2023

'Real Life: Telling the Truth of Our Lived Experience'

“Is this the real life? Is this just fantasy?” asked Freddie Mercury. This year’s Summer School is about sharing the truth of what life is really like for us, and being curious and compassionate about what life is really like for others, especially those whose lives are invisible to us and whose voices are unheard. Additionally, over the last few years, the distinction between ‘real’ and ‘virtual’ has been blurred, as the new communities and relationships we have created and sustained online have shown themselves to be equally vital and valuable, particularly for those who were excluded or isolated by their personal circumstances from many ‘real world’ opportunities for connection, engagement, and participation in community life. Through talks, engagement groups, and personal reflection, we will be exploring what it means for us to truly ‘be real’ – with ourselves, in our relationships, in our communities, with God – and how we can make space for others to do likewise.

Engagement Groups

A: 'It Ain’t Necessarily So...’ with Sarah Tinker and Charlotte Chanteloup

Summer School provides space for gentle exploration, away from our everyday lives. In this workshop the invitation will be to go deeper, to consider our identities beyond those social veneers. Together we’ll create the trust needed for us to share our life stories, both tough and tender, and express more of ourselves – through conversation, journalling, silence, collage, poetry, movement and sound. We’ll seek ways to strengthen and protect ourselves, for our work out in the world, whilst staying open-hearted, better able to accept ourselves and others as we truly are.

B: 'A Life Less Ordinary?’ with Danny Crosby and Laura Dobson

The invitation of our engagement group is to explore the spirituality of ordinary and extraordinary experiences, affirming the sacred nature of our whole lives, from the mundane to the magical. We will explore experiences on the physical and more-than-physical planes, from activities grounded in our bodies and our earthly existence, to such things as dreams, mystical experiences, epiphanies and revelations, synchronicities, signs and symbols. We will consider how we discern truth, how we create our own reality in dialogue with others, and how the pandemic has changed our experience of reality. Together we will create safe spaces to share our experience of life and listen to one another, working with a variety of 'bodyfulness' practices to help us be fully present with ourselves and others.

C: 'The Natural Network’ with Kate Dean and Eleanor Chiari

'If we could surrender to the Earth's intelligence we'd rise up rooted as trees'

– Rilke

Our engagement group explores the idea that in inventing our abstract human reality we have forgotten how to belong to the wider ecosystem. Inspired by author Richard Powers’ invitation to imagine and speak for non-human consciousness, our group will explore ways to find our place in a world where humans are not the centrepoint. We will do this through practical activities, creative exercises and meditative practices.

D: 'Keeping It Real’ with Jane Blackall and Lizzie Kingston-Harrison (ONLINE via Zoom)

‘Authenticity is a collection of choices that we have to make every day. It’s about the choice to show up and be real. The choice to be honest. The choice to let our true selves be seen.'

―Brené Brown

In this group we invite you to share true stories of what life is really like for you in all its messiness and complexity. We hope to co-create a compassionate space in which we can hear honest accounts of each other’s lived experience and, in so doing, nurture a deeper understanding of our own and others’ reality. We will also look at ways we might equip ourselves to live ever more authentically in our relationships, communities, and spiritual lives. This online engagement group will require some advance preparation; all participants will be asked to prepare a short written reflection on some aspect of their lived experience to share with the rest of the group during summer school week (guidance will be sent ahead of time). We will explore these reflections together, with sensitivity and care, in a structured way. [Note: we will meet at the same time as residential groups are meeting so our first session will be held from 2.15-4.15 on Sunday, subsequent sessions from 10.45-12.45 Monday to Friday, and we ask all participants to commit to setting aside the time to attend the whole series of six group sessions].

E: Children’s Group (for under 18s): ‘Reality vs Virtual World’ with Claire Maddocks and Caroline Boyce

Imagine a world where you can decide your own rules, live the life you want to lead, dress exactly how you’d like, only live with the people you choose who all share your interests, thoughts and morals. It would be so perfect and peaceful wouldn’t it? Well, that’s a world you will be creating whilst at Summer School. We’ll begin the week looking at your reality - where you come from, your interests and morals. As the week progresses, we’ll devise our own virtual world where you’d love to live. We’ll then end the week looking at how we can make some things of our virtual world reality for us to make a pathway to living a more peaceful life.