![]() Henry writes: A couple of years ago I read and enthused about a book 'A Boy, a Mole, a Fox and a Horse’ by Charlie Mackesy, and gave copies to friends as Christmas presents. This Christmas there was a film version of the story on BBC 1, and an audio version on BBC Sounds. Even if you’ve read the book I commend both the film and the audio. There was also a documentary on BBC 2 about the author, and the making of both the book and the film that I watched. There was something about Charlie Mackesy that fascinated and intrigued me, while not being able to put a finger on quite what: he somehow felt a tad feral to me. I looked him up on the internet, and found, slightly to my surprise, that he’s a Christian. I say surprised because he had in no way alluded to that fact in the documentary, although I had sensed that he was a man with a deep spirituality, and that it undergirded his story. What is more, there was a video of him talking about his faith at Holy Trinity Brompton, and in a way that both delighted me & also challenged my assumptions about HTB. If you like to see the video, you can find it here.
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Mike writes: This weekend will be the first anniversary of my retirement from full time parish ministry. This Christmas has been very different from the last 30 or so years. I needed Christ to be very present to me in order to ward off a sense of being in the wilderness. To some extent, I have felt separated from everything familiar. I have been unable to reach out and touch what is familiar because it no longer is.
At times during this year I have felt that I cannot know Christ other than when one knows on entering a room that someone has just left it. The absence leaves a sense of presence (very R S Thomas, I know!). But that has been my experience. Retirement, for me, has been a kind of dying in the hope that I may be born again. A period, still ongoing, of laying down what was in order to gather anew a sense of self. To use an image of Christmas, there has been some unwrapping so that more of my true self may be revealed - a 'nakedness' before Christ and with Christ. A sense of his Spirit dissolving layers of the old ways of being in order that the new may reveal itself even in this latter part of my life. The Christmas story is full of journeys made and I sense we are all journeying for different reasons and and different ways. The Christmas season invites us to briefly turn aside in awe and wonder and pay homage to the One who travels with us, sometimes recognised, sometimes hidden, sometimes unknown. There is a warmth and wildness to this journey, which I have been particularly aware of in this first year of retirement. Mike (Barnard Castle, UK) ![]() Henry writes: Recently I was staying in London and a friend told me about the ‘Gaia Exhibition’ in Southwark Cathedral, a focus for thought and prayer for the care of our planet. Its a travelling exhibition that’s been in other cathedrals, and entrance was free. I was ordained in the Cathedral many years ago so its a place that has significance for me. Intrigued I went along and was taken aback by the sight of a huge revolving model of our Earth, hung suspended in the Nave of the Cathedral. Many people were present, of all ages and nationalities, walking round, or standing and gazing wrapped in wonder at what they were seeing. There was still and prayerful atmosphere. I went and stood in the Chancel and looked down the length of the building. Suddenly I remembered. It was a day in later November 1991, thirty years previously. I had with others edited a book ‘Approaches to Prayer’ that contained a wide range of different prayer exercises, and we had organised a Day of Prayer in the Cathedral at which many of those prayer exercise were available at different times and at various stations around the building, led by those who had written them. Large numbers of people came and it was a wonderful day. I had nothing to do but be there. The Cathedral always had a Eucharist at midday, so that was one of the prayer exercises, and I was asked if I’d administer a chalice. I was stood during the service behind the altar, and I had a vision: I saw our Earth in space, floating at the back of the Cathedral, prayer was rising like incense from all over it. And God said that all this prayer, from many faiths and centuries, offered in many languages, was all acceptable, as was the prayer being offered around the Cathedral at that moment. I was astonished and my understanding of prayer underwent a dramatic deepening, which changed me. Gradually it dawned on me that my vision was now being fulfilled, in the Gaia Exhibition’: people of all faiths and none were gathered in the Cathedral praying for our Earth and all their prayers were valid and acceptable. This at a time when the issues facing our world are everybody's issues, and they need us to cooperate in addressing them. Our various faith leaders need to set an example to our political leaders, one of mutual acceptance & affirmation. Keith sends this seasonal offering: We're now in the season when we hear the famous readings of God's light coming to shine in the darkness. We sing for the coming Emmanuel to "Disperse the gloomy cloud of night/And death's dark shadow put to flight."...
![]() Henry writes: A friend of mine, John Walker, was recently telling me about his son Jonny: a gifted musician…who founded the Keep Streets Live Campaign, to advocate for public spaces for people and against the criminalization of homelessness and street culture. Jonny once said: “Buskers act as civic lighthouses. We give directions, we break up fights, we call the police when we spot trouble. We talk to the lonely. We create moments of enjoyment between strangers, and contribute to the social and cultural enrichment of shared urban spaces. We are an integral part of the ecology of the street. We care deeply about the well-being of the places where we perform.” ![]() It started at a Jubilee lunch. I was giving out leaflets for a neighbourhood festival and got into conversation about death and dying (as one does!). I had written quite a lot about music and dying and it turned out they were organising a festival of dead. And so it began – three weeks of workshops, creative workshops, story-telling and discussions. Discussions in the planning centred around rooting the frippery of Hallowe’en into ecocreativity and the ancestors, and awareness of our present situation. One Thing’s Necessary this Christmas
With apologies to Hans Borli, wonderful Norwegian poet, who wrote the original One thing’s necessary — here in this hard world of ours of homeless and outcast people: Let God take residence in you. Walk into the darkness and clean the soot from the lamp. So that people on the roads can glimpse Light in your inhabited eyes. A Discussion full of Grace
Every six weeks or so I do chaplain duty in the cathedral where I welcome tourists and every hour say some prayers from the pulpit. That morning had been dull, in fact distinctly boring with few visitors, and they all seemed to be glued to their headphones and video guide... Henry writes: Sue from North Yorkshire, commenting on my story, raises some interesting questions. It would be good to read how others respond to them.
