I have been reading a book called Ordinary Magic: Everyday Life as Spiritual Path.  I quote from a passage in this book:

“The key to everyday life as spiritual practice lies in bringing a full, rich quality of being and presence into whatever we do. ……To find the spiritual path in our daily life, we need to bring being and doing together. This is precisely what happens in creativity, where the beauty that we love can become what we do.”

In June I am going on a ‘ conscious writing’ retreat with Julia McCutcheon. I am often asked what ‘conscious writing’  means. Depending on who I am talking to, I find it difficult to explain.  I will let Julia’s words speak for me. This is a holistic retreat to ‘discover your true voice and writing from your heart with the voice of your soul.’  I went last year and found it a wonderful experience.

We stayed at the Abbey House in Glastonbury, a lovely retreat centre which abuts on to the Abbey ruins.  From a bedroom window you could see over the garden to the ruins, and you could walk right through to the ruins from the bottom of the garden.

Not only is Glastonbury home to the music festival, but it has a very ancient spiritual history going back many centuries to the time of Jesus.

This created a wonderful atmosphere in which to explore our writing. Julia led us very lightly through a series of holistic exercises and guided visualisation into a space from where we were able to dive deeply into our authentic nature to find our own voice in our writing.

I found myself in a very stimulating group of bright, loving and compassionate women and one man, and was able to gain much insight and wisdom for the writing of my own Life Story. So that is why I am going again this year.

Following on the retreat, I decided to create this website. Another suggestion which was made to me was to read extracts from my book in a podcast. A year later I have finally managed to do it.  Here it is. It is my first attempt, so I hope to improve it with practice!

The Sufi poet Rumi wrote:

‘Let the beauty that we love be what we do.

There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground.’