PicoBlog

Here is what I believe

Will be the hardest thing

To do:

To remember

That we have

A soul.

Lodestar, Alice Walker

Do you want, deep down, to live a good life? A really good one? Even if it sometimes feels like it might be the end of the world?

Me too.

My name is Elizabeth Oldfield, and I’ve spent five years interviewing public figures about their deepest values on The Sacred podcast. I’ve worked at the BBC and in Westminster, been an agnostic, then a Christian, then an atheist and now, though the language is complex, a Christian again. I’ve moved my family into an intentional community in search of a more meaningful, more connected life in South London.

Your journey will be different from mine, your sense of what a good life means different too. You will have your own sacred values, the half buried principles you want to orientate you in these dark woods.

What we might share is a sense that there are not enough places to think about these things, to surface what is buried.

By subscribing to Fully Alive you will listen in on my quest to to become braver, freer and more loving than I currently am. I don’t want to just bloviate about my values, but live them, and as it turns out, that doesn’t come naturally.

I hope that by being this earnest to give you permission to be earnest too. My intention is to help you clarify what you want to be growing towards, what kind of person you want to be becoming, and give you some ideas about how to stay loyal to that quiet whisper of your soul.

I draw on anything that helps me, primarily poetry, novels, my stumbling attempts at learning to garden, christian theology and my family’s experience living in community.

It sometimes feel like we are living at the end of the world. It will almost certainly be the end of the world as we have known it. Maybe it always is. I think we will need, indeed need now, people who are prepared to attend to their souls and not just their bodies and their careers. People with spiritual core strength even in turbulent times, who can take a deep breath and work out what loving their neighbour means now.

And none of us can grow up like this alone. I’d love us to do it together.

I’ll be sending a newsletter once a fortnight, with occasional bonus editions.

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