I believe that ceremonies that mark the important transitions and turning points of life are essential for our health and well-being. I also believe that meaningful rituals that we repeat on a daily or regular basis also help us to anchor, ground and elevate our consciousness. I am deeply enamoured with experiencing, creating and conducting powerful ceremonies that support us as human beings to navigate the highs, lows, ups and downs of life. It’s a fascinating 20+ year journey that began with me commissioning Laurie Sue Brockway to co-create an interfaith marriage ceremony with me in 2003.

I continued my journey with this exploration of authentic and meaningful ceremony and this resulted in me beginning my training as an Interfaith Minister in 2013. This training led me to start integrating ceremony and ritual into my life as essential components in the way I live and work. This fascination and commitment to helping people integrate ceremony and ritual into their lives has continued and inspired me to take up a part-time role as a Tutor on the OneSpirit Interfaith Foundation Interfaith Ministry Training course. In this role, I’m training future Interfaith Ministers how to create and conduct unique ceremonies for people of any faith or none from before birth to beyond death. We are also exploring how to support people to choose, adapt, develop and be inspired to use repeatable rituals in daily life.

I also integrate this work into my relationship coaching and I often incorporate ceremony and ritual into my client’s coaching packages. This can be a commitment, vow renewal or marriage ceremony to expand into a loving relationship. If the relationship has ended our ceremony may be a Conscious Uncoupling ceremony or a releasing ritual to lovingly let go and bring closure. The Wild Wisdom Oracle Cards and meditations that I’m launching are also another part of this journey with ceremony and ritual. The purpose of The Wild Wisdom Oracle Cards is to provide inspirational support and rituals for the body, heart, mind and soul. For example, in The Wild Wisdom Oracle 44 Day Meditation Circle we practice a daily ritual with the cards and have ceremonies and circle shares at key points in our time together. It’s such a blessing to be sharing this work. I’m so grateful for this journey and the work that I’m doing right now in service of The Spirit of Love. What’s your relationship with ceremony and ritual? Pop a comment below or if you want to join me in The Wild Wisdom join The Wild Wisdom Oracle Kickstarter Group.

Thanks to Juanna Grace Ladaga for blessing my feed with this. I was trained by the then Interfaith Seminary by the deeply-rooted Fay Barratt and the ever tuneful Olivea Dewhurst Maddock in Manchester starting in 2006: a process which ended almost fifteen years of depression and the Black Dog’s not been back since.

Since ordination in 2008 I’ve done a wedding or two, buried a few and even facilitated equine assisted spiritual counselling. These days I am mainly a storyteller, educator and drinker of tea but the gifts of the Seminary are still with me and I feel a more ministry-led path is somewhere up ahead of me!

I’ve known darkness and doubt and I fully believe in the power of stories and artistic expression.

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It’s always different. But spending time in nature is my anchor each day. It grounds me, especially when I’m video editing. It helps me release all the electro-stress, be grateful and savour each magic moment. Today the rain has gone and the sun is rejuvenating me. This ancient yew is in the churchyard of St Bartholomew’s Church in Much Marcle, Herefordshire is one of 70 ancient trees across the country. I have a few sacred trees that help me centre. Their wisdom sustains me.

Today has been about being quiet, filled with self-care & contemplation. The dark moon helped me release things no longer needed, clearing & preparing for today’s new moon in Aquarius. So I’ve rested, had a salt bath, done a ritual of intention setting and manifested for the highest good. With so many solar flares the past few days, and cosmic energies ramping up, no wonder I’m tired – are you feeling it?

Have you managed to carve out time to stop today?

“Breathing in I calm body and mind. Breathing out, I smile. Dwelling in the present moment, I know this is the only moment.” – Thich Nhat Hanh, Being Peace

As someone who could probably be labelled an animist or a pantheist, I see the sacred, the Divine in all things.

As Yogi Bhajan says, “If you can’t see God in all, you can’t see God at all.”

As a result, I see lots of things as spiritual practice… walking in nature, writing poetry, baking a cake, filling the bird feeders, enjoying a delicious meal, and cuddling my partner. Anything done mindfully and as a way of connecting with that which gives life meaning, the mystery bigger than all of us is, to me, a spiritual practice. Mary Oliver beckons us to “Pay attention, be astonished, tell about it.” These words gave guided me for years in a life seeking to know the sacred in everyday life, to live in wonder. Things I do that may be considered more formal practices include meditation (I’m a trained mindfulness teacher) prayer (although my understanding of the word is very broad) spiritual reading and contemplation including poetry, and using various oracular methods of seeking wisdom such as The Tarot.

Do you do anything you consider a spiritual practice?

In a nutshell…

For many years I ran an outside catering business. A couple approached me to cater for their wedding, part of which was to take place in the groom’s grandmother’s rose garden; a very unusual happening back in the nineties). The choices the couple made and attention to detail were exceptionally thoughtful and truly beautiful. It was many years later that a dear OSIF minister friend invited me to an ordination ceremony in Oxford, there on the stage were Robert and Miranda Holden (the founders of OSIF) the penny dropped! They even recognised me in the crowd afterwards, it was a wonderful moment.

 

With such synchronicity afoot why would I not sign up to the OSIF training, as soon as it became possible?

This month is #monthofministry.
Occasionally I’m asked how my ministry looks. It’s a question I ask myself frequently. As an Interfaith Minister, I don’t have a church or place of worship. I sit outside of that. I’ve slipped through funerals and end-of-life care to spiritual teaching and right back to ceramics. Working with clay brings me squarely and softly back to the heart of how I see life and my journey in it.

Clay is magical. Wild or manufactured, it’s an organic composite of every aspect of life, all squished in. It holds all the questions and all the answers. Working with it is a joy and a privilege. This past six months I’ve let it lead me to some deeper exploration of the themes I follow. After spending time in Orkney (returning to my home turf of the area around Stonehenge and Avebury) I let the anthropomorphic standing stones sink into my creativity. It’s been a journey.

Here’s just one of the investigations.

Thanks for your curiosity, instagram folk. The answer is that my ministry sits in my clay journey and I’ll happily share that with anyone. It’s a journey of constant observation and questioning. I call it deep listening. And it moves forward through touch. Sometimes I question whether that’s self-indulgent. But honestly, it’s far, far from easy. Not a day goes by when I don’t kick myself for not having a proper job! At the end of the day, though, it’s what I’m here to do. And in these times the examination of beauty (perception, prejudice and breaking into newness) feels actually extremely important. I’ll give myself just a little slack.

This piece differs a lot from my usual work, but if my work was static it would be a product, not a process. So here it is, a part of my journey into the mysteries.

A ‘what’ answer, rather than a ‘who’. I used to be inspired by many spiritual speakers and authors and by many “sacred” texts.

I found the texts said pretty much the same thing:

– live in the present

– don’t get too attached

– be loving and kind

– be peaceful and humble

– get on with life!

Nowadays I read a lot less and do a lot more. Life is for living, and for me, I live it best in nature. I am not a city person. My

calm is found in places of natural beauty, whether I walk, run, cycle, scramble, swim or just sit, just give me nature.