Sacred Space Foundation UK

31/03/2026

We provide wellbeing support to health care staff of all kinds, those in teaching. social, police and ambulance services, support workers in nursing and residential homes and in the community, volunteers and many others involved in caring and support roles of all sorts. We are never too definitive! And much the same applies now. If in doubt that you can apply, please contact us 🙂

20/02/2026

27/01/2026

What if the scars of past generations are etched into our DNA? Discover how epigenetics might explain the transmission of trauma across family lines.

In 2016, researchers at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York released a study that shook the scientific world. They examined the genetic makeup of Holocaust survivors and their children.

The team found specific chemical markers on the genes of the children that matched the trauma responses of their parents. These markers were not part of the DNA sequence itself, but rather how the body reads those genes.

This process is known as epigenetics. It suggests that a person's environment and experiences can leave a physical footprint on their biology.

These changes can influence how we handle stress and anxiety today. It provides a biological look at what many families have called generational burdens for centuries.

Understanding this science offers a path toward healing. It proves that while we may inherit a vulnerability, we also possess the resilience to change our own stories.



Sources: World Psychiatry Journal, Frontiers in Neuroscience

26/01/2026

The wonderful friend and author Kenneth Steven is holding a writing retreat on the glorious Isle of Iona this March. Details here including a link to his website where you can also find details of his book "Pilgrimage"

20/01/2026

A note for navigating our noisy world.

A thought from Swami Paramananda via Roberto Assagioli.

17/01/2026

Our latest newsletter is out. Please enjoy all of the exciting news about our work.

17/01/2026

The next Kentigern School programme is announced.

The School consists of two residential weekends.

In between participants are expected to follow a series of readings and exercises. Monthly on-line groups give the opportunity for further teaching and spiritual direction. The residential sessions are experiential with individual and group work, spiritual direction, contemplative prayer, silence, movement, discussion, lectio divina and reflection.

The focus of the programme is a deep dive into the key virtues of the contemplative Way, how to ground them in the everyday, and how they help us to face the fierceness of a world in crisis.

The weekend residential sessions for the next course in 2026 are 4pm Friday April 10th to 3pm Sunday April 12th (2 nights) and 4pm Friday October 2nd to 3pm Sunday October 4th (2 nights).

Founded by Rev Prof. Stephen G Wright. Explore the Heartfullness Way of Contemplation through the Kentigern School and the Community (open to those who have attended the Kentigern School)

07/11/2025

Our dear Jeannie. Made it to 93 today.

24/01/2025

A copy of a post from Stephen, one of our spiritual directors, on the Deep Adaptation and Kentigern School sites:-

I'm gradually easing myself out of Facebook, but watching the Washington horror horror film on TV I couldn't help but reel from it. Having the role of faciltator of a School for contemplatives, and a writer on the spiritual life (not least its relevance to Deep Adaptation - promo note see Fugue!) I've been asked, well, what's the point of the spritual, contemplative life, in the face of what rampant bloated power-over ego mania is going to unleash on the world? (Not that there isn't an awful lot if about already actually; it's just that this lot, "like the revolution", is televised. )

Now if I'm really clever I can give you the link to the School website where you can see the posting. And it should be here:

https://www.kentigern.org.uk/letters-from-stephen-lrpxyynq/post/in-the-dark-shine-a-light-luU8kurVk6mc2QH

But I’m inclined to technofailure, so that may not work. It's not hopium, but trust in action that arises from, as we say in the Iona Community, the good that is planted more deeply than all that is wrong. And it's written with the participants in the School in mind, so please lift some of the sentences into your own context.

Love, honest,

Stephen

When it gets dark, shine a light.

In my time in nursing practice, I saw some terrible things - especially in the A&E Department and Operating Theatres. There were many assaults on all the senses when witnessing what can happen to human beings when their bodies are broken. Many of those horrors are with me still. As a young man and student nurse I was unprepared for them. I probably had a degree of what now would be called PTSD. Yet, as Lennon sang in A Day in the Life, I could not look away.

There was something gobsmackingly alluring about the inauguration of the new president of the USA. I make no comment on the politics of one side or the other. What had me staring with incredulity was the parade, the clear and present sight and sound, for all followers of the Way, of the real-time horror show of what bloated, unrestrained ego in full flight looks like. Not just one man, but a shedload of them (and women). A whole gang of poweraddicts feeding like the hungry ghosts on the lust for more; blurring identity between self and country and political system. A kind of shudder went through me at the sight of it.

