What follows is the summary from the Sunday morning consideration on Zoom, which happened to fall while a score of us were also gathered in person.

It's a little longer than usual, as I've used some of my notes following a meeting earlier in the week of a group of people from the Iona Community who met on line, so I am rather combining two sets of conversations and trusting it works!. They too are interested in the contemplative Way. .....

Up and Down

“If we can listen in stillness, ‘till our hearts begin to vibrate to the thing He is thinking and feeling about the matter in question, whether it concerns ourselves or others, we can from that moment begin praying downwards from His throne, instead of praying upwards towards Him.”[1]

I am grateful to Leilani of K6 for her gift of the writings of artist and mystic, Lilias Trotter, hitherto unknown to me. Her prolific works and sayings can be found in assorted publications, preserved and promoted by a group dedicated to ensure the world appreciates her (https://liliastrotter.com/).

Lilias grew up in the Victorian era, found favour in the eyes of Ruskin because of her great artistic talents, but instead followed her calling and dedicated her life to that of a Christian missionary, primarily in North Africa. She visited Brantwood, Ruskin’s home in the Lakes and was influenced by that religious movement that became the Keswick Convention. Her religious views and language were fairly conventional for the time and until her death in 1928. Yet many subtle phrases and images can be found in her works which suggest that she was not perhaps quite as conventional as she appeared, at least in her ‘calling’ and relationship to the Divine - a calling which she saw as ‘praying down’ through service and compassionate action.

An aspect of prayer along the contemplative Way is a disinclination to see it as a practice to offer ‘up’ to God to ask for things, and more a conduit to encourage relationship; unitive consciousness.

Now my favourite (very personal) contemporary musician, composer and singer is Joni Mitchell – it has been fascinating to grow up into old age with her words and music. They are like a diary unto me. Along that journey, she expresses all the deep spiritual questioning and longing of the mystic, and the tensions between union and separation (as in one song where she pleads, “I sent up my prayer, wondering who was there to hear?”[2] which may be contrasted with her later works of intense relating and joining to ‘something other’ as in the album Hejira.).

I digress; Mitchell’s words are probably quite typical of many people’s view of prayer as going ‘up to’ God (usually to ask for something – more on this in a moment). Yet Lilias offers an alternative that comes from this deep sense of joining with the Beloved. We shift away from asking ‘up’ and become vessels for transmission of compassionate action in ordinary reality – Thy will be done. Indeed, depending on your sense of ‘joining’ do we not sometimes pray ‘across’ in nature, as well as up or down, not to mention around, about, within….we could have a lot of fun with the prepositions!

Meanwhile, Emerson[3], a near contemporary of Trotter, takes few prisoners in his views on prayer which, “Looks abroad and asks for some foreign addition to come through some foreign virtue, and loses itself in mazes of natural and supernatural, and mediatorial and miraculous. Prayer that craves a particular commodity – anything less than all good – is vicious. Prayer is the contemplation of the facts of life from the highest point of view. It is the soliloquy of a beholding and jubilant soul. It is the spirit of God pronouncing his works good. But prayer as a means to effect a private end is meanness and theft. It supposes dualism and not unity in nature and consciousness. As soon as the man is at one with God he will not beg. He will see prayer in all action.” The anchoring of the Kentigern School is Thy Will Be Done. The words ripple through every session and the teachings in Heartfullness[4], and which demanded considerable deconstruction of accepted notions of a gendered God and of the roots and power of ‘Thy’. But I digress again, suffice here to say that such a prayer does not demand that we know that will, rather trust in its movement in and with us, indeed already is us, tattooed within us at “birth, first birth”[5]. All we have to do is wake up to it.

Emerson’s expectation of prayer as being at one with the Beloved out of which action springs is quite startling considering the views of Christianity and prayer at the time (and at present!), and among other traditions come to that. How can we pronounce the works of the Divine “good” when such suffering wells up all around us, and in us – unless it is from the highest (or deepest) contemplative vision of all reality(ies), such as the Zen ‘ah so’ quality of consciousness or the non-duality of the likes of Mother Julian. Such equanimity seems a tall order.

Emerson goes on to cite King Caractacus (Caratach) in Beaumont and Fletcher’s Jacobean play Bonduca[6]. He is urged to pray to his god Audate, to secure victory against the Romans. He rejects any notion of trying to know the mind of God and trying to get God on his side, and instead chooses to rely upon his part in the scheme of things and trust to right action, “His hidden meaning lies in our endeavours: our valours are our best gods.”

Hanging out in unitive consciousness, or at least aspiring to it, is the wellspring of action; it is a catalyst for our Work. Unlike Lilias, no doctrine is demanded of us. Rather our School, like others, is a menu of multiple exercises intended to help each of us to find our Way.

