This was an attempt to learn the Chakras location and meaning.

May help some of my readers:

The Energy of Life

My Crown sings

in perpetual awareness of higher consciousness

to reveal a Violet lightness:

Source of beauty, creativity and self sacrifice.

At the centre of my vision resides mystical insight

There I “see” with my Third Eye, in Indigo hue,

Prism of intuition and understanding of the way.

From my throat is voiced to the sky

the Blue sound of Self expression,

in true communication of Spirit.

The core of all being inhabits my Heart

waving rhythmically in a field of verdant Green

while at home Love dances perpetually.

My Self-worth is upheld through my Solar Plexus

Sun Yellow the colour of ego, intellect and clear thinking,

 Connecting strength, confidence and good humour.

Deep is feeling and joy rooted in my lower abdomen.

There self-respect abides while Orange glows

in its success and freedom.

Upholding all - the base of my spine - source of power

Whose colour Red symbolises self awareness,

Built on solid ground, deep rooted and vital!

From denominational Christianity to Global Faith

Grange over Sands – 4th September 2011 [NB - I used a much edited version of the Sermon on the day]

Sermon (Part 1)

My spiritual journey - From denominational Christianity to Global Faith

I thought it might be interesting to share something of my spiritual journey, before getting into the meat of my sermon. I was born in Chorley in Lancashire and attended the local Congregational church school in Chorley. My Grandmother was into Trades Unionism, but my Father’s gentle influence reached back to his father’s strict upbringing. His father was a very “Victorian” CofE Stipendiary Reader in Penrith. From my dad’s bookish presence I was schooled in Temperance and Science Fiction, and he gave me a deep awareness of the bigger picture. There was world religion on his bookshelf. It made me argumentative in RE lessons at Bolton School.

By the 6th Form I was slightly rebellious, but at University in Manchester I was soon “converted” to Anglican Evangelicalism [Holy Trinity Platt Fields – Michael Baughan (Vicar)]. I was on the Christian Union Executive and later had links with Pentecostalism. I drifted away a little after my return to Chorley from where I commuted to Salford to work as a Planning Officer. However, I began lay preaching in the Congregational then later the United Reformed Church (by then in my early 20s)

After marrying Val, we lived and worked Aberdeen, attended the village Kirk (Presbyterian) near Aberdeen at Skene, but after only 18 months I moved back south to Kendal where James and Lindsay, our children were born. I became active as a leader in “Sunday School” and also “lay preached” around the South Lakes and up Penrith. I then felt “called” to trained for, the then new, URC Non Stipendiary Ministry. I chose to train ecumenically on the then, Carlisle Diocesan Training Institute course. It was a tough time in full time work at the County Council with small children! I was Ordained 1986 serving at Carver, Windermere – by which time I was post-evangelical, as my training was
open and exploring!

My Forties were an activist phase, basically getting on with my job, preaching on Sundays around Cumbria, and

very active across church structures, on endless Committees, but with strong ecumenical interests being developed. I was Chair of Governors at Kirkby Kendal School for a few years. I was very much involved in conceiving the Social
Responsibility Forum with Ruth Clarke & was for many years on its Environment & Energy Groups. I saw my work and practical Christian engagement as linked. I was gradually promoted in my work, which was planning related - covering energy and the environment, with a major nuclear waste, nuclear power and environmental role for my employer CCC.

As I reached my fifties I was reading widely in the sciences (Dawkins et al), leading to a brief “non-realist” phase in terms of my preaching & writing. In the late 1990s I helped ‘found’ the Progressive Christianity Network Britain

(and was on its Executive until last year). Working with the Kendal Ecumenical Group I started a local PCN Group –
reading key texts, watching the DVDs and going to conferences with authors such as Jack Spong, Marcus Borg and Dominic Crossan, who reshaped my theological understanding in a Christian context. All this set me free to explore liberal and progressive theology – with no limits – and helped me grow! I remain on the Committee of “Free to Believe” – the mainly URC open network.




Sources of theological awakening
My first personal sense of encounter with the “divine”, after my University conversion, was triggered by early retirement from Cumbria County Council at the end of 2006 (after I was off work for several months with stress problems). Nevertheless I later started my own Planning Consultancy! So now – here I am in my early 60s! I guess

that I’m slowly awakening to what was my problem – being into everything – instead of just BEING! I think I
am realising that western Religion is interpreted as being about DOING!, in other words, it is guilt based and culture bound. Doing is not experiencing God, so, I readily admit I have had a limited prayer or spiritual life for the past 40 years, much more it has been about intellect not the heart. I am still “Living the Questions”, exploring to what or to whom am I praying and respecting? This also is “doing”, but a necessary stage.


