also two exhibits which picked up on the theme of homelessness. Apart from a couple of local artists most of the exhibitors would simply laugh at the idea of showing anything they have made anywhere else. And for the vast majority this will be the only time they visit church all year.
 
What am I describing here? A successful church fundraiser, which other parishes might like to emulate? No. There’s something more going on here. Of course, the conversations among the visitors over coffee, mince pies and mulled wine make for a very special atmosphere. But as I’ve watched this event develop year by year it’s spoken to me at a deeper level. I think that’s because it’s this glorious coming together of participants who first manage to find that little spark of courage to get involved. They then rise to the challenge of each successive theme, take the risk of trying something out, and share with everyone something… new.
 
Where others might make polite comments and not really see anything special, I can’t help but sense that we are standing on holy ground. Why is that? Is it because at the heart of this enterprise is a revelation of creativity? Increasingly, the former categories and language for God seem to be failing us, but wherever you see the joy and delight of people making stuff, taking risks, working together or alone, then surprising themselves by being able to sit back and declare, “I did that!” – well, this for me is divine life. As others have said, God is Creativity.  
 
Like some of the best things in life, no one designed this event to be like this. Like other good things we know, words can only do a second-rate job in their attempt to describe something so precious and quirky, and yet which also draws and touches upon something quite profound within the human spirit. There is love here, this is life here, there is fullness of life here. So for me this is God. And Christmas… Incarnation… of course! God with us, God alive in us, God stretching us. As Ilia Delio says, “Where there is God, there is the invitation to create.”
 
Keith Griffin

Jesus’ invitation has become the name of a group meeting which I facilitate here in Lewisham. This group started in March 2016 and it is addressed to “those who care for a loved one suffering from ill-health”.
 
How did it start? Since arriving in England I have worked for 15 years as a Chaplain, first in prison and then about 10 years in a psychiatric hospital. As a chaplain I had a duty of care for patients, staff and families. Most of my time was naturally spent with patients in great need and distress on the wards.
 
Over the years I became more deeply aware of the needs of the families. Serious illness affects of course the patients first of all, and the care in the hospital is naturally focused on them. However it affects also their families, partners, communities, especially once discharged back home and needing care, be it physical, emotional or mental health care. I also noticed how often faith is an important support and comfort for those who care for a loved one. I discovered that there is a variety of support for carers available, be it information, advocacy, well-being, respite and more. However I could not find much in terms of spiritual support offered in this specific context. That is how the desire to offer a space for spiritual, religious support grew within me. As the community moved to Lewisham in 2014, I grasped this time of new beginnings to launch such a group.
 
I started, early 2016, by facilitating two sessions called ‘Soundings’, which gave me the opportunity to listen and get a sense of the needs, and also the practical possibilities of those who care for a loved one. I then decided on a monthly 2-hour session late morning from 10.30-12.30. The invitation suggests: ’Come away, pause, be, reflect, pray, listen, share with others the joys and difficulties on this journey of daily caring.’ Two hours is not very long for all this, but it is in the nature of caring that often people cannot get away for very long. Each session has four main parts: first a moment to catch up informally, then a more formal time of listening to each other, as each participant shares something about their experience of the last month: a point that has been difficult, painful, and also something that has given them strength, joy… Those who wish then take a quiet time of reflection, prayer, and those who prefer to continue some sharing stay together. We then all meet at the end for a final simple liturgy.
 
The participants come from a variety of backgrounds and contexts. The loved ones they care for can be a parent, a partner, a young child, an adult child, or even one or several neighbours. Some live together with the one they care for, others not. Some need 24-hour-care, others need different kinds of care and support. The needs of the participants vary as well. Some enjoy being together, sharing, … others need more space for quiet and reflection. Respect and flexibility to accommodate these various needs is important.
 
Sometimes the question, the dilemma surfaces, whether it is ok to take time out for me, when the care needs are so great. To be with others who also take time out can be a great support. A place where the question ‘How are you?’ is not only addressed to the patient but to the one who is caring for him or her. Yes, ‘Come away’ and ask each other and ourselves ‘And how are You today?’
 