It’s generally recognised how tough that can be (one reason why we pursue it collectively). For example, Easwaran, in his fine translation of the Bhagavad Gita, has this to say about the contemplative aspiration, essentially a universal across traditions:-

“In the unitive experience, every trace of separateness disappears; life is a seamless whole. But the body cannot remain in this state for long. After a while, awareness of mind and body returns, and then the conventional world of multiplicity rushes in again with such vigour and vividness that the memory of unity, though stamped with reality, seems a distant dream. The unitive state has to be entered over and over until a person is established in it. But once established, even in the midst of ordinary life, one sees the One underlying the many; the Eternal beneath the ephemeral.”[7]

Thus praying down from this condition of unitive, contemplative conscious is, like Caractacus, a willingness to surrender into action that derives not from personal desires, the will of the ego-personality, but an deep commitment to trust and service. Thus, praying down is every kindly action, every moment of deep appreciation of being part of and participation in everyday reality. Contemplatives have down the centuries tried to say what they have experienced in this oneness condition. Words often fall short, though one seems to prevail (and yet it seems almost banal to write it) – love; a quality of profound love as the nature and foundation of all things. A love that is not lazy. It refutes the often held stereotype of contemplatives as passive spiritual navel-gazers, for to experience it, to know it, the consequences is a willingness to participate in compassionate action in countless forms wherever and whenever a unique opportunity falls to our particular being. To know it in the heart, we cannot not participate.

Thus: patience, persistence, perseverance…..

Thy will be done.

Stephen, September 6th 2026

[1] Trotter L (ed. Rockness M 2020) A Way of Seeing: the inward and outward vision of Lilias Trotter. Lafayette. Lilias Trotter Legacy. p56 

[2] Joni Mitchell (1974) The Same Situation from the album Court and Spark. Asylum Records. 

[3] Emerson R W 1883 Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson. London. Routledge p18

[4] Wright S 2023 Heartfullness. Penrith.SSP. p

[5] Wright S 2021 Coming Home.. Penrith. SSP. p116

[6] Beaumont F & Fletcher J (ed Rhys E 1905) Bonduca in Selected Plays. London. Dent. p421

[7] The Bhagavad Gita (Trans. Easwaran E. 2007) Tomales. Nilgiri. p27

In this age of the Collapse[i] and what Mishra[ii] called ressentiment, it’s not surprising that we can get mightily brassed off with the world around us and most specifically with the behaviour of some of our fellow humans.

Thus it was, in a recent Zoom gathering of one of our Schools, we slid into exploring anger and how we deal with it. One participant, to much laughter, shared honestly about the blessings of the contemplative Way while at the same time wanting, when it comes to certain politicians and pundits, to “stick ‘em in the eye”. The violent imagery, while not being acted out (at least I hope it isn’t!) expressed graphically the contradictions of seeking to keep an open heart to others, while coming up against the brick wall of their destructiveness.

First of all, to anger. As we have explored many times, it has its roots in fear. It is a way of striking outwards and attacking a person or an idea, because it enables us to avoid facing the underlying and frightening deep pain we feel (unconsciously) when confronted with our own powerlessness, despair, disappointment, guilt and shame. Anger points to those places in ourselves where there is more to be done on the healing of our broken bits, longing for connection and deepening trust. Lots of approaches in the literature condemn anger, yet it is a perfectly natural response to a human predicament of suffering. It is an energy like any other than can be accepted and its fiery quality transmuted, with care, to fuel action and compassion for self and others. When it is used to attack others, then paradoxically in doing so we tend to take on the characteristics of those very persons or things we feel we are up against. It sustains ‘othering’ and is disconnecting and dehumanising.

The Jesus story of his outburst in the temple (there are versions in each Gospel[iii]) is often interpreted as his resort to anger, yet in none of the English language Gospel versions does the word anger appear. And although in this story he overturns tables and makes a whip, nowhere does it say he hurt people (there were many animals in the temple, so a whip might have been need to drive them out). Perhaps the commotion and threat was enough to drive people and animals off. People who had already set up shop in the temple were perhaps unlikely to be receptive to sensitive and gentle religious admonition. It was going to take a stronger language. But if Jesus’s action is not anger, it looks more like indignation, in this case what amounts to a demo’ to show people the error of their ways in a language they might comprehend. Otherwise, it was harmless direct action, except it might have affected people’s pockets. There’s a distinct lack of aggression in this story, a quality which accompanies anger – not directed at persons, but at something that was going on that was against virtue – respect for a sacred site. Indignation, from the Latin indignatio, suggesting properties of being opposite to that which is worthy, natural and just. Although often described in dictionaries as a form of anger, it is not anger directed at persons, rather at ideas and behaviour that are disrespectful, unfair, abusive and inhuman. Indignation is not an anger that attacks persons, but rises to correct an aberration against truth. We can object to the behaviour, strongly so, while still recognising the person within.

