The Coach House Team
Currently, Claire Starr is the Coordinator here and works with a team of volunteers, some of whom come regularly and others who are able to give some time this year.
The life of the Coach House is enriched by the participation of all our volunteer members, who come and stay for varying lengths of time.
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Claire Starr
Coordinator
Claire has been closely involved with the Coach House for many years. Having been on the team since 2016, she was appointed Assistant Co-Ordinator in 2019.
Claire trained as a spiritual director with the Epiphany Group and she has been accompanying people on their spiritual journeys for about 13 years. Claire regularly offers the Ignatian Spiritual Exercises. She took part in the Contemplative Supervision course at Loyola Hall and offers supervision. She has also been a tutor on the Growth in Prayer and Reflective Living Course. Claire loves cooking and enjoys bringing this ministry with her.
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Seonaid Crabtree
Spiritual Director
After many years in a monastic community I trained in spiritual direction/accompaniment with the Jesuits at Loyola Hall, subsequently joining the Epiphany Group. On being asked to join the Coach House team I felt both challenged and quietly pleased. I still feel challenged yet also quietly pleased to be walking alongside others……following our longing hearts.
Seonaid lives in South Uist, but stays here, usually for four periods each year, to help provide residential retreats.
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Lynn Darke
At the heart of any spiritual tradition sits a need to tend to the holy, and for spiritual guides with listening hearts. For anyone drawn to ‘tend to the holy’, learning how to recognise and respond to the nuanced moods and movements within is like learning to read a compass; and by leaning into the grace offered, we can make choices that lead to the increased freedoms that God longs for each of us to know.
As I stop to look back at my own wanderings (and wonderings) I discover that I was always being met exactly where I was by a God who even now remains both elusive yet intimately knowable, and keen to be found in the midst and mess of my ‘spiritual’ and ‘everything else’ life.
This requires, as the Jesuit writer Pierre Teilhard de Chardin reminds me, patience and trust in the slow work of God, for we are impatient of being on the way to something unknown, and struggle to believe that God is trustworthy. My training to become a spiritual director came about in response to my own deepening trust and a desire to walk with others also on the way; a desire that grew naturally alongside my work as a specialist nurse in palliative care. I do both from a faith grounded in contemplative Christianity and am open to seeing God in all things, whatever your beliefs and wherever you are on your journey.
