by Joann Neuroth:
I almost didn’t apply for the Spiritual Nurturer class that was so transformational for me – I pictured the School of the Spirit as very Christocentric, and I was still smarting from encounters with a judgmental and narrowly prescriptive childhood version of Christianity that excluded me. I hadn’t been successful, though, in turning away from Spirit completely – there was a hunger for “more” that kept me seeking. If pressed, I’d have described myself as post-Christian exploring Wiccan spirituality and attending Quaker Meeting.
Luckily for me (and in a larger sense for tikkun olam – the healing of the world) I was drawn to the invitation I experienced in a “Testing the Water” day-long event and did enroll in the ninth class of On Being a Spiritual Nurturer (OBSN). The teachers described School of the Spirit (as we still do) as “listening to and recognizing spiritual openings and committed journeys in whatever form,” and I decided to understand that as genuine welcome for non-theistic vocabulary and experience. “Non-theistic” didn’t quite describe me; I didn’t reject the existence of God; I just hadn’t found any articulation of God that wasn’t dualistic and fear/guilt-generating and hurtful to my soul. So I used words like Mystery … The Deep … The Sacred … Inner Guide … or the all-purpose Quaker “Spirit” and definitely avoided “God.”
Being part of that SN class meant learning to “listen in tongues” to others’ groping for language for ineffable experiences (being willing to do my own translation to language that worked for me while speakers used their own heart language.) It opened and softened me to Christian terms I’d experienced as harsh, when I saw what they did for others. And Marcus Borg’s book Speaking Christian cracked open concepts like “grace” and even “sin” and “salvation” in startlingly rich ways I could claim.
I’m so much more comfortable with God language now that when Adria Gulizia DiCapua and I began developing an upcoming School of the Spirit program that I think of as the “child” of On Being a Spiritual Nuturer (it has the genes of OBSN and is being birthed by the authentic spiritual experiences of us as leaders) we used the title “God’s Promise Fulfilled.” I was startled this week during an information session for that program to hear that some considering the program found our use of God language off-putting and that it might stop an application from universalist Friends. (How’s THAT for coming full circle!)
Adria and I can testify that we recognize each other’s core spiritual experience even though Adria’s heart language is Biblical and Christocentric and mine is universalist. To show you what I mean, let me try to explain how I experience the central premise of the course — “God’s Promise” – in non-God language. My best description so far is that when I sink down with my Inner Guide, I feel an exhilarating (sometimes intimidating) invitation to freedom from what Walter Wink calls the myth of redemptive violence. Embedded in our bones by the culture we swim in, that myth tells us that we need to do something to help good triumph over evil: convince someone, push here, pull there, make something different happen — often by getting other people to change. Inexorably, we become coercive and violent ourselves as we oppose violence and evil.
Instead, the revolutionary invitation I experience is to accept that good has already triumphed over evil; all that is required is for me/us to claim that victory, step out of the Domination System, and begin the radical experiment of living in alignment with my/our Inner Teacher. We can become the people we’re called to be; Empire is powerless to stop us. When we dwell deeply with Spirit, other things tend to fall away; we care less and less about the consequences of being out of step with the world. The invitation is full of curiosity and risk and hope. It requires active, disciplined claiming and attentive obedience for it to be actualized. And it’s clear-eyed about consequences: the world isn’t kind to those who are out of step. Still, I find that “promise” exhilarating whether I envision it being extended by God … by Spirit … by the Universe … or by the Guide Within.