Now, at the risk of splitting hairs, perhaps you can see the subtle difference, and how indignation allows us to fulfil that quality endorsed by the Lord Krishna to his pupil Arjuna on the field of battle, that is, to do what we must do, but not close our hearts to others[iv]. It is to not dehumanise, deny compassion or the humanity of the other (which is what the red mist of anger does to us when we let rip with it). No matter how monstrous the act and the actor, somewhere in that person is a soul just like us. Anger denies that, indignation does not.

Apart from all that, remember that biblical stories, whether factually true or not, may contain spiritual truth. The Jesus story here tells us to clear out that which gets in the way of the sacred and send it to its proper place. He does not destroy and does not say there should be no buying and selling, but to keep them in their proper place and not let them have control. We may see this as a lesson along the Way, clearing out the ego’s desires to their proper place, keeping our centre pure and holy.

Thus, it is honourable to be honest in a group and say that you’re so incensed that you use the violent simile of ‘stick ‘em in the eye’ to illustrate the hurt and frustration we feel. Remember that authenticity is one of the cardinal qualities of the Way. Expressing and exploring our demons to get clarity and truth are part of the process. 

Furthermore, such conflicts are also gifts for us. The unitive state needs to be entered again and again until it becomes a lived condition. Stories of our encounters with anger and the effects they have on ourselves and others are grist to the mill of our spiritual development. As such, they are teachings; we may not like them, they may be hurtful and challenging, but they show us those gritty points in ourselves which have yet to be empearled.

Addendum

At the end of the meeting, I suggested this exercise, drawing on the work of the Carmina Gaedelica[v] and the concept of the Gaelic Frith (pronounced free-eh) of the Western Isles. It suggests a quality of looking at the world – scenery (especially the sea), persons, plants and animals and ‘seeing’ what these may be saying to us beyond surface meanings. In other words, we see and hear ‘signs’ beyond the ordinary seeing and hearing of things. You might consider this before we next meet, just opening to possibility in the ordinary around you, that there is something you are being invited to hear, see, know. I’ve touched on this in a recent posting on the K School website.

Love

Stephen  7th August ‘26

[i] Servigne P & Stevens R (2020) How Everything Can Collapse. Cambridge. Polity

[ii] Mishra, P. (2017). Age of anger. London: Penguin

[iii] Matthew 21:12-13, Mark 2:15-17, Luke 19:45-46, John 2:13-16

[iv] Baghavad Gita (trans’ Easwaran E 1985) Blue Mountain. Nilgiri

[v] Carmichael A (1899 repr’ 1992) Carmina Gaedelica: hymns and incantations. Edinburgh. Floris (p529)

Illusion or illumination?

Marsha Sinetar’s[i] fascinating research illuminates what happens when ‘ordinary people’ experience some kind of inner prompting – a voice, a vision, a feeling. I was encouraged to raise the subject this Sunday morning because by chance, if chance it be, I was rereading an earlier work that influenced me by Eileen Caddy[ii]. On first reading (middle 80’s) it took my breath away with a “That happened to me too” fellowship; a recognition feeling to it. This week, while meeting someone to explore the mystic voice, we immersed in the works of Teresa of Avila and Julian of Norwich who both wrote of ‘seeing’ or being spoken to.. Meanwhile, with some nursing colleagues, I’ve just finished a book on Florence Nightingale and she too felt a powerful prompting by a voice calling her at the age of 17, leading her to defy conventions and her own will, follow her “must”, and go on to found one of the great humanitarian gifts – modern nursing.

There are striking parallels in this Western mysticism with that of the East. The Dao, particularly, embodies notions of personal destiny, and the universal forces will do all that they can to ensure we follow that no matter where our will inclines. Heaven, by this philosophy, plants the seed of original nature within, an internal mandate which we may choose to follow, or not, while heaven always works to nudge us towards than mandate. Even further, this tradition suggests that we find our mandate, our “must” through ardent “devotion to the heart”. We fulfil our destiny when we bring this heart of heaven into the world by acting as a vessel for the Dao[iii]. Heartfullness! Thy will be done! In this view, one cause of illness is when we do not follow that truth.

Such promptings (as words, feelings or imagery) are arguably common to many persons at some time in our lives (perhaps everyone, if assorted surveys are to be believed e.g. Alistair Hardy Trust); it’s a question of whether we do or do not pay attention. It’s like the story of the busy city street where everyone gets on with it and ignores the noise around – but if a coin is dropped to a resounding ‘chink’ we suddenly turn to it. It is a question of attention.

