My breakthrough moment came through deep conversations with six young women from our group who were interested in the spiritual practices I had adopted over the years. They were eager to know how I had pursued God in ways that resulted in both spiritual and psychological growth and transformation. Each conversation finished with someone saying: ‘Angelika, you must write a book’.  This was the boon that I had been waiting for!

As a child, visits to Canterbury’s towering cathedral gave me a sense of the timelessness of faith and an awareness of many in whose footsteps I followed. So, what’s in this pilgrimage life? Just as in Chaucer's day, I find community in a rich diversity of people and landscapes. I hear people’s stories and I see in action what I’ve come to describe as God’s choreography in the wonder of timing, of place.

Love has a compass, so I try to ensure that the direction of my life, and its everyday realities, are fostering sensitivity to God’s loving presence and invitations. God nudges, invites, and draws me onward into more of what it means for me to be truly alive. The way of love ‘means to be sensitive to life, to things, to persons, to feel for everything and everyone to the exclusion of nothing and no one.

In a scallop shaped chapel in the Spanish town of Ponte Vedra I climbed the winding stairs up into the dome. My back felt so sore – for the first time ever. I’d been travelling for weeks, walking kilometres every day on the most amazing pilgrim route imaginable. Yet suddenly, weirdly, I felt pain and it worried me.

Nicky Brown is a spiritual director with a background in nursing. She is also an artist, creating  art inspired by the natural world and enjoys gardening and walking her dog, Asha, on the local beach and bush tracks. Married to Simon, she is a proud Mum to three young adults. In this blog post, Kathryn Overall-Cass has a conversation with Nicky about her formation journey and finding her way as a spiritual director.

Marg Schrader has been a formative presence in New Zealand’s contemplative landscape and a respected elder within the Spiritual Growth Ministries community. As a spiritual director, minister, teacher, and retreat leader, she has nurtured generations of spiritual directors with wisdom, compassion, and prophetic insight. Marg’s book ‘The Ever-Widening Circles’ shares the story of her personal and vocational life.

A poem inspired by the Winter 2025 issue of Refresh - Sacred Feminine. Ana Lisa de Jong is a contemplative poet and author, whose evocative, spiritually charged poetry is born of the flora and fauna and unique landscapes of Aotearoa. Ana Lisa responds to the natural world as God breathed and with a story to tell, which she seeks to weave into her words.

I am a childless woman. I am a woman without a uterus. I have had my belly patted consolingly and been told I am a spiritual mother, but that is not a posture that resonates with me. She Who Is cannot be reduced to a baby-bearing body, a child-rearing body, a ‘wife and mother.’ Pointing to the Sacred Feminine should not reinforce narrow gender binaries or try and locate an ‘essence’ of what is feminine in the maternal.

In this issue, devoted to reflection on the Sacred Feminine, it is fitting that the abundant spiritual legacy of this extraordinary woman be acknowledged. The reflections offered here are personal – just one window on that legacy. Sheila has always been a way finder. Again and again – and this has come home to me powerfully in the last few months – her footprints have marked out the paths we find ourselves following.

A poem featured in the Winter 2025 issue of Refresh - Sacred Feminine. Miriam Jessie Fisher is a poet, textile artist, educator and theologian who lives with joyful extroversion and contemplative wonder in Ōtautahi Christchurch. She works as an interdisciplinary lecturer in Theology and Education at Laidlaw College. Her default setting is Hope.

The Divine Feminine is awakening the world with new hope for peace, respect for other human beings, the rest of life, our beautiful planet and the entire universe. God is manifesting as She chooses! Can the Christian Church respond to the invitation to enrich itself and all its people by giving equal value to the ancient and new feminine images of the Divine, of God? 

Relating to Godde as a feminine figure feels grounding and healing. It shifts my understanding of the divine from fear to connection, compassion, and creativity. I imagine Her as deeply nurturing, powerful in a quiet, steady way, like the earth or the ocean. I see Her in the beauty of the wildflowers and trees and different birds and other symbols. For me it feels like she holds space rather than controls it.

I’m very conscious of the tāonga we have in the Spiritual Directors Formation Programme (SDFP) and the privilege I have of guiding it into new waters after the COVID years. I’m excited to share some of these “new waters" with you!    Read on to learn about some new opportunities we have for you as spiritual directors and alumni of the SDFP.

I think often of my friend and fellow wayfinder Mike Riddell. I especially think of him during Matariki each year. Mike would often say to me, paraphrasing New Zealand poet James K. Baxter, that ‘we Pākehā have to bow the head and learn from our elder brother – Māori –  for then the water may begin to flow in our dry watercourses.’