from Joann Neuroth
Our current spiritual nurture program, God’s Promise Fulfilled: Encountering and Embodying Grace in the Shadow of Empire, has completed the first of two years in which we explore what faithful living looks like, and how to choose it while the forces of injustice, separation, greed and cruelty around us (Empire) actively work to keep us from living in God’s Promise. Sixteen participants, two teachers and two elders are concluding our first year together in a hybrid format – half of us on site at each of the quarterly weekend residencies and the other half on Zoom.
We came together last Memorial Day weekend, many of us intent on finding spiritual ground to stand on as the world unraveled around us into chaos, polarization and suffering. Our first – and perhaps our hardest – shared realization was that Empire was not something “out there” that we could blame and mobilize to defeat. Rather, Empire had colonized our own assumptions, thinking, self-perceptions and instincts. Our first task, therefore, was self-examination, confession, repentance and re-commitment to living as our Inward Guide intends.
This required examining what God does intend for God’s people. Some of us were willing to begin with Biblical stories of what seekers have found over the centuries, and others found that language antithetical and off-putting. As usual with School of the Spirit programs, we committed to and practiced “listening in tongues” so that all of us could speak our heart language about the Divine. We trusted listeners to listen with their whole beings by translating what was shared into their own preferred language.
Through the four weekends since, and meaning-making sessions in between, we have come to share a sense – however we express it individually – that the Grace intended for all of us includes (among other things) radical self-acceptance and willingness to be seen as we are; tender-heartedness, forgiveness and inclusion toward all fellow creatures; a refusal to accept or participate in injustice and inequality; awe at the sacred majesty of creation and a commitment to be “makers” ourselves in holy partnership with the Creator.
We highly recommend a book that summarizes much of this understanding of the domination system and the lifetime task of freeing ourselves from its insidious lies: Liturgies for Resisting Empire by Kat Armas. And we also highly recommend finding and/or making for yourself a community in which you can talk about these things and share struggles and support each other. That is what we’ve become for each other. That is the goal of School of the Spirit’s long programs.
Another five participants are joining us for Year Two, which begins in May, during which we will turn to discerning and discovering how each of us is called to ministry in the world, and equipping ourselves for sustainable obedience to that call.
Please hold us in the Light.
