Changing paths
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Wobbling
Read more: WobblingChanging Paths challenge day 26 — wobbling Spiritual wobbles can happen when your spiritual path becomes out of synch with your religious community. They can be dry spells, when it feels as if the source of your spiritual life has dried up, or the wobble can propel you out of your old path and into…
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Wandering
Read more: WanderingChanging Paths challenge day 25 — wandering Wandering, like wavering and wondering, is a good thing. There is a whole genre of songs in German called Wanderliede, about hiking. And as JRR Tolkien wisely remarked, not all those who wander are lost.
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Wonder
Read more: WonderChanging Paths challenge day 24 — wondering. There’s wondering in the sense of asking questions about the nature of things, and then there’s wonder in the sense of amazement.
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Longing, Sehnsucht
Read more: Longing, SehnsuchtChanging Paths challenge day 23 — longing. There are various words in other languages that can be approximately translated as longing or yearning. Sehnsucht (German), a longing for a person or a place. Saudade (Portuguese), melancholic longing for a person or a place. Hiraeth (Welsh), a longing for home, possibly unattainable since we cannot revisit…
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Check your baggage
Read more: Check your baggageChanging Paths: unexamined baggage🧳 🎒💼👝👜 This is an excerpt from my book, ‘Changing Paths’: “Changing your religious or spiritual path can result in unexamined spiritual, emotional, and intellectual baggage from your previous tradition, which can cause all sorts of issues from depression to anger. We all need to unpack and deal with our unexamined baggage.…
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We are family
Read more: We are familyChanging Paths challenge day 21 — family There are two types of family — the one you were born into, and the one you choose. If your birth family is problematic for some reason, you can create your own.
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Seven fires
Read more: Seven firesChanging Paths blogging challenge day 20: hopes and fears. When I chose this prompt, I was thinking of the position in the solar cross Tarot spread that corresponds to hopes and fears. But now, with the news that we will be crossing the 1.5°C global warming threshold in the next few years, I’m reminded of…
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Deep magic
Read more: Deep magicChanging Paths challenge day 17 — deep magic The deepest magic that I know is love. Not sacrificial love, not romantic love, but the everyday magic of connection, nourishing and soul-satisfying.
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Stories
Read more: StoriesChanging Paths challenge day 16 — stories. The power of stories to change and challenge a person’s worldview is immense. My worldview was definitely informed by reading A Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula Le Guin, Tolkien’s The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings, The Writing on the Hearth by Cynthia Harnett (now sadly forgotten by…
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Wibbly wobbly
Read more: Wibbly wobblyChanging Paths challenge day 14: changing paths. Changing paths is a wibbly-wobbly thing. During the process, I was all over the place. It was like having the bends (you know, the thing where a diver rises too quickly to the surface and gets cramps) or being on a giant scary roller coaster ride. That’s why…
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Things I miss
Read more: Things I missChanging Paths challenge day 13 — things I do miss about my old path. Unitarian hymns — specifically the earth-based ones like Peter Mayer’s “Blue Boat Home” (which doesn’t get sung often enough in the UK), “Mother Spirit” by Norbert Čapek, and nature-based ones like “Daisies are our silver” and “Spirit of Life” of course,…
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Things I don’t miss
Read more: Things I don’t missChanging Paths challenge day 12 — things I don’t miss about the traditions I have left.
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Lover of leaving
Read more: Lover of leavingChanging Paths challenge day 11 — why I left I left Unitarianism in the end because of archetypes. The archetype that fits me the best is that of the witch, and it’s an archetype that sits uncomfortably in the Unitarian path. (The combination may work for others: didn’t work for me.) I left Christianity because…
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Old friends
Read more: Old friendsChanging Paths challenge day 9 — old friends. Although Unitarianism * / Unitarian Universalism wasn’t my path, I still value many of their ideas and values. They’re green, they’re LGBT+ inclusive or at least welcoming, they were the first to ordain women ministers (the Universalists in 1860, the English Unitarians in 1904), among the first…
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New friends
Read more: New friendsChanging Paths Challenge day 4 — new friends I’ve met some lovely new people in Canada — in the Wiccan and Pagan community, at pottery class and also Morris dancers. Plus we’ve joined a (secular) choir recently.
Changing Paths 