We are conceived as a result of relationship and born into a world of relationship in a cosmos which is nothing but relationship. Yet, almost without exception, it is relationship which generates our greatest challenges, individual or collective, and which remains the most elusive, often painful, mystery of our lives. When I mentioned to a client that I was writing a book on ‘The Challenge of Sacred Relationship’ his cryptic response was, ‘Not before time. We’ve made a real mess of that one.’ Why should this be so, when relationship is the primary reality which underpins the working out and evolutionary unfoldment of this planet as a whole?

This book asks the most fundamental question of all, ‘What does it take to come into, and remain in, sacred relationship – with yourself, other people, nature, the planet and wider universe, spiritual realms of being, and God, in whatever form we conceive that central reality - relationship which challenges, supports and frees both parties for wider usefulness?’ As one great 2,100 year cycle or Age comes to an end and we are caught in the chaos of transition, this seems to be a question that is almost too difficult to ask. However, there is no alternative if humanity and the planet is to survive and unfold.

Every day brings evidence that current ways of relating are less than adequate. As I write this chapter the world is struggling to make sense of events in the Middle East, along with the USA’s military involvement in the region, the plight of Zimbabwe under Robert Mugabe, and the continuing refusal by the Roman Catholic hierarchy to adequately face the long-term consequences of the church’s sexual stance.

Over the last fifty years the forms that relationship takes have changed dramatically. Marriage for life is almost a thing of the past, and marriage itself seems relevant for fewer and fewer couples. The ‘fifties families is no longer recognisable, and a woman who combines paid employment and mothering is now the norm rather than the exception. Yet, while the form has altered, sometimes almost beyond recognition, the belief structures and mindsets which govern our attitudes to and expectation of relationship remain locked into patterns which are a legacy of the Age of Pisces. The poem Meeting and Not Meeting calls them ‘our old games of possession, power, greed’. Given, over the past forty years, an increasing emphasis over much of the world on the satisfaction of individual desires and self-gratification, we could add a ‘what’s in it for me?’ mindset.