Hi. My name is Rev Geraldine Bown. I’d like to share with you a little about my own spiritual journey so you get a sense of the person behind the Minister. (Feel free to skip this completely and go straight to the tabs to find out about my work).I was raised as a Catholic. As a little girl I wanted to be a Priest and carry out ceremonies. I was told I could be a nun…..and of course I couldn’t serve on the altar. I used to kneel on the front row of church while my brothers served on the altar, and I would say all the Latin responses with them. Over the years I tried to make sense of it all even though my father was adamant that it wasn’t for me to understand, it was for me to obey. He said that my job was to follow the white line down the middle of the road and deviate neither to left or right. My job on earth was to save my soul. Of course he meant ‘save my soul from damnation’ and at the time I thought it was a selfish attitude anyway. Strangely though, now I do believe that my job is to be responsible for the evolution of my soul – but not to save it from banishment to Hell, but to express the Divinity to which it belongs. My overriding goal is to help people to express their own divinity and soul essence in the world.
There are many reasons why I left the Catholic Church. But in spite of all the things about the organisation of the Catholic Church which made me uncomfortable and even furious, it was through this religion I was raised in that I had a sense of God (albeit a male God – and a God ‘out there’), a role model in Jesus, a sense of sacred ceremony. And I remain profoundly grateful for the introduction to these things. Ultimately I found the Catholic Church too limited and too confining. I had a growing sense of my own spirituality. I read books and I talked to people and I went on workshops, all of which enabled me to free my spiritual self. So I came to see the Church much like a dating agency. I was introduced to God and once we began a relationship I didn’t need the agency any more. I started to realise that God was within me residing in my soul and I felt a crushing responsibility. No more just trying to live by the rules and going to confession to remove your sins. Now, every thought, every word, every action became a moment of truth. I became aware of my spiritual self constantly and in spite of the sense of responsibility, the more I tuned into it the more peaceful I felt and the more aligned with my soul as a reflection of Absolute Beingness. Yes, I missed community coming together. Yes, I missed the hymns and the singing and the candles and the incense. I had to create the upliftment I had found in ceremony in my daily life somehow.
I left the Catholic Church when I found A Course In Miracles. I hadn’t wanted to leave something, I wanted to go towards something else. In ACIM I found a blueprint for daily living. It is a modern interpretation of what Jesus’ life was really about. It introduced me to the exploration of the differences between perception and illusion and truth.
Then, one day, I saw a small ad in a spiritual journal “Did you ever want to be a Minister?” My heart leapt. When I was 17 I had thought I did have a vocation…to be a nun. I prayed every night for God to take it away. I spoke to a nun at school and she told me to go to University and begin my teaching career – if you do have a vocation, it will come back, she said. Wise woman. So here I was 30 years later and my vocation came back. I spent two years training and was ordained as one of the first One Spirit Interfaith Ministers and Spiritual Counsellors in the UK in 1998. There is no church, no dogma, no rules about Ministry. Every Minister serves in the way they feel personally called. There are many people now who have done a weekend training to become a Wedding Celebrant. I am very happy that my two year part-time intensive training accelerated my own spiritual development as well as preparing me to be a Minister and Spiritual Counsellor.
My chosen focus for my ministry and spiritual work is on conducting sacred ceremonies for special occasions – especially weddings, and working with individuals and groups on their own spiritual awakening and exploration.