Regula
Sisters of St Andrew

The business of being empty and waiting, being open & sometimes something coming. Often, I sense its existence before I can express it in words. Sometimes it’s another voice speaking, and I am surprised at what I hear and then write.  It’s a process I’m aware of in writing many of these blogs. I only start to write something if I feel led to do so, and then it can take some time to take shape. I might wake in the night with an additional insight or a recognition that I need to change drastically what I’ve written so far, or even abandon it altogether. Ideas often come during that period after waking up in the morning and while I’m still dozing, while I’m sitting mulling, or out walking. When I sense that I’ve got as far as I can, for now at any rate, then I’ll post it as a blog. And the beauty of a blog, over against a book, is that the process has no end, a thought is always evolving, I might re-visit it, and others can critique it, add to and be a part of it as well. It can become a corporate process and the richer for it.

I like John Henry Newman’s words: “No revelation can be complete and systematic, from the weakness of the human intellect; so far as it is not such, it is mysterious ... The religious truth is neither light nor darkness, but both together; it is like the dim view of a country seen in the twilight, which forms half extricated from the darkness, with broken lines and isolated masses. Revelation, in this way of considering it, is not a revealed system, but consists of a number of detached and incomplete truths belonging to a vast system unrevealed.”
If what is revealed in this process is “a number of detached and incomplete truths” and what we are talking about here is indeed ‘revelation’, which I think that it can be, then what is revealed will be greater & more reliable if a number of people are involved, indeed, the more the better.  So please do join in by commenting.                   
My hunch is that all artists rely on this process, indeed we all do when we are being creative. Others may express it in art, music or some other creative form.  Alice Oswald expresses it in her poetry, I express it in my blogs. Crucially, we’ve all learnt to trust it.
This is also true with a spiritual experience.  Indeed it’s probably more accurate to see that all of the above is ‘spiritual experience’ in the sense that it appears to come unbidden from beyond our conscious selves. The experience precedes the words. My brain expresses it in English, and if I was French would express it in French, but the pre-verbal experience is presumably the same. The experience comes first & then our brain expresses it using the medium, language, symbolism & culture with which we are familiar.

Originally posted at A Contemporary Spirituality

The Journey
We took the first step and a volunteer drew up a design for the building and applied for planning permission. When this was granted in June 2019, work began. By July 2019 another Church member registered Horsforth Shed as a Charitable Incorporated Organisation. The charitable aims are to “promote social inclusion by assisting individuals to integrate into society. This means learning together in a workshop environment and creating an atmosphere of mutual support. The services of the Shed are directed towards helping any individual who is, or is at risk of becoming, socially excluded.”

Another gifted individual from the Church who agreed to take on the role of Chair of Trustees Our first grant application was for £1,000 from Horsforth Town Council. One of the councillors had a woodworm treatment business and the work was undertaken free of charge. This has exemplified the support we have received from both the Church and the wider community such as the Town and City Council, numerous businesses and both national and local grant providers. We feel that we have been pushing an open door and we have also been privileged to receive generous donations in terms of skills or finance from many different individuals.
 
Our core team of volunteers  gradually expanded. During the renovation we purposely drew alongside us students who were not in employment or training, the unemployed, people with a crisis in mental health or issues of addiction or older socially isolated individuals. These were the very people that we envisioned the Community Workshop serving. Professionals replaced the roof and some windows ,installed the exterior door and did the tarmac work and plastering. A qualified electrician joined us and undertook all the electrical installation free of charge saving many thousands of pounds. All of the other work was done by the volunteer team – insulation and cladding, drainage, flagging, plumbing, joinery, flooring etc. We calculate we raised £65,000 in cash and estimate we saved a similar amount through the use of volunteer labour.

The building was reroofed, with walls insulated and clad. All internal work was completed by the end of 2021 including the newly built social area We created level access and an accessible toilet so we can facilitate wheelchair users. Our aim was to create a well presented and welcoming environment.
 
Facilities & Equipment
The workshop is now fully equipped with a circular saw, band saw, chop saw, planer thicknesser, various sanding machines, scroll saw, router table, three woodwork lathes  and a mortice machine. We have a fully stocked tool cupboard and a wide range of battery-operated tools. There is provision for nine people to complete bench work as well as the social area and kitchen. Since we started operating we discovered the second hand dust extraction ducted to the cellar was not able to cope. Two companies have worked together to fund a more powerful extraction unit costing over £2,000 that has also being installed at their expense.
 
Delivering a service to the local community
In November 2021, an individual donor from Church gave a gift of £18,000 to enable us to employ a part time Shed Manager for two days per week. We also have ten volunteers who are being trained as Shed Supervisors with accredited training in the use of the equipment and full DBS checks. For Health and safety reasons we always have two people running each session.