Drivers to theological awakening

I have to admit that all this has brought increasing disillusion with standard Christian religious beliefs. I find much Christian doctrine totally disconnected with contemporary understanding in the sciences and its relationship to other faith insights. For example, I find Christianity’s “only way” claims personally difficult. To me God must transcend any and all faiths, for the God of “all that is” in our amazing universe – must be always mystery and yet source of our awe and wonder.


I am thus more and more experiencing the possibility of “awakening” through other sources of global wisdom and spirituality. Living faith is a “Way” rather than depending on Religion’s “beliefs”. I am recognising, with millions of others “on the edge”, that we can be ‘spiritual’ without being ‘religious’ (in the negative sense of having to believe particular things). I am awakening to the new - but old! I now see (intellectually) that there is a new story which integrates scientific understanding, the “evolutionary story”, and the felt experience of the “All”, as Michael Dowd puts it in his book, “Thank God for Evolution”.) This for me is the felt inner experience of “Life, Love, Being” that is shaping a new Spirituality - aboveand beyond historic western religious doctrine - but not its long mystical tradition.
It was after reading afresh in the Christian mystical tradition as well as those of other faiths that I wrote “Reshaping Christianity” in 2008. [It can be purchased from Free to Believe - see link:

So, increasingly, like Elliot, I am "Knowing the place for the first time” It is from my own experience of the mystery that life has now danced into being more than I could ever imagine. So - before talking through my Booklet .... A poem I wrote to Iona. It is an important place for me as some of you will know.

SERMON PART 2 - Reshaping Christianity

My sermon now summarises my Free to Believe Booklet – You can find the link to the site here: http://www.freetobelieve.org.uk/booklets2.html.



My Booklet explores developments in the world faiths and what are called the “new spiritualities”. It embraces the clash of the pre-modern, modern and the emerging world, which risks tension and schism – but also offers hope for mutual understanding. It also explores how Christianity is changing, as new ways of looking at “God” are
becoming necessary – the “God” in the evolutionary process of becoming – Life, Love & Being. Poetry and poetic prose best captures the reality that we name God. As John O’Donohue puts it in Anam Cara, “Silence is the sister of the divine.” “You must make a space for it so that it may begin to work for you.” “Friendship mirrors itself in the
silence between.”
Recent research predicts a continuing decline in church attendance to as low as 3% in the UK over coming years. However, what the academics call “post modernity”, will through its re-awakening of people to the ‘spiritual’ or ‘mystical’, begin to open up new avenues of faith exploration beyond the evangelical / liberal divide. Dave Tomlinson’s book, The Post Evangelical, first explained this situation in 1995. He acknowledged the “growing discontinuity” of many

nurtured within the evangelical milieu. Gordon Lynch (Professor of the Sociology of Religion at Birkbeck University, London) has also written about his journey from evangelicalism in Losing my Religion, but he has set out his
analysis of the emerging encounter with what he calls The New Spirituality. It is from these and other sources that I have found my way of looking at church and life and God very differently.


There is a growing common theological underpinning for this. Gordon Lynch identified many of the key ideas. God
– the All – is the guiding intelligence behind evolutionary process expressing in the energy of the universe itself. Pan(en)theism is replacing a transcendent, patriarchal view of God. Mysticism and the divine feminine – using symbol and liturgy and encounter with nature people are able also to celebrate the feminine side of God. More and more people are discovering the sacred in all of nature and are affirming the material aspects of nature and its gift of life as participation in divinity.
This way of thinking emerged in the 1970’s with the book Original Blessing by Matthew Fox. People of faith are more and more celebrating themselves as sacred – as a manifestation of the divine. They sense that human
self-consciousness is derived from the supra-consciousness of the “All”. In addition they begin to Religion differently – as culturally and historically bound and thus metaphorical – enabling a growing spirit of ‘ecumenism’ and interfaith encounter.


The future of faith will be a return to its mystical roots. A chorus of voices proclaim that Christianity must re-embrace the spiritual, the mystical, in ways that make the mystery of God real in human experience. Carl Rahner said,

“The Christianity of the future will be mystical, or it will not be at all".
He felt that all human beings have a latent awareness of God, who he describes as “absolute mystery”. The Celtic way
is also deeply connected to the mystery of the divine “being” – using a Trinitarian motif in its worship and engagement. This call to mysticism will not be easy for those whose faith journey has been rooted in accommodation to the religious critique posed by modernity where God is simply the “religious ideal”. My story has followed this path
and I expect many of your spiritual journeys have too!


