You Will Grow In The Right Soil - The June Beagle

Hello dear friends and readers, and welcome to the June Beagle.

(A podcast of this issue read by yours truly is available at the top of this post)

Goodness, it has been a month of change and pendulum emotions, thankfully landing now on the upswing. A heartfelt thank you to those who said a prayer for my Uncle John. He is finally enjoying very good specialised care in an appropriate environment. The delirium persists, but he has gained weight, and we dare to hope that maybe, just maybe, one day, he can return home to my Aunt.

I attended my first Hutchmoot UK after wanting to go since the very first gathering in 2019. I also ran a workshop! But more about that later.

The weather has finally turned from hailstorms, thunder, lightning, sideways rain and relentless wind into temperatures reminiscent of summers I once lived through in Australia (93+ for my American friends). The garden seemed to finally exhale and then promptly burn to a crisp in the space of a fortnight. We are due rain this week, huzzah!

This month I also got to catch up with my wonderful and very dear friend Sally Clarkson, and we also met recent online connection Jake Lloyd for an art tour at the National Gallery with a couple of his friends, which was enormous fun.

I have been picking up my camera again in new ways this month, and I will share some of that work below. There have been hospital visits, new books, little craft projects, pub lunches, fresh bread, and much dreaming and pondering about what The Beagle may yet become in the years ahead. A retreat is topmost on my heart.

I took part in my first exhibition as part of the Oxfordshire Artweeks festival. My university, Wycliffe Hall, hosted its own gallery, and it was an honour to be among such a group of talented artists.

I have just finished the first of two papers for the next round of submissions on Church History. I do not mind if I never have to talk about Constantine for a while, or repeatedly spell the Latin names of his associates. Next week, I move onto the second paper — Christianity’s impact on the abolition of slavery, William Wilberforce, etc. I will only have two more papers from there, following that, I will be finished with study! I can barely believe it.

Friends, I feel like new life is on the horizon. Perhaps it is the nearing end of study, or simply the sense of emerging from a long winter season, but I feel an opening into a broader place.

I found myself returning recently to Psalm 16:6:
“The lines have fallen for me in pleasant places; indeed, I have a beautiful inheritance.”

I have been pondering the ideas of heritage and boundaries. The portion of life we find ourselves within. Whether one believes those boundaries are given by God, shaped by circumstance, or slowly formed through our own choices or the choices of others thrust upon us, there is something deeply grounding about reaching a place of gratitude and contentment for the life in front of us.

To recognise that contentment is not found in having everything, but in learning to receive the place we stand with open hands. I feel that gratitude today. Paul himself expressed this truth, even framing it as a secret to be learned (Phil 4:11-12 AMPC).

I have some still life photography to share with you this month, along with the easiest bread recipe in the world because, truly, homemade bread is one of life’s great consolations. To cut into a warm loaf fresh from the oven, slather it with butter and top with strawberry jam feels nothing short of holy to me.

I have also loved watching the robins with their new fledglings bobbing around the garden these past few weeks. Sometimes I catch myself thinking, “Oh look, I have a visitor,” before remembering that actually, it is I who am visiting them. I am in their world. There is something comforting in that thought. It reminds me that I am not creating the rhythm of life around me, only learning again how to fall into step with one that was already there long before I arrived.

Alternatively, you can contribute £2 to The Oxford Studies Kitty Jar via this LINK.

Did you know I link every book, film, recipe etc in the Beagle? Where you see words in BOLD and UNDERLINED, simply click the link.

“Lord God, whatever I have written which is of Thine, let Thy people recognise. If I have written aught which is of mine, forgive Thou, and let Thy people forgive.”
- St.Augustine

My dear friend Sally Clarkson says that where hearts meet, ministry happens. Four days in Derbyshire have left me convinced of a small but significant addendum to that truth — where arts meet, ministry happens too.

Hutchmoot began as a gathering dreamed up by the team at Rabbit Room, the community founded by author and musician Andrew Peterson 20 years ago. Andrew began The Rabbit Room based on a conviction that “community nourishes good and lasting artistic work—and that creative work nourishes community”. Hutchmoot exists as a space for artists, writers, musicians, and makers to encourage one another, sharpen their craft, and encounter God through beauty. What began in Nashville has found a warm and flourishing home in the UK, drawing together a community of kindred spirits who believe the creative life and the spiritual life are, at their core, one and the same.

