May/June 2019 Newsletter

This newsletter is a publication of Creation Spirituality Communities and is funded by its members and supporters. If you are enjoying this newsletter and appreciate keeping up with the Creation Spirituality community, please consider becoming a member or renewing your membership.


Membership is available at several different levels at annual and monthly rates.
We Are All Connected
At the end of April I traveled with some friends from Austin to San Antonio to participate in a Cosmic Mass led by Matthew Fox. I think this is my sixth Cosmic Mass led by Matt since the early 1990s. These, along with participating in several Spiral Dances led by Starhawk, root me deeply into why Creation Spirituality is so important to me. Experiences in nature often leave me spellbound and feeling connected to the whole Cosmos, but moving body to body in transformative ritual reminds me that I crave connection with other people, and that fills me to the brim.

The San Antonio Cosmic Mass was sponsored by Celebration Circle https://www.celebrationcircle.org/ , a 27 year old Creation-Centered community. This afternoon their pastor Rudi Harst and I spent several hours together comparing notes. I have been the lead pastor of Trinity Church of Austin https://www.trinitychurchofaustin.org/ for 31 years, also a Creation-Centered community. Both of us have attended Creation Spirituality events, read books by Matt, danced with mystics, been arrested with prophets, and dedicated our ministry to Creation Spirituality—healing our Sacred Earth through Sacred Work. But, even though we only live an hour and half from each other, neither of us had heard of each other until about six months ago. What’s up with that? Do we live in that much of bubble? When I began building a Creation-Centered community three decades ago I drew deeply from the work of Howard Hanger at Jubilee! Community in Asheville and Richard Kuykendall through Spirit Wind. He drew from the same sources. How many communities are out there that we don’t even know about yet? We don’t need to be a denomination, but surely none of us needs to reinvent the wheel when so much work has already been done that can be shared.

Recently Creation Spirituality Communities did a survey to find out what you want our organization to be for you. Overwhelmingly, the primary desire is for connection . Some of us have the blessing of participating in regular Creation-Centered communities, but most of us live in places where the only connection we share is social media, webinars, or online communities. In the current state of our country and world, if there’s anything we need, it is the awareness of not being alone. I want you to know that we have heard you. As a result, the board is actively exploring how to increase meaningful face-to-face experiences, as well as a greater sense of connection through online interaction.

Some of the exciting things happening through CSC are:

  • Creation Spirituality Immersion Retreats. Called “Sacred Earth, Sacred Work”, we’ve had five around the country so far. Another is planned for June 28-30 at Rolling Ridge Retreat Center in North Andover, Massachusetts. Here is the link: https://www.rollingridge.org/event/sacred-earth-sacred-work-12775973. You can still sign up. And—just today Rudi and I made the commitment of doing another Creation Spirituality Immersion Retreat in Central Texas next May, combining our two communities and other interested persons. Would you like to have one in your area? Let us know. We’ll help you make it happen.
  • Small Groups. The CSC board is in the process of developing a small group program that can be implemented in conjunction with the Immersion Retreats or, in areas where a retreat is impossible, a stand alone group. We are also looking into how to create online groups that can meet through Zoom, Skype, etc. We want you to be connected to each other.
  • Online Classes. With the Fox Institute for Creation Spirituality in a state of flux and re-creation, we are committed to idea that some of the kinds of classes that would have been offered there will find a way to continue. These could be classes on the basic tenets of Creation Spirituality, the Re-Invention of Work, Art-As-Meditation, Ritual-Making, Focus on the Mystics, Living out a Prophetic Creation-Centered Life, etc. The possibilities are endless.
  • National Convocation. On the success of our last two gatherings in Berkeley and Asheville, we are beginning explore what our next gathering will look like—and when. One of the ideas rising to the top is Deep Ecumenism. Creation Spirituality has expressions in Christianity, Judaism, Sufism, Buddhism, Wicca, First Nation Spirituality, but most of it has been expressed—at least among us—within a Christian framework. What would it be like to bring leaders together from multiple expressions, multiple faiths, multiple traditions—as Matt says—One River with Many Wells?
  • Monthly Zoom Gatherings. We already have a monthly meeting of clergy who are either leaders of Creation-Centered communities or are interested in starting them. If that fits your profile or vision, let us know and we’ll get you linked up. In addition, with all the chaos in the United Methodist Church over LGBTQ inclusion, we have instituted a Creation-Centered conversation for Methodists. We are looking at other monthly online gatherings to get you connected. What do you desire?

