Wild Summer

Through the changing seasons of nature and spirit that we circle within Wild Church, we each have our own unfolding inner seasons, both through the journey of our natural life as embodied beings and in the shifting feelings and unfoldings of the soul. For myself (Sam) I’m in the late summer or early autumn of my life, journeying through midlife and menopause. Just as I witness the natural world each year move from its energetic prime at midsummer into the maturation and harvests that follow, so I find myself in a similar inner season with both its beauties and its challenges.

I’ve been blessed to be reasonably physically fit in my life, so engaging with my body’s ageing  and recognising that my outer energy is waning and slowing has been a steep learning curve since last summer. I’ve found myself not being able to maintain the pace of work and life that previously came so naturally. I seem to be endlessly apologising for being late… and needing to reduce my workload and the expectations I have of myself. Which also challenges me to value myself in deeper ways… not so much by what I do as who I am, which in turn helps me appreciate further the ‘being-ness’ of others.

So Wild Church’s journal of our celebrations for both May and June have been brought together into this Wild Summer post in an energy saving fashion! And as Midsummer approaches it feels like a good time to reflect, before the natural world also turns towards the waning of its yearly cycle.

The theme that began to arise strongly for me as Maytide and Beltane approached this year was ‘all things micro’. It was very much a micro May! Perhaps this fits with my midlife breakthrough, as the last few years have seen much downsizing in my life and it’s come to feel like a really soulful choice. I find these days that I feel more at ease in my own skin and as a person in relation to a hard pressed world, when I keep the footprint of my life reasonably small, slow and simple. For Wild May this was expressed in the form of a ‘micro mindfulness pilgrimage’ and I think the dozen or so of us that gathered on May Day 2016 each found in our own unique way, that a journey may be very small in outer terms, while also being very full of wonders. I resonate with this thought expressed by Thomas Denny, the artist who has created the new stained glass window celebrating ‘wisdom’s call’ at St. Catherine’s College Chapel in Cambridge University, “Landscape is, of course, something to be experienced as much in a pebble or a patch of lichen as in a stretch of scenery.” Proverbs 8 beautifully describes divine wisdom (Sophia) at play in creation, “The Lord created me at the beginning of his work… then I was beside him, like a master worker; and I was daily his delight, rejoicing before him always, rejoicing in his inhabited world and delighting in the human race.” As a Kabbalist I understand creation  as a process that continues to unfold in every moment and that we are invited to awaken our capacity for wisdom and delight in that ever unfolding process of which we are a part.

So Wild Church started awakening to wisdom and delight in the graveyard under the ancient yew tree at the heart of the Dartington Estate and beside the old Church tower, which is all that remains of the original Dartington Church. Just to be here, in the shade of the yew, is to be in the presence of a wise grandmother who has witnessed more seasons of life than we can really imagine, including the entire period of Christian history in Britain. I think She was the real priest that Sunday. Here is a taste from a poem written in her honour by Wild Church member, Abigail:

Entering into our four fold ‘seasons of the spirit’ pattern of wild communion, we gathered together through sacred chant and a mindfulness meditation to open our senses to ‘wild church’ – the community of all beings in this place. Each person then engaged with their own micro pilgrimage into the spring gardens and discovered their own delights. Coming back together we shared our silent collaborative communion with a locally brewed mead, made using the red fruits from the yew tree we were gathered under, and including offering a libation to the tree Herself. Then we continuing into sharing the delights and blessings we had received from our communion with the natural world; for one the sound of the bees on a bank filled with flowering primroses, for another the movement and light touch of the spring breeze and for myself the feeling of being free to play, piling stones in Dartington’s zen garden under the flame red leaves of the maple.

Our communion concluded with crowning one of our younger members for that day as May Queen. That’s a small moment of delight that remains powerfully in my mind – the beauty of a young girl garlanded with sweet honeysuckle and the way her eyes shone to be seen and honoured in that moment. I would that every young woman had her sovereignty affirmed in the Beltane of her life. From there we dispersed, with some heading home and some wandering off along the river, through the kissing gates, past the hydro scheme and the  sacred marriage of the nesting swans to a shared lunch in Totnes.

A month passes and it’s to Totnes that we return for ‘Wild June’ on Sunday 5th 2016 which was also World Environment Day. I arrived early at Leechwell Community Garden and so was able to visit the old Totnes Leechwell whose waters flow into and beyond the gardens. The well has three springs named Toad, Long Crippler and Snake and has been recognised as a healing place since at least the fifteenth century. The well guardians are symbolically represented within the gardens by three beautiful stone sculptures by an old friend and inspirational artist, Rosie Musgrave. As with last month, visiting the well and garden felt like coming into a sacred heart (this time of of Totnes) and I so appreciate the effort that went into saving these natural spaces from development in the heart of the town.

This was our smallest Wild Church gathering to date with just half a dozen gathered in the warm summer sun and sweet scents of the herb garden. After gathering within ourselves and with each other, through a multi sensory herbal meditation, we set off silently through the back lanes and hidden gardens of Totnes and then along the river and onto the Sharpham Estate.

Perhaps it was the ‘small but perfectly formed’ nature of the group, perhaps it was the sunshine or the sheer natural exuberance of June… may be it was, in part, the presence of fellow & sister ‘wild monastics’ Ian & Gail Adams of Beloved Life… maybe it was just the mystery of life itself… but there was a special magic to this day for me. The moment when we all paused to watch a kestrel hover over the summer meadow, the sound of river silt breathing on the shore as the swans swam to meet us, lying and looking up through long grasses like a child, breaking local bread under a summer oak and sharing tears and heartfulness along with our rhubarb and apricot libation.

We walked back along the cycle path, enjoying the wide views over the River from above now and getting to know each other in a different way through more wordy conversation. At Totnes we went our separate ways, which for a few Wild Church folks included joining the Network of Wellbeing for their Forest Festival at Follaton Arboretum. A meadow picnic was followed by storytelling and more in this lovely place. So it was a tired but very happy Sam who headed home at the end of the day…