From the start of 2022 we have been operating for at least two and a half days per week. In the first three month of 2023 we have met with nine different groups totalling over 90 participants and delivered a total of 74 sessions with over 500 hours of contact time in the workshop. During this time we have been supported by ten volunteers who have contributed almost 200 hours of their time.
 
What an achievement
It goes without saying that none of this would have been possible without the wonderful support we received from across the community. As project leader it has been a humbling experience to see so many give so generously.

Since opening our doors to the public at the start of 2021, we have engaged with a range of different individuals and groups. Although users praise the quality of the facilities and the opportunity to learn new skills, the mental health and social benefits of using the Shed are what shine through in testimonials. One drop-in session participant described how the Shed offers ‘a chance to have some creative time whilst being therapeutic - a way to ease the anxiety experienced following the problems and events of the last few years. Another said the Shed ‘has helped me a lot and given me the confidence to try new things’. Another commented on the ‘calm and friendly environment’ where they ‘feel less isolated and more productive while learning valuable skills’.  “It's the best thing I do all week,” said Jim, a recovering addict.
 
Here are some of the activities underrtaken. 

• Engaging with students not in mainstream education
  In the past six months we have had three half day sessions per week with students struggling to cope with mainstream education. They attend in small numbers, and we work alongside their staff. As the school itself does not have workshop facilities, we are able to enrich their curriculum with activities the students find engaging. We have also provided one-to-one support to a young person who post-covid felt unable to cope with school.
• Christmas Willow Star Weaving
  Responding to a request from a Willow Star Weaver (!) we offered the use of our facilities for this one day event. It was a well-publicised event that helped to put Horsforth Shed on the map.
• Supporting the local Cubs, Brownies, Scouts and Guides
  One of our volunteer Session Supervisors works with the local Cubs and Brownies groups and has been able to use the workshop for them to achieve some ‘badges’.  Bug hotels were produced in two hours of workshop time.
• Working alongside Lighthouse (West Yorkshire)
  - a charity and faith-based community, Lighthouse supports individuals on the margins of society, those ‘battered and bruised by the storms of life.’ Every Friday afternoon they share a fish’n’chip lunch and then work on their own projects or help out on projects that the Shed is undertaking for others. Most recently they helped to make a book library box for a primary school.
• Teenage lads in the care system or in need of support
  We have offered free weekly two-hour sessions to these lads who face various struggles. Christmas trees were a particular success when LED lights were added.
• Weekly afternoon drop-in session
  Attendees are either self-referrals or those referred to us by social prescribers.This has been a free weekly session running from the very start. We have now reached capacity with this group and are looking to run an additional weekly session.
• Engaging with students on the Autism spectrum
  We have started working with a post-18 provider for students with autism. Again, we offer curriculum enrichment. The theme was provided by the students – the environment and gardening.
• Woodwork evening classes
  In response to a request from a local employer we offered recreational woodwork classes. After some basic skills teaching, students engaged on a wide range of projects.

 
The last word
Will (not his actual name) is someone who attended with the Lighthouse group. Students may choose their own projects, and these range from storage units, stools, shelves to mug racks. Will, someone who has seriously struggled with issues of addiction and poor self-worth chose to produce a crucifix (image below). He cut a space through it and inserted a mirror. When asked why he said, ‘when you look into the mirror you see that you’re made in the image of God.’ Look closely and you can perhaps see his face – it was a beautiful moment.

However, very recently Will was so overwhelmed by his struggles that he took his own life, a sadly too common event in the life of the Lighthouse community. The family at the funeral were supported by over thirty members of his friends from this special community and were amazed to see what he had created. They were given the cross as a memento of Will's creative gifting. May Will’s recognition of being made in Gods image transform their and all of our relationships, relationships with each other, with God and with ourselves. What stands out is that working with others blesses us far more than it does them, it is great to learn from each other as we journey together. We are indebted to Will for what he has shared with us.
 
See https://www.horsforthshed.co.uk for more details.”

School nativity plays have not served us well here, but they are only copying much great art. The problem is easy to state but less easy to resolve. How do you visually depict an angel appearing to Mary or Joseph or a group of shepherds, without appearing ridiculous?
 