Such attention can be difficult. States of blissful peace rarely follow these promptings. Often, we are projected into anxiety and disorder in our once ordered inner and outer lives. Sinetar cites psychiatrist R D Laing calling it ‘experiential anarchy’, and as her study illuminates, some attempt to ignore these ‘calls’, others to work with them to make sense of them, others find life becoming more disordered when unable to do so and retreat into denial or complacency. Amid this anarchy, we try to locate “continuity and internal authority”, as Sinetar reports, and offers a hopeful note that, “Fortunately, as time passes the demands of the higher Self are easier to hear. This is especially true as life becomes more well ordered and simplified….as our external life gets simplified and less distracted, our inner life is strengthened and refined.” In other words, if we pay attention and work with it, we may find that this inner guidance is deep in ourselves, it is the Self communicating with the self towards greater integration and authenticity. It may lead us to what Nightingale called her “must”[iv] – a movement of inner prompting into unavoidable outer action.

Each of us feels our promptings in different ways, sound, visions, feelings; in temple or in nature, while engaging in some ordinary activity or the deep reflection on retreat – no matter the form, time or place, there are two principles to consider.

Firstly, Ultimate Reality, the Universe, the Beloved, the Dao...whatever …is conspiring in some way to alert us to truth. If we work with this, we may find that it is not something alien, or just outside ourselves, but an inner calling from Self to self to be who we really are beyond the superficial functions of our identities and personalities.

Secondly, none of this must be treated lightly. Bear in mind that early question we raised in the work of our School. Whatever we are experiencing, we bring to bear the question, “Is this true?” We “Test everything” as St Paul[v] reminded us. Discernment by sound guidance (the ‘toolbox’ of Soul Works, Soul Foods, Soul Friends, Soul Communities) is the key to authentic spiritual development and action.

From my own experience, that internal anarchy settles down after due work and refinement to an interior place of quiet reflection and dialogue, sometimes mirrored by external encounters. The phenomenon has become an ordinary aspect of my being, it informs me, tests me, nurtures me; with greater confidence in its veracity but never beyond my sources of discernment.

How are you being prompted this day? Are you always receptive and attentive? How are you discerning illumination from delusion?

Love

Stephen

3rd August

Addendum. This is an example from personal experience. Like most people, I have had moments when I I felt I have been spoken to, or had profound and persistent images swirl around my consciousness, or had interactions with the beasts and flora of nature, or the moon and stars, or…or…The list goes on. It seems that the Real with make an impression on us in whatever way we are receptive. Down my long years of exploring and writing about the spiritual life, I’ve had my fair share of such experiences. Probably more than my fair share actually. Perhaps initially I would be ‘touched’ a couple of times a year. Until now in old age, a condition of communion is a quality that is ever present in varying degrees of intensity.

I have been disinclined to share such experiences except in private. They can too easily inflate our egos or set others up for comparison or disappointment. Just occasionally I’ve let a few slip through to illustrate a point, and how such experiences can be part of our spiritual maturation, the breaking free of the egos power or guides to the meaning and purpose of our lives. Florence Nightingale, heroine of my former profession and who exhibited the classic ‘symptoms’ of the mystic, grounded her inner summons and followed the compelling nature of them, her ‘must’ for example to learn to be a nurse and to further create a whole new profession as a result. I’ve had a few ‘musts’ in my time – more like affirmations and encouragement. Although one such left me afraid, very afraid.

My partner and I were exploring the derelict farmhouse that was to become our home and an outpost of the retreat opportunities of the Sacred Space Foundation. I was at the time at the peak of my profession, garnering glittering prizes and all manner of ego inflating demands from my services. The thought of completely leaning into the spiritual life and giving up other things was far from my expectations at the time.

As I stood one bright summer’s day by a breezeblock wall at the far end of the house, I looked up entranced by the calls of seven buzzards circling above me. Now the fascination was intensified because I had been trained in Shamanism, and it was the buzzard who had emerged as my companion and guide. Space here does not permit me to explore much about Shamanism, except to say that it is one of the oldest if not the oldest ways in which human beings have sought to explore and find help in other realities and realms of consciousness. I guess that because of my shamanic work that I was entranced by these seven friends soaring above me and what it might mean if anything.

It was at that point I heard a voice. It was distinctly loud, auditory and insistent. It said, “This is where I want you to do my work.” Now, first of all we could have a field day interpreting a statement like that, but let me take it at face value for now. I was at first perplexed by its clarity of sound, a quite human voice, that I presumed I was mishearing my partner and a local farmer chatting nearby.  But they were way off at the far end of the property which is in a remote place with the nearest house a mile away.

I moved through the ‘must have misheard’ phase when the same voice, very clear, very strong, very audible, said the same thing. This time I began to tremble with fear. “I must be stressed, or is this how schizophrenia starts?” - or had I overdosed on alcohol the night before? I was afraid. Is this how madness invades?