 
These are just a few of things we are doing to help you get connected. Let us know your ideas.

One way you can stay connected is to help support CSC. If you are already a member, thank you. If you are able to pledge a monthly amount, that helps us promote the programs listed above, provide the online Zoom meetings, maintain a vibrant website, and publish a monthly newsletter.

Joseph Campbell once said that “If you follow your bliss you put yourself on a kind of track that has been there all the while, waiting for you, and the life that you ought to be living is the one you are living. When you can see that, you begin to meet people who are in the field of your bliss, and they open the doors to you.”

Creation Spirituality is that field for many us. I look forward to opening the door and seeing YOU!
Start a New Community!
Let us help you gather and support your local CS community.

LIST YOUR COMMUNITY ON OUR NEW WEBSITE!

If your CS community is not listed on our current website, please let us know so that we can add it to the growing list of CS communities. 

KEEP IN TOUCH

Leaders of CS communities gather online on the first Monday of every month to share ideas, resources, and support. If you are a core team member for your community and can join us on Monday mornings, please let us know. We would be glad to have you join us!

Let us know how we can support you!

Reflections
Birthing
by Linda Villegas Bremer

A spark flies off a burning log…
         A shooting star streaks across the sky…
                     Lightning flashes abruptly seemingly from nowhere…

Is that how the breath, the form, of life comes to be?
In that place where everything resides and nothing exists, where all is form-less,
         divine sparks ignite and launch into the journey to the land of the formed.
Abracadabra! And a baby is born. What magic! Divinity expressing!

A master once asked: “When were you born?”
After I shared my birthday, he said, “Really? Did you exist before that day?”
“Yes, I was in my mother’s body.” 
“And how did you come to be a fetus before germinating? Do you think that the matter that became you was there before then? And what about that which engendered your parents? Before the Universe even knew you in this form?”
Mysteries. Life ostensibly from nothing – yet spawned from Divine Source.

Once upon this earth, how is it that we are here with a clean slate for a memory?
What will it take to remember that the realm of the form-less is all that is?
And so what do we truly know about life? About death?
A dictionary defines death as “the ending of all fundamental functions or processes in an organism or cell.” How appropriate. It does not speak to non-existence, but rather it alludes to the possibility of transformation.
Miracles!

Luminosity and Love…
         Imagination and Intention…
                     Nascence and Nurturing…
                                 Desire and Demonstration…
                                             Abundance and Appreciation…
I am magic!
         I am a mystery!
                     I am a miracle!
                                 I am the expectancy of the Universe personified.
                                             I am fully living my life’s purpose.

© 2019 soulvoices
Worrisome Thought
It is frightening when we first begin to consider that GOD is no longer perceived (in our mind) as a perfect, detached, all-powerful male figure sculptured like Michelangelo’s statue of “David”. The worrisome thought (in our mind) that god, as Jesus of Nazareth believed, was truly within us from our very conception, is so unsettling that we want to push it out of our mind. The suspicion (again in our mind) that this creator being who has no name in human language, and no ‘body’ modeled in conformity with the bodies (male or female) of homo sapiens, has humbled himself in order to accompany us throughout our self-seeking and often wayward lives - is too improbable to believe. Only our soul by way of experience can begin to believe and embrace it.

Tim Cromley
Gem City Rainbow Community Mural
Featuring our Laramie WY world class precious Casper Aquifer groundwater that provides 50% of our water. 
 
Designed by Laramie High School student Sam Robertson along with Parker Jackson, teachers Rebecca Watson and Shelley Miller. Painted by 2019 Shepard Symposium on Social Justice participants. April 2019. 12'x 52 inches.

Artistic Director: Paul Taylor. Inspired by Australian Aboriginal culture and Spiritual Law of the Rainbow Serpent, teaching us to "Care for Country", especially our water .
The Orphaned Ones
By Robyn Hubbard, DMin

Over a lifetime of mining my inner fears and longings, I’ve become aware that some of my most difficult memories, feelings and beliefs are from a time when I was too young for language or emotional development to describe my inner experience. It is hard to identify, let alone articulate, something that eludes the description of words. Though, at this point in my life, courting those pre-verbal and orphaned parts of myself feels essential, loving and gracious.

