“What a long strange trip it’s been”

If you were to visit my home, you’d find lots of books on photography and design, but by far, the largest collection in my bookcases (and overflowing out of them) are books on History, Religion and Spirituality. When we moved to Oxford, I decided to finally go back and earn a degree in this area and started with a 2-year English Local History course through Oxford University Cont. Ed on where there was flexibility in the topics that I could chose for each paper and I always took up the options related to religious history. From the Anglo-Saxon minsters to the English Reformation to the Oxford Movement, I loved it all. To complete the degree, I took four more years (whilst working full time as a teacher) to study through Open University for a BA Humanities degree with a specialism in Religious Studies. This included studying the history of religions, the major religions of the world, and for my main elective I chose classical mythology. Years later, the collections of books keep growing and I realise that this has been a guiding interest throughout my life.

One of the first songs I remember loving as a child was “Age of Aquarius“ by the Fifth Dimension and it pretty much set my expectation for what the future was supposed to be like (I was not well prepared for the 80s!). I’m very much a child of the 70s California Schools System, raised on songs by Cat Stevens and believing that if we all work together we can heal the planet and live in harmony with all other beings (I still do). I used to watch “In Search Of.. with Leonard Nemoy” every Saturday morning and dream of visiting Stonehenge some day, developing ESP, seeing Bigfoot… and was pretty much fascinated by anything magical, paranormal and extraordinary. I loved the The Power of Myth by Joseph Cambell.

As a teenager, I was the geeky kid in the “New Age” section of the bookstore, playing with Tarot cards, casting horoscopes, calculating numerology, and reading… reading all the time. In my 20’s I was often still seen sitting on the floor, but now in Fields Bookstore in San Francisco reading books by Starhawk, Margo Adair, Margot Adler and Scott Cunningham, popular writers in the fledgling Neo-paganism movement. By my 30’s, my interests had shifted to the historical origins of Judaism and Christianity, mostly through many authors of the Jesus Seminar. By this time my interest was focused on understanding why people believe what they do and how religions are born, grow and change.

These days, one of my heroes has to be Ronald Hutton, (who I have a bit of an academic crush on. I met him in person one day on High Street in Oxford and I tried not to be too much of a fanboy, but he was unbelievable gracious and kind). I developed a Buddhist meditation practice earned a BAMBA certification in Mindfulness Teacher.and My 50’s brought me into studying Buddhism and finally earning a Humanities degree through Open University with a specialism in Religious Studies as well as diving a bit more into “cunning folk: and the general idea of the “spirit of the place” in folk magic and religion. I also became a BAMBA certified Mindfulness Teacher.

Now, my life was turned once again after finally reading Robin Wall Kimmerer’s “Braiding Sweetgrass” last year and resonating with pretty much every single word of it. Boom… she had written a book describing how I see the world and I realised that my view is very old and shared around the world. I now have a stack of books on Indigenous religions and Animism to work my way through, (Harvey, Abram, etc..), but have also been reaching out more to local groups to meet like-minded people. If you think we should be friends, say hi.

Posts I’ve tagged as “Spirituality”: