To imagine, to dream that an ocean away, on the far side of half a millenium’s separation, there are people willing to give you a hearing, or a chance, or to count you as kin for a while, who would show real esteem for that bit of treasure you’ve been entrusted with: there is no equal to that privilege. That has happened to me.
No one says goodbye to that privilege easily, or voluntarily. As most of you know, I thought I’d been served my severance some two years ago, and I shook every hand in that hall in Wales as if I’d not have the chance again to live out loud that way. Turns out I didn’t read the fine print. Turns out I’ve been spared, and granted grace. And so I’m coming back. I’m bringing a vial of vital fluid with me. Brain• Mind• God is what that fluid’s called.
This time together will be for those who are summoned to the mind’s wilderness, as I have been. It will be for those who’ve wondered after the seat of the soul, who’ve wondered after the intelligence of the spirit and the spirit of intelligence. It is for those who are stilled and sorrowed by the grace of an ordinary life, and by the silence that is the time signature of the Holies and the saints.
I’ll see if I can make a sum of what I’ve granted, in case there some among you who’d like to take this summons and stillness and sorrow for a walk through the fields, or up the mountain for a time.
Stephen Jenkinson
Founder of Orphan Wisdom
