I think, like many of us, the road upto this point has been varied and interesting. I do not claim my past story has been more or less special. It seems though that I have been given my own set of "Koans" to work through, in order to realise or to become fully a human being on this planet today.

I am truely a late and an early comer to a life spirituelle. Late because it was only just over 2 years ago that I discovered my thread of life, within this body, and in that flash of realisation, knew it to be something way beyond my own petty conceptions of self. Early commer also, because the journey since then has included a strange rememberance of having already travelled this psychic landscape before, in dreams when I was a young child.

I guess you could call that Koan number one. The second Koan for me is my gender, and for most of my life I have been spectaclularly dysfunctional in relationship to dealing with that side of identiy. The psychologists call it gender dysforia, and now I simply admit that I am transexual, and not bothered anymore with sex, because there are far more important issues happening in this world than my own mistake of sex.

So my journey this last two years has been a fast an furious deepening, almost like playing catch up. But the metaphore is a bad one, because I have in fact slowed down and simplified an awful lot. I was living in London, and working as a sound editior for the movie business when it all started, and now I rest for a while in the glorious landscape surrounding Morecambe Bay in the North of England, where I grew up.

I attempted to connect with two spiritual comunities in this time also the Iona Community in the North of Scotland, where I voluteered for a few months, and also with a Tibetan Buddist community in the South of France. These interactions were both rewarding and chalenging. I came away knowing that there was a synergy between Christianity and Buddhism, which could be expressed, and pointed to the Truth within all religions. But of course these sorts of inter faith or multi faith dialogues often went down like a ton of bricks within communities clinging to their traditions in the face of a growing adversity. So I have had to tread a lonesome path;but  I have found some space within the Quaker meeting for worship. Ironically I have not been allowed to "get off" that easily, I have found myself with a part time job with a local Church of England, Church, one always needs to pay the rent! And I am still drawn to connecting with the local buddhist groups as well.

Here in Lancaster there is a Deep Ecology group, which is small but committed and we meet up once an month, also there is the embrionic start of a community supported agriculture scheme at an organic and "green" farm. I hope there is pottential for the new networks to form here, which may help to hold things together, and transform things toward the positive.

I was trained as an artist, and film maker, but money dosen't allow this form of expression to have a voice from this mind as yet. Instead I have taken to writing, a much cheaper alternative. As I write this I am starting the second draft of a prospective book, entitled "my responsibility". Perhaps it may become another voice to add to the voice of change, and the movement toward sanity.