Surveys of Religion & Spirituality were undertaken by Lancaster University which explored the way “religion” and “spirituality” interact in Kendal. The Religious Studies Department chose Kendal, in Cumbria, to research levels of involvement in both the old “religion based” and new “individualised” spiritualities. The book based on the research is, “The Spiritual Revolution – why religion is giving way to spirituality. “
The research distinguished between those who see ‘life as religion’ and those who seek ‘subjective-life spirituality’. The authors identify the “massive subjective turn of modern culture” with a profound rejection of the authority claimed by ‘religion’. They caution that, where the word spirituality is used in Christian circles it traditionally references the transcendent, not an experience that flows “through one’s own subjective life”, though there are overlaps. The Kendal Project looked at the ‘congregational domain’ and the ‘holistic milieu’ (e.g. Yoga classes / body-mind-spirit) and found that there are, “two worlds” in Kendal, with a self-developing spirituality: “far more evident in the holistic milieu than in the congregational domain”. The project predicts a steep decline in traditional churches over the next 20-25 years. The Unitarian Church in Kendal was noted as an exception, as it also embraces nature based and other faith adherents


In addition, Progressive Christianity also exemplifies this change, as, over recent years, there have been emerging in Kendal and many other UK towns and cities, groups of Christians who are exploring beyond the edge of traditional Christian faith.PCN Britain Local Groups, such as Kendal Ecumenical Group (KEG), and nationally Free to Believe, MCU, the Iona Local Group, etc – study books, host conferences with noted leaders, watch DVDs and
follow Courses – like “Living the Questions”.
There is a growing Speaker and Conference Circuit – with Jack Spong, Marcus Borg, John Bell and many others. However, most “open Christians” hang on in the congregational domain out of loyalty, supported by new open hymnody: e.g. Wild Goose and the late Fred Kaan’s great hymns.


I have also been exploring beyond my tradition through contact with the, “new spiritualities” and open faith communities, and am more and more into Interfaith issues, as people in the South Lakes and Cumbria have developed the South Lakeland Interfaith Forum & the Cumbria Interfaith Forum networks. I am secretary of SLIF.


Finally, to finish this address, I want to explain about what are often called, the “New Spiritualities”. A growing spectrum of what I regard as credible writers and spiritual teachers, are taking an increasingly high profile role, by drawing together the “holistic milieu” into a coherent framework. The new spirituality comprises many spiritual paths which are being pursued by those who do not directly follow one of the recognised eight or so historic
faiths, though many remain deeply influenced by them.
The historic faiths remain the core source of the wisdom the new spiritualities advance.
The goal of all such paths is “spiritual awakening” and its method is “meditation” and “silence”. Christian mystical, Vedanta (Hindu) and Buddhist writings, earth based spiritualities (“pagan”) as well as aspects of

psychology, are regularly quoted. The wisdom of the pre-modern is alive again! Leading teachers include the Dalai Lama and Eckhart Tolle. Also, Neale Donald Walsch – as well as others such as Gill Edwards, local author of “Conscious Medicine”, have wisdom to share! The teaching is:“Life is an ongoing process of creation... We call forth what we
think, feel and say... Be in the present moment...”


As a “cross fertilisation” of religious ideas - now growing rapidly, as east and west share common insight,

an open approach across the world’s faiths offers a vital opportunity to shape a global spirituality drawn
from the world’s meditative traditions. This is now urgent – in the face of climate change and the consequences of human excess. To change the world we need to challenge traditional culture and religion – but not by confrontation – by education and engagement. This, so far, has had little impact in the more fundamentalist expressions of each religion – but it needs to have - as it is beliefs and the fears they provoke that drive hate and war. It is socially

and politically the challenge of the century, as recent events in the Middle East and now in Britain show. Hope arises, however, from the increasing emphasis on meditation practice in Christianity and in Interfaith contacts - with many local groups across the UK linking contemplative tradition and practices.


Contemporary mystics, such as Eckhart Tolle, are increasingly recognised as key western leaders in the movement to “awaken” individuals to the “presence” found in times of stillness: He says:

“When you lose touch with inner stillness, you lose touch with yourself. When you lose touch with yourself, you lose yourself in the world”.
Worldwide the emphasis is increasingly on meditative practices to still the mind’s endless chatter and our focus on “form” (things). This does NOT mean leaving our religions and their heritage – it means absorbing all the world’s inherited wisdom and practicing a Way – but not one bound by belief & doctrine. Future spirituality will be about PRACTICE – knowing God!



