The term Sacred means “to be connected with or close to God.”

I like the sound of that.

Intention

I am going in search of the Sacred.  Since coming down out the tree after 40 days and 40 nights, so much of what I learnt during my time there has been integrating and becoming the foundation for what my future work will be.

5 Expedition to 5 Sacred Sites.

Expedition: ‘A journey undertaken with a particular purpose, especially that of exploration.’

I will walk, sleep out, track and explore. I will go alone, with friends and from time to time I will take Willfred – a 1940’s Willies Jeep.

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Join Me for Season 2 – In Search of the Sacred: To get started copy and paste the URL below into your favorite podcast app and subscribe

Sacred in the Wild

When I was in my twenties I wrote a book called Cathedral of the Wild.  The title was an attempt to capture the often unseen presence of the sacred in wild places.  Sometimes walking through a wild place I would find myself stepping across an invisible threshold into the feeling one might encounter in one of the ancient churches of Europe. A stillness that felt alive, as if the air was infused with holiness.  I was suffering with severe depression at the time I wrote the book… yet in nature close to towering trees and in empty wild places I felt connected to an almost innate reverence.  In those places, briefly the depression would lift and all anxiety would fall away.

I started to believe that the mental turmoil I felt was an undiagnosed homesickness for the land and what it held.

It seemed to me that in the wilderness there were particular places where the feeling of being close to God was dramatically amplified. Forests and gorges were places where in the face of ancient forces we glimpsed ourselves in a scale of time beyond comprehension. Where cut stone and ancient waters made us face eternity.  Later I learned that all the churches of Europe were build on Pagan sites of worship… sites that those early nature worshippers had know had some kind of amplified energy. The holiness was there before the monument to it.

What does that mean? Amplified energy?……. I don’t know. But I have felt it.

All I know is at that time I had became hungry for the sacred as medicine for how grey and dull my life had become. It was like if I could find something sacred I could find a reason for being.

What Makes the Sacred?

I’m still hungry to understand, more so than ever … what makes the sacred? But now my quest is not to stave of depression but rather to deepen life.  I’m fascinated by how something in us seems innately capable of recognising the sacred. Even now in a world that would ‘tinderfy’ love and commodify art.  It is somehow present at the moment a child is born or there as we sit at the bedside as a loved one passes.

Location

I will load up an old Willies Jeep that me and some buddies bought off a guy one night while we were drinking and go in search of the sacred, exploring Londolozi’s sacred sites on an individual expeditions to understand the nature of the sacred.

South Africa remains in lockdown. The land is quiet and wild and I am longing to be back under the stars.

Join Me for Season 2 – In Search of the Sacred

To get started copy and paste the URL below into your favorite podcast app and subscribe