Then I heard the same voice say the same thing in exactly the same way a third time. This time a feeling of overwhelming peace and love swept over me. Questions and fears about the ‘truth’ or otherwise of what I had just heard paled into insignificance. I just ‘knew’. The rest is history; against all the odds of money and renovation problems and multiple ego drives in other directions, the building was restored as a home and a sanctuary and has been a place of spiritual succour for many thousands since. My roles in life changed too, as I gradually surrendered into that hand break turn (that had been going on for almost ten years) about who I am and what I am here to be and do, even though the answers to that conundrum, as they emerged, flew in the face of everything that had hitherto attracted and rewarded me for decades.

Discernment is the key. Our egos can get a grip on such experiences and apply their primary drives for immortality, power and control, and distort that radiance. Deep discernment, as with all spiritual experiences, is needed to check, ‘Is this true?’ In my case, with this particular moment, I did not entirely trust my inner ‘yes’ prompting, and took the matter to three elder persons who had been my guides and with whom I was subjected to a very tough ‘examen’.

[i] Sinetar M 2007  Ordinary People as Monks and Mystics. New York. Paulist. p31-2

[ii] Caddy E 1966 God Spoke to me. Findhorn. Findhorn Press.

[iii] Jarrett L 1998 Nourishing Destiny: the inner tradition of Chinese medicine. Stockbridge. Spirit Path. p33

[iv] Wright S, Dossey B, Beck D-M 2026 (in press) Florence Nightingale – then and now.

[v] 1 Thessalonians 5:21

The above is from a recent text, sent by a young man I knew when he was a child. I offer it because it illustrates a point about the nature of Presence. That is, while we may surmise our purposes and actions, there is always a quality of ‘you never know’ how things are moving. That young man went on to university to study art and become a great artist, now lost to illness.

I could have set off to that Hockney exhibition at Salt’s Mill (Google!) with the intention of making sure my young godson would be inspired by art. But I didn’t. It was just a day out with friends and family some thirty five years ago. We cannot always know how things are at work beyond our ken.

In his book on Chinese medicine, Lonny Jarrett[1] offers some fascinating insights into the spiritual aspects of health, and the connection with Daoism. So much of the language he uses would find common ground in the western contemplative Way, in part expounded in Heartfullness.

He writes, “To begin at the beginning, we must discuss the fundamental nature of ‘no-thingness’ itself, the dao. The qualitative nature of the dao is present throughout all creation and lies eternally in the depth of each being to which it gives birth… To arrive at an understanding of the essential nature of the dao is of utmost importance, but an inherent pitfall awaits anyone who tries…the dao is fundamentally unknowable by the human mind and therefore can have no proper name. In the very act of naming it, the ‘eternal’ dao changes to the dao of transient existence, and the process of creation begins. Whatever we may say about the fundamental nature of the dao, eternal truth lies always beyond the reach of words, residing only in the realms of feeling and intuition (my italics).”

There are many echoes here of that tension in the spiritual-religious life of Western Christianity wherein lie the roots of our exploration of the contemplative Way in Heartfullness; the tension between the via positiva of religions to say what God is or is not, and the via negativa that rejects definitions and human attributions.

It is the great paradox of the contemplative life; we come to know by not knowing. We find the eternal beyond the temporal. We cannot know by words and thoughts the nature of the Divine, but it is in the heart, the “realms of feeling and intuition” that we know at an altogether different level than the intellectual or conceptual…and this Way certainly cannot be bound by doctrines and assertions of faith or theological definition. That does not mean an immersion in vacuity and neutrality - no-thing and nothing are not the same.

The dao that is indefinable and is everywhere present is a close relative of the Way. It’s workings, if indeed it ‘works’ at all, are essentially beyond us – we can only ever know in part. Hence, we may touch the lives of others or be touched by them in ways that do not enter the conscious and intentional realms.

Consider, then, as you read this. First hold gratitude for the ways in which your life has been touched by others who may never know that this was so. Consider too, in your awareness today, how much you might be an agent of that grace. A grace where you never know where it comes from or where it goes. So much that we bring to the world is often of a random nature, yet in our awareness in and of the Presence each day, we might consciously touch the lives of others, and know it. Either way, when you add it all up, we are still left with a phrase that my great teacher Ram Dass often uttered, ‘You never know’.

Stephen July 5th 2026

[1] Jarrett L 2004 Nourishing Destiny: the inner tradition of Chinese Medicine. Stockbridge. Spirit Path Press. pp5-6

I fled Him, down the arches of the years;

I fled Him, down the labyrinthine ways

Of my own mind; and in the midst of tears

I hid from Him, and under running laughter.

Up vistaed hopes, I sped;

And shot precipitated,

Adown Titanic glooms of chasmed fears,

From those strong

Feet that followed, followed After.

