Personal Introduction — Welcome!

It’s easy to fear you’ve fallen off the religious journey. It’s easy to assume you aren’t spiritual as you don’t fit into organised religion. It’s easy to see the spiritual journey as no longer relevant. Others’ ideas of the journey can mess with our heads.

I usually followed the ‘right’ moves in the Christian church I was raised in. Frequently I feared I’d left the ‘right’ path and was wandering lazy meadows like the truant Little Red Engine of my childhood story book. I often felt, like the Little Red Engine, that I’d disobeyed the injunction to, ‘Stay on the rails no matter what!’

Other friends have long since given up on church. Even in my childhood there was little social need to be a church member anymore. Saying you went to church brought you more embarrassed, incredulous looks than respect or admiration. Church was no longer what everyone did on a Sunday. It didn’t mean much to others. Saying I was a Presbyterian minister was a conversation stopper.

This cultural change was starkly illustrated six years ago on my first Maundy Thursday in a new inner-city parish. At 6.45pm I was at the front of the church setting up an intimate space with candles, stones, and a bowl for footwashing later. I’d sourced reflective music and planned lots of silence among carefully written words. As I’d nearly finished my preparations, a group gathered at the other end of the church. New to the parish, I was surprised how many there were and how young, expecting more grey heads.

Then a local member led half the group down the aisle and through an internal door to the church’s conference centre behind. The young attendees were NOT coming to my mindfully meditative Maundy Thursday commemoration. No. They’d enrolled online (sight unseen) for a six-week mindfulness course beginning that evening in a hired conference room. Google maps had led them to the street address but had not distinguished church and centre.

What a symbol, I thought then and have done many times since, of what is going on for church, younger generations and the search for soul. They and we participated that evening in much the same meditative quality of activity in the same building but within very different contexts. The mindfulness group trusted an unknown secular instructor more than an established church and minister. For them, church history and ‘baggage’ obscures any deeply satisfying spirituality available within. It is not that they are not looking, but that they are looking in a different place.

Because I was around church and spiritually minded people, I kept being reminded that there is an inner spiritual journey to negotiate. I’ve found however, that it is wider and freer than I was taught. To my utter relief, I’ve learned I am always on that journey simply by virtue of being human. To be human, I discovered, is to be spiritual. Hence the title of this book. Wherever you are, you too are on the journey, (doing it your way, I hope.)

It is easy to lose sight of our inner convictions as we stumble, fall, pick ourselves up, and deal with critical fellow-travellers. It is not easy to seek new directions, through mists of disillusionment and disenchantment.

In my experience, as I need resources, they come into my life. I hope it will be the same for you. In this novel you have come across part of Hope’s journey. Not all of it may suit you right now. Here, though, are ideas and metaphors which may help with the questions buzzing round your head. These conversations seek to support re-enchantment of your journey. To help you move into post-critical thinking. I hope the book helps you understand the reasons for the changes in your thinking, and in other people’s. I hope too that you will learn how important it is that we do change.

Imagine you and I are sitting in a coffee shop with our favourite beverage in front of us. Here are, in novel form, significant encounters. They have their origins in different conversations I’ve had with a variety of seeking human beings who were wrestling with questions, doubts and scepticism.

I bring to the table, as virtual conversation partners, some authors who helped me understand what is going on for us when we begin this phase of faith and stumble our way through it. I’m personally indebted to their courage. They’ve put out into the world their innermost thoughts on journeying through this still poorly mapped landscape. There are a few metaphors of my own in here too, images that came to me as I strove to show clearly what was going on for other seekers.

• • •

Enjoy the realisation that you are not alone.

Others have trod this way before you.

Others tread this way with you.

As you walk honestly in your truth, others will be able to follow in your footsteps.

We are a band of contemporary pilgrims, sisters and brothers and others together making the most significant pilgrimage of our lives.

There is a journey.

You are on it.

With us.

Susan Jones