An angel is a messenger from God, and the Bible is full of examples of people experiencing God speaking to them. If you make a list of the ways that God spoke to people in the Bible it soon becomes clear that God is able to speak through almost anything. Jesus heard God speak to Him at His baptism, but I doubt if anyone else heard it.  Isaiah heard God speak to him in the Temple through a vision. God spoke to the prophet Amos through him seeing a man with a plumb-line on a building site, and to the prophet Hosea through his experience of divorce. There are stories of God speaking through dreams. Christians experience God speaking to them through a man dying on a cross. Large numbers of people today testify to an experience of being spoken to by God, but I’ve never heard any of them mention a winged human figure in white.
 
One of my earliest and most memorable encounters with an angel happened many years ago. I shall never forget it. It was a Saturday morning in autumn. I’d left my house feeling down and fed up and was walking across a patch of grass kicking dolefully through fallen leaves. A small boy of maybe seven or eight was walking towards me, and when he drew near said ‘Hallo Henry, would you like a crisp’, and he held out a packet of salt and vinegar crisps. Now I don’t like salt and vinegar crisps but it seemed ungracious to say ‘No’, so instead I said ’Thank you’ took one, and we parted. As I walked I suddenly realised that my feeling of gloom had gone, and that I was feeling cheerful, all as a result of this encounter with a small boy who knew me but whom I didnt know. 
 
Reflecting on the experience I realised two things. First, that a miracle had occurred because something powerful and life-giving had changed inside of me, and secondly, that I had experienced God’s love through the offering and acceptance of a crisp: God had spoken to me, and the vehicle God had used was a small boy, who was therefore an angel!  I was sure that his parents would have been surprised if I’d told them that their son was an angel, but so, at least briefly, he was. 
 
I now most days do a regular look back over the previous twenty four hours and ask myself when I have had a similar sort of experience and find that they happen not infrequently and invariably unexpectedly. Any encounter with another person is potentially an encounter with an angel, with someone through whom God may speak to me.  Experience has taught me that it’s mainly down to my openness and awareness. There’s potentially an angel in everyone, so why do I find it easier to be aware of God speaking to me through this person rather than that one?  Ahh!!!.  Of course this works in reverse as well, so we each of us will probably from time to time, without our being aware of it, be someone through whom God speaks to another: we will be angels.
 
And it doesn’t have to be limited to people, for there’s an angel in everything. I was sat by a river recently and asked myself ‘what might the angel of the river be saying?’  And the answer was immediate and obvious ‘I’m moving slowly and I know that I’ll get to the sea eventually, so I’m in no hurry.”  The angels of rivers, trees, flowers and animals consistently offer wisdom that runs counter to that of human society.  To pay attention to angels is to open to a level of awareness that riches and deepens human experience. It’s easy to trivialise it, but life enhancing to embrace it.
 

But I’m not a first century Jewish Christian. I’m a twenty-first century Christian who knows from personal experience that God loves me unconditionally. As Paul wrote in Romans 8 “there is…nothing in all creation that can separate us from the love of God in Jesus Christ our Lord.”  I seem to be unusual in having never known God as judgemental, but as accepting and loving. I guess that I owe that to my parents and the friendly little middle-of-the-road Anglican church in which I grew into faith. But, if not as a sacrifice, what sense am I to make of Jesus’ death and resurrection?
 
The Gospels are clear that Jesus’ ministry began as a consequence of his baptism by John the Baptist, who proclaimed “a baptism in token of repentance [a change of direction], for the forgiveness of sins” [Mark 1:4]. Matthew was obviously embarrassed by the implication that Jesus must have had something to repent of, in order to come to John, and tries to explain it off. But I’m not convinced. I think it more likely that Jesus came for baptism precisely because He felt the need for forgiveness, and was then overwhelmed by hearing God speak to Him: “You are my beloved son, in you I take delight.”  I think  a spiritual experience of that magnitude is often preceded by a deep awareness of failure, but more of that later.
 
No wonder that He took Himself off into the wilderness to try and make some sense of this. If God loves him as a son, accepting and trusting him whatever he might have done in the past, without him offering any sacrifice, then what sort of God is this, and does this God want of him now, by way of a response?
 
When He returned, He did so with a message rather different from that of John the Baptist. A change of direction was required not because of the threat of Divine Judgement, but because the Kingdom of God is upon us, the Kingdom of the unconditionally loving Father God, of not just Jesus but of everybody.  All are welcome in God’s Kingdom, as God’s children, no sacrifices are necessary. All that was required was that people trusted Jesus’ message about God, as some did. 
 
