Life is hard...and amazingly wonderful, so keep an open mind

I am very much a person of extremes. I either love something or I hate it. There is seldom an in-between for me, it is all or nothing. This was especially true when I was younger. At age 25 I had chosen my beliefs, both politically and spiritually. I was genuinely convinced that those beliefs would never change and moreover that they should not change. In my utter naivety, I thought I had found the ultimate and unchangeable truth. Looking back now I marvel at the strange mixture of innocence and arrogance. I loved to learn, but only about those things I already knew or believed. In fact, I was so fastidious about guarding my 'boundaries'  that a few years ago when a friend gifted me with a book by theologian Timothy Keller I first contacted my good friend, Rudi, to enquire if he knew the author's work and whether it was alright for me to read.  Looking back now I realize what I was really asking was: "Will this book unsettle me? Will this author tell me something I do ...

As I sit down to write this, it is somewhat of a shock to realize that I have been a practicing Celtic Christian for just shy of five years now. Before finding Celtic Christianity I searched far and wide for a Spiritual Home and it wasn't until I discovered this ancient branch of Christianity that I truly felt at home in the religion I was born into. Five years ago I was Spiritually tired. I can think of no other way to describe it, the dogma, the doctrine, all of it just left me tired and drained to the very depths of my soul and in the darkest corner of my heart, the fear was growing, fear that in the end there may not be a place for me in the Christian House-hold... I don't have the words to describe the absolute relief I felt when I discovered Celtic Christianity. It felt like belonging, like coming home. The more holistic approach, respecting nature as God's creation and getting to know a Jesus who holds the universe in his hand and yet is present in a very real way in...

I had a blog planned for this week, dealing with Corona and the lockdown, but honestly, when it came right down to it I just didn't have the stomach for it. I'm fast approaching Corona and lockdown saturation and maybe some of you reading this are too. So instead I'm going to tell you about a delightful little movie that is helping to keep me upbeat during these strange times. I think most of you who read this blog know what a big Jane Austen fan I am. I also love period movies in general. But when I heard that Jane Austen's romantic comedy Emma was getting a remake in 2020 I was skeptical, to say the least. There have been many very good adaptions of   Emma in my lifetime and I wondered if one more version was really needed. I finally got to see this movie just before the lockdown and I found it...very pretty, but as I told a good friend at the time I found the story on the slight side. Since then I've watched this movie twice more and discovered that this version...

Walking a Spiral is a form of walking meditation. As such it is not a meditation I am physically capable of doing, nevertheless, it was required of me this week as part of the art as meditation course I've been taking for the past eight weeks. So what to do? Well, I used a little trick I learned from Carl Jung. It is called active imagination and I've been using it since I was a child. Of course, back then I had no idea what I was doing or where it comes from. I was simply doing what seemed to come naturally to me. And so this week I went into a moonlit forest and laid out a spiral path with smooth white pebbles that glistened in the moonlight and I walked that path, but I did so with a heavy heart and a dark question lurking around the edges. The poem below came from that 'walk' in the spiral. WALKING THE SPIRAL A spiral laid out in my mind smooth pebbles white in the new moon's light. the spiral clockwise turning  Love holds you fast Smooth pebb...

I'm an avid reader, I love books and I read every chance I get. There have been several books over the years that shaped me and changed my life, literally.  Back in 2007 one such a book was published. It was a little book called THE SHACK by William P. Young. This year as part of our practice during Lent my mom and I decided to revisit The Shack. I've seen the movie of course, but it has been 13 years since I last read the book. I wondered whether it would pack the same punch the second time around as it did the first. In 2007 I was spiritually in a very different place. I had always seen things differently, even as a child. I can't recall exactly how The Shack first came to me but looking back now it came along in a nick of time. Now, this book has been very polarizing in the Christian community. Some loved it, some hated it. I loved it! This book blew my mind in the very best way. I found that I could relate to the lead character Mack's deep distrust of God. I...

 I've learned a lot about myself in these past months and in the process I also learned a lot about my writing process. I had somewhat of an existential crisis at the end of last year when after a two-year struggle I finally produced a rough draft for my novel Selkie's Magick, the draft sucked, no false humility, no fishing for compliments, just plain unvarnished truth. Seriously it was hideous.  It was lazy and rushed (after two full years of struggling, really what have I been doing?) The next two drafts were not much better, it pains me to say it but it is true. Like Amy March in Little Women, I was forced to face the cold, hard reality that, while I may have some talent I'm unlikely to ever be great. So now what? As I saw it I had two choices. I could quit and oh that was tempting, so very, very tempting or, and this was the much less appealing option, I could go back to the manuscript and see if anything could be salvaged at all.  But first I had to have a fran...