Links with India

Links with India through Bede Griffiths

 
In June we enjoyed an evening led by Adrian Rance-McGregor exploring the influence of Bede Griffiths in the vision of St Ethelwold’s House as an “ashram in the West”, illustrated through letters shared between Fr Bede and Dorothea Pickering. We were happy to be joined by Shamsudheen Thayada, an artist who exhibited with us during Art Week, and were intrigued to discover that Shamsu and his family had been connected with Kurisumala Ashram in the Kerala highlands which was co-founded by Bede Griffiths in 1958. We were further moved when Shamsu told us that he felt the same spirit of peace at St Ethelwold’s as he had at Kurisumala.

Following this event, Sreeja our House Manager has made a visit to Kurisumala Ashram as she and her family visited her mother in Kerala this summer. She took our warm greetings, some photographs of St Ethelwold’s, our History of the Fellowship booklet and a memento of Dorothea Pickering. The photo above shows the family meeting Abbot Sevanand.