In a dream, I am walking through a big, old, beautiful mansion. I walk into a bedroom, then down a set of stairs where I see babies in newborn hospital cribs. As I descend the stairs, the babies start quivering with excitement at my incoming presence. It feels heartwarming to make connection with these precious little ones. 

The setting is like an orphanage with loving adult male volunteers tending to the babies. As I am going back up the stairs I come upon a few volunteers making “volunteer story boards” to hang in the orphan nursery to bring warmth and connection. I want to make one - it is a fabulous idea!

Making a storyboard of all of these unmet parts of me that have been “orphaned” and relegated to the basement of my soul, now being birthed back into the light, has been a revelatory process. It is liberating to engage my imagination and welcome these parts back into the fold of my experience. It is like reuniting with long lost friends that bring immense value to my life. I feel the quivering and quaking inside of previously repressed creativity longing to be expressed.

I have come to recognize when resistance, anxiety and/or shame arises in my current experience, that it is most often triggered from these long lost parts who became the discarded outcasts of my psyche. These vulnerable “orphans” strategically created habitual responses of protection born out of painful early experiences. The inherent wisdom of these compensatory responses have served as brilliant safety measures up to this point, while proving to be self-diminishing and deprecating in the long run.   

My unique strategy of invisibility, and flying well under the radar, has kept me safe and relatively productive for most of my life. Though, I now recognize when the familiar uncomfortable feelings arise, that they become my cue to slow my thoughts and actions way down and get curious about which orphan is calling my attention. When I become quiet and listen deeply, she has a story to tell that is a long lost treasure in the mansion of my soul. Each young one I nurture back into my adult consciousness brings the warmth and joy of untapped potential – and a liberated feeling of creative energy stirred!

To protect and nurture these young ones inside, it is my practice to first lovingly acknowledge their presence and assure a safe environment, just like the volunteer male attendants in my dream. As I court these tender parts of myself in this way, I am able to notice the often playful and creative vibrancy that is freed; that which had been previously coveted painfully in the dark corner of my psyche. When I invite these infant energies to accompany and share their essence with the adult in me, I feel an expansive quality that is not easily described, but joyfully welcome.  

The more that these parts within are honored and nurtured, the more love and trust is harnessed, and over time, cultivates an embodied, integrated and holy union. Hence, the evolving story of inhabited awakening and wholeness ensues. The memories that once plagued me with the devastation of nightmares have spun the gold of my own personal myth, meaning, divinization and service within this larger dream of life.

What is the story that your soul longs to tell? What is the best way for you to nurture and articulate it? Who are the long lost parts hiding in the basement of your inner mansion? Lean in close...and listen. You might hear an orphaned one inside, quivering with life longing to be lived.

Daffodils
by John Spiesman

Daffodils brilliant, yellow, and standing tall
Heralding the rebirth of all creation
Lining the hillside – A springtime prayer shawl.
Shouting with joy in acclamation.

Heralding the rebirth of all creation
Earth with their beauty is shaken.
Shouting with joy in acclamation
Calling all creation to awaken.

Earth with their beauty is shaken.
Lining the hillside – A springtime prayer shawl.
Calling all creation to awaken
Daffodils brilliant, yellow, and standing tall.
Watching How God Loves
By Evan Mecham

I am always deeply moved when I hear the story told about Neem Karoli Baba, the great Indian mystic, teaching his acolytes about meditation. Having been asked by a student how one should meditate Baba was about to speak when his countenance changed. He sat up straight, something he rarely did, then he said you should meditate like Jesus did. The students were surprised. They were asking their Hindu Guru to help them understand better how they might meditate and their teacher was introducing them to how Jesus meditated. The students that were there that day have spoken of how the air turned thick and sweet, their hearts felt the waves of love that came from their master. One student recalled that a bird flying across the courtyard of the ashram stopped in mid-air. It was as if life itself stopped for a moment to feel the embrace of the love flowing from Baba’s heart. After a moment Baba spoke, that is how Christ meditated, he lost himself in love for all of creation.