Not to mention the religious hypocrisy, nay even blasphemy, of presuming to know the mind of the Divine. Or what kind of monstrous God we create that ‘saved me’ from an assassination attempt, but let the guy behind me get shot.

Best to limit access to such imagery for the sake of sanity! You may recall the guidance in Heartfullnessabout being cautious in our exposure to the ‘news’. There is much evidence that the stress induced is harmful emotionally and physically. A few minutes a day just to keep abreast of events is probably enough.

I’m about to quit Facebook, but before I do I’ve noticed the volume of fear and grief, especially from my American friends, about what is happening in their country – a counterpoint to so many others in the USA and elsewhere who triumphally celebrate the rise of the ‘right’.

What is our response as followers of the Way?

By participation in our contemplative School and elsewhere, we have de facto signed up to inviting spiritual work. Well, right now here is a ton of it. What’s that saying – ‘Be careful what you pray for or you might just get it’ (!). We have committed to a life of opening the heart, of service, of compassion? Well right here before us is a test of them.

Those egos and their behaviours have provided us with a feast of inner work. It’s easy to feel compassion, acceptance and understanding for those we like who are sweet and kind. Can we do the same for those inflated egos who now hold so much worldly power over us? Are our hearts big enough to hold them in our prayers as well? Can a c***k of pity for them open the door to compassion when we see that their presentation comes from places of deep ego pain, fear and unworthiness? It is easy to love our friends, but can we love our enemies as the Master Contemplative urged? Can we do what we do, but put no one from our hearts as the Lord Krishna demanded of Arjuna? There’s the Work. If we want spiritual practice, it starts at home.

Carved into the altar in Iona Abbey are the words, among others, ‘drink this cup’. There is a mythoslesson for us here. It is the capacity of the contemplative to say a spiritual ‘yes’ to what is. To the drink the cup that accepts reality and all it brings with it, to ourselves and others. That does not mean that we agree with or do as this shadow bids, but a ‘yes’ of acceptance is our first step in discernment.

An ego ‘yes’ is always about self-gratification. A heartfull ‘yes’ embraces what is before it and choses right response, right action. This Way is not Quietism, a fugit mundi, it is a Way of awareness and engagement, of seeing and service according to our capacity and calling.

An ego ‘no’ pushes away anything that does not gratify it. A Heartfull ‘no’ may mean acting opposite to inner impulses, of repudiation: standing against wrong. ‘No Passaran’, a slogan against fascism during the Spanish Civil War perhaps resonates here. So how do we not let pass the legion of evils that the heartless ego can unleash?

Jesus, in his time of trial in the desert offers us a masterclass here. In the temptations of chthonic ego power, he does not say I will fight you, or kill you, or ignore you, or do what you want. He simply stands his ground, veers to truth, says ‘no’ to it, and resolves to follow his path. One way to deal with evil is to repudiate it. Another is to embody and act out its opposite.

So, when offered a world of satisfaction of ego lusts. We must keep watch on ours

When some speak and act from fear and hatred. We resolve to keep our hearts open, even if it’s bloody hard work.

When a world of noisy powermongering is proposed. We vow to give more time to stillness and quiet, to prayer and meditation.

Should the seductions of allegiance to self-gratification be proffered. We promise to deepen our path of service, feed the hungry, visit the prisoner, help the sick, stand with the oppressed …….

Those with such ‘power over’, despite the bluster, live from a heartshut fearful place. We will keep our hearts open, face our fears and not be ruled by them, hand them over to and ask the help of the one in whom we live and have our being.

When disconnection and selfishness is summoned. We stand with the broken and disreputable, make an ally of the powerless, hold community in the face of dismemberment, act justly, love mercy.

When the values of selfishness hold sway. We engage, serve, make moral choices, give practical help, money, time and energy rooted in Self-ishness.

A final point about a common response to fear. Those of us on the Way may not only feel fear, but also shame – we’re spiritual after all, we have some sort of faith, we’ve done the work - we’re not ‘supposed’ to be afraid. One of the illusions of the spiritual life is that we will no longer be governed by ‘negative’ feelings.

The Way teaches us to get real here, to have compassion for ourselves and not let that inner critic get its hooks into us.

