Have you ever walked into a particular place -- a forest or spot along a shore or a whole region and suddenly, unexpectedly felt as if you were home? A homecoming that often brings irrational tears, a remembering without words or logic. Maybe it's the place you were born.  Or the place where your ancestors lived. Often, it is even more mysterious than that. You feel as if you recognize an unknown place, or that the place somehow recognizes you. This knowing-and-feeling-known is a phenomenon of interconnected belonging.  

 

"There is a mysterious union that happens when we enter into relationship with the wild and practice sacred conversation." Church of the Wild: How Nature Invites Us into the Sacred

 

Have you felt this?  A bidding, a return of some kind, an alluring invitation to come closer, to listen, to enter into conversation.  This is how the call of the sacred wild feels. When a place calls you quietly and persistently like this, I call it terra cognita: known territory.  A territory of soul, connected to a particular land and sea. 

 

This experiential offering is one of saying yes to that deep irrational even mythic call of the sacred wild to return to soul in Ireland.  To listen with an open heart to the whispers of an alive and ancient world where we already and always belong.

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If you find yourself seeking a more wild spirituality, consider joining a cohort of like-hearted friends at Ards Friary on the northwest coast of Ireland. Accompanied by two hundred acres of thick forest peopled by native oak and rowan, craggy stoned beaches and vibrant azul Atlantic waters, this is one of those life-changing experiences where you can feel your old stories restructure to make room for a new way of being human in deep relationship with a sacred and living Earth.