I cannot tell of my surprise, shock and gratitude at being asked to contribute. It was a tremendous privilege, and I’m still bruised from pinching myself!

There are seasons where life narrows so much that you stop really living and find yourself simply surviving. The last couple of years have felt a little like that for me. Somewhere along the way, without fully noticing it happen, I lost touch with parts of myself. Artistic expression can be extremely cathartic, repurposing your pain, but grief can also hit your creative spark like a mighty deluge. I had lost the joy of creating, the delight in my camera. I had other avenues by which to process my struggles, but still life was not one of them. Oh dear, I’m a Still Life photographer!

In the weeks leading up to Hutchmoot, I was struggling mentally and emotionally. I also dropped my hard drive containing 16 years of photographic work, all my raw files! I spent two days with ChatGPT (don’t hate me for that), painstakingly copying my catalogue over from the ailing HD to the new SSD. With only a week to go and my PowerPoint still to be finished, I decided this was now a post-HM problem; I would have to make do with screenshots and any images downloaded from the archive of blogs for the presentation. Here is an actual photo taken of me the moment I dropped my hard drive!

My upcoming workshop felt overwhelming at times, and yet I was so keen to inspire those attending and share something of worth with them, that they could take home and allow to become a vision-shaping tool in how they engage with the world, and with God. My journal pages from those weeks were scattered and often anxious. Poor sleep. Back pain. Stress dreams. Feeling invisible. Wondering, if I’m honest, whether I should even be there. I have always been someone who could circle back to hope (out of necessity), but that circle had grown very, very wide lately. So wide that the path sometimes felt less like a road home and more like a loooong ditch, stretching on further than I could see.

And yet, as if pulled by an invisible thread, a hope against hope, I still went. I felt God’s love with me. I felt useful in His hands once again.

Hutchmoot was held in a beautiful setting in Derbyshire, The Hayes Christian Conference Centre. It is surrounded by pastoral farmland, the sound of sheep and newborn lambs and cow-song drifting in from the distance. So many places to wander and ponder. And a feast of a table, laid out, as the Psalmist says, “in the presence of my enemies”. Or at least, in the presence of all that would seek to diminish and discourage. A banquet spread anyway. A table set regardless.

It was my first time attending and, as God would have it, also my first time presenting a workshop, my first public talk in quite a long while. I’ve decided God simply didn’t give me time to overthink it!

I arrived feeling completely in over my head. So many gifted, thoughtful, creative people. I felt the full weight of how quietly my confidence had eroded over recent years. That first evening was genuinely overwhelming; hundreds of people, conversations already flowing, a room full of the already-acclimatised. It reminded me of joining a motorway from the slowest slip road. You have no choice but to keep your foot on the gas and trust that you’ll find your speed. There’s that initial lurch of panic as everything rushes past you, but if you hold your nerve, you do eventually slip into the flow.

And I did. This is also due in large part to the posture of the team, whose aim it is to ensure those attending feel welcomed, seen and at ease. Any anxiety I held was personal and internal; they really do embrace folk with warm, open arms, even providing a bespoke session for people who feel a bit wobbly, to get to know each other.

Slowly, over conversations, shared meals, workshops, tea and biccies, sung worship, the tightness in my chest began to ease. Great is thy faithfulness indeed. I recorded a little snippet from a hymn we sang one night, a taste of heaven.

In those few days, I started remembering things about myself I had forgotten, and that perhaps my suffering had not only diminished me, but also deepened me.

My daughter had attended the first Hutchmoot gathering in Oxford in 2019, where she met Sophie Killingley and promptly insisted Sophie get to know her mum, “You two would get on really well”. She was right. Sophie and I became internet friends over the next six years, Zoom calling during lockdown, literary kindred spirits across a screen, but Hutchmoot was the first time we’d met in the flesh. There was a very good squeeze. Almost a little tear, air kissing, and a lot of fun.

