THE PROGRAMME
THE PROGRAMME
Now in it’s 21st year, this five-weekend programme entails the telling of myth(s) or fairy tale(s) by Dr. Martin Shaw, and then study and response to it. Over the gatherings a braided knot of relationship is formed between the story of your own life and the great ocean of these epic tales. The atmosphere is studious and lively in appropriate measure. It’s a migratory voyage through the grandeur of language, mythos and place.
The Skin-Boat & the Star
A Christian Mythopoetics
September 2025 — March 2026
The Skin-Boat & The Star is a homage to the early Christians, especially the Celts who would have travelled in such boats with a dangerous and wonderful story tucked under the breastbone of their hearts. The tale of the storyteller and healer born as a fugitive in a cave, and in only a few short decades, taken to Skull Hill and slaughtered for the troubling, beautiful things that he says, who then has the audacity to return from the Underworld with a message of love so extraordinary it has caused half the world to swoon.
This programme sees Martin teaching from the place he now finds himself in. There’ll be many myths, fairy tales and ideas he has loved for decades alongside the developing Christian landscape he is beholding.
Each weekend will feature in-person guests, and there will be archived and live zoom sessions with guests between each weekend.
Please note this course is in-person attendance only.
The Skin-Boat & The Star
A Christian Mythopoetics
September 2025 – March 2026
The Skin-Boat & The Star is a homage to the early Christians, especially the Celts who would have travelled in such boats with a dangerous and wonderful story tucked under the breastbone of their hearts. The tale of the storyteller and healer born as a fugitive in a cave, and in only a few short decades, taken to Skull Hill and slaughtered for the troubling, beautiful things that he says, who then has the audacity to return from the Underworld with a message of love so extraordinary it has caused half the world to swoon.
This programme sees Martin teaching from the place he now finds himself in. There’ll be many myths, fairy tales and ideas he has loved for decades alongside the developing Christian landscape he is beholding.
Each weekend will feature in-person guests, and there will be archived and live zoom sessions with guests between each weekend.
Please note this course is in-person attendance only.
THE MERRIE
Around Skin-Boat, Martin is developing what he calls The Merrie, a structure with four cornerstones. They are worth a read to get a sense of what he’s imagining, as some elements will be within Skin-Boat.
Martin writes: Ivan Illich once claimed, “we live in a world immune to grace.” That kind of immunity is nothing less than enchantment, and I’d have a few small ideas about what to do with that. We don’t need to keep hearing that everything is broken. Maybe everything’s always felt broken. Maybe that’s the low, depressed note required for green shoots to counter. But in testing the spirits of our age we discern what we choose to listen to and what we choose to put down. A peaceful heart is not an indulgence, it’s a requirement. Attend to your shy dreams, take them seriously. A greater energy may have placed them within you. This is a Romantic position, which in turn is a mythological position, which at its best is ultimately a religious position.
Myth: A space to let the stories be the stories again. To be open to the mythological depth of the Christian tradition. A robust practice of storytelling and exploration. To bring closer traditions like The Grail Mysteries that evoke the best chivalric values. I think much modern Christianity has lost touch with its stories as living energies, and often seem trapped under glass. They can speak to us as dynamically as they did when they arrived, frequently as an oral tradition, 2,000 years ago. They are about the eternal now and we could be more imaginative about how we tell them, and the depths of how we experience them.
Our God speaks to us in stories, are we letting our side of that opportunity down?
Nature: An invitation to abide in wild places. To experience the gospel of a hawk on the wing or a chilly night in a Dartmoor forest. To encounter an undomestic, mossy face of Christ. Get in touch with what John Moriarty calls ‘your bush soul’. Christianity is frequently divorced from what goes outside the church building or human community. I think God is asking us to have a far more receptive ear to a bustling, receptive ecology. Stop being a tourist within the living world. Come take your place. It’s good for the health of all of us. ‘But ask the animals, and they will teach you; the birds of the air, and they will tell you; ask the plants of the earth, and they will teach you; and the fish of the sea will declare to you. Who amongst all these does not know that the hand of the Lord has done this? Job 12:7-10.
Liturgy: To integrate such an experience into a bustling liturgical year that weaves pilgrimages, saint stories, mystery plays and prayer in the land and community you live amongst. Importantly, a revival of the lively and oft obscured saints of these or your islands. Why do the saints and their stories matter? They are teaching tales, mythically expansive and they instruct us about both limit and delight. They are an inheritance many of us are barely aware we have. To celebrate and anchor the turning year with their lives and deeds bring us closer to a more beautiful way of being in the world. The saints are often specificity attached to a particular art or skill. They have a totemistic quality to our own developing acts of service. The saints are the best of our grandparents. We don’t worship them but we thrive in their company. The kind of year the Merrie suggests is a way to bring the prophetic energy of the wild back into the business of the parish. In the end we ourselves are a walking liturgy, serving the wisdoms that Gods seasons dictate.
Tempering: To track the rite-of-passage that is the core of Initiatory Christianity. The life, death and resurrection that underpins Yeshua’s life and can be found in myths and stories all over the world. That Christianity is a profound initiation experience. Christianity doesn’t shy away from grief: In his anguish he (Jesus) prayed more earnestly, and his sweat became like large drops of blood falling on the ground. Luke 22:44. Our own lives will see betrayal, triumph, wrong paths and unexpected blessings throughout, and we do ourselves a disservice when we don’t bring these stories as close as our own breath, because they are our own breath. They are the stuff of life, even holding clues towards what the Anglo-Saxons called the Heofonlic – heaven.