Again, the Master Contemplative has a rich teaching for us here. The night before his torture and ex*****on, knowing what was coming, he was so scared (yes even he, the en-lightened one) was so afraid that he sweat blood. (A rare phenomenon, haematohidrosis, that I have witnessed only twice in my nursing career. Patients so terrified that the cellular walls in the sweat glands break and red blood cells leak across, turning the sweat pale pink). And Jesus’ response? He sees the ego-no reaction of wanting to escaped it, does not give way to it and offers a spiritual-yes; a deep trust in his Beloved that he is able to say ‘Thy will be done’.

That is a tough call for all of us. To trust that much. Fear always shows us that place where trust has yet to be full-filled. We may remind ourselves that everything passes, that there are many planes of reality, that like Mother Julian in times of great evil we might summon up the courage to trust that at some deep level ‘All shall be well.’

That’s a mighty challenge. We are each called to rise to it. Contemplation in action. Action in contemplation. We each have a part to play in ensuring the legion powers of unrestrained ego do not pass, in ourselves and the world. A part. That’s all that is asked of us. Ask now what is yours. And keep asking.

Stephen G Wright January 2024

When it gets dark, shine a light In my time in nursing practice, I saw some terrible things - especially in the A&E Department and Operating Theatres. There were many assaults on all the senses when ...

03/12/2024

The Royal College of Nursing is the largest and arguably most powerful nuring organisation in the world. Here's a recent post from Stephen as a Fellow of the college. For non-nursing readers it will probably work just as well if you substiture the name of your own occupation, or maaybe just 'people'.

As much of our social and environmental cohesion seems to be falling apart, RCN Fellow Stephen Wright says compassionate action is needed now more than ever.

01/12/2024

The Kentigern School for Contemplatives (www.kentigern.org,uk) co-parented nearly ten years ago by the Foundation and the Diocese of Carlisle.
The School avoids being a crystallised stucture of organisation and doctrine, and seeks, among other things to explore along the Way mythos and logos when we read the holy books - the symbolic and literal reading. At this time of year in the Western Christian calendar we may find mythos and logos in the nativity. Logos suggests an historical event (and being historical can never be exactly repeated) which may or may not be factually true. As mythos it is profoundly, spiritually true. The manger symbolises the centre, the Heart of all things in which the beating heart of eternal life resides. It is the centre to which all paths lead; the individuation whether we arrive as wise and wealthy magi or impoverished shepherds. The nativity as mythos is thus not a one-off event, but a recurring theme, an archetype. We ‘follow the star’ to find it, our intuition, our heart’s desire. We listen to invisible (angelic) voices urging us to ‘come and see’. It is not found or heard in a wealth of spiritual materialism or the crystalline structures of a religion, but in the simplicity of an impoverished manger – materially poor but wealthy in spirit beyond measure. It is the convergence of our lives of wandering and wondering into the unum necessarium of the very source of life itself, of the immanent amid the transcendent, of the eternal in time, of the Real in the real, of the egoless uncluttered child of heaven, the soul, amid the donkeys and detritus of the functioning stable of our personalities. We find Truth, the Beloved, by impoverishing ourselves of attachments and worldly things and sinking into the willingness, the humility, to go where we think God is not, only to find God is. It is something to which we are drawn and reach if we commit to doing so, refusing to be tempted by Herodian gifts and delays, or the distractions of the chilled nights of life, or our desires for staying put and being satisfied with what is. It signifies a willingness to travel, to step outside of ordinary responsibilities even if just for a while, to see what it is to which the star of initiation, illumination and inspiration points.
In this context, the symbolic, the nativity is no one-off event, but an eternally present invitation to ‘come and see’ into full awareness of Reality. Our own incarnation in the cosmic Incarnation. Into the centre of the Life, the Heart that is the centre of all hearts.
Every time someone 'wakes up', it is an incarnation. Every occasion of Coming Home is a birthing of the Christ child, a return to the centre of the psyche, not just as one person, but as a quality, a Christ consciousness that is the birthright of all.
In the case of the School, if participants listen carefully, we hear hear the voices of angels or see the twinkling of a star in our readings, in our conversations, in our experiences, in our moments of stillness and silence, or dancing and chanting or, or, or…… The summons is ever present and ever available, if we pay attention and follow the star or listen to the messenger angels calling us out of what we are into what we might be, birthing into the loving awareness freedom “I Am”.
In this time of advent, whatever tradition we follow, may each of us know what is coming into being in ourselves and into the gifts we bring to the world. In this perspective, there is not so much an advent, as an always adventing.