I hope this address has informed and encouraged you to explore your faith and its impact on yourself and others – while having open hearts and minds to discover the voice of the divine light in our midst.
Rev''d John Hetherington - john.hetherington@pcnbritain.org.uk

Magic of Soul

Hi everyone who reads my blog - check out Mark Townsend's "Magic of Soul" site. Also the FACEBOOK Hedge Church - its growing and exciting.
Mark is being ordained to a new ministry on Saturday 18th June 2011. Lots of info - and links to his new role. John

Evolutionary Christianity

Hi everyone on my Blog - I am posting a link here to the Evolutionary Christianity website: http://evolutionarychristianity.com/blog/ What keeps drawing me back to the site is the breadth of contributors - but I just picked up on from the site of the passing of Judy Cannato - an amazing writer on spirtual evolution and the evolutionary story. Do check it out and lets see what we think. And check out Judy's many books. They take you there!

And just to whet your appetite further check out this endorsement:
What others are saying about Field of Compassion:

“Judy Cannato writes like a poet, visions like a mystic, and weaves a story that is original, provocative, and inspiring. Her ability to integrate the wisdom of field theory, Christian compassion, and personal narrative ...provides the reader with nourishment for intellect and spirit alike. A message of reassurance and hope for troubled times.”—Diarmuid O’Murchu,author of Quantum Theology

"Synthesizing the brilliant insights of our era’s most significant scientists and spiritual teachers, Judy Cannato provides an effective process for embodying this new understanding. Field of Compassion is a gateway into the future of the human species.”—Brian Thomas Swimme, co-author of The Universe Story.

I have read both of these and found them transforming!

GO buy!!

An open and progresssive global faith

John Hetherington [P2S Associate] explores the 7 Points of his vision for the global religion and spirituality of the future.
[Reproduced from the Article Posted on www.permissiontospeak.com]

The Unitarian approach to faith and life offers a caring, open-minded way of thinking, which encourages seekers to follow their own path. Unitarianism has increasingly drawn me over recent years from my own Reformed heritage as a former Congregationalist. However, I remain for now a 'self-supporting' minister in the United Reformed Church. The Congregational and English Presbyterian Churches, later joined by Scottish Congregationalists, became the United Reformed Church (URC) in 1972. The URC and Unitarian churches thus reach back to the early (16th Century) at the beginnings of the European struggles for religious freedom and tolerance over and against  monarchical state religion, .

Unitarians and liberal progressive in the URC (and in other denominations) draw on many religious sources and welcome people across a wide spectrum of open-minded views. The URC retains a somewhat more Calvinist perspective, with evangelical and liberal / progressive wings. Unitarians are united by shared values, not by creed or dogma.

Unitarian and other progressive, open, liberal Christians yearn to explore, unfettered, the full range of contemporary religious and spiritual insights. Ours is a broad faith that allows people to explore the full range of contemporary understandings of the "mystery" of life and Being that we call "divinity". We are people who "Live the Questions" not expecting to be given fixed answers. We must hope that forever, now, we are past imprisoning or killing one another on the basis of belief or doctrine, though that is not the worldwide perspective - yet!

I am more and more drawn to a Unitarian Universalist position, content to embrace all those progressive values and ideas that have paved the way to open exploration of the world's faiths and spiritualities. The hallmarks of this openness should be reflected in all aspects of our thinking and living.

A word hear on Trinitarian and Unitarian belief. I share my ministry across both traditions. For me the "divine" is not definable - certainly not as a "God" out there beyond the sky, who sent a literal "divine Son" to save humanity. The "God" I know is found in the midst of life - at the depth our being and doing. That beingness is where east and western religions can come together. Trinities crop up in religions east and west and each reflects a way of entering into the mystery of our humanity and divinity and the connectedness we address as Spirit.  To me God must remain a mystery - through which I sense God's 'presence' in all that is in "creation" and also thus "in" us humans (and nature) - beyond any defining. As Karen Armstrong says in her, "The Case for God" we must look for God in "mythos" not "logos". God cannot helpfully be defined as unity or trinity - only experienced. 

Jesus thus remains my source of connection to the divine, but other faith founder also had that connection, too. I find the doctrines hammered out in the 4th Century under Constantine incredible when viewed as "logos" - but deeply powerful when entered into as mythos.

