My spiritual life has been in quite a chaotic phase for some years, in particular after my separation a little over two years ago. That was a part of a vast overhaul of my own consciousness and Christian belief. Already, in my teens, I latched onto an immature understanding of Romanticism, those poets who yearned for some excitement outside the humdrum of “ordinary” life and material concerns.

A big step in my life was my year in Rome and my life with a very narrow and rigid form of Catholicism, scholasticism at its most caricaturistic and the Deus ex machina. At the same time, the superior of the community was an American prelate, working in the Congregation of Oriental Churches, showed a great interest in the Wisdom tradition of biblical interpretation and spiritual life. A year later, I went to Fribourg without being in a diocese or religious community. My anxiety and discouragement led me to consult a psychologist in Lausanne. He had no thought about autism or Aspergers, but rather the basis of my religious life. He suggested contact with other cultures, and in particular reading authors like Vladimir Soloviev and Nicholas Berdyaev. I found or borrowed the books and read – and have not stopped reading ever since. These two Russian philosophers did not give me a real desire to become Orthodox, but rather to see God and spiritual life in a different way. I also became attracted to German Idealism and philosophers like Friedrich von Hardenberg (Novalis). My notion of truth and existence would be forever changed.

I had approached traditionalist Roman Catholicism as an Anglican, seeking beauty and love more than dogmatism and politics. It took a long time to come to terms with these differences before I returned to Anglicanism via the Continuum. I have continued to be fascinated by this “alternative Christianity” because I could see no real future in intégriste Catholicism or in the kind of thing being promoted by the current Papacy, a moral and political vision without a real concern for the most intimate interior life of man. The Church is more than the various institutions that claim to embody a sacramental reality of Christ’s Incarnation.

As a sign of contradiction in regard to the current trend of using words in their etymological or ideological meanings to appropriate an identity, I am aware of the danger of the word Romanticism – “I am a Romantic”. I am aware too of a risk even of saying that I am a Christian or any other noun or adjective. Our inner consciousness has to be much deeper than justifying ourselves to others. I think that was most of the problem I took to the psychologist in Lausanne in something like 1989.

Properly speaking, Romanticism emerged from the tiredness of the Enlightenment and the French Revolution, and extended to about the first third of the nineteenth century. It was the affair of individuals, but there were groups like the Shelleys, Keats, Lord Byron and others. Ideas ranged from medievalism, dark and macabre thoughts about death and the end of the world, to more “conventional” ideas of restoring the role of man’s creative imagination alongside his rational faculties. This creativity would be the source of art, music and poetry, the manifestation of beauty and a divine consciousness. I have noticed analogies of this kind of consciousness in the Pre-Raphaelites, the Arts & Crafts Movement and a whole fascination in the early twentieth century for esotericism, the occult and alternative spiritual views more or less based on oriental spiritual traditions like Buddhism and Hinduism. Thus we had characters like Rudolph Steiner, Theosophy and Liberal Catholicism as devised by Charles Webster Leadbeater (1854-1934). Others had fingers in different pies, between the fascination with esotericism, orthodox Roman Catholicism, Modernism à la Tyrrell and the struggle with materialistic atheism. Modernism in the thought of Tyrrell was not about liberal Protestantism, but rather about a more credible answer to atheism and unbelief than “true church” apologetics and scholasticism.

A few English gentlemen of that early part of the twentieth century distinguish themselves: C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkein, Charles Williams, Owen Barfield and others. They inherited much from the old Romantic movement, but brought about a developed understanding of many aspects. They met over a pint of beer in an Oxford pub in the 1930’s and 40’s, and discussed and criticised each others’ work. They became known as The Inklings. They towered intellectually, and I am profoundly humbled as a learner. I like the name inklings. The word inkling derives from Middle English yngkiling, meaning “whisper or mention,” and perhaps further from the verb inclen, meaning “to hint at”. There is also the Old English noun inca, meaning “suspicion”. The meaning that emerges is one of an extremely subtle idea or piece of information or knowledge. I suspect that what is implied is that these thoughts and ideas would be heard by those who are ready for them, and then they would germinate and grow like the famous mustard seed of the Gospel.

In my own pilgrimage, I find that idea attractive, one of seeking the Kingdom within. I see such an informal movement as a future for Christianity when political and social interests have lost their relevance in their search for relevance. As one who is discovering and learning rather than trying to teach, I leave my readers with a few YouTube videos to encourage them to buy a few books.

I particularly recommend this fascinating discussion:

In the following video, we are far from meetings, meeting and meetings about meetings!

These are just a few. The really important thing is books. Yes, real books made of paper, cardboard and printing ink. I am finding Mark Vernon fascinating. He has written a whole series of books. I have recently begun to read A Secret History of Christianity, Jesus, the Last Inkling, and the Evolution of Consciousness, Winchester 2019. I found in my letterbox this morning Pietro Archiati’s From Christianity to Christ, Christianity as the Essence of Humanity in Rudoph Steiner’s Science of the Spirit, English translation from German London 1996. Steiner seemed to have some cranky ideas, but not without some real wisdom that Owen Barfield seized onto.

For me this is a whole new education as I evolve beyond Romanticism and even beyond other movements before my time. The important thing is to find ourselves, not only in the thoughts of others, but by finding that consciousness that links us all with God and what Christ really means and meant. Maybe the sea will bring me inklings as I sail along the coast of north Brittany.