Following the Wild Spirit of Christ :
 How a trip to the forest lead to me leaving Methodist ministry

I came into the church as a teenager with no background in Christianity or any kind of religious framework in my upbringing. However, I had always had a sense of something beyond that was drawing and beckoning me out of my limited self. The Christian faith gave me a framework to understand and nurture that sense of beckoning. In time I was baptised, began preaching and was ordained as a Methodist minister and for decades this felt as if my spiritual life had finally found its home. Indeed, for the most part Methodism has provided for me a hospitable dwelling: warm and nurturing it has been a place to live, grow and share.

Nevertheless, in seeking the way of Christ there is always a sense of opening to new vistas, a breaking open of boundaries and boxes that bind us. Carefully formulated over centuries, we are offered categories that we can put people into, separating one from another, boxes within which we constrain our own unfolding sense of self as well as clever definitions of who God is and how God speaks and acts.

Although they may be useful for a 5me, the Wild Spirit of Christ and our own vibrant souls cannot be contained by any of these boxes. When it is not channelled along concrete culverts the flow of a river shifts its banks, unconstrained, and twists in new ways. And so, in the summer of 2019 I felt the draw of the wilderness and I found myself camping alone in a forest in Cornwall. I’m not instinctively a person for such outdoor pursuits but I felt compelled as if that land had something to teach me.

I spent time in the woodland naked, meditating and reaching out to the Wild Spirit that was still beckoning me forward after all those years.

In the shifting shadows of the night forest, I felt a deeper opening: an ancient communion with primal energies. Rhythms of moon waxing and waning, seasons in constant flow, all the elements in flux outside of my control: rain, sunshine, rain. And the call of the Wild Spirit of Christ was to open up my body/ soul (for these two aren’t separate) to welcome all of this.

The fecund fertile ebb and flow of creation/destruction and the primordial forces in the soil, trees and rocks found an echo in the depths of my own body.

This did not feel safe. There is a raging power, passion, desire and will to life in our muscles, bones, and churning organs. Once opened to be seen and experienced this is a door impossible to close.

The bright orange ball of fire that resides in the bowl of our pelvis is a source of such creative energy. It loves fiercely and seeks connection to others as it urges life out into the world. But institutions teach us to be wary of our bodily sensations and to mistrust them as a source of authority, instead we are taught to seek an external voice to guide our ways. Be it a book, a set of doctrines, a man in a pulpit, or a list of rules of practice and disciplines. This is not surprising because, however benevolent an institution may be, it relies on control to maintain its form just as a city needs laws and boundaries to maintain decorum and a sense of identity. Who knows what might burst out if members started to trust their own deep drives and sensations? Equally it feels much safer for us to rely on that external authority, there is no need to take responsibility if we subcontract our important thoughts and decisions to something outside of ourselves. Within the institution the warm maternal bosom nourishes us as long as we stay close. And this is no bad thing as there are times when we need the maternal holding to heal and grow.

The structures hold us safe but if we turn our attention to that supernova exploding inside of us then who knows what havoc that could wreak in our lives? Rather than incline our ear inward it’s so much safer to let the heavenly father tell us what to do: he’s up there watching over us to protect us and guide us for our own good (or so simplistic religion would have us believe).

As I sought to understand the ramifications in my life of these newly discovered sensations, I found a dilemma: How do I live in faithfulness to this raging wild creative spirit that I have found in communion with Christ by entwining my body with the earth whilst also dwelling within an institution called the Methodist Church with all the frameworks that this necessarily entails?

There are many good things about the Methodist Church and many wonderful faithful people who live well and are called to minister within its structures and yet it is the nature of institutions to always hold boundaries: limits of acceptability of thought, behaviour, and ways of being. I know that many people do flourish within these boundaries and wonderfully so, like a city with strong walls that protects its citizens with structures to keep them safe and healthy. But for me the Wild Spirit kept beckoning outwards, what I had thought was my home for life became a staging post on the way, a welcoming community to whom I owe a lot and to whom I have given thirty years of my life.

But the full moon always wanes and rather than remaining still she tracks a path across the sky. The tide turns in the estuary to reveal new channels and complex fresh landscapes in the salt marsh each day and so came a new act of trust for me: to let go of everything I’d been clinging to, everything that had helped me find form and identity in faith and self since I walked through the welcoming doors of a Methodist Church at the age of 14. To set out into the wilds, away from well-trodden paths into rich and tangled undergrowth. I don’t know whether this space will consume me or nurture me as such things are outside of our control when we give ourselves to that wild flow.

Uncertainty is the very nature of this path but it has the potential to open up new ways of connecting to others, conduits of love and creative life that atrophy in the framework of institutions. If we choose to venture into the wilderness, the self-willed place beyond city walls, then we risk our own destruction.

Some questions: