Rewilding Faith

02/11/2026

Looking back on the AONTAS Adult Education Summit, I realise just how much the opportunity to speak meant to me.

It felt like the culmination of a (very) long journey as a woman no longer fully at home within the Church I grew up in, looking for spaces to talk about faith and spirituality.

There are relatively few such opportunities. So I really valued being invited to contribute to the Summit and the inclusion of my article in the latest Adult Learner Journal. The article looks at where Irish adults who are somewhat ‘over Church, but not over God’ can go to explore their faith and meet with others renegotiating their relationship with the religious tradition they grew up in.

In my presentation, I spoke about moving from passively receiving ideas about faith to co-creating spaces where people can explore questions of meaning, belief and spirituality together.

I used the image of gorse: bright, resilient, rooted and at home in spaces beyond walls. It evokes the kinds of spaces I have been involved in co-creating with others – rooted in people's lived experience, open to dialogue, and not confined by institutional boundaries.

I would love to develop further opportunities for adults to explore and express their faith and spirituality together through workshops, courses and retreats.

I am also interested in encouraging and supporting others who would like to create their own Rewilded Faith spaces ( or already have) – places where people can bring their lived experience, explore and express faith - and the questions it prompts -together, share leadership and discover what might grow.

I am grateful to AONTAS for making room for these conversations, and excited about what might come next.
The 2026 Adult Learner Journal is available here (my article is on p71):
https://www.aontas.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/10/The_Adult-Learner_2026_WEB.pdf

23/10/2026

Grateful to all at for the chance to speak at .

Delighted too to have had my article on Spiritual Development and Adult Education published in the latest edition of the Adult Learner Journal.

With increasing numbers of Irish people moving away from regular practice of the religious faith they were raised in, where can they go to explore and express their spirituality and beliefs? And how can they re-negotiate their relationship with their faith tradition. I explore what role their might be for co-created participative spaces which use adult education approaches to dialogue around faith and spirituality starting with peoples’ lived experience and ask what role might adult education bodies play supporting such spaces.

For anyone who might be interested to read some more, itshttps://www.aontas.com/.../10/The_Adult-Learner_2026_WEB.pdf See less

30/09/2026

I'm delighted to have the opportunity to speak about Spirituality in Post-Catholic Ireland at the AONTAS Summit in a few weeks time.

I'm also delighted to have an article in the latest edition of the AONTAS Adult Learner Journal, which will be launched at the Summit.

Opportunities to talk about spirituality and faith-related topics as a woman can be relatively rare within many of the established churches — and perhaps rarer still outside them. So this opportunity means a lot to me.

And the subject feels increasingly relevant. Many people my age — middle-aged and counting are renegotiating their relationship with the faith tradition they grew up in. And doing this while questions of mortality surface as parents age, and possibly also as they parent children going to a school with a Catholic ethos. I have talked to many who feel they fall into a partially post-Catholic category: 'Over Church, but over God'.

And that leaves some interesting questions.

- Where can we go to air the questions we may have been left with about the faith tradition we grew up in?
- How do we acknowledge the parts of that faith we might want to hold on to — perhaps even reclaim — while being honest about the parts we don't?
- And who do we do that questioning and holding-on with?

I don't have all the answers. But I think these are important questions — and I suspect we have many more tools at our disposal for addressing them than we realise.

So, in the spirit of Rewilding Faith, at AONTAS I'll be sharing some of my experience over the years of co-creating informal, participative faith spaces with others outside established church settings: places where people can explore and express, question and celebrate what they believe and value, without needing to have it all worked out first.

I've experienced how enriching, empowering and sustaining these spaces can be — not only for our inner lives, but for our efforts to engage with and make a difference in the world.

25/09/2026

It's been a while for lots of reasons, but I'm starting again back here again with a prayer for finally 'being on a roll'

Not a prayer for escaping the to-do list, but for asking for help in the middle of it — in the energy, the determination, the people we want to avoid steamrolling along the way, the need to stop occasionally, and the satisfaction of celebrating moving on a very long-term resident on the 'to-do' list.

This is a prayer for one of those days when you've finally got your teeth into the thing you've been avoiding forever…

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09/09/2026

Nine people. Nine true stories. One evening about connection.