I took part in an artist workshop with Alastair Gordon, inks and sprayed leaves and a glorious mess, and rediscovered, or perhaps admitted afresh, how difficult I find creative play. The fear of getting it wrong, of not being able to let go. Ally was such a generous and fun tutor, drawing each of us gently (and forgivingly) into our own expression and connection with God. It was more than an art class.

I heard Jennifer Trafton speak on Lilias Trotter, who has been an inspiration of mine for several years. I could have listened to her all day. I grabbed the last copy of her book on the way out and am now cherishing it in my morning reading time. The quote on this photo spoke to me profoundly.

I met faithful, long-suffering ministers gasping for refreshment, who found it, not only through sessions and seminars, but through a hand on the shoulder and prayer offered quietly in a corridor. I met young people full of dreams and inspiration, perhaps lacking support at home, finding themselves suddenly among kindred people who offered encouragement in spades. There is something rare and holy about a room full of people who get it.

Another of God’s little kisses from heaven was the arrival on the Saturday of Leah Boden and her hubby, Dave. I’ve known Leah since 2018, when she spoke at a Mum Heart conference I hosted in London with Sally Clarkson. We picnicked on the grass, chatted, laughed, and she said a little prayer for me. It was just the familiar face I seemed to need to regulate my heart and settle any residual nerves.

My workshop went really well. People engaged so warmly, and afterwards I remembered something important again: I really love this kind of connecting and gathering. I love helping people notice. I love drawing attention to beauty and meaning and light. And I love hearing the ideas of others. That is such a gift to have given back to you. Somewhere in the middle of all my heaviness, I had forgotten that.

I’m not gonna lie, as soon as my workshop was finished, I took myself off to a deliciously quiet spot in the main building and enjoyed some alone time to sip an icy something while I poured reflections into my journal. Yes, I felt a sense of relief, but mostly I felt a deep, abiding peace. I had been brought through the press to a spacious place of rest. Hope was returning and so was future thinking. I was dreaming again.

I would love to share my worskhop with you but will do that in a separate post

I’ll be honest about what I was carrying into those four days. A real knock to my confidence. Anxieties surfaced that I thought I’d conquered decades ago. I felt vulnerable, exposed and alone. But I held onto something I had felt in my heart on my first day there: where confidence ends, trust begins.

And I watched that unfold. Serendipitous moments arrived like small gifts: a late night text from a friend on the other side of the world, whom I hadn’t spoken to in months, reminding me that God had me in the palm of His hand. A friend who turned up on the Saturday, who sat and had lunch with me before my workshop, steadying my nerves. The beautiful photographer, Lorna Rande, whose story so resonated with mine, it was as if God was reading my mail. And then there was the song I left singing, one I had written many years ago:

I am full of answered questions, for He hears my prayers.
He has taken all my burdens, and carried my cares.
He has shed my heavy load, as I walk on His road.
It’s so easy, so easy,
He hears me I know.

The very next day, this song appeared in my Facebook memories. I had shared it on the exact same date, 12 years before.

I felt like God put me a little bit more back together at Hutchmoot. Where the scattered pieces had lain, He gathered them up and placed them into a beautiful basket, assembled tenderly, by the remarkable team and the people I met there. No part of our journey is wasted. Even the fragments will be used to feed others.

Since coming home, I have felt different. Lighter, perhaps. Not healed entirely, not suddenly transformed, but reconnected. My creative joy has begun returning. I have wanted to photograph again. To write. To make things. I am dreaming dreams of outreach ahead.

The single rose I photographed last week felt strangely symbolic of all this. A lone bloom against the dark, slightly weathered, not in the first flush of youth, and yet still full of richness and colour and quiet beauty. It felt raw and honest.

One line from my journal keeps staying with me from Hutchmoot. I came knowing no one. I left named and known. I am home.

There are moments in life where you meet with a kindred person, people, group, voice, book, or organisation. Their voice strikes a chord so harmonious with the language of your own heart that they interpret the unspoken. You find your tribe. You find your soil. And in that soil, and in that soil you can flourish.

For the first time in a long while, I feel as though light is beginning to return.

