I am so glad you are reading this. It is my aim to
welcome your ideas, visions, hopes, concerns, experiences, teachings and more
during 2020. I hope you will write some posts and comments.
I have been on a quest for wisdom and new ways to
practice my faith for as long as I can remember. This quest has grown in
intensity year after year and especially during the last two decades. I began Abundancetrek.com
20 years ago and began blogging about 15 years ago. This website and 2 blogs have plenty of
spiritual wisdom and practices which I have collected and put my own stamp on. I am heavily indebted to Frederic and Mary
Ann Brussat of Spirituality
& Practice who have inspired me and guided me in so many ways during
these 2 decades and even before when they offered spiritual and cultural
resources in pre-internet publications, particularly Cultural Information
Service.
Approximately 7 years ago I began to study
InterSpirituality under the guidance of Dr. Edward Bastian. This has been an amazing experience which
led, in 2017, to my attaining an InterSpiritual Mentor certificate from Ed’s
Spiritual Path Institute. 6 of us received these certificates. We had worked with Ed mostly via online
meetings for about 5 years before we “graduated” and celebrated at a wonderful
weekend together in Granite Falls, Washington in October 2017. I had never hung up any previous diplomas or
awards in my study. This one is hanging
where I can see it and be reminded of my commitment to InterSpirituality.
I do not regret my career as a Presbyterian Pastor. Indeed I am still committed to this ministry
as a participant at First Presbyterian Church, Utica NY and in the Presbytery
of Utica. But I always felt like something
was missing as I have participated in the activities of my denomination and
local congregations. What was missing was this emerging paradigm of
InterSpirituality. I believe InterSpirituality is a critical way for us to get
beyond all those walls which separate us from the rest of humanity and so many
creatures.
It was about 10 years ago that I changed THE NEW CHURCH
FOR THE NEW AGE to THE NEW FAITH FOR THE NEW EARTH. I resonated with a book by Harvey Cox called
THE FUTURE OF FAITH and a book by Eckhart Tolle called THE NEW EARTH. Here is a brief description of what I mean by
THE NEW FAITH FOR THE NEW EARTH:
THE NEW FAITH FOR
THE NEW EARTH is:
non-hierarchical,
free, open, loving, caring, compassionate, healing, energizing,
inclusive, humble,
non-judgmental, fun, creative, yours, mine.
Christ never meant for the church to be a closed,
hierarchical, authoritarian, nationalistic and denomination-alistic
institution. Same for the Faith Communities following The Buddha, Muhammad,
Moses, Lao-Tse, and other Great Spiritual Teachers.
This description has been on the Abundancetrek.com homepage for just about
as long as the website has been around with that significant change just
mentioned.
In this first Spiritual Explorations 2020 post I want to
provide links to several sources of Spiritual Wisdom and Practices. I hope to
come back to these sources again and again in future posts and I hope you will
find inspiration and illumination from these wonderful sources. Here goes:
·
Abundancetrek.com
> This is the website I have offered for two decades with pages on 9
Heavenly Attributes and 12 Spiritual Practices.
·
Spiritual
Paths Institute > You will find The Seven Steps of InterSpiritual
Meditation and The Mandala of 12 Spiritual Styles, 12 Spiritual Questions and
12 Spiritual Sources.
·
Spirituality
& Practice > The best website in the universe. See for yourself. Book Reviews, Film Reviews, E-courses, Meme
Galleries, Practices, Teachers, Blogs, Quotes and more.
·
Inner
Frontier > Joseph Naft offers hundreds of pages of excellent,
informative spiritual guidance.
·
The Center for Action
and Contemplation > Father Richard Rohr offers inspiration, guidance and
wisdom on a daily basis.
·
One Spirit
Learning Alliance > NYC seminary renowned for their Interfaith and
InterSpiritual courses
·
One Point
Mind > Inspiring and practical teaching by Zen Master Miyohae Do’an
Prajna of Lotus Heart Zen
You could spend the rest of your life finding guidance
from even one or 2 of these amazing websites.
And, of course, there are many other great spiritually oriented websites
I hope I can offer a post in the near future where you
provide a list like this of websites you
have found offering spiritual guidance.
I invite you to join a group I have begun called SPIRITUAL EXPLORATIONS
2020 > https://www.facebook.com/groups/567789840446209/
1 comment:
I was listening to an old lecture by Matthew Fox yesterday and he was talking about the same discomfort with the traditional way we've 'done' religion as you are voicing here. He was quoting indigenous wisdom which of course resonates with whole idea of Interspirituality. Another important point he made was the need for us all to be mystics. Exciting!
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