Hello, reader friends,
It’s good to be in touch again.
In many ways I’ve become a different person since the birth of our daughter in May. She was born, and I was re-born -- or at least some layers fell off. More on that in time, but it meant I stopped writing my newsletter for a few months.
Before baby was born, I’d planned to write a newsletter series looking at the spaces inbetween division and find the hope there. The hope inbetween left and right politics, sacred and secular, rural and urban, joy and despair in the world. The hope between the edges of the world as it is. I still want to explore these things, but the series I’d planned felt too contrived, like I already knew the destination before I’d undertaken the journey.
To quote Paul Kingsnorth (who writes The Abbey of Misrule):
“The silence of the hermit, the reality of the well: the faith that is rooted in the rocks, and which bubbles up from the ground. Maybe I need these things to counter my heady tendencies. Maybe I am not the only one. There is no theory that can accommodate the truth. ‘Ideas create idols’, said St Gregory of Nyssa. ‘Only wonder leads to knowing.’”
These past few months have brought a silence not of the hermit, but of the 3am night feeds and the frequent isolation of a new mother. It has brought a faith and a feeling and a foundation that has bubbled up from somewhere deep, from an umbilical connection to the past and present and future. It has brought a new kind of life into my own heady, cerebral tendencies.
As I re-emerge and re-form around new and old identities, it feels time for a re-form of this newsletter too. More committed. Deeper and truer.
I want to read writing that listens for the pulse of life underneath what often passes for it. Writing that responds to and imagines beyond a world that is in so many places despairing, loveless, false and fearful. Writing that makes room for possibility and connects disparate things. I want to write that kind of writing too.
These past months have brought questions, insight, joy, despair, wisdom, clarity. My deepest desire for my work in this world is to dig deeper than we’re often encouraged to, to find hope, to witness and live out the sometimes hard work of love. To inhabit this life fully, and awaken the humanity in each other. To look into darkness and light, to see, and to envision, in a time of social, technological, spiritual and environmental upheaval.
My newsletter, from now on, is a small way of turning towards that. It is a recognition of this moment we’re at and a response to it. It is an exploration of the becoming world, using all my experience, and hopefully yours too — an exploration of community, care, soil, creativity, leadership, ideas, spirituality, mothering (in all its forms), and of the village it will take to raise a future.
I am leaving the past editions of my newsletter here. But I am shifting what its future looks like, I am committing to it and I’d love you to join me — wouldn’t it be good to explore all this together?
As I emerge from the reformation of early motherhood, my newsletter will be a focus. All RedLands posts will be short, weekly and free for now, but for the price of a posh coffee each month, you can choose to support my work if you’d like. I’d be very grateful, and it will deepen my ability to think and write here — find out more here. In 2024, I’ll be offering extra things for paying subscribers — longer exploratory essays (written and audio), insights into the book I’m writing, and if there’s interest, perhaps a book club and writing workshops.
Thanks for being here. I’d love you to stick around and explore all this together.
More next week. With love,
Elizabeth
PS - There’s a bit more on the About page here
All I can offer is the 1961 black & white film “Whistle down the Wind” for some sense of naivety, wonder and love that’s not around much anymore apart from in very isolated communities of England.
Happy Christmas.
(Your thoughts in Redlands are always so heartfelt and therefore important.)