Wild belonging...
26/09/22 Nature
Driving south from Bristol to Devon the concrete was slowly replaced by curling, rolling roads and countryside. When I arrived I found that the days of Wild Belonging were to centre in a quirky campsite next to a stream, nestled between two huge hills.
Led by Peter Gill the retreat focused on individual paired and collective contemplations. To be honest I wasn’t sure what to expect, however, very quickly Invisible doors were flung open through which our small group entered. There, patiently waiting for our attention, nature lay at our fingertips. And like that we were given occasion to notice, acknowledge and connect with it: magnificent and minuscule; transient and intoxicating…
Excuses had been dreamt up to encourage us to touch and be touched by the living world that is so often our forsaken backdrop. I’d forgotten how jagged cliffs can fall away into coves, and shale beaches, and how lovely it is to clamber down the last fringe of land and dip into the sea.
Out of the way of work and supermarkets we enjoyed the last rays of September’s Summer sunshine: standing in the stream; smelling and fingering the foliage; sitting around the fire; and at nightfall, stumbling up the steep hill behind the camp to lay silently in starlight and be amazed by a delicately twinkling universe.
In the light of Wild Belonging I could see things that had been obscured. In those focusing moments somehow stuff made sense. E.g. I don’t need to wrestle with the gatekeepers of this world, I can train myself to recognise the sunshine in someone’s eyes and be lifted up into another dimension. & That I should remember how much people’s voices are secretly tuned to warn or to warm us. etc.
Laying here, back on my sofa, the smell of smoke on my skin now just a memory; Im cherishing these thoughts and the connections I made, and smiling deeply on the inside.
Adriana Dorsett.
Out of the way of work and supermarkets we enjoyed the last rays of September’s Summer sunshine: standing in the stream; smelling and fingering the foliage; sitting around the fire; and at nightfall, stumbling up the steep hill behind the camp to lay silently in starlight and be amazed by a delicately twinkling universe.
In the light of Wild Belonging I could see things that had been obscured. In those focusing moments somehow stuff made sense. E.g. I don’t need to wrestle with the gatekeepers of this world, I can train myself to recognise the sunshine in someone’s eyes and be lifted up into another dimension. & That I should remember how much people’s voices are secretly tuned to warn or to warm us. etc.
Laying here, back on my sofa, the smell of smoke on my skin now just a memory; Im cherishing these thoughts and the connections I made, and smiling deeply on the inside.
Adriana Dorsett.
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