About
The Inside Story
In my teens and twenties, I often felt lost, alone, and despairing. It was a repeated sense of falling into a deep black pit, and something eventually comforting me, and drawing me back up into the daylight.
Now, I’d call that something my soul and its connection to divinity, to the Great Spirit that holds us all. In those days, I didn’t really know what was happening, and I hadn’t got words to describe it.
My thirties and forties were a busy, mostly happy time. Although I was scared of the responsibilities of being a parent, I loved being a Dad, and learned a lot seeing life through the eyes of my two daughters.
In my fifties, I had a thorough midlife crisis. My long-running marriage fell apart, I walked out of my business career, and I swung between excited freedom and panicky lostness. It was like being a teenager again.
It was amid this chaos that my soul began speaking to me: or maybe more accurately, I started hearing it. I began meditating. I found spiritual teachings I could relate with, mainly from Sufi, Aramaic Christian and Celtic sources.
Since then, my soul’s journey has continued to deepen, and my soul’s voice has become really vital in giving me a sense of meaning and direction in my life, in spite of rising confusion around us.
I wish that when I was younger, someone had given me a way of making sense of my pain, and growing through it. That’s what I hope this website can do for you.
The Outside Story
I studied English Language and Literature at Oxford University in the late 1960s: a time when the end of the world felt real, due to nuclear war. But there was also joy and a sense of possibilities. Then I spent 20 successful years in business management, mostly in building materials. I wasn’t trying to make money, I wanted to work hard and get results and recognition.
However, I was part of a new venture that did make money, so my joke of wanting to retire at 40 came true. I spent my forties and fifties using my time and capital to create two environmental charities, both still going strong.
In 1990, with zero experience in farming, education, or charities, I helped create a 130-acre organic farm and education centre for young people: the Magdalen Environmental Trust. This inspired my book Natural Happiness. Then I set up Hazel Hill Trust, a 70-acre conservation woodland retreat centre, which was my spiritual home for many years.
Since 2000, I’ve been increasingly engaged with the climate crisis: running workshops on resilience, and projects to help communities to respond: see more at Seeding our Future. My wife Linda and I now live near Hay-on-Wye, on the Welsh borders, where I am growing vegetables, praying, and trying to help young people prepare for the future.