In this Jesus was being feral, in trusting His own experience of God, rather than what the religious authorities of His day, said about God.  He spoke with authority because He spoke from His own experience of God, not from what somebody else had told Him. Not surprisingly, the religious authorities were not impressed: they felt threatened. Jesus was thrown out of the synagogue in Nazareth, and in time the religious authorities in Jerusalem would connive at His death.
 
The Gospels are full of Jesus’ teaching. He was a good Jew and taught that the key thing was that people should love God, and their neighbour, that was the fulfilling of the Jewish religious Law. But I’m fascinated by the fact that Jesus in His teaching rarely quoted the Jewish scriptures, instead it’s based on stories and incidents from everyday life, and most probably from His own experience.
 
He assumed that God would look after Him, and it seems that God did. Jesus was homeless, and there’s no hint that He ever expected or sought payment for His ministry. But angels were with Him in the wilderness, and angels in human form provided practical support [Luke 8:3 talks of women who provided for Jesus and the Twelve out of their own resources] and others welcomed Him and His followers into their homes. An anonymous man provided the Upper Room for the Last Supper. The loving God provided His son with friends and supporters.
 
Although He was thrown out of the synagogue in Nazareth, He managed to walk away unharmed. He we never arrested by the civil authorities. He must have known from the example of the Old Testament prophets that suffering was likely to be his lot, and that trusting His experience of God was unlikely to be an easy road, but would probably require Him to bear a cross on God’s behalf. He warned his followers about the need to take up their own crosses.  But through it all, He continued to trust the God Whom He knew.  What He was doing He was doing for God, it was God’s calling that He was responding to.
 
Did He expect to be crucified? I’m not sure, but He must have known it was possible. Did He hope that the God Who had spoken to Him at His baptism, would rescue Him? Maybe. But His cry of dereliction “My God, my God why have You forsaken me” was real and suggests that on the cross He wondered if He’d made a terrible mistake in his knowledge that he was the son of an unconditionally loving God.  He doesn’t seem to have felt forsaken by friends and followers who had betrayed, denied and abandoned him, as He might well have done, but He did feel abandoned by God.
 
And then God raised Him from death, vindicating both Him personally, and perhaps more importantly, what He had taught about God being loving, accepting, and trusting.  What Jesus made of that we have no record, He didn’t speak about it, rather He came to His followers with forgiveness, and the stories of their encounters are all about their being commissioned to continue His ministry, and promising them His continuing presence and support in doing so. 
 
The Gospels begin and end with these very similar experiences, like two bookends. First Jesus comes to John the Baptist to repent before God for something He did and to His surprise is overwhelmed by God’s response: an act of unconditional acceptance, love and commissioning. Then the Gospels end with the disciples full of despair and shame at their abandoning of Jesus, but then are overwhelmed by the Risen Jesus appearing to them with words of acceptance, forgiveness and commissioning.  Paul’s conversion experience on the road to Damascus follows the same pattern. It's one I know from personal experience and so do many others
 
I don’t believe that Jesus’ death and resurrection changed God into being a loving rather than a judgemental One, what it changed was human beings understanding of God.  God revealed God-self through Jesus as delighting in all of creation, and offering all human beings a personal relationship which is loving, accepting and trusting, like the relationship Jesus had with God, and which He then showed to His followers after His resurrection: a relationship that transcends death as it does for Jesus. It fulfils the Jewish teaching about ‘Love God and love your neighbour’ as we seek to share the relationship we have with God with the rest of humankind. Much of the world doesn’t know this, and it won’t be an easy road, but if we take up our own cross then we will find it as the way to Life as Jesus did.
 
Several things stand out for me.

Jesus died for God, for His belief in a God of Love. He didn’t die for us, He died because the religious institutions of His day found His message too threatening. His death and resurrection had huge implications for humankind, but He died for God.
 
He was led to do that because of His own personal experience of a God Who loved and accepted Him, and he incarnated that relationship with His followers. In doing so, He trusted what he knew, over and above the religious wisdom of His day.
 
Our part, in the words of Malcolm Guite in ‘David’s Crown’ is to “Take up my part in the unfinished tale of Jesus’ risen life, once more renew My little role within the coming kingdom.” 
 