Giardinetto, “little garden”

I heard this wonderful Italian word the other day and immediately thought of the embryonic days of The Beagle during the lockdown of 2020. It was difficult to obtain the flowers I wanted then, so I began setting myself the challenge of foraging locally and creating compositions from whatever I could find growing nearby.

I had an old apple crate from Spitalfields Market which became a kind of enclosed world, a tiny stage for my own giardinetto. The limitations of the space, along with the seeming plainness of common wildflowers, provided exactly the creative stretch I needed. I spent hours rearranging stems, chasing balance and movement, tucking in little details like the snail, almost as though I were trying to breathe life and story into the scene.

Looking back now, I realise those early still lifes were about far more than flowers. They marked a return to play, to curiosity, to the quiet rekindling of creative spark after a long season of absence. Strange, really, that such freedom could emerge during a time of such extreme restriction.

There is a verse in Zechariah that says, “Do not despise these small beginnings” (Zechariah 4:10, NRSV). Looking back on those formative months brings that truth vividly to life for me. They were difficult days, yes, but also deeply shaping ones. Something raw and necessary was taking place beneath the surface. I was being pressed, stretched, and slowly reawakened to the creative presence of God.

And perhaps that is what I find myself seeking again now: a quiet room, a little beauty gathered, and the gentle meeting place where God and creativity seem to find one another.

Something shifted internally following Hutchmoot. My creative joy returned. Little by little, darkness is giving way to light. It had no choice.

I photographed this single rose against my black chalkboard last week and, for the first time in a long while, I felt genuinely excited to compose again. It stirred something in me that I still struggle to fully articulate.

There is a stillness to this image, a kind of quiet repose, which reflects the peace I have slowly begun to carry again. Its beauty is simple. No fuss, no abundance, no striving. Just a lone rose, slightly beyond the first flush of bloom, yet still extravagantly alive in the fullness of its giving.

I think perhaps that is part of why it moves me so deeply. It speaks of beauty that remains, even after weathering. Beauty that deepens rather than diminishes.

To me, this image feels like a threshold moment. A first small step into what I sense will be a gentle unfolding of greater light and beauty, both internally and through the work still to come. After a long season of numbness and survival, creating this felt like breathing again.

And maybe that is what art sometimes does. It returns us to ourselves. Or possibly more truly, it returns us to God, and in doing so, we come alive again.

A Rose Quietly Giving

Monthly paid supporters will have full access to each image for your personal use. I am deeply grateful to my financial partners, it means so much to me that you get behind my work, thank you.

For all of nature is awash with living symbols, hidden relations between what
we see and hear and touch, and the truth of our beings, our hopes and
belongings and fears, and the character of the Creator whose world pulses
with layers of meaning waiting for us to unfold them”
- Jennifer Trafton, If Only We Could See

kills me
with delight,
that leaves me
like a needle

in the haystack
of light.
It was what I was born for -
to look, to listen,

to lose myself
inside this soft world -
to instruct myself
over and over

in joy,
and acclamation.
Nor am I talking
about the exceptional,

the fearful, the dreadful,
the very extravagant -
but of the ordinary,
the common, the very drab,

the daily presentations.
Oh, good scholar,
I say to myself,
how can you help

but grow wise
with such teachings
as these -
the untrimmable light

of the world,
the ocean’s shine,
the prayers that are made
out of grass?

A pair of goldfinches visited my garden a few weeks ago. It was a spellbinding moment. I do not think I have ever had them here before, and so I stood quietly at the kitchen window, completely mesmerised as they delicately picked apart the dandelion heads, skilfully extracting the seeds with their tiny pointed beaks.

I had been standing in that very spot, remembering Alba, missing her familiar presence moving through the garden, when suddenly they swept in like little flashes of living colour and light.

I surreptitiously took some photos and a small video on my phone and went to do some research. The goldfinch has long carried symbolic meaning within Christian art, particularly in Renaissance paintings of the Madonna and Child. Often depicted perched gently in the Christ child’s hands, the bird became associated with both suffering and hope. According to legend, the goldfinch gained the red mark upon its face while trying to pull a thorn from Christ’s brow on the road to Calvary. Because goldfinches feed on thistles and thorny plants, they came to symbolise the Passion, sorrow intertwined with redemption, beauty existing alongside pain

I found that symbolism deeply moving, especially in light of Alba’s passing. There was something about the timing of it all which felt most tender and personal.

