Saturday is always a heavy day, with three rituals and attendant prep sessions, as well as two explorations, led this time by Lorraine and Jan, both of whom are ordained ministers, but who follow rather different personal paths. You can find the basis of Jan’s exploration here, while Lorraine took an informal approach to engage us in a discussion exploring the relationship between Spirit, Humankind and Nature from a Druidic perspective.

Many Paths are represented on these weekends; beliefs wear many faces and Names, but the more you learn and the more you get to know the people who walk these paths, the more you realise that, although the outer form may differ, at the heart of each is the same Light.

Every year, we try to build in time to just spend getting to know each other, but there is always just so much to do… But, in spite of a day so full that we learned of an ‘in’ joke that says you have to diarise time for flatulence on a Silent Eye weekend, there was much laughter in the pub on Saturday night. We occupied the tiny snug of the four-hundred-year-old inn and set about the serious business of learning more about each other. It is one of the joys of these weekends that we get to spend time with people we only usually get to speak with online or on the phone.

There are inevitable and invisible barriers around us all, created to protect us in a world full of strangers and possible dangers. By the time we have worked through the first ritual on Friday, most barriers are down… and by Saturday evening, you would never know they had been there at all. The shared experience of something so far outside our ‘normal’ lives brings us together in friendship and companionship. The release of the tensions built up by the story we have been exploring opens the doors of the heart and it is a lively, laughing band that occupies the little bar, talking long and late.

So, Sunday morning, we did not officially greet the dawn, though some of us were already up to prepare the temple, which we had opened early for private meditation. It did not escape notice that, after two days of torrential rain, during which time the Fates had told the pre-biblical, Sumerian story of the Flood, Sunday began with clear and sunny skies.

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