For me that means following Jesus and, like Him, trusting my own experience of God, being open to God speaking through the everyday events of life, taking time apart to pray, and then trying to support other people in their following of Jesus, as they support me. There’s almost inevitably going to be a feral aspect to that, and some will find it threatening, but that’s just how it is. Henry Morgan

Susan (not her real name) had been through unspeakable things in her life, but when I reconnected with her, she still had the impish smile and giddy personality I remembered. After a number of hospital stays, she found herself needing to use a wheelchair. At this point, she decided she wanted a wake before she died! A party to celebrate her life with friends and family whilst she was still alive! The other TLC residents and staff rallied round and worked with the help of the local pub landlady to arrange it, publicise it, make food for it, book a DJ and decorate the pub.
 
I went along, with my daughter, who had been friends with Susan when they were growing up. The love, joy of life, and hope were palpable. Susan had chosen a bright dress and glam shoes which she wore with joy and pride sat in her wheelchair with a big beam on her face, and seemingly oblivious to the various tubes attached to her. Her TLC friends reminded me of Jesus’ disciples – a motley crew! – and their love for Susan screamed compassion, understanding, acceptance, unconditional love. The music was joyful, celebratory – and when Rick Astley’s ‘Never goin’ to give you up, never goin’ to let you down’ blasted through the speakers, Susan danced in her wheelchair with my daughter, as they relived their friendship thirty or so years earlier! The spirit of Godness was everywhere in that pub bar. Goodness oozed from every pore of humanity, and every fibre of being.
 
It wasn’t many weeks after that when Susan died. Knowing her wish to be buried as a Moslem, the TLC staff made the arrangements within the customary 24 hours. Her family wanted to hold a Christian ‘thanksgiving’ service for her sometime later, in a church in a local town. I went to that service. I found it sterile, forced, ersatz compared with the wake. Jesus was at the wake, dancing, laughing, joining in the joy. He was not in the church. Maybe he was outside weeping.

Or maybe he was in the pub.

He’s been vilified as the betrayer, but was he really that much worse than the other male disciples? Peter denied Jesus, the others, bar Peter, James & John, fell asleep in the Garden of Gethsemane, all of them ran away when Jesus was arrested, and apart from John none of them seem to have been present when Jesus was crucified.  None of the male disciples covered themselves in glory. Why put all the blame for Jesus’ death on Judas? Who would benefit from doing so?
 
What stirs me most powerfully is my sense that Judas has been made a scapegoat. Scapegoating is a nasty business: it places all the blame & responsibility for failure solely on one person’s shoulders, leaving everybody else looking innocent. Everyone else is free of any responsibility because its all the fault of the one scapegoated. Society does a lot of scapegoating, and so does the church. I’ve written about it before. And I fear its what we’ve done to Judas.
 
In the Synoptic Gospels, Mark, Matthew, & Luke each recount how at the Last Supper Jesus said that one of the disciples would betray him, and all asked ‘Is it me?’  Jesus doesn’t answer the question. Only Matthew goes on to link the betrayal with Judas.  All three imply that Judas was present at the sharing of the bread & wine. Whatever Judas might be about to do, Jesus did not exclude him from the fellowship of the Last Supper. But then when Jesus leads the disciples into the Garden of Gethsemane, it is Judas who leads a crowd of armed men to arrest Jesus, having identified Him to them by kissing Him. One of Jesus’s followers resorted to violence & cut off the ear of one of the High Priest’s slaves and was rebuked by Jesus for doing so. Jesus was then led away.
 
John’s Gospel explains that the arrest was necessary because the religious leaders in Jerusalem were concerned that Jesus’ popularity would lead to a bloody confrontation in Jerusalem that would precipitate a brutal Roman reaction. Thus, they wanted to get Jesus out of the way, & looked for a way in which He could be arrested quietly, without provoking a violent reaction.They needed someone who could take their armed men to where Jesus could be found alone, and they needed someone who could identify Him to them so that they could arrest Him. That would make sense.
 
But I wonder if Jesus might have wanted much the same thing? He could hardly have been unaware of the possibility that His presence in Jerusalem at the Feast of the Passover, with some hotheads proclaiming that He was the Messiah, would lead to a bloody confrontation with the Romans, and its not difficult to imagine that he would not have wanted it.  He probably foresaw the religious authorities wanting, indeed needing, to arrest Him, & didn’t want His followers to take up arms to resist them. I suspect that He might have welcomed the opportunity the face the religious authorities alone, without endangering the lives of His disciples, and to speak to them face to face, placing His trust in God as to the outcome.
 
