Dear friends,
A few weeks ago, a group of us set out on an overnight pilgrimage across London. This was the launch event of our Spiritual Ecology Festival.
We walked from Calthorpe Community Garden through the dusk to the floating gardens of Global Generation, where jasmine, wildflowers and long grasses leaned out over the water. We continued in silence along the canal to the London Buddhist Centre, then into the quiet simplicity of the School of Sufi Teaching, where sleepy hosts welcomed us with tea in the small hours of the morning.
As dawn approached, a procession of fluorescent pink rickshaws carried us through streets, as the sky slowly turned from grey to blue to pink. We reached Tower Hamlets Cemetery Park just as the birds began to sing. "Ninety-eight bird species have been recorded here," Deborah Colvin, a trustee for the park, told us, as the dawn chorus swelled overhead.
A lot of people have asked us why it’s an overnight pilgrimage, and not a daytime one! For me, there’s something so hopeful about travelling through the dark together, trusting that every companion is carrying a story, and discovering, again and again, unexpected places of hospitality and light.
Then, a week later, we gathered again for the Spiritual Ecology Festival. There were conversations about myth, ecology, AI, community and social division; music, comedy, workshops and shared meals. Out of all the talks, panels, workshops and dialogues there’s one story that’s stayed with me.
Our friend and contributor Scelo Mbatha told of walking in the African bush when he and a friend found the river they depended on had run dry. One by one the animals came, discovered the empty riverbed, and left. Then the elephants arrived. For hours they stamped and scraped at the dry earth, digging down towards the hidden water beneath. Eventually they reached it. They drank deeply before moving away, leaving the waterhole for every other creature that followed.
Scelo paused, then said that maybe we could all think of St Ethelburga's as being like a waterhole. A place where people who are thirsty for hope, companionship and courage can come and drink.
It is such a generous image. In a world that can often feel dry — of wisdom, of trust, of spaces where we can speak honestly across difference — maybe our task is simply to keep digging. To create places where people can gather, rest, tell the truth, and find the nourishment needed to continue the journey.
Thank you to every pilgrim, contributor, musician, storyteller, volunteer and participant who helped make the festival possible! If you weren't able to join us, recordings from the Spiritual Ecology Festival are still available to watch online, and we'll be releasing further conversations over the coming months on our YouTube channel.
And if you would like to continue engaging with our Spiritual Ecology programme, applications are now open for participation in Lifelines. Lifelines connects community and faith groups with farmers to plant hedgerows and wildlife corridors across the UK, whilst deepening our relationship with the natural world. If you are a part of a faith, community, or cultural group, we invite you to join us. You will attend a residential leadership training, then organise your own volunteers for a fully-funded weekend retreat of planting and connecting alongside another group. Alternatively if you are a farmer or landowner, or know one, who would like us to come and plant hedgerows or woodland on your land, we would love to hear from you!
Join us in the Peace Tent for Contemplative Practice on 14 July, and online for Conflict Coaching. Looking ahead, our autumn training programme includes Depolarisation Training in September, Facilitation Training, Embodied Peace: Working with Grief in Communities, and Non-Violent Communication & Conflict Transformation in October, and a three-day depolarisation intensive Holding a Radical Centre in November. You can also join us for Remembering Earth, an evening lecture with Emmanuel Vaughan-Lee, and on 30 September for Towards a Radical Centre: What does it mean to be together now?, bringing together leading UK voices in depolarisation and peacemaking.
We hope you'll join us soon at the waterhole!
With all warmest wishes,
Clare Martin & Tarot Couzyn
and the rest of St Ethelburga’s team