This post is the first in a short series over six weeks, during a time of pilgrimage. Daily descriptions of my journey, some reflections and photos are being offered in our River Dart Wild Church fb community. So these longer sabbath posts will probably be more about inner musings, including in relation to the ‘seasons of the spirit’ which are a central part of my spiritual practice. I’ll try to add some more descriptive journey journalling at the end, taken from my fb posts, for those not on facebook… so scroll down if need be!
Today is Mothering Sunday, traditionally a time to return to one’s mother church and remember the mysterious spiritual birth of baptism. For me, this year, it also marks the end of the first week of a pilgrimage I am making to mark the transition between leaving my Mother Church, the Church of England (C of E), and moving towards wherever my next spiritual home may be. As someone who received Anglican baptism as an adult, I experienced a similar transitional time within the sacrament itself, as quite some time elapsed between my baptism in England and my confirmation in Scotland. How unexpected that I now find myself on a similar journey, both spiritually and in travelling north again.
I remember baptism and beyond as a deeply painful time. The conservative evangelical vicar of my local English parish disapproved of my mystical, radical approach to Christianity and due to his positional power was able to make this felt in various ways, including by excluding me from receiving communion. In the name of ‘good order’, through insisting on a delay between baptism and confirmation, I was first welcomed into the faith and then immediately kept out of its hospitable heart. In years to come, this helped inspire the inclusive welcome and open, collaborative communion that are a hallmark of the Wild Church I would later found. I hoped that no one in our community would experience the pain I had felt.
So I have not been back to my ‘mother church’ since my baptism. Happily my experience of being received into the Scottish Episcopal Church (SEC) was completely different. That was a day of true magic and mystery as I gathered with a small and loving congregation, in a tiny chapel by a beautiful Highland loch side. I still remember the sensation of the Bishop anointing my forehead with oil and the feeling that fiery wings had folded themselves around me in a healing embrace. It felt like a real initiation, through which I was set free, empowered, and from which flowed the unfolding of so much creativity in the years that followed, as we created a remote retreat centre and collaborated in some great community projects. So, although it cannot be today, I will travel back to that congregation and chapel in the weeks of pilgrimage still to come, as my true mother church.
In my experience as a psychotherapist mothering is a very complex experience for many people. Not everyone knows or can easily relate to their birth mother. As in my baptism experience, our first experiences of being mothered can be wounding and open a need for healing. Or our wounds may open later in seeking to mother and finding ourselves bereft of being able to love in the way we longed for. While for some the wound is in meeting stereotypes of how gender and its sexuality and creativity can be expressed. Mothering is a mystery that can take so many forms, serving as a metaphor for diverse ways of being generative and of embodying tender love and fierce compassion. I remember the many times I have heard our local Eastern Orthodox priest speak of Mother Mary, the Theotokos or God bearer, and how She inspires him and every Christian to be pregnant and give birth to Christ in their own life. Whether we are a person of faith or not, I believe that gestating and birthing radical compassion and justice in our lives is something we are all called to, each in our own unique and diverse ways.
When I was on pilgrimage in my late teens, in India, I remember being inspired by Tibetan Buddhist perspectives on mothering. In their tradition, a human life is rare and precious, and whatever their limitations (and as a mother myself, I am well aware of my limitations in this regard) our mother gives us that gift of life. Our spiritual or philosophical matrices similarly gift us with a more subtle but no less powerful way of living. It can be challenging in the face of wounding in our literal and spiritual experiences of being mothered to face both the reality of pain and the good gifts received. I feel this in relation to the C of E – as my first mother church, it is part of my spiritual DNA and there is much to be grateful for, alongside needing to also be honest about the abusive experiences it brought into my life, from early days in Church schooling until my final withdrawal during ordination training. Yet throughout my life, other spiritual mothers have followed and new spiritual families have been birthed, such as this one within Wild Monastery and Wild Church, for which I am deeply grateful.
