mystical

Being realistic about God

Being realistic about God

For several decades, energy and activity in the Church of England has been increasingly dominated by attempts to protect or advance or resolve disparate visions of the church, God and Jesus in a culture inhabited by various tribal groups. One half of the human race, women, have achieved a degree of emancipation and equality in the Church of England, but full equality is still some way off. Equality for LGBTQIA+ people remains a dream that isn’t going to be fulfilled in February. How long will it take for us to be fully heard, valued, welcomed and included? It will never be achieved, is the answer from some organisations and leaders.

Unknowing God

Unknowing God

In 1957, aged nearly 12, I knew with an arrogant conviction that if God disapproved of me loving another boy, then God was wrong and I was right. I knew I was right to trust my feelings and physical desire for intimacy and love. I trusted my intuition, my awareness of who I am. I have had to learn again to trust the arrogant wisdom of my youthful self. Today I am still learning to trust and listen to my contemporary self, my body and feelings, and the energy within.

A Rumour of Angels - the supernatural, secularisation and the mystical

A Rumour of Angels - the supernatural, secularisation and the mystical

I was 24 when Peter Berger published A Rumour of Angels. I think my High Church Anglican religious world was a supernatural world in which God ‘lived’ somewhere other than earth and could be communicated with through prayer and affected emotionally through worship. God could be apologised to in confession and seduced into liking us through sensuous liturgy. I live in a different domain now, the domain of sacred, holy, real presence in the here and now, a domain which has the powerful effect of taking me beyond my mundane, prosaic self and away from a conditionally-loving, judgemental God of heaven and hell, into another realm which is as real both here and now in the present moment and in the infinite elsewhere, in glory and beauty and the infusion of love.

Some of the essentials for contemplative living

Some of the essentials for contemplative living

I’ve compiled a list of the key essentials for the contemplative life which keep coming to me when I meditate. Elements that are important to me are usually missing from other people’s writings. These include the importance of the body (implicit in the incarnation) and of emotional and physical experience, and the importance of actively teaching people how to become aware of their intuitive contemplative self and nurture that self in ways that are so simple that people find it difficult to believe they really work – until they try.