Oh...I grew up in Sussex, and one of my favourite childhood memories was making a den in the woods at Ashburnham with my Dad, and sitting inside under cover hearing the rain and feeling safe. Hope that if nowt else, you enjoy a time of feeling safe and loved by your Father.
Amazing how you managed to lead class today while you were on retreat!
Glad you went to the retreat late Gordon, class was good - lots to think about. Hope you enjoy the rest of the retreat and return to Poplar feeling refreshed and recharged.
Am cracking up laughing here. Retreats are hard work - and it certainly often takes a few days to get into them. I remember being surprised at first that spending a day sitting around listening to God left me exhausted. Then I tried being the spiritual director and guiding someone on one, and I found a whole new level of exhaustion. It's 'listening' time, not 'doing' time. May it be a rich and wonderful blessing.
Sussex is lovely Kathryn - in fact I'm going with our two girls camping in West Sussex in a couple of weeks - do you recommend any spots good for a 5 and 9 year old?
Anonymous said…
Very belatedly - and probably too late: I grew up in Sussex too, in Chichester at the other end from Ashburnham (which therefore feels more like Kent to me!). We used to spend lots of time at East Head, beyond West Wittering, where the Solent meets Chichester Harbour and the light is like nowhere else. They have fenced off the sand dunes to protect them - almost too late - but it's still a great place to run around and feel the wind and make patterns and castles in vast expanses of sand.... and if it's warm you can even swim as long as you watch for the red flag.
Came across a good bit of Sally bashing over at salvationsoldiers I have to say we try and make sure that everything we raise goes into projects that build local community in Poplar but hopefully if you read this blog you get that sense anyway.
Along the world famous Oxford street in London's Westend; nestled in among the classy frontage of designer shops there is almost an unnoticeable, unimpressive wooden door. It is more or less alongside The Regent Hall's main entrance onto the busyness of Oxford Street. People pass the wooden door oblivious to the equally unimpressive wooden steps that go up three storey's to what was Regent Hall's youth club. When I was 10 I played on these bare wooden steps totally unaware of the significance behind and upon which I played. Many years later I discovered a university youth work course - as an induction to Youth Work - stopped outside this insignificant wooden door to point out that Youth Work as we know it in the UK started behind this door. ...whether that be the surbanite flower people that flooded the Westend to express their free love; or the hard core drug community this unimpressive wooden door became the 'portal' that blurred encounter between church an...
It is easy to think and to limit ourselves to a single approach to Christian spirituality. A 'if it works for me it should work for you approach' tends to narrow our appreciation of other ways which actually impoverishes our experience of spirituality. Urban T. Holmes has developed a means of exploring spirituality and helps develop an appreciation through discovering links between spirituality, temperament and predisposition. The diagram illustrates his ideas together with potential inherent dangers. The vertical continuum speaks and helps us understand our relational orientation to God. This ranges from engaging with God through understanding and theological process to a more emotive response. Horizontally speaks of a persons preferred means of pursuing the spiritual life. Kataphtic speaks of affirmation and the need of something tangible in an individuals spirituality- this may take the form of worship, art, even imagination with the use of metaphors, symbols and images play...
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Hope that if nowt else, you enjoy a time of feeling safe and loved by your Father.
Glad you went to the retreat late Gordon, class was good - lots to think about. Hope you enjoy the rest of the retreat and return to Poplar feeling refreshed and recharged.
Thanks