Ancient Roots, Emerging Futures

Thanks for joining me on this virtual platform. Here’s something of the vision behind this website.

It seems to me that the enforced pause brought about by the coronavirus pandemic brought with it, among other things, a kind of grace. Now on the other side of its more extreme manifestations, the issues raised by this visitation continue to reverberate in our collective psyche, with many questions remaining unanswered. I truly believe this marked the beginning of what Cynthia Bourgeault described as a “permanent reset of our collective human conscience”,¹ an initiation into a new way of being on this planet.

The question now is whether we can step up to the task before us of co-creating a world more aligned with who we really are, and more fully in tune with all that is good, true and beautiful in our cosmic home. Can we finally inhabit a different reality, a different story-of-us, one that is life-affirming rather than death-dealing? How can we choose wisely among the many paths before us?

The Need for Wisdom

In a global culture of increasing polarisation, exacerbated by the intensification of social media and electronic communications, wisdom often seems in very short supply. Our increasingly dysfunctional political structures are crying out for new ways of being, new ways of homing in on truth and justice. This website, these writings, are an attempt to participate in what I want to name as a global renaissance in wisdom knowing, arising in response to this pressing need. It is a contribution with a distinct flavour of a particular city (Norwich) and a particular medieval mystic (Julian).

Influences

In navigating this terrain I am drawing on the treasures held in our wisdom traditions, and particularly our Christian heritage as that’s the one I’m most familiar with, and it is the path that has called me by my name and embraced me. The mythical language of this wisdom stream is deeply embedded in our culture and history, and it has shaped my identity in ways that are beyond conscious choice. At the same time, in an era of vibrant interspirituality, my soul has also been touched and formed by many other influences, and my genetic memory of indigenous earth spirituality is a deep homecoming within. All of this I hope will work some kind of magic in this weaving of words.

Both-and-more

My vision for this website, if it’s not too lofty an aspiration, is that it might go some way towards rehabilitating words and concepts from within the Christian tradition that have fallen out of currency. At the same time I hope to face into the emerging future and reach towards a universal language for spirit, invoking the sacred within of all things.

A story of us

All the best writing – and art for that matter – is, I believe, essentially relational, collaborative. I’ve spent too much of my life having futile conversations with myself (anyone relate to that?), so I’d like to think I can tune in to the collective imaginal realm here, and provide a platform for multiple voices. To that end I greatly welcome feedback and comments, and I’m curious to explore what a more dialogical form might look like. Perhaps other local see-ers might join me on this journey, and together we can curate a collection of writings on wisdom, emanating from this land and its people.

Let’s see what unfolds.

See Also: Virtual Wisdom?

See Also: Biographies

(1) Cynthia Bourgeault, author, episcopal priest and mystic, has been posting her response to the pandemic on the Northeast Wisdom blog. She’s one of my favourite authors and teachers, a voice of true spiritual authority. This quote is from the post From the Eagle’s Nest.