Hello and welcome to Five Minutes in Nature with me Liz Scott,
Where every day in March I go out and about enjoying nature's wisdom.
And today is a special day.
It's the day before I embark on a pilgrimage,
A pilgrimage that is following the Mary and Michael energy currents that stretch across the UK from Cornwall,
Which is right on the southwest of England,
And diagonally they go up through the country and eventually cross through Norfolk and Hopton-on-Sea.
And en route,
These energy currents go through places like Los Witheal in Cornwall,
Brentore in Devon,
Glastonbury in Somerset,
Avebury in Wiltshire,
On to Royston and Bury St Edmunds and then eventually Hopton-on-Sea,
Which is in Norfolk.
And it's a really interesting reflection as I sit here on Dartmoor.
It's a beautiful day actually.
It's in the middle of the day,
The sun is shining.
I'm sort of perched on a hill,
Able to look down on a busy route,
The A38,
Where I can see lots of little cars whizzing up and down,
People busy going places.
And today I'm reflecting that I'll be starting my walk tomorrow.
And I've come up here because there's a very,
Very special place I want to take you to.
I haven't actually shown anyone this apart from my sister.
It's something I made out of rocks and it's in a hidden snicket of Dartmoor and I want to take you there today because this is a place I want to go and be present to and with.
My pilgrimage is all about connecting with the energy of the land,
The energy of nature,
The energy,
The timeless energy of life itself.
I'm going to share this space with you and together we're going to reflect on the journey ahead.
Mine is a pilgrimage journey,
Your journey is your pilgrimage in life.
And anything that you might be coming up against at the moment in life,
Reflect on that as your pilgrimage.
So I just need to head off,
Cross a stream and then I can take you to this really special place of mine.
So I'm just approaching the stream now and it will just take a bit of paddling to go across and then I am nearly there.
So here I am.
I am at the sacred spot,
The spot I've been telling you about and it's a labyrinth.
It's a spiral labyrinth made out of stones and rocks that I've gathered over weeks and weeks and I created it about two years ago and then the animals came and knocked over the stones and I couldn't work out how to recreate it again.
But earlier this year I was strongly drawn to come back here and recreate it again and I gathered more stones over weeks and some of the stones are beautifully green,
Thick with moss and others are flat or knobbly or bits of granite or white stones.
I don't know if they're made of quartz,
I'm not entirely sure.
And there are two ways into the labyrinth or you could say one way in and one way out and I've just walked it.
The way in,
The route in,
Is quite circuitous.
You keep going in and looping back in this almost like concentric circles until eventually you'll find your way right to the centre of the labyrinth.
And when I got there I just placed down an offering.
It was just an offering of a bit of sheep's wool that I'd seen on the way just past the stream and a bit of moss.
And I'm looking at them now actually in the centre of the labyrinth.
And whilst I was there I just connected with the energy,
I connected with gratitude and love and nature and just thanked nature for her generosity.
And then I walked out of the labyrinth carefully and I'm standing here now with you.
So whatever pilgrimage you've got in your life,
Just reflect on how you might honour that pilgrimage in your life.
How might you show gratitude?
How might you show thankfulness?
There is something about connecting with the heartfelt energy of life itself.
So my invitation to you is that you do that on whatever pilgrimage in life you are taking at the moment.