 Given this perspective, I want to share with you SEVEN POINTS that I have come to see as my vision for the global religion and spirituality of the future. See what you think!

So, my First Point: It is in personal encounter with the mystery and wonder of life that we find our deepest selves. When we sense the "spirit" within, lifting us to moments of transcendent "knowing", we glimpse a foretaste of a "divine loving presence" that will ever hold us.

I believe that the heart of all religion and spirituality arises from human encounter with the "spirit of life" that is fully present in us and our world. It's not surprising we start each service at Kendal Unitarian Church with "Spirit of life come unto me".

"Spirit of life come unto me. Sing in my heart the stirrings of compassion. Blow in the wind, rise in the sea, move in the hand giving life the shape of justice. Roots hold me close, wings set me free, Spirit of life come unto me, come onto me."

My personal perspective is that, as evolved human beings, we are more than "flesh and blood" - we are eternal souls journeying to find joy in our hearts and wisdom for our mind, through the sensed presence of "divinity" within. I sense deeply that we are sparks of the divine life sharing a journey of discovery - connected to the source of all that is.

Second Point: We have discovered that in human lives, words and deeds - prophetic women and men have and are being "energized" to confront the "powers" of structural evil - with justice, compassion and love.

There is more to heaven and earth than most human beings experience. Life is hard and brutal for many. We have down the millennia been blessed with stories that can change things, if we will but listen. The normal modes of civilisation are, for a few, to rise tyrannically to the top of the pile and oppress the mass of the people. Inspired women and men have spoken out and sacrificed their lives to confront such systemic evil - as in Libya now. We must always be prepared to take risks for the future.

Third Point: We know that down the ages, prophets, sages and wisdom teachers have made the "light within" clear to us, and to peoples everywhere. We thus recognise Jesus, in particular, as our model for a life lived in love, compassion and service to others.

There is an enormous literature from west and east that speaks to us of the insights being experienced across our planet from growing awareness of Hindu and Buddhist and other teachings, and the practices being followed. We need to be open to practices of mindfulness and prayer that have often been lost in the western faiths. Meditation and mantras, ritual and chant, stillness and silence - are all increasingly recognised as global phenomena. One "divine light", recognised in tribal peoples and civilisations across the world.

We now know, in this global age, that we can read and absorb all that insight; and be changed as a consequence. We can at least glimpse what it means to be wise, enlightened and loving. I thank God that this chain of messengers has opened the way to justice, peace and love for all - even if we still have a long way to go in our climb to global unity in diversity.

We should always be deeply thankful for the man Jesus who came in the line of inspired prophets within Judaism - and for the recognition of his early followers that, in him, there was a shining depth to his life, love and being that caused many to embrace his "WAY" within their Jewish context. It must remain our model.

Fourth Point: We have the freedom in Unitarianism to explore the wisdom found in all the world's religions (west and east) - and from them find inspiration for our ethical and spiritual life, and help to develop practices to open heart and mind.

There is much I do not understand in my own faith heritage, but I increasingly believe that we are on the verge of a global civilisation, whose deep roots of "practice" have arisen in India, China, Egypt, central Asia and in tribal settings. I firmly believe that Unitarians and other progressive Christian groups have a mission to work across faith boundaries to develop common explorations. As the Baha'i faith is the most recent world religion, it has also sought to integrate the whole picture into a common global ethic.

We must search for "ever new" explorations of the Jewish, Christian, Muslim and Baha'i writings and consequent teachings - which call us to respond to God's love by loving our neighbours as ourselves. We must search for "ever new" explorations within eastern religious and spiritual insights, as found in Hindu, Buddhist, Taoist and Sikh thought and practice.

There is a beautiful translation, by Alan Jacobs, of the Isa Upanishad, which Mahatma Ghandi regarded as one of the most important in Indian scripture. It captures the essence of eastern insight:

All is perfect, so perfectly perfect! Whatever being lives, moves and breathes on the earth, at every level from atom to galaxy, is absolutely perfect in its place, precise and choreographed, because "That" flows from the Glory of God, the Lord, the Self, Consciousness, the Source, Awareness, Peace and Love, and is therefore perfect. When you surrender your ego to "That", you will find true happiness. Never envy the place of any other man or woman.

We need to be cautious when we hear people talking of Christianity "being the only way".

All I am discovering, points to there being many paths to the truths about us human beings and our spiritual nature. Insight comes from all that Moses, Jesus and Muhammad and Bahaullah taught. We need to hone our critical faculties to test faith assertions. Unitarians need to ensure they play a decisive role in the global Councils of faith to get their point across.

