About the author
Jennifer Kavanagh worked in publishing for nearly thirty years, the last fourteen as an independent literary agent.
Since selling her business in 1997, she has run a community centre in London's East End, worked with street homeless people and refugees, set up a microcredit programme in London, and worked as a research associate for the Prison Reform Trust.
She currently sets up microcredit programmes in Africa and facilitates conflict resolution workshops for Alternatives to Violence (AVP), both in prison and in the community.
Jennifer is an associate tutor at Woodbrooke Quaker study centre, and contributes regularly to the Quaker press. Her books include Call of the Bell Bird (Quaker Books, 2004), The World is our Cloister (O Books, 2007), The O of Home (O Books, 2010) and, as editor, New Light (O Books 2008).
After a year’s travel round the world in 2001/2, Jennifer found that she did not want her flat or most of its furniture, and has felt liberated by letting go of most of it. Although she now lives in central London, her flat is quiet and simple: an urban retreat, with an occasional glimpse of the stars.
Jennifer finds balancing an active life with a pull towards contemplation a continuing and fruitful challenge. As she writes, “Life in the world is about a series of balances: of the life within and the outside world; inner experience and outward witness, plenitude and the void”.
And home?
“I think I still feel that it isn’t a geographical place, and can only describe it in a series of snapshots, both actual and virtual: times in my life when I have felt at home. It’s both family and friends who accept me, and solitude; connection with the rest of creation, and the Divine.
“Yes, most of all, connection. We are all connected. We all want to be at home.”