Christ is a God who doesn’t wander Olympus munching grapes; he’s down in the filth and camaraderie of it all, and drinks the sorrowing of the world as a sublime demonstration of love. The tempering is not just to have Christ as a pal to lean on, but to gradually behold the world from exactly where he stands. That’s overwhelming and we have to work up to it. The Merrie takes the Jonah road, the Jasconius road, down into the depths for the sacred mastication that ultimately leads to renewal. No dark night, no sublime dawn. Christianity often wants to skip to the nice part. The comfortable part. If Christianity refuses to descend, to ignore the meat the raven offers Elijah, then it remains hypnotised by a secular society that does not have its best interests at heart. If it is thinned to ethical teachings, civic good and not much more, it has entirely lost its teeth. And something as wild as Christianity needs its teeth. Not to randomly snarl, but to stay vital. Snarling is tedious. The Merrie is interested in Christendom but only when it includes all four quarters of the earth that God shows his hand. A remake of the crusades is hardly the thing, it’s the opposite of the thing.
THE MERRIE
Around Skin-Boat, Martin is developing what he calls The Merrie, a structure with four cornerstones. They are worth a read to get a sense of what he’s imagining, as some elements will be within Skin-Boat.
Martin writes: Ivan Illich once claimed, “we live in a world immune to grace.” That kind of immunity is nothing less than enchantment, and I’d have a few small ideas about what to do with that. We don’t need to keep hearing that everything is broken. Maybe everything’s always felt broken. Maybe that’s the low, depressed note required for green shoots to counter. But in testing the spirits of our age we discern what we choose to listen to and what we choose to put down. A peaceful heart is not an indulgence, it’s a requirement. Attend to your shy dreams, take them seriously. A greater energy may have placed them within you. This is a Romantic position, which in turn is a mythological position, which at its best is ultimately a religious position.
Myth: A space to let the stories be the stories again. To be open to the mythological depth of the Christian tradition. A robust practice of storytelling and exploration. To bring closer traditions like The Grail Mysteries that evoke the best chivalric values. I think much modern Christianity has lost touch with its stories as living energies, and often seem trapped under glass. They can speak to us as dynamically as they did when they arrived, frequently as an oral tradition, 2,000 years ago. They are about the eternal now and we could be more imaginative about how we tell them, and the depths of how we experience them.
Our God speaks to us in stories, are we letting our side of that opportunity down?
Nature: An invitation to abide in wild places. To experience the gospel of a hawk on the wing or a chilly night in a Dartmoor forest. To encounter an undomestic, mossy face of Christ. Get in touch with what John Moriarty calls ‘your bush soul’. Christianity is frequently divorced from what goes outside the church building or human community. I think God is asking us to have a far more receptive ear to a bustling, receptive ecology. Stop being a tourist within the living world. Come take your place. It’s good for the health of all of us. ‘But ask the animals, and they will teach you; the birds of the air, and they will tell you; ask the plants of the earth, and they will teach you; and the fish of the sea will declare to you. Who amongst all these does not know that the hand of the Lord has done this? Job 12:7-10.
Liturgy: To integrate such an experience into a bustling liturgical year that weaves pilgrimages, saint stories, mystery plays and prayer in the land and community you live amongst. Importantly, a revival of the lively and oft obscured saints of these or your islands. Why do the saints and their stories matter? They are teaching tales, mythically expansive and they instruct us about both limit and delight. They are an inheritance many of us are barely aware we have. To celebrate and anchor the turning year with their lives and deeds bring us closer to a more beautiful way of being in the world. The saints are often specificity attached to a particular art or skill. They have a totemistic quality to our own developing acts of service. The saints are the best of our grandparents. We don’t worship them but we thrive in their company. The kind of year the Merrie suggests is a way to bring the prophetic energy of the wild back into the business of the parish. In the end we ourselves are a walking liturgy, serving the wisdoms that Gods seasons dictate.
Tempering: To track the rite-of-passage that is the core of Initiatory Christianity. The life, death and resurrection that underpins Yeshua’s life and can be found in myths and stories all over the world. That Christianity is a profound initiation experience. Christianity doesn’t shy away from grief: In his anguish he (Jesus) prayed more earnestly, and his sweat became like large drops of blood falling on the ground. Luke 22:44. Our own lives will see betrayal, triumph, wrong paths and unexpected blessings throughout, and we do ourselves a disservice when we don’t bring these stories as close as our own breath, because they are our own breath. They are the stuff of life, even holding clues towards what the Anglo-Saxons called the Heofonlic – heaven.
Christ is a God who doesn’t wander Olympus munching grapes; he’s down in the filth and camaraderie of it all, and drinks the sorrowing of the world as a sublime demonstration of love. The tempering is not just to have Christ as a pal to lean on, but to gradually behold the world from exactly where he stands. That’s overwhelming and we have to work up to it. The Merrie takes the Jonah road, the Jasconius road, down into the depths for the sacred mastication that ultimately leads to renewal. No dark night, no sublime dawn. Christianity often wants to skip to the nice part. The comfortable part. If Christianity refuses to descend, to ignore the meat the raven offers Elijah, then it remains hypnotised by a secular society that does not have its best interests at heart. If it is thinned to ethical teachings, civic good and not much more, it has entirely lost its teeth. And something as wild as Christianity needs its teeth. Not to randomly snarl, but to stay vital. Snarling is tedious. The Merrie is interested in Christendom but only when it includes all four quarters of the earth that God shows his hand. A remake of the crusades is hardly the thing, it’s the opposite of the thing.