The era of Christian exclusivism is ending, leading us to an era of mutual inter-faith and inter-spiritual exploration.

The Sufi path in Islam has produced some of the most powerful poetry and insight into God's presence in us. For Sufis there is, "one human brotherhood and one morality that blooms in deeds of service".

They are sceptical of churches and shrines. Rumi the famous Sufi poet of the 13th Century said, "I gazed into my own heart; There I saw him, nowhere else." They also see each religion as different lights: "The lamps are different, but the light is the same: it comes from beyond."

Bahá'u'lláh (the prophet of the Baha'i faith) said: "The earth is but one country and mankind its citizens"; and that, as foretold in all the sacred scriptures of the past, "now is the time for humanity to live in unity"

I am personally convinced that the inspiration for change will only come as we explore the more mystical Christian paths, and connect them with the insights being experienced across our planet from growing awareness of Hindu and Buddhist and other teachings, and the practices being followed. We need to be open to practices of mindfulness and prayer that have often been lost in the western faiths. Meditation and mantras, ritual and chant, stillness and silence - are all increasingly recognised as global phenomena.

Fifth Point: We must embrace Humanist teachings - which counsel us to heed the guidance of reason and the results of science, and warn us against idolatries of the mind and spirit.

People who are a-theist (unhappy with the traditional concept of a Father God "out there") are of course welcome in Unitarianism, for there is much to redefine and explore together. Agnostics are our also our brothers and sisters - because none of this is certain or defined precisely! Writers like Ken Wilbur are exploring an Integral approach, with concerns that link science and faith, and social and cultural issues, to help bring about a connected global understanding.

Sixth Point: We must embrace earth centred spiritual teachings which celebrate the sacred circle of life and instruct us to live in harmony with the rhythms of nature.

"Pagan" has become a pejorative term - harking back to, what I sense was a deeply real attempt by pre-historic and early cultures to understand and thus "worship" the "gods" of season and places. It must have seemed to be a capricious and dangerous world. There is much to rediscover in the exploration of "earth based" teaching.

I see much to rediscover in the exploration of "earth based" teaching. Unitarians, I know, do appreciate the Pagan, Celtic, Druidic insights that have produced some of the most powerful poetic spiritual verse I know. You may well recall the words of Celtic Christian saints - inheritors of the earlier faith of these islands.

Seventh Point: We should be excited, too, by the new emerging forms of spirituality that embrace the possibility that we can explore connection and healing.

Some of you may have come across the "Celestine Prophecy" series with its 12 "Insights" of a future global connection being enabled. Other writers like Neale Donald Walsch and Eckhart Tolle, as well as writers on "Conscious Medicine", are part of a growing scene exploring the nature of life and soul - the divinity within. Unitarians will freely want to explore this growing area of encounter, practice and healing.

So - to finish:

My 7 Points will, I hope, be memorable and helpful in stimulating you to think further, "outside the box". I always enjoy breaking boundaries - and I welcome your ideas and reactions.

In other words, I want to challenge you all to be risk takers, people open to the call of "spirit" and "insight". We are, I am certain, called to be explorers beyond "orthodoxy" of belief and be open to the excitement of exploration and the joy of new discoveries made and interpretations heard.

We should (to borrow a Baha'i term) be a "House of Welcome" to those with open minds and hearts - supporting one another in our "Way" while fully respecting other's ways. These are exciting times to be part of!

In my Booklet, "Reshaping Christianity" I expand on the new forms of open spirituality.  To order a copy go to the Free to Believe website: www.freetobelieve.org.uk

Twitter / Home

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Longing is the universe evolving.

Longing is the universe evolving. Love is the glove enveloping the formless form. Sing, sing of the light. The starlight born of darkness.


And what of you and me? Was our soul-light born then too? Ready made seed: divine spark. Waiting, waiting down the eons.

I, in this moment know myself. Present! Full! Graced. Given. Dance, dance with me now. Maker of worlds! Life giver.

I am here living, aware, joyed. This, "little thing" held in my gloved hand. Looking in and out - seeing all that is. In this I am alone but also everything.

That is the wonder of it all. To see, to love, to be! To be beyond strife and striving.

Let poets speak. Let songs be sung! No random words - save the well chosen. It is all we have to praise the mystery of being.

Yet - even poets are silenced in that ending, when the heart drowns in love.

Copyright John Hetherington Feb 2011

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