But with unhurrying chase,

And unperturbed pace,

Deliberate speed, majestic instancy,

They beat – and a Voice beat

More instant than the Feet –

“All things betray thee, who betrayest Me.”

Francis Thompson. The Hound of Heaven[1](p23)

Where I live, (illegal) foxhunting with hounds persists. The hounds in this reality are agents of amusement for the followers, and death and suffering for foxes. The idea of being pursued by hounds is further enshadowed by traditions of using hounds to hunt people such as escaped prisoners or slaves.

Thompson takes that ability of hounds to follow a trail in relentless pursuit of their quarry and its ineluctable fate, and turns it on its head - to show that boundless love of the Beloved that will never give up on us, and always has the victory, even over death.

In The Hound of Heaven we are introduced to a hound that does not pursue us to harm us, but as a servant of the Divine, who is on our trail and will not give up on us. This hound is a relentless re-minder. Indeed, he writes in symbolic language, it’s not about a dog at all, but a quality, a something both internal and external that constantly prompts is. It helps us to see our fear, and how it feeds our distraction, yet there is a hopeful message that “fear wist not to evade as Love wist to pursue” (p24). No matter how knowledgeable and powerful are the attributes of the fear-driven life, its powers are never as much as that of Love. .  , it is wist-ful , not in the sense of being dreamy, but as resolute in its purpose and knowing it fully. It is constantly chasing us, summoning us, to follow our soul’s path and not be distracted and follow the paths of self-will. Anything to which we do become attached, will let us down anyway in one formor another (All things betray thee, who betrayest Me. p23).

The word ‘wit’ comes from the Old English wist, meaning, to know. But it is not just about knowing as facts, it suggests a deep knowing, of being fully aware, a collation of perceptions of the intuitive and the observable that enables us to the see the whole picture at a deep level. Hence someone who is a half-wit or witless is someone who doesn’t ‘get it’. A person who is ‘witty’ has a quality of insight and knowingness that cuts through perceptions. A witness is someone who sees and integrates information at many levels to get a sense of the whole. Such persons understand, a word which in everyday use suggests knowing facts and figures, but understand has deeper meanings than everyday useage. It is derived from the Latin inter which became unter (under) in Germanic and Old English and the Latin stare to stand. Inter as joining together, standing not as being physically upright, but being inwardly centred, present and purposeful.

I’m smiling now as I write for I am reminded of my old school motto sto ut serviam – ‘I stand that I may serve’ and how often schoolmasters of the time tried to explain its subtle meaning to us. That is, the purpose of our schooling was to produced people who knew who and why they were here from a place of inner knowing of self and the world, and to use that knowing for the good of humanity.

No matter how much we stray, the hound of heaven is always in pursuit, howling to remind us of who we are and summon us to our true path, the soul’s trail. It is not a hound of brutality and wounding. It is not ‘out there’ (although sometimes it may call to us in persons and situations), it is within, welling up through the miasma of our everyday activities and agendas to call us home.

How often, honestly, like me, have you sensed that call in life and ignored it? How often have you listened to and followed its promptings. And what was the result of each?

Where now is the hound of heaven calling you in your life, and where now is that self-ego-driven hound of hell tempting you away from what is true? How will you discern which is which? Anything that is not authentic, truly grounded in the Love of the Divine, that ‘betrayest Me’, ultimately passes away and is cast off, or deserts us, or lets us down. Only Love is the constant…..

The Hound of Heaven symbolises the ‘love that will not let me go”[2], the recognition that all things, all earthly concerns and connections no matter how wonderful or terrible, even death, must pass, but that which is no-thing is eternal.

Of course, Thompson wrote with the view of God of his time – as male and separate, but in this poem and others he nudges towards a deeper perception, if the essential unity of God and Soul, beyond labels and genders.

Later in the poem, Thompson (whose own life had much tragedy, after leaving his childhood home in Preston, yet it released in him literary and mystical treasures like Hound)embraces that contemplative truth that nothing loves us unconditionally like the Divine does and the very Sufi inclination that the one we have been seeking has been seeking us – and always find us. “Rise, clasp My hand and come.” (p31).

Listen to the Hound of Heaven today.

There are several versions on YouTube of actors reading this poem. Most notable David Suchet and David Burton, but my favourite is by the anonymous actor (I suspect Ciaran Hinds) using the pseudonym Tom O’Bedlam.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V6hNu8U7NSc

[1]Thompson F 1916 The Hound of Heaven. Philadelphia. Kelly p23

[2] Matheson G 1882 O love that will not let me go. in Church Hymnary 2005 Canterbury. Canterbury

…it suddenly occurred to me that my Life was none of my business; and, even more unsettling, I realised that it never had been any of my business. It’s hard to explain but I sensed that some other thing, some other element had overseen my existence. Most peculiar. I still can’t explain this wake-up call, because that is what it was – a wake-up call, and it was my first breath of freedom from the feeling of hopelessness. [2]

These two statements are from the autobiography of actor Anthony Hopkins. Apart from being a jolly good read about a man with a fascinating history, and who is also a damn fine actor, they tell us something about those ‘wake-up call’ moments, those epiphanies when quite suddenly and unexpectedly we see ourselves and reality differently and clearly, and our lives are never quite the same again. Like all of those mystically inclined, such moments are often brief and may never recur.  But if we pay attention to them, life is never the same again. Hopkins touches into that sense of presence, that transcendent quality where he was lifted out of limited perceptions of self and into a grander reality, yet deeply inner and intimate.

