Anchors and Masts Your house shall not be an anchor but a mast (Khalil Gibran)

What’s in a label?

July 3, 2010

Often when I’m talking about the Enneagram, people get worried that discovering their personality “type” is going to put a label on them. We tend to resent being labelled, but we label ourselves all the time: conservative/liberal, gay/straight, old/young, extrovert/introvert. Some of our labels are factual, some are a question of degree, some are more [...]

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Solstice grieving, Solstice hope

June 21, 2010

Today is Summer Solstice in the Northern hemisphere, the longest day of the year, on which people gather to greet the sun at sacred sites such as Stonehenge. As I stand in my wild garden today, I see and hear dozens of bees conducting their age-old sacred dance in and out of the flowers. But [...]

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Plastic not fantastic

June 7, 2010

Do you want to join me in an experiment to see how much plastic we use and how we can decrease it radically? Following my last post about earth-based spirituality, I went searching for some intelligent blogs exploring Paganism, and stumbled across Quaker Pagan Reflections. In turn this led me to its offshoot, Chestnut House, [...]

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I’m Christian but…

May 31, 2010

“I’m Christian but I would say I have Pagan leanings.” If I had £10 for every time I’ve heard a woman say that recently, I’d be… well perhaps not wealthy but at least off to have a meal in a very expensive restaurant. What might this mean? Are Christians and Pagans always at odds? First, [...]

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Life in its own time

May 22, 2010

One week ago today at Turvey Abbey, I watched a friend take her final vow to become a Benedictine Oblate (lay Benedictine). The service was moving, I had a big lump in my throat as she stood on the spot in the chapel where vows are taken and coffins lie and said the words that [...]

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The Buddha Community

May 14, 2010

I will be away for the weekend. I leave you with this thought that I posted at my other blog, Sacred Graffiti, this week: It is possible that the next Buddha will not take the form of an individual. The next Buddha may take the form of a community, a community practicing understanding and loving [...]

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Deaf studies course might close

May 10, 2010

I just realised something unflattering about myself: I’m getting too big for my boots. A friend asked if I would publicise the potential closure of an important course run at the Centre for Deaf Studies at Bristol University. Well perhaps, I said grandly, but I’d have to consider the context for my readers in putting [...]