Letter from Cressida Pryor
June 19, 2022

This ‘full on’ time of year is now set in even stranger times...somehow the certainty and fullness of nature’s being; the roses in limpid full bloom, the nests full of new life and busyness contrast with an uncertain feeling of being on the edge of so much calamity...climate change, food and fuel shortages and a now protracted war in Europe do not fully describe the challenges we face.

We seem to be sitting, legs kicking, on a sunny and warm wall; savouring an ice cream whilst there are storm clouds gathering and maybe military manoeuvres in the nearby fields. We cannot quite see it but there is the sense that, after two years of being away from others, we are now reconvening in a different and ‘new to us’ landscape and we don’t yet have the roadmap to navigate our way through...we don’t have such a guide and nor does Google...

Perhaps one way through is to, as Rumi says in his poem ‘Zero Circle’...is to surrender to the beauty, to the not knowing, let the certainties go and ‘be helpless and dumbfounded, unable to say yes or no.’

Rumi assures us that: ‘Then a stretcher will come from grace to gather us up.’

This is a reminder to have faith and trust in the love of the Great Mother...

I don’t believe this to be a ‘do nothing’ faith and an empty lazy trust...

Rather that we are the hands on that stretcher; in whatever form it takes...we are the hearts open to intuit the safest route through the challenges we will undoubtedly face...but we don’t do it alone. There is someone else holding the other end of the stretcher...we face the next times together.

I finish with words from the mystic Julian of Norwich who undoubtedly faced much uncharted territory in her lifetime:

"Beloved One,
Thank you for calling me into being and holding me in your love.
Help me to feel how preciously I am knitted to you.
Make me aware of the knot of love that ties me to you, so I may courageously do your will."

So may it be; in Her name, amen.
Cressida, FOI Steward