It is this community that has enabled me, through kind thoughts and generous donations, to take time off for this sabbatical time of pilgrimage, within this my twentieth year in public ministry. So for those who have not been travelling with me in our facebook community, here is a whistle stop tour of the first week:
Day 1 – My wild monastery pilgrimage got off to an interesting start yesterday… being stuck on the M5! Got to my tea stop at Tyntesfield to find the cafe closed but still much to enjoy, including hot house peach blossom & the best rainwater goods! Tyntesfield seemed to embody my mixed feelings about the C of E… beautiful in many ways & yet literally built on shit (it’s Anglo Catholic owners, the Gibbs family, made their money from the guano trade, based in slave labour).The Gibbs were members of the Oxford movement & supported the return of pre-Reformation Catholic practices to the C of E, which I personally feel much resonance with. It’s that very difficult relationship between beauty, wealth & oppression that I struggle with… much to reflect on and it’s only Day One! On leaving Tyntesfield all us M5 pilgrims then slogged through a biblical downpour with very poor visibility but finally the promised land was in sight: Mucknell Abbey. More about that soon…
Day 2 – Now at Mucknell Abbey, an eco Anglican Benedictine enclosure near Worcester. Wonderful wild prayer walk today, which nourished my Druid and wild Christian soul, with masses of ‘golden bough’ mistletoe in the hawthorn hedges and a beautiful, old oak on which to rest one’s pilgrim staff. So many blessings… bells & beehives, and all manner of birds including a lapwing and curlew, which I now rarely see as both are red listed endangered species.
Mucknell Abbey is also a rare species – a double house of female & male monks living alongside each other. This was common in early Celtic times but no longer. This community are forward thinking in many ways, having sold their old buildings to create this new, green, home base. They have a fascinating ‘ark’ of a chapel or oratory, as pictured above, which has such a deep sense of peace from the seven times of prayer each day. Heating is provided by Harry the biomass boiler & electricity by photovoltaics. There is a huge kitchen garden, plus forty acres with a meandering stream, ponds and tree planting. This is a great place for retreat with clean and cosy, private en-suite rooms and three modest meals a day, all available on a donation basis. More details here: https://mucknellabbey.org.uk/retreats-quietdays/
Day 3 – From Mucknell Abbey to snowy Cumbria… via Japan! I stopped for lunch at Tatton Park, which has the most beautiful Japanese garden, complete with a Shinto temple and tea house. I was quite enchanted… and then grateful to warm up in the orchid & fern houses afterwards. Then back on the road and after some time stuck again (this time) on the M6, I met my first snow in Cumbria. Now staying with my friend Steve and his husband Ian at their retreat centre near Mungrisdale. Tired now, so will share more about this tomorrow.
Day 4 – Fatigue has really hit today… so very grateful to have a hermitage, no schedule and a wonderful selection of places in which to sit and contemplate, here at the Sacred Space Foundation.
This is another place that offers retreats (self catering) on a donation basis. For more details see: https://www.sacredspace.org.uk/
and you can find out about their wisdom school courses here: https://kentigern.org.uk/the-kentigern-school
Day 5 – I was so happy to wake up, see the sun and not feel like the living dead – thank God/dess! Cumbria said farewell beautifully with bees humming in the heather, light moving over the hills and a breakfast shared with red squirrels. Then back on the M6 heading north again.
I realised while laid low yesterday that this is also a journey back in time for me… I have so many memories of travelling this way with my husband & young children, first for holidays and then when we relocated in a van full of ducks, chickens & cats (that was a really mad journey!) Now I travel alone and appreciate all the living that has come before and also all the growing that has happened over the years since I last came this way. I realised today how much more present I am now in my own skin, more willing to feel all the wild range of being alive in both its beauties and challenges. That’s good to know…
Escaped the motorway around Moffat & took the scenic route into the hills, as favoured by Porsche drivers it seems! Stopped at fifteenth century Rosslyn Chapel which, even though it is more of a tourist destination since the ‘Da Vinci Code’ film, remains a remarkable sacred space. I especially enjoyed the Crypt and the many wild creatures and green man carvings. It must be one of the older wild churches.
Now happily arrived in Edinburgh to stay with my dear friend, Beth, who was such an important collaborator in setting up our wild church…
Day 6 – A lovely day wandering and wondering around Edinburgh. We walked along Figgart Burn towards the sea at Portobello, then up Calton Hill for an all round view of the city. The real highlight for me though was visiting St Brigid, as painted by John Duncan, in the National Gallery. This has been one of my favourite depictions of Her for many years… I love the wild context with seal and seagulls, the gazes and holding of the angels and all the details of the life of Christ depicted on their robes. I took photos of a couple of details and also this picture of Beth and Bride together. On the way back we shopped for our supper in the best whole food workers co op, The New Leaf, where Beth works part time and then wound our way around Arthur’s Seat to home.
All text and images (unless otherwise stated) are my own – © Sam Wernham 2023
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