I stood there watching these tiny creatures feast on what most of us hurriedly dismiss as weeds, and I found myself thinking again about attention. About how often beauty arrives so quietly, without grand announcement, asking only that we notice it.

I was so thrilled to snap up the last copy of Jennifer Trafton’s book at Hutchmoot, If Only We Could See: Reimagining Creativity, Compassion, and Calling Through the Extraordinary Life of Lilias Trotter. Having basked in the utter delight of Jennifer’s seminar session, I knew this was a book I wanted to bring home and savour.

Jennifer is such a wonderful writer, and Lilias Trotter is a woman I have admired for a very long time. An artist, missionary, and deeply attentive soul, her life carried that rare combination of beauty, sacrifice, imagination, and quiet faithfulness which I find endlessly compelling. This is a rich, soul-expanding, imagination-awakening kind of read. You feel the love Jennifer has for “Lily”.

"As long as there is a single candle burning, a whole world may yet be lit”
- Jennifer Trafton, If Only We Could See

Andrew Peterson, The Burning Edge of Dawn. Particularly the track, Be Kind to Yourself.

Separately, Andrew’s song Invisible God which he played to open Hutchmoot. I cannot lie, God kinda got a hold of me right there and I had to fight real hard not to do the ugly cry.

The newly released Every Moment Holy: Prayer Songs.

Remarkably Bright Creatures on Netflix. Sally Field is one of my favourite actors and so it was a treat to watch her in her craft throughout this moving and uplifting story. You will need tissues!

[Occasionally, my recommendations may not be for everyone. My choice of films, books etc are based on my particular tastes and tolerances. Just a note for my G-rated friends]

Easy peasy your-kids-can-make-it, delicious and holy, bread!

Ingredients
4 cups, flour of choice
2 cups warm (not hot) water
1 tbsp fresh quick/fast yeast
1 tsp salt

Allow to cool (if you can resist!) and enjoy. I recommend slicing and freezing what’s left, it doesn’t keep long as it has no preservatives.

“You can let darkness define who you are or you can fill up your world with joyful things. Things to give your life weight. And one day you hope light will overwhelm dark. That meaning may come from what you saw.”
- Death by Lightning (film)

And so I bid you adieu for another month. But before you go, I have one final delight from Hutchmoot to share.

Fellow contributor and songwriter John Grummitt invited me to lend some of my photographs to his workshop, One Body, Many Arts: Ekphrastic Tools for Songwriting.

“Ekphrastic?” I hear you ask.

It is the practice of one art form responding to another. A poem inspired by a painting. A song inspired by a photograph. Creativity in conversation with creativity.

Participants spent time with several works by Hutchmoot artists and used them as prompts for songwriting. To my astonishment, two of my photographs found their way into the mix.

There was something deeply moving about watching images I had created become the starting point for someone else’s imagination. A photograph begins as an act of attention, but once released into the world, it gathers meanings, memories, and stories that belong to others too.

Below are the two images, alongside the songs they inspired. I hope you’ll take a few minutes to listen. They feel like small reminders that beauty rarely ends with us. It is passed from hand to hand, heart to heart, art to art.

Tea & Peonies SONG LINK
( John Grummitt, I would love to credit the songwriters if you have their names?)

Longing: Blessed, Broken, Given SONG LINK

If you are interested in purchasing any of my Fine Art prints, you can visit my Gallery Print Shop on my website. You can also hear more of John’s work on his website.

Keep a lookout in your inboxes this month for my Hutchmoot workshop, where I'll share some thoughts on photography, noticing, and why learning to pay attention may be one of the most important spiritual practices of our age.

Grace, peace, cool pillows, fresh bread and God’s love be yours this June, and always -

Jacqui

“Above all else …abide.
Be confused and disappointed by God, and yet stay”
- Ross Byrd