Events

We are living in a time of anxiety and uncertainty. As more environmental damage is done, the means to repair it seems to be getting less. It is increasingly difficult to know what to trust in politics and the media. Spiritual traditions survive, but the authority they once had has passed to science and so it might seem that the idea of ‘The Sacred’ has disappeared.

But as science reveals more and more about the place of the earth in the cosmos there is a growing awareness of how precious our living world is and of how inter-dependent we are with it. Perhaps this is not only a scientific discovery but also the re-appearance of the sacred in a form fit for our times.

The Rainmaker Story tells of a Taoist elder who brought rain to a region of great drought in ancient China; it was one of C.G. Jung’s favourite stories about the capacity to bring about a state of natural balance. It is also one of many examples of an ancient worldview where the earth is seen as sacred and humans are part of that sacred matrix. Can we reinhabit this way of seeing in our modern world? In this talk I will bring stories, experiences and examples of ways in which our relationship with the earth, and with our own animal nature, can be restored, opening doors to imagination, synchronicity and the numinous. Along the way there may be many difficult and painful encounters with the shadow of our dominant culture; when this is honoured our ecological crisis can then become an extraordinary portal of modern times.