It is now almost exactly one year since I started this Substack, with a commitment to writing one article per month. I would love to do more, but a surprisingly busy full-time job running a retreat centre makes this difficult at the moment.
The subscribers to this list are a mix of old and new. Some of you have subscribed over the course of the past year – hopefully because you are interested in what I write about. Some of you have been on previous versions of this mailing list, perhaps going back to the meditation group I used to facilitate in Newcastle over ten years ago, or the online meditation sessions I ran during lockdown.
Either way, thank you for being here!
Over the past twelve months, I have posted articles on a variety of topics, reflecting my interests in religion, spirituality, and culture. In case you missed any, you can view the archive here. As well as being a blog and mailing list, Substack also functions as a website, so I have also added a page about my books here.
This year, I am going to try something slightly different. A couple of months ago, I signed a publishing contract with Canterbury Press to write a book about Christianity as a spiritual path, which is provisionally titled ’A Tale of Two Gardens’.
One of the reasons I have been thinking about this idea is that I frequently meet people who could be described as ’spiritual seekers’. In some ways this may be unsurprising, given my role. What is interesting, however, is that in many cases these are people who did not have a religious upbringing, but have nevertheless developed an interest in spirituality, typically through ‘eastern’ traditions such as Buddhism and Yoga, or so called ‘new age’ spirituality. Yet, it never seems to occur to anyone that the Christian/western tradition might have something comparable to offer. But, of course, it does, even if the idea of actually going to church remains deeply off-putting to many people – often for entirely understandable reasons.
I also hope one day (though who knows when), to bring out revised and updated second editions of two of my previous books: The Wilderness Within, also originally published by Canterbury Press in 2014, which was about Christian meditation; and Tantalus and the Pelican, originally published by Continuum in 2009. Taken together, the three books will then comprise if not a trilogy, exactly, then at least a 3-part set of some sort.
So, as I start work on the new book, I intend to post article length sections of work in progress from time to time. They won’t necessarily be posted in sequence, and the material will undoubtedly change a lot before the book is finally published, but I hope they will prove interesting in the meantime.
I will also post other articles unrelated to the book, as and when I write something new.
There might be more than one a month, there might sometimes be gaps. I would like to increase my output compared with last year, but will have to see how it goes. I think it unlikely I will manage more than one a fortnight, so you certainly won’t be inundated.
Finally, I am very grateful to all those who have generously supported my work by taking out a paid subscription. Substack offers a great platform for writers, as you may already have discovered for yourself, and whilst I am a very long way off being able to earn a living from writing, all subscriptions nevertheless provide an enormous boost – not least to confidence.
I hope to be in touch again before too long.
P.S. Substack has opened up a whole new world for me – maybe the same is true for you too. In the past year I have enjoyed some outstanding essays on the Abbey of Misrule by Paul Kingsnorth (can't wait for his next book), and perceptive insights from Mary Harrington on Reactionary Feminist, not to mention some great pieces by Ed West on the Wrong Side of History. I have also enjoyed The Upheaval by N S Lyons, The Free Press, After Babel by Jonathan Haidt, Rod Dreher's Diary, as well as Andrew Doyle, Louise Perry and Freya India, to mention just a few.