My meditation which appeared in the Psychosynthesis Institute Newsletter August 2022

The war in the Ukraine brings back memories of some of my childhood. Even though I was born in the UK, some years of my formative life was spent growing up in Sri Lanka's war torn multi ethnic and multi religious culture. It has shaped and informed my career choices. Trauma in its various forms is nothing new. In November, I became authorized as a 'pioneer' in the Anglican church; one who does faith differently. I started the MA Psychosynthesis Psychology course because I had various 'spiritual emergencies' that were out of the ordinary and felt safe to explore them here. Last Saturday, I felt drawn to go to Chibburn preceptory, a ruin of the Knights Hospitaller of St John based in Northumberland. The Knights were a former religious group of knights who after the crusades in the Holy Land used to tend to the sick and injured, as well as act as safe chaperones to the numerous pilgrims who thronged to the Holy Land. Chibburn, is also on the pilgrim route to Lindisfarne, where Saint Aiden had brought Celtic Christianity to England. Under the Dissolution of Monasteries this place was also laid siege under King Henry VIII who also started the Anglican Church that led to the Reformation. Whilst at Chibburn, I placed a rosary, a small cross and a figure of an angel and prayed. What I sensed was that in the spiritual realm, knights who had died were still trying to guard the pilgrim routes and I told them to go home to the light and then felt a 'horse' thunder past me. Still in the silence, I felt a 'wounded knight' fall into my arms sobbing and I just held him; told him to stop guarding and go to the light. A friend told me later it was Saint George's day; the patron saint of England and he is also revered in the Ukraine. The Knights Hospitaller were the forerunners of the Saint John's Ambulance Brigade and so let us help to bring both the medical and the spiritual healing that is needed at this time.