You are warmly invited to join us on the following Quiet Garden mornings at Wild Fortune this autumn - October 9th, November 13th and December 11th. Places are limited to 8, so please be in touch via email with your preferred date to reserve a space.
Below, we reflect on the last 25 years at Wild Fortune and look to the future.
Peace be with you
Tessa & Mark Holland
email: wildfortune@btinternet.com
Affiliated to the Quiet Garden Movement
https://quietgarden.org
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| Wild Fortune: the prayer spiral in spring |
It all started with a problem which became an opportunity. Twenty-five years ago, we moved with our young family to a spacious home at the edge of woodland near the South Downs in West Sussex. A plot of derelict land beside our home became available for purchase and we took the opportunity with a view to restore it to its former life as a woodland garden. And we had two questions. How do we do this? And how do we share it?
The cycle of the seasons and time spent in all weathers listening, looking and working with the lie of the land, the trees and plants answered the first question. A friend’s question offered an answer to the second; have you heard of the Quiet Garden movement?
This year, 2019, is our 20th anniversary of being an affiliated Quiet Garden and through all the joys and sorrows that life brings, we continue to be deeply thankful to be part of this very gentle, vital and often hidden ministry of prayer and welcome. The quiet vibrancy of ‘God’s big book’ of creation has taught us so much, as has the presence and friendship of fellow pilgrims who have joined us over the years in response to the invitation of Jesus to ‘Come with me by yourselves to a quiet place and get some rest’.
Everything is for a season and we are living with a new challenge and the opportunity it presents. As a family home Wild Fortune is too big for us now. Also, in the last few months planning approval has been granted for three separate building projects by neighbours either side of us. As a result, at some point in the next couple of years we are anticipating having to close the Wild Fortune Quiet Garden as it will no longer be a quiet place to welcome people. Less immediately we are looking to move away so that we can continue to live prayerfully as contemplatives and we hope to be able offer a quiet space of welcome to others once again. We have seen this as a new chapter in our journey of faith and an opportunity to think outside the box! So we are now in a time of transition between Sussex and rural Wales, where we have been fortunate to find a place (which needs work) and where we feel at home. In the meantime we are giving thanks for all that Wild Fortune has given us over the years and listening afresh to the quiet raw beauty of the Welsh landscape and the rhythm of life of the people and place. And the mystery that is God beckons us forward in the quiet.
Tessa & Mark Holland
Arrival
Not conscious
that you have been seeking
suddenly
you come upon it
the village in the Welsh hills
dust free
with no road out
but the one you came in by.
A bird chimes
from a green tree
the hour that is no hour
you know. The river dawdles
to hold a mirror for you
where you may see yourself
as you are, a traveller
with the moon’s halo
above him, who has arrived after long
journeying where he
began, catching this
one truth by surprise
that there is everything to look
forward to.
R S Thomas
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