My first such experience was at the age of five, as I looked out of the window in our front room, over the rooftops and across to a blue sky and the waving branches of a sycamore tree. I saw countless possible shapes in that tree and had the strange feeling of how things happened, just lots of life becoming, like the tree, against a blue sky, out of nothing, like me. Then my mum told me my tea was ready and the moment was lost. I tried to tell my mum about it, but I didn’t have the vocabulary, and she always just saw me as daydreaming. But it wasn’t a dream, it was a feeling and an image.

There have been many such moments in my life, with increasing frequency and intensity down the years, until somewhere along the line I seemed to settle into Hopkins’ lived experience.

That’s a brief digression into my experiences. Why not use these pages to share some of yours? I’m sure others would love to hear of them.

Love

Stephen

April 2026

[1] Hopkins A 2025 We did OK, kid. London. Simon & Schuster. p223

[2] Op cit p319

On my way to the abbey this morning, though I am readying to depart Iona, I had that feeling of space between and found myself singing a track to Abbey Road.

In ’68 this Manchester working class lad took off for London – where else was there to go in those days? Abbey Road came out not long after and could be heard in every boutique on Carnaby Street. Yes, I was there.

And this morning that phrase ‘oh that magic feeling, nowhere to go’ was like a mantra to my steps.

At that time, it meant Sunday mornings, off work and escape from the youth hostel to fulfil my intellectual pretensions buying a Sunday Times and settling down to read it by the Round Pond in Kensington Gardens. Then the lyrics just met that feeling of having nothing planned, no obligations, no packed tube to the office.

As we have often noted in our groups, sometimes a song takes on new dimensions and meaning as we grow older and perhaps mature spiritually. Now the magic feeling of having nowhere to go is an inner quality of feeling settled within, in communion where, really, there is nowhere to go. My day ahead is filled with plans and travel and questions to be answered as is usual in participation in ordinary reality. But learning to live with the eyes of the soul we may find that wherever we are outwardly or in our minds, in the spirit of the depths is the peace that where we are right here right now is timeless and placeless. This, the still point in the turning world.

Stephen April 2026

[1][1] Lennon J & McCartney P 1969 You never give me your money. Apple Records

"They were predictable people, predictable because they worked for the robot. What the robot said they would also say, what the robot did they would also do, and what the robot believed was what they believed because people like them had fed that belief into it. And they would always be right so long as the robot worked, because the robot was the standard of rightness. There was no originating passion in them. Whatever they felt was original would die the moment it came into conflict with what the robot was geared to feel.” (Scott P The Raj Quartet. London. Heinemann p 432)

My (professional) heroine, Florence Nightingale, also broke the 'robotic' conventions of her time. She described how she found her 'must' - that which she had to follow, no matter the obstructions, which, among other things in her case, led to the foundation of modern nursing.

And I include above a picture of a sculpture of Jesus from the Anglican Cathedral in Brisbane. I was fascinated by its audacity - not least because he is naked and is breaking free of something to which so many are attached, and all the symbolism that goes with that, perhaps also how Christianity can become robotic.

What is your 'must', your 'originating passion'?

Love, of course,

Stephen

In our era, the road to holiness necessarily passes through the world of action.[1]

Our Sunday morning consideration, as war spreads its vicious tentacles, was of a man of peace. I was just about old enough to be aware of global events when Dag Hammerskjold, the then Secretary General of the United Nations, was killed indeed almost certainly assassinated, in an air crash in 1961. He was man of peace and, looking at his posthumous publication Markings, was deeply contemplative in nature.

