This festival was held at Bicester, Oxfordshire 28th – 31st July 2023. I am currently pescatarian and vegan curious and I’ve been cooking more vegan meals lately so I thought it would be a good idea to check out this festival to find out more about veganism and I was so pleased that I did.
Have you ever looked out to sea and been mesmerised by the waves rolling in? I have on many occasions. For me, I feel a visceral connection with the Earth when I see water rising and falling. And this is why I found this installation so compelling. It's about rising sea levels and our need to address human induced climate change.
I knew Brendan for over 20 years, first meeting him at GreenSpirit events in the early noughties. It was in the early days of GreenSpirit, in the 1990’s, when it was called “The Association for Creation Spirituality” as inspired by Matthew Fox that he became involved. Indeed, Creation Spirituality continued to be an important part of his outlook throughout his later life.
The concept of ‘infinity’ is amazing. Did you know that it can be shown, mathematically, that there are different kinds of infinity, some bigger than others? I find that incredible. This documentary takes you through the ideas of infinity, where it started, different kinds of infinity and the puzzles that are thrown up by the concept.
The wonderful GreenSpirit Walking Break in late Spring of 2022 provided a happy coincidence for me. Our location at Monckton Wyld was very close to Dorset’s fascinating ‘Jurassic’ coast, and came just as I was reading the final chapter of ‘Otherlands’. In this superb book, the palaeontologist and evolutionary biologist Thomas Halliday takes the reader back to specific times and places over the past 550 million years of Earth’s history (the period of complex multi-cellular life and just one eighth of the total 4.6 billion). The Dorset coast, ‘Otherlands’ and walking in Nature with fellow GreenSpirits (plus mainly sunny weather) made me feel very open to all that ‘Deep Time’ offered, open to the astonishing journey that the Earth has been on. There is a real joy in knowing one is part of something so magnificent – but in what way is it ‘spiritual’? The following paragraphs will, hopefully, help to explain.
What lies at the heart of Green Spiritual practice is the ever turning wheel of the seasons, the constantly changing lunar cycle as the moon waxes and wanes, the cycle of the year as Spring grows to Summer. Donald Smith has produced a lovely little book which celebrates just that in the form of stories and of his own garden. Enchanting tales punctuate his telling of his own year journey, from snowdrops to ivy.
I have been a fan of Björk’s incredible singing abilities and creative compositions for some years, especially since her crossover album Vespertine, which signalled a change in direction from predominantly Techno music to establishing a newer style of compositions and sounds. On the album before Vespertine, Homogenic, Björk began to experiment with more than just electronic wizardry and drums and included much more of an array of instruments in her compositions. And since Vesperine, she has included traditional choirs in her songs and music, which have become almost impossible to categorise, except perhaps Björkian.
…For the Cross has many meanings, some of which long predate Christianity. And, especially when you combine it with a circle in the Celtic Cross, its symbolism is rich indeed… The cross is angular, finite – though its arms may stretch to infinity – and very much male: a yang symbol. In contrast, the circle has no beginning, no end. It is smooth, enfolding. It is feminine, a yin symbol. So in the one Cross there are both male and female – a true synthesis of God and Goddess
I was born in London 10 days after war was declared into a very ancient traditional Catholic family. After 2 months my elder brother and I were sent with a very strict nanny, to a deaf Grandfather in Yorkshire. Obedience and fear were born. In January 1942 we came back to Stanmore to find another brother had arrived. Here bombs, air raids and gas masks accompanied by Catholic prayers were the pattern of a fear filled life though nothing was spoken of.
To me, green spirituality means having a sense of the sacred in the ordinary, everyday and miraculous world we live in.... ...But then, in my mid-thirties, I had what I could only describe as a spiritual crisis, prompted by an acupuncturist asking me if I felt there was a part of me as yet unknown. I felt deeply threatened by this question, but I couldn’t let it go. I started to have powerful numinous dreams, and to experience synchronicities which I couldn’t explain with my rational mind
