Senses Group

Aberlady Bay and the arrival of hordes of geese - a senses group trip.  Press play button for movie and link for accompanying poems Wild Geese by Mary Oliver and What we need is here by Wendell Berry.

A trail of musings on experiencing God bodily through the five senses.

The world is charged with the grandeur of God.
it will flame out, like shining from shook foil.

Gerard Manley Hopkins

The basic reality of God is plain enough. Open your eyes and there it is! By taking a long and thoughtful look at what God has created, people have always been able to see what their eyes as such can’t see: eternal power, for instance, and the mystery of his divine being. So nobody has a good excuse.

Romans 1: 19-20, The Message

Re-integration

For a couple of years a small bunch of interested people have been infrequently gathering to explore, experience and discuss their journey of faith in relation to the senses.  Now, supported by the Coracle Trust, a new phase in this group’s life cycle has started. 

We receive God through our senses, through the fabric of our bodies.  We suspect there has been an unnecessary divorce between the sensual and the spiritual.  This has resulted in an unease yet also a growing excitement that this wedge between body and soul, between nature and soul, is not God’s intention.  Affirming these intuitions has been pleasureable and some measure of re-integration of faith with life experiences is being observed and also well received!

Outings

Much foodstuff is being merrily scoffed as we ponder quotes and readings and related personal stories.  In addition there have been a number of excursions:

• Aberlady taking in the spectacle of thousands of well drilled geese hoving into view then spectaclularly disintegrating (whiffling) as they drop into the welcoming arms of the sandy bay.
• Sancta Maria Abbey at Nunraw for compline followed by the craning of necks to catch meteorites racing across the night sky.
• Corstorphine Hill in stillness and silence waiting and watching as a set of 9 badgers tentatively emerge from the bowels of the earth to nuzzle and to play.
• A bare foot walk across the causeway to Lindisfarne. Photos from trip.

To come

We aim to have more excursions and to extend invitations more widely.  In some secluded and semi-wild spot cooking and eating round a camp fire inside a tipee. 

The trail of discussions and musings will be posted shortly along with video clips of the above excursions and the group’s reflections that resulted.