As such, he was that rare phenomenon of someone who achieved high office and power, while not losing his soul. He felt it was possible to retain his connection to the Beloved, to hold inner peace amid war. In doing so, he overcame the temptation of the mystic to want to withdraw from the horrors of the world and into Quietism, “an indifference to and impatience with, not only ‘works’ in the conventional sense, but also all the institutional and intellectual aspects of human life.”[2]

That tension between being in the world as participant, yet not captured by it an of it, has been a regular part of our discourse in our School. Hammarskjold shows us the common path to live with this contradiction - by differentiating his essence, his I Amness, from the many ‘I’s of identities he, like all of us, possesses. His life was lived from the former:-

“At every moment you choose yourself. But do you choose your self? Body and soul contain a thousand possibilities out of which you can build many I’s. But in only one of them is there a congruence between elector and elected. Only one – which you will never find until you have excluded all those superficial and fleeting possibilities of being and doing with which you toy, out of curiosity or wonder or greed, and which hinder you from casting anchor in the experience of the mystery of life, and the consciousness of the talent entrusted to you which is your I.”[3]

Hammarskjold, like many other followers of the Way, senses the ‘Another’ present in all things, yet contained by none. It is the Alone, the One, of which Plotinus speaks, in which we are alone, but paradoxically therefore can never be alone. It is the faith in even in nights, of which the poet Rilke writes, where he finds “a great presence”[4] is moving there.

Rilke’s faith in nights summons us, like Hammarskjold, to “keep our hearts open in hell”[5], to find our point of participation (however great or small that is outwardly judged to be) free of our ego agendas.

And thus, I return to Hammarskjold and adapt his words[6] for a prayer:

‘That each moment may we let go of the image which, in the eyes of this world, bears our name, the image fashioned in our consciousness by social ambitions and sheer force of will. That we may in each moment trust in blind devotion in the Another in which we are.’

Love

Stephen

March 1st 2026

Thy will be done

[1] Hammarskjold D 1971 Markings. London. Knopf pxxi

[2] Auden W 1971 Foreword. Markings. London. Knopf. pxxxi

[3] Hammarskjold op cit 1 p 19

[4] Rilke R (trans. Barrows A & Macy J 2005) You darkness. New York. Riverhead p63

[5] Wright S 2024 Fugue. Penrith. SSP p26

[6] Hammarskjold op cit 1 p24

The original Greek texts of the New Testament, as well as the early Aramaic words (brought to us anew with the amazing work of Neil Douglas-Klotz) are literally and metaphorically written in a different language.

By the time the Bible was given to me in school, I was terrified of hell. Like many in the Christian tradition, then and now, hell and heaven were and are real physical places. The former ‘down there’ the latter ‘up there’. Yuri Gargarin, famously the first man in space, reported that he saw no heaven or angels; toeing the atheist party line of the USSR at the time. Science has done a good job of refuting so much biblical ‘truth’ – not many of us would take our child with epilepsy to an exorcist, or consider burning a suitable response to a woman healer.

That distortion of heaven and hell has kept people in place for millennia. Does anyone believe in them now? It seems about 40% of the UK population still does.

Followers of the Way tend to be more circumspect about such concepts, and incline to the realisation that heaven and hell are not places, but conditions, qualities of consciousness. Primarily varying according to the sense of connectedness to or oneness with the Beloved – the closer and more loving the more heavenly, the more separated and fearful the more hellish. From that inner place of harmony (heaven-connection) we find the world with all its ‘sham and broken dreams’ a liveable place.

[Curiously, at least to me in my role as a spiritual director, I have sat with many people who have felt like they were in hell. When asked to describe it, words such as cold, lonely, dark, solitary are commonly used. It seems that hell is not the hot and fiery place usually depicted, but a condition that is brutally isolated and desolate. I wonder, what is your experience of hell? May be add some commentary here.]

Of course, trying to experience only heaven and avoid hell, the inclination of our personalities, is a kind of hell itself! Wanting one and not the other creates attachment which keeps us stuck; letting go and finding that unifying Beloved trusting and loving relationship, which transcends clinging desire, seems to be the key. Here the Greek original is helpful in the use of the word Truth, which Jesus (English translation) uses. English translations tend towards ‘truth’ as facts, and ultimate truth applicable only to Jesus. But the Greek aletheia does not indicate facts, but process. It means unforgetting. Our Way to Truth invariably means breaking through the veils of constructs and memories and stories which have left us with a distorted view of the Real. A view which is discovered there within us as we unforget.

Easy peasy of course! Throw a switch and we have instant aletheia!.... But to help us on our Way we have assorted spiritual exercises such as we find in our School, not least the simplicity of prayer.

Rabiah, the first recorded female Sufi (to my knowledge) wrote in one her verses[1]:-

I carry a flaming torch in hand

And a bucket of water in the other:

With these things

I am going to set fire to Heaven

And put out the flames of Hell

So that voyagers to God can rip the veils

And see their real goal.

I share Rabiah’s words; the page in Daniel’s book that fell open to me this morning as I readied for 9am silence. May we carry bucket and torch each moment to rid the Way of delusions and illusions and help us in our aletheia. Thus, may we encounter its twin: anamnesis – re-membering.

Love, Stephen, probably February

Thy will be done

[1] Rabiah in Dyer D 2016 The 99 Names of God. Kendal. Chickpea Press. p41