From the late autumn of 2024 through to the spring of 2025 was a very unexpected time for me (Sam) in various ways. Around this time last year, while helping the previous guardian of St Barnabas Church, Brooking set up for the 2024 Remembrance Sunday service, I discovered that the small traditional BCP congregation (of which I was a member) would be leaving St Barnabas in mid December. The reasons were entirely understandable – a numerically declining and mostly elderly group of lovely people were struggling with a beautiful and yet also damp, cold church in constant need of maintenance and with a backlog of repairs. So our Wild Monastery (with its Wild Church) suddenly became the main custodians going forward! This was both rather a shock and a great blessing and privilege. My deep thanks go to Archdeacon Douglas, Team Rector, Fr Jim and other members of Totnes Team Ministry, including Lay Reader and Dartington Focal Minister, Liz Waterson, the Dartington PCC and others for entrusting us with this special sacred space. Given what an unusual and radical group our Wild Monastery & Wild Church are, this speaks to the depth of relationship that can be built up over time between very different and diverse people.
Although we had been working towards taking on Brooking Church for some months, the shock element was the unexpectedly rapid arrival of this hope and the accompanying sense of a somewhat scary and sudden responsibility for a Grade II * Listed Victorian Church and open graveyard. How to handle the legalities, the practicalities and the lack of funds was now waking me up at 3am! And in that way that life has sometimes, of giving us several major challenges all at once, I also had an unexpected health concern arise around the same time.
Some of you may know that I was one of the many unfortunate people who contracted the first and most powerful strain of the Covid virus in Spring 2020. This made me very ill for several months at that time and left me with Long Covid, from which I have been making a slow but steady recovery ever since. A new blood test taken in Autumn 2024 revealed a lingering and incurable blood disorder, which can manifest as bone cancer. So between then and the early summer of 2025 I was going through a series of tests and scans to see if I would be facing my imminent demise. I can safely say, with a touch of black humour, that combined with the Brooking church challenges, it all was rather stressful!
It’s easy now to have a sense of perspective, as I now know that, while this may develop in future, I don’t currently have cancer and the risk (if I take good care of myself) is fairly low. At the time however, I was deeply troubled and exhausted. So for those wondering about the gap in this journal, the paucity of newsletters and the sudden cancellation of this year’s pilgrimages, you now have the full story. In the face of all of the above, I made the decision to focus on what needed to be done at Brooking Church, including our Wild Monastery retreats there. As part of this I became Churchwarden from the Spring of 2025 and have been on a steep learning curve every since to figure out exactly what this means!
As I write now in the late autumn of 2025, there is a sense of puzzle pieces finally starting to fall into place… the churchyard is managed (with much help – including from my wonderful son, Tam, as shown above) the repairs are underway, a fundraising team is mobilising, a wonderful year of retreats and events can be looked back on and forward to. This year’s cancelled pilgrimages will now happen next year instead. Good relationships with people and place continue to grow and my own health and energy levels are also steadily improving. God (by whatever Name we know Her) is good and there is so much to be grateful for!