“I’ve read all the stories with great interest. I don’t know whether I’m feral or not ( it seems such a strong word, wild almost) but I do know that I don’t fit in the institutional church any more.”
“Reading Karen Armstrong’s latest book Sacred Nature: ‘A religious ritual should be a transformative event - it can never be a matter of simply going through the motions, however piously’. Church services for me feel like ‘going through the motions..’. Where is the beauty, the mystery, the silent wondering….”
“I feel bogged down in a mass of words. There is another way of communicating that doesn’t involve talking!”
“Your sense of being free when you left stipendiary ministry resonates very strongly with my sense of feeling free when I came out of the monastery. Though I believed it was of God I continue to wonder if it was just me wanting to ‘do my own thing’.”
Henry writes: In conversation recently with my friend Brian he told me of a friend who had visited this web-site and how it had reminded him of an Anthony de Mello story. Its one of my favourites and here is together with a comment on it by Pierre Teilhard de Chardin:
Anthony de Mello tells the following parable of the man who invented fire: “A long time ago, there was a man who invented the art of making fire. He took his tools and visited a tribe in the north, where the climate was bitter cold. The man taught the people how to make fire. And the people were spellbound. He showed them many uses for fire: they could cook, keep themselves warm, keep predators at bay and dance by firelight. So they built fire and were very grateful. But before they could express their gratitude, the man disappeared, because he wasn’t concerned with recognition or gratitude. He was concerned only with their well-being. The fire-making man visited a different tribe, and began to teach the art of making fire. Like the first tribe, this tribe was mesmerised. But the tribe members’ passion unnerved the tribe’s leaders. It didn’t take long for them to notice that the fire-making man drew large crowds, and the leaders worried about lost influence and power. Because of their fear, the leaders determined to kill the fire-making man and they devised a clever plan because they were worried that the tribe people might revolt. Can you guess what they did? The leaders made a portrait of the fire-making man, and displayed it on the main altar of the temple. The instruments for making fire were placed in front of the portrait, and the people were taught to revere the portrait and to pay reverence to the instruments of fire. The veneration and the worship went on for centuries. But there was no more fire.” “The day will come when, after harnessing space, the winds, the tides, and gravitation, we shall harness for God the energies of love. And on that day, for the second time in the history of the world, we shall have discovered fire.” Pierre Teilhard de Chardin I hope the feral world will extend itself beyond the inward spirituality which it invites - and which of course needs the nourishment of stories, encounters, experiences, and explorations - into different types of dialogues, such as between religion and science, between different religions, between theology and the humanities.
The postings so far demonstrate that there is a spiritual and intellectual need that values a space for sharing and exploring. AR (Reading). Please add your comments. ![]() Andrew Maynell writes: Recently I was sent this reflection on wild places by a friend, Andy Lord, who gave me permission to quote him: "Throughout his writing, Robert Macfarlane has been seeking to connect soul and land. In his writing on “wild places” he comments on what he sees as a primary idea of Coleridge: “that the self-willed forms of wild nature can call out fresh correspondences of spirit in a person. Wildness, in Coleridge’s account, is an energy which blows through one’s being, causing the self to shift into new patterns, opening up alternative perceptions of life.”[1] Personal life is opened up by attention to nature in ways that stir our spirits. An example he points to is the immense sense of life found in limestone gryke’s, small vertical fissures of up to ½ meter in width.[2] This life is connected to the friendships he has, notably Roger Deakin with whom he visited a number of the places spoken of in the book. Life is communal with all creation – human and nature alike. Macfarlane had started out by seeking the wild places in the world that seemed to be lost and found the wild in the abundance of life that exists everywhere: “As I had moved south, my own understanding of wildness had been altered – or its range had been enlarged. My early vision of a wild place as somewhere remote, historyless, unmarked, now seemed improperly partial… I had learned to see another type of wildness, to which I had once been blind: the wildness of natural life, the sheer force of ongoing organic existence, vigorous and chaotic. This wildness was not about asperity, but about luxuriance, vitality, fun.”[3]" [1] Robert Macfarlane, The Wild Places (London: Granta Books, 2017), 209 [2] Macfarlane, 168 [3] Macfarlane, 316 |
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Just wanting to say “yes” to this. You will be speaking for, and to, many. I will certainly be passing this on to others, and will contribute some thoughts myself later. So, I was delighted to see Feral Spirituality make an appearance. I'd think you could find many wanting to join in |