Have you ever been in love? With another person, with God, with a vision of the earth we live on, or of the immense night sky filled with countless stars, and astronomical obscurities? Have you been in love with an idea, or something material that you just could not live without? I remember my first love from every preceding category just listed. I remember feeling that I must have it, own it, capture it. I wanted to tell the world that whatever it was that so delighted me, was mine.

The tighter I held what I loved, the less light it produced, and the satisfaction I felt for it diminished. My jealous desires to have, and control became seizure, internment, and death. Love so strongly anticipated and pursued darkened, and died.

With time and error weighed one learns to take a step back, and accept a wider vision. This observer watches how God loves his creation, and yet gives space, and air to breath. Freedom births becoming, blossoming. Inner ears are opened to hear the secret voice that whispers all is love. So now when I am acutely afflicted with that most tender of feelings. I let the sensation build within until I believe my soul will burst. Then when love overflows from my heart it reaches into other hearts as well, and we see the world anew with gentleness, kindness, and acceptance. 
Initiation and the Red Tent
By Catherine Boland

We mothers of my daughter’s 6 th  grade class held a red tent celebration this past month. It was a powerful rite of passage with a lot of healing dialogue and information respectfully shared. With great joy I chose to share a poem I wrote while at UCS. While there, I did an independent study and put up ceremony with Peter Brokenleg, who was teaching at UCS at the time. When the night came for my first sweat ceremony I ended up having to sit outside the lodge because my moon time had come. This poem was my experience outside the lodge. I was sitting by the fire in meditation and this vision of the primordial goddess is what was shared with me in that meditation. I was receiving information from her about the sacred moon time and how it is a time of power. I was grateful for the opportunity to share this poem of initiation I experienced, with this next generation of young women. 

In introducing the poem, I shared that as a young woman reaches this point of coming into their blood cycles or menstruation, it’s because their body is maturing and they are coming to a new level of power with their creativity. The door opens in a whole new way for birth, not just the birth of having a baby, which is very powerful. It initiates you, the young woman, to a new level of birthing yourself first. Your moon time is when the door opens to deeper connection with the primordial essence. This is the dark field of pure creative potential…the sacred feminine.  This is what you are being initiated into.

This is the poem that I wrote in 2003 sitting in meditation outside the sweat lodge:

As I begin to float upon the still waters of silence, I am carried into the current of mystery; the primordial dark dragon guides me. Navigating these internal waters I come to be with the subtle essence of reality…the heart of truth that binds together the sacred web of life.

A shift into silence and a new voice emerges…

A soft voice that is not as visceral as emotion and not as forceful as the intellect.  This subtle voice often gets lost in the presence of such company.  A new focus and I am gazing into the fire.  In the fire I see the goddess standing before me. She is the nurturing mother, beautiful and radiant and she shares the warming love that I hunger for.  It is a love that penetrates every cell and fiber of my being.  This is memory of the divine love I birthed from, we all birthed from it. The deep desire to be held in the arms of this divine embrace is the very inspiration for leaping into the silent void.  The familiar warmth of divine mother inspires the child within to crawl into her soft embrace and here I rest until I am full.  

The winds of change begin to howl and spirit cautions me to sit back…the child is growing and responsibility knocks on the door… focus turns again toward the fire, from a distance I see this Goddess begin to dance…at first her movement is soothing and gentle, she sways from side to side like a mother comforting her babe…then the rhythm intensifies…faster…faster…faster…until she is furiously spinning…the beat is pounding louder and louder as she transforms into the face of the dark one…in this form she is wild and untamed…as she is death and birth…she is essence…the brewing cauldron of primordial fire…she is pure power of creativity that which burst forth and shaped a universe.

Fear of this primordial force lives deeply in the minds of humanity.  Generation after generation has sought to destroy or defile the memory of this old one…fear of her burning intensity is why so many cling frantically to illusion and distraction…heads bobbing at the surface rather than diving in deep…to drink from the well of this goddess…one needs wisdoms guide…the smallest drop of this elixir can move mountains. When it is time, when we are guided, we take a tiny drop into our hearts…with this we uncover a love for life that is so deep it is bittersweet on our mortal lips.  The goddess holds the blade of truth and with this bittersweet love she swings it, severing the shackles of illusion that have bound the spirit of a people…the unity of existence unfolds before us…the illusion of duality is exposed.