If Jesus wanted to avoid a disastrous violent confrontation, but welcomed an opportunity for a meeting between Him & the religious authorities, how might that come about, other than the way in which it did?  Might He have either asked Judas to do what he did, or perhaps was aware of what Judas would do & was content to let it happen?  Either way up I wonder if Judas’ actions brought about what Jesus wanted, and if the two of them might even have been cahoots to achieve it? If so then Judas expected a positive outcome and was appalled by what actually transpired & his part in it, and so took his own life. If he hadn’t, Jesus would surely have forgiven him as He forgave the others, wouldn’t He?

Spirituality is about life under God and implies knowing and being known by God, on the one hand, and responding in life on the other. Feral spirituality is about that, outside and beyond the bounds of organised religion. It is impossible to know for sure if somebody knows God or is aware of being known by God, but its not so difficult to recognise activity that demonstrates living out of that knowledge, and so to some extent, named or not named, knowing it. St Paul in Galatians names the fruits of the Spirit of God as being “love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.” I’d add ‘hope’.  Wherever and whenever we encounter those things we are encountering feral spirituality, and its everywhere.  There are stories on the web-site of that happening in places you might not expect to find, that excite and encourage me. But it mostly happens in tiny ways, involving people of all faiths and none, and usually well below my radar, which of course seems to be God’s preferred ‘modus operandi’.
 
Secondly, that links with my increasing preference for talking about spiritual conversations rather than spiritual direction. A spiritual conversation can take place, and frequently does, with anyone and anything. It's not just human beings who are called to incarnate something of God, it's everything. I can, and sometimes do, have a spiritual conversation with a flower, a tree, a landscape, an animal, a piece of music, a painting or sculpture, a poem, as well as with a fellow human being. If I can, everyone and everything can.
 
I am excited by this not because I imperialistically want to plant a ‘feral spirituality flag’ or a spiritual conversation flag on lots of new territory. But because I want a to plant a God flag there.  God is not dead but everywhere, it’s a matter of becoming aware. God is active and busy in the lives of people of all faiths and none, and in every aspect of creation.
 
Thirdly, all of the above, has coloured my understanding and love of the feral Jesus.
 
The implications of this seem to me to be huge, life changing, and very much needed, not only by me, but much more importantly, by our world.  If ‘feralspirituality’ can increase its awareness in even a small way, it will have justified its existence.

Henry

PS - An appendix to the above entry
I’ve just spent a relaxing weekend with one of my daughters, who lives in Swansea. She introduced me to Clyne Gardens which are close to her new home, and on Saturday while she was out, I went for a wander there. I wandered rather than walked, and as there is so much to look at, it's best to go slowly and to stay open to surprises. I found a bench by a small pond and sat and gazed around me in silence. After a while, a lady walked past with her dog, and we fell into conversation. Her dog was getting on in years, and she told me that it had been rescued from the streets of Cyprus, greatly overweight, and brought back to Wales where she had adopted it and cared it into a much healthier condition.  ‘Hmm’ I thought.
 
She then went on to tell me of how a woman she knew had recently wandered past the pond where we now were, and had noticed that a bat had flown into the water, presumably by accident, had managed to get to the pond’s edge but was unable to get itself out. So, she knelt by the pond, slipped her hand into the water and beneath the bat, and had lifted it up and out, before holding it in the sunshine until it was dry and able to fly away. But not before biting her hand. ‘Hmm’ I thought. ‘That’s two examples of feral spirituality that I’ve learnt about in less than five minutes”
 
I wandered on and found a small decorated caravan covered in plants where another woman was selling refreshments. As she was not busy, I fell into conversation with her too. She was kind and friendly, made me an excellent cup of tea and sold me a piece of shortbread and one of rockyroad, that I took to a nearby bench to eat and drink. There were parents encouraging small children to walk and to explore; there were people with dogs, many dogs, having great fun chasing each other; there were people just strolling by, others standing and chatting, and others like me drinking tea and eating. I thought, ‘this place is full of examples of feral spirituality in every direction I look.’
 
There’s a chapel in the Gardens, with a service on a Sunday, and I had thought I might go, but I realised that I didn’t need to as I was being offered all the hospitality and spiritual nourishment I needed sat on this bench.  Some of the couples walking by were holding hands, and for a moment I felt lonely, sat on my own. But then I thought ‘Come on H, you’re sat in this beautiful place surrounded by feral spirituality if you have the awareness to see it, surely God is holding your hand here?’  And it was true.