Petra Griffiths
My main roles are coordinating Living Spirituality Connections, being Pastoral Care Coordinator at St James’s Church Piccadilly, and helping to run the Eco Church programme there, including monthly non-denominational eco liturgies in the garden and on Zoom. I also facilitate a Zoom group working through Richard Rohr’s book Falling Upwards,, and the Living Spirituality monthly group Journeying Together, involving discussions and liturgies.
In 2021 I designed an introductory course to Deep Abiding Prayer (a form of healing prayer that works well as a group activity), which has proved very fruitful. We now run monthly Zoom practice sessions as a partnership between Living Spirituality Connections and St James’s Church Piccadilly. Go to: https://www.livingspirit.org.uk/events/
Previous roles include being Coordinator of the Centre for Creation Spirituality in the UK, and directing a community based Cancer Support Centre in South West London.
Heather-Jane Ozanne
Heather-Jane’s qualifications and early professional life were in sociology, research, social and community work, in inner city London. When faced by the pressing concerns of human life in extreme circumstances she engaged with the question,’ what difference does spirituality make?’ She also developed her interest in ‘community’ and subsequently worked in a community setting where she began to explore the ideal of community life.
In 2001 her life-long interest in the Holy Land and peace-making led her to work with a group of interfaith peacemakers known as the Jerusalem Peacemakers. Her work with them grew into a charity which fosters Human and Earth Flourishing. Please see www.spiritofpeace.org and www.flourishing.global
For over two decades Heather-Jane has undertaken training and developed her work, in the areas of spiritual accompaniment and spirituality, peace, nonviolence and reconciliation. Her roles includes: working in retreat houses, facilitating workshops and retreats in addition to being CEO of Spirit of Peace. Within the charity, she is continuing to develop and deliver a training course – Pathways for Human Flourishing, centred around the wisdom of the heart and based on her work and experience in community and social work and her partnership with International peacebuilders.
Heather-Jane is also a member of the Core Group of CANA (Christians Awakening to a New Awareness) and co-authored with Janice Dolley, Voices of Contemporary Christians: Towards the Universal. Sleepy Lion Publishing, 2023.
Linda Courage
The Living Spirituality Network (LSN), and now Living Spirituality Connections (LSC), was and is a real treasure house to me, particularly now that my belonging to traditional church has moved beyond its edges.
LSC and her work has become a place where I’ve recognised I too am part of a worldwide and historical movement that is responding and being beckoned to life, and the life in life. A place where I can access the stories of others who have held onto the core of faith and have been true to where they are being led.
This Rilke poem is very meaningful to me:
Go to the Limits of Your Longing by Rainer Maria Rilke from The Book of Hours: Love Poems to God
Translated by Joanna Macy
God speaks to each of us as he makes us,
then walks with us silently out of the night.
These are the words we dimly hear:
You, sent out beyond your recall,
go to the limits of your longing.
Embody me.
Flare up like a flame
and make big shadows I can move in.
Let everything happen to you: beauty and terror.
Just keep going. No feeling is final.
Don’t let yourself lose me.
Nearby is the country they call life.
You will know it by its seriousness.
Give me your hand.
