Interfaith Ministry

I said I would post next about Interfaith - so here I am,  1/4 of the way through training to be an Interfaith Minister with the One Spirit Interfaith Foundation.  This means a w/e in London about once a month with a wonderful group of fellow students,  mentors & tutors going through all manner of experiential learning processes, looking at many of the great faith paths /  religions,  and learning about an inspiring form of deep listening called Spiritual Counselling.  This will lead on to creating ceremonies in the 2nd year of the training too.  

It was this latter aspect that drew me in initially,  as an opportunity to explore ritual & ceremony further,  I have so enjoyed helping create ceremony to mark important moments in people's lives already.  I still look forward to that element of the training,  but I am engrossed in the beauty of finding out about so may ways of honouring Spirit in our lives, that I am in no hurry to get to the next bit of curriculum.  And I am reading so many wonderful books - many of you know what a happy bookworm I am..

A friend whose experience was one of my inspirations to do this training spoke of 'having layers peeled away' , and this is certainly my experience too.   It confirms for me that  opening to the Divine is & always has been at the centre of my life;    but now I am learning to recognise how I have ducked & dived away from this,  how I hide behind my defences, indeed hide myself away.  I need the challenge of working with these patterns to have anything to offer others down the line.  The more I step into the enormous support that was always there to stop this , the more my relationship with Whateveryoucallit grows.  Words are difficult,  so easily laden with old stuff - but  God /  Spirit /  the Mystery /   Source /  is beyond those hangups,  and shamanically speaking my Spirits are backing me clearly and strongly.

This kind of focus stimulates creativity too,  & I continue to play with my sewing machine - more posts soon.

And we have done fun things in the recent good weather, like have fish & chips at Newquay on the w/e ..  under a watchful eye, as I thought,  though when I saw this photo full size, the eyes seem to be elsewhere ..?!