Refresh
Te hautaka hoatu ora

 

Refresh JOURNAL OF CONTEMPLATIVE SPIRITUALITY
Te hautaka hoatu ora

Refresh is Spiritual Growth Ministries' journal of contemplative spirituality in Aotearoa, New Zealand. It is published in July and December each year. Contributions of prose, poetry and imagery are offered by people who seek to live contemplatively amidst the particularities of their everyday lives. Each issue plays with a theme that evokes contemplation and stimulates thought, prayer and spiritual growth.

Sacred Feminine

Refresh Winter 2025 | Volume 27, Issue 1

The July issue of Refresh ‘Sacred Feminine’ is out now - showcasing a fresh new design for SGM’s Journal of Contemplative Spirituality.

How does the Sacred reveal Herself through feminine symbols, energies, and ways of being? What happens when we expand our metaphors for the Divine beyond the masculine and let Sophia-Wisdom speak? This issue explores the Sacred Feminine—an ancient and emerging stream within the Christian lineage and beyond.

You’ll find reflections rooted in scripture, mysticism, motherhood, whenua, body, and poetry—each inviting you to listen afresh for the voice of She-Who-Is. Rather than offering a single definition, these contributions reflect a kaleidoscope of ways the Divine appears: nurturing, fierce, compassionate, mysterious, grounded, and embodied.

Writers—spiritual directors, poets, ministers, and mystics—draw from personal experience and sacred encounter. We hear of God as Mother, of Guanyin’s compassionate gaze, of feminine energy that heals and grounds. We’re reminded the Sacred Feminine is not confined to maternal imagery, and are invited to rediscover what the Church’s liturgies have often sidelined.

Whether familiar or unsettling, may these images stir something vital in you.

“May She of Old—present in the beginning and in all becoming—be your companion and guide as you journey through the comfort, challenge and invitation in these pages.”

~Kathryn Overall-Cass, Co-editor          

Prefer a Print Version?

Printed copies of Refresh can be posted to your home (if you live in New Zealand). Simply fill out the form to join the SGM Mailing List. You can receive a printed copy of Refresh twice a year, and digital contemplative content and retreat information via the SGM e-newsletter.

We invite you to consider making a regular annual koha to SGM of $30-$50 to support the publication of this unique journal presenting an Aotearoa, New Zealand perspective on contemplative Christian spirituality.

~ Bruce Maden, SGM Workgroup Convenor

 

“Refresh is where people can read what God is doing in the hearts and lives of other contemplative Christians; how they are responding to the issues of the day. The articles, pictures, poems, and photos connect me to our growing contemplative community in Aotearoa. They often rekindle my love for this whenua and its unique spirituality.

— Trish O’Donnell

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Appreciation for Refresh

 

“Refresh spurs us on in our deepening practice, exposes us to other creative and knowledgeable sources as well as giving us a sense of belonging to a loosely held movement. It also provides tangible form that can be given to others who are searching for ways of connecting to something beyond or deeper.”

— Bruce Maden

“Refresh is where people can read what God is doing in the hearts and lives of other contemplative Christians; how they are responding to the issues of the day. The articles, pictures, poems, and photos connect me to our growing contemplative community in Aotearoa. They often rekindle my love for this whenua and its unique spirituality.

— Trish O’Donnell

Recent Offerings from The SGM Blog

Featured
She Who Hears the Cries of the World - By Jemma Allen
She Who Hears the Cries of the World - By Jemma Allen

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.

Read More →
Remembering Sheila Pritchard - By David Crawley
Remembering Sheila Pritchard - By David Crawley

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.

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‘Womb’ a poem by Miriam Jesse Fisher
‘Womb’ a poem by Miriam Jesse Fisher

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.

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Expanding the Metaphors - By Trish McBride
Expanding the Metaphors - By Trish McBride

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? 

Read More →