During my time at Tassajara Zen Monastery in my twenties, I remember hearing a quote by its founder, Shunryu Suzuki. Now that I am in midlife, naturally I can’t remember it fully! But it was something along the lines of… the way of a Zen Master is about continually falling down, then getting up and beginning again… and again. I am not a Zen or any other kind of Master but I certainly recognise the wisdom here and now that I have, more or less, made my peace with my Christian roots, I can recognise the same life-death-life wisdom teaching at the heart of the story of Christ’s ministry, crucifixion and resurrection.

Looking back at my last journal entry here, from almost two years ago, involves remembering a lot of falling down, getting up and beginning again. This has largely been through the experience of loss, at both a personal and collective level. Personally, this has included the struggle to let go of my fertile years and all that encompassed, following the death of my former husband and my last child leaving home. Also of having to stop taking my health for granted, as my experience of menopause has included a host of physical issues that have forced me to slow down and to make many changes in my life. Meanwhile, like many others during this time, I have also been living through the process of Brexit and its impact on my work, and living with the increasing turmoil of worldwide political and environmental crisis. 

During these recent years, my life has also included being engaged in doctoral research and going through a formal discernment and assessment process within the Church of England. Doing a PhD sounds kind of cool and clever when you write it down, but in reality it too is mainly just a process of dogged and sometimes desperate perseverance, which often seems to involve lying flat on one’s face on a metaphorical inner ground and then crawling onwards! People regularly say, ‘Are you enjoying it?’ What can I say! And as for having one’s vocation tested by the church, as a middle aged, female and feminist, pioneer minister engaging in creating new ways of being church on a self employed basis… I can only say that I feel a deep affinity with the founding figures of women’s suffrage or those who fought for women’s ordination. I can only hope that my small efforts to offer a different kind of deeply ‘creative, contemplative, collaborative and curious’ kind of mystical Christianity, that both breaks new ground and remains in relationship to established church, are playing some small part in raising the bread dough of contemporary spiritual life without completely killing off this little yeast strain.

So, here in a spirit of beginning again, I am re-launching my small social enterprise, formerly known as ‘Living Spirit’ and now as ‘Wild Spirit’ to reflect its focus on Wild Church, Wild Monastics and the Wild Wisdom School. I can’t promise a resurgence of online journalling, but the steady, spiritual work goes quietly on… of supporting individuals through spiritual counselling and offering peaceful stays in my micro monastery, of co-ordinating contemplative ‘Wild Monastic’ meetings and working with collaborators to create ‘Wild Church’ pilgrimages and Wild Wisdom community days. My prayers and blessings go out to each of us who, in our own unique ways, is trying to make a difference and in the process may well be mastering the art of falling down, getting up and beginning again… and again.