Wild Places: Reflective Space for Soul Searchers
Following on from the publication of ‘Inner Wellies’, I am seeking a publisher for my second book. ‘Wild Places’ is a book of reflective, poetic pieces that bring the wonder and mystery of the countryside, of seasons, of God, into the room of the reader. It is written for all who appreciate unfolding leaves or winter snow, who value space within the hubbub of life to reflect and enjoy, whether or not they have a religious faith. It is soul food and encourages the reader in a sense of the numinous. It paints pictures with words that bring beauty and awareness. Some pieces explore ideas about God or Jesus without being religious or prescriptive. Many reflect the changing seasons as experienced in an early morning garden. They are written in the first person, a sharing of personal thought and experience.
The pieces are arranged by season. Many of them are posted on this website under ‘Words of Keeping’. This is the introduction.
"Wild" has undergone a transformation. There was a time when the wild was a scary place beyond our borders and our influence, somewhere wolves or tigers reigned and could eat you for breakfast. The wild was a place to be avoided or domesticated. When applied to a person or event it was an insult - it is now a compliment.
In the developed world, we have filled our lands and our minds with our own activities. We have done our best to shut out the wild and now we realize we need it. We need places where our planet and its precious fauna and flora can find their own balance without our interference, places where species can repopulate, where air can re-oxygenate. But more than that, we need it for ourselves. The wild calls to us, it feeds a need deep inside us for something beyond what we have created, something bigger than us, something untamed that can pry loose the knots in our psyche and blow away the dust.
Most of us don’t live near places of uninterrupted wild. We have to make do with the pockets that patchwork our domain. And they are there if we look, if we notice. The ultimate in experiencing the wild, in other, in life, is God. In the developed world God too has been cut out, or tamed to fit in. But just like wind-blown seeds, the Spirit has ways of finding our cracks and crevasses and making them green.
The pieces in this book are my response to the wild places in my life - in the countryside, the weather, my garden, my God. I trust they will help you to discover your own.
Jane Upchurch
"There is another dimension; there is a spiritual and life-changing engagement with the wild world available out there to everyone, a private, personal wildness we can still relocate in our heads and which can serve us well by bringing us closer to the dazzling creative genius of the very nature that made us what we are."
John Lister-Kaye, At the Water’s Edge: a Personal Quest for Wildness