What connects us to a place, to another person, or to a community?

As some of you know, I work part-time with Inishowen Development Partnership on the Connecting Communities team.
This Friday evening in Buncrana, we’re trying something a little different.

Stories of Connection is a Tenx9 storytelling evening where nine people will each have ten minutes to tell a true story from their own life.

No speeches. No presentations. Just real people telling real stories — some funny, some moving, some unexpected — about the connections that have mattered to them.

You don’t have to tell a story yourself. Most of us will simply be there to listen, enjoy the evening and perhaps see something of our own lives in someone else’s story.

📅 Friday 11 September, 7.30–9.30pm
📍VENUE: Inishowen Gateway Hotel, Buncrana
🎟️ FREE – everyone over 18 is welcome

We’d really love to fill the room with a good mix of people from across Inishowen. If this sounds like your kind of evening, please come along — and perhaps bring a friend.

👉 Book your place for free now: https://inishowen.ie/whats-on/

And if you know someone who might enjoy an evening of good stories, warmth, humour and human connection, please share this post or tag them below.

Sometimes listening to someone else’s story is all it takes to see a stranger a little differently.

Stories of Connection is organised by Inishowen Development Partnership through I-STAR – Inishowen Standing Together Against Racism, in collaboration with Tenx9. See less

Join IDP this September for Stories of Connection, an evening of powerful, authentic storytelling brought to you by Tenx9.

We have some fantastic storytellers lined up, each sharing a true story from their own lives inspired by this year's theme of Connections. From stories of community, friendship, family and belonging, to unexpected encounters and life-changing moments, this promises to be a memorable evening of laughter, reflection and connection.

Places are still available, but booking is essential.

📅 Friday 11th September
🕢 7.30pm - 9.30pm
📍 Inishowen Gateway Hotel, Buncrana

🎟️ Free event (18+) and everyone is welcome.

Don't miss this opportunity to experience the magic of live storytelling and hear real stories told by real people.

👉 Booking link in the comments.

01/07/2026

Looking forward to leading this Volunteer Care Day tomorrow with Donegal Volunteer Centre. Hope the rain... and the midges...decide to stay away.

A chance for some re-energising rest, reflection and in the stunning scenery around Lough Eske.

11/06/2026

The images of the last few days coming from Belfast and across the North have been deeply disturbing. We learnt about people being burnt out of their homes in history class, forty years ago. It is horrifying to see it happen again, this time to different groups of people, who through no fault of their own, are being targetted. At a time when it can feel hard to know what to do, I am glad to be part of I-STAR (Inishowen Standing Together Against Racism), am grateful for the chance to gather with people who want to make some difference. Grateful too to IDP Inishowen Development Partnership to focus on this work, including this statement today.

20/04/2026

https://www.patriciahiggins.ie/post/at-the-start-of-a-challenge

God,I am going to try and do something I find hard.Something I am not sure I can pull offI will hear many voices as I go, ‘you are too old for this’, ‘who would want this?’, ‘you don’t know enough’, ‘it’s too much’, ‘it’s not enough’…Allow me to hear those voices, and mov...

15/04/2026

May you find a certain solidarity with others who are waiting

May you be gentle on yourself as you prepare to leave the thin comfort of not knowing for sure you haven’t been accepted

To finding out whether you or not you have been.

May you be blessed by a sense that whatever happens
The stretch you made to be considered was not wasted
If only, because the fact you tried, will in time be its own comfort.

May you, whenever your time might come to be the maker of decisions that others will wait on,

Remember what matters most to you now as one who waits.



If the decision doesn’t go as you would wish
May you find the strength and compassion to love fiercely the disappointed part of you
And to face down firmly the flurry of negative voices that may stir up

And should the decision go as you would wish
May you give thanks where it’s due,

Find time to celebrate what’s been achieved
and be open to how this new step may bless yourself and others.

May you find a certain solidarity with others who are waiting May you be gentle on yourself as you prepare to leave the thin comfort of not knowing for sure you haven’t been acceptedTo finding out whether you or not you have been.May you be blessed by a sense that whatever happens The stretch you ...