Into the mystery we go discovering truth…meeting the subtle voice of spirit…beyond the chatter of the mind or the tug of emotion. When we are ready and when it is time… we emerge from the vision…as we emerge wisdoms voice is not lost…it becomes the heart of us…it sparks our cells and ignites our sense of purpose.  Moving out of this internal cycle, the intensity softens…we stand at a threshold with eyes squinted as we greet the new light of day.

What we are to create from this journey stands before us on the edge of the horizon.  As we are pulled through the movement of time we come to meet the horizon.  There we can see the vulture, wings outstretched, peacefully gliding towards us. Its presence is mystical as it gracefully rides the winds of change…the divine messenger recognizes our quest and seeks us out to reveal its wisdom.  It is here to remind us that deep in our flesh and bones are where we find the purpose of this creative journey.

 The vulture speaks…with this precious time of life, we get to contribute something greater than ourselves and that expression comes through finding our true Self.  We come to this world and play the alchemist, transmuting pain to new life.  Our service is to be the alchemist and develop fully the potential of our differentiated Self and that is greater than us…our experience of this life is our gift to share…who we are comes though us yet, it is not ours to keep.  We share our voice and our wisdom to serve the evolution of life as all life has done before us.  In taking this time to meet, cultivate and express our deep self, we gift this reality…in the ways that we have been gifted. 

Born from the Troubles
By Wendy Maclean

This ancient stirring of my soul
this riled, rippling movement
like water over rock
keeps seeking, keeps travelling
as if somewhere
it will find its home, and settle
 
The green fields are generous
and invite me to rest
in their sumptuous breast
But the rock fences and gorse
send me away
as once they sent away
my ancestors
 
My soul is rain, is mist, is stone
turned up in the earth’s eons of turmoil
in a history that does not belong
to anyone
No race or religion or ancestral story can say:
This is ours.
Upheaval is the mother of these rocks
 
Fences and cathedrals and stone huts
are an estuary
mingling the salt of tears with the rivers of stories
travelling from the heart of God
My soul hears the prayers in the stone walls
and the rocks that remember
they were born from the troubles
of creation

Wendy Jean Maclean is a United Church of Canada minister, in a small country church in Eastern Ontario. She wrote this poem while in Ireland.
Response Ability
By David Sparenberg

This video is addressed to every member of the human species and especially dedicated to all who call yourselves Shamans/ Healers and all who are Educators: asking The Question on the issue of Earth Crisis, one component of which is Climate Change, others including species extinctions and the ecology of human war.
Mystical Activism: Transforming a World in Crisis

To call these "end times" is hardly hyperbolic. We are in trouble and the signs are everywhere: extreme political divisions; xenophobic violence; enormous wealth inequity; poverty and homelessness; sexism and ageism; arms buildups and unending...

Read more
www.tikkun.org
Letting Go
By Jann McGuire

This is the way we let go in life.
The terms of surrender are given
And we must accept the terms.
Night follows day: we let go of the light
And accept the darkness.
The colors and softness of spring
Brighten into the heat of summer.
We let go of the flowers
And accept the bright heat.
When we pass from childhood,
We let go gladly, embracing youth,
And when it is time to let go of youth,
We are powerless once again.
We acknowledge the signs of age
And let go
It is no wonder that we want to stop
This continual surrender,
This unceasing goodbye.
The Lost Language of Flowers
By Gopi Ona-Ali

Flowers. They bring us feelings of wonder and awe when we take time to notice the presence of divine intelligence: their colors, fragrances and unique shapes inspire art, poetry, music and spiritual devotion. Late spring and summer bring us a bounty of symbols we may find familiar in that deja vu kind of way; like the vibrant marks on ancient cave walls, flowers speak to us on the deep level of remembrance.

Using flowers as language of spiritual metaphor is often credited to the great nature mystic, St. Francis. While he certainly made a most extraordinary contribution to the cause of nature’s mystical language, I doubted that it all began with him. It felt primal to me.

Then who started it? And when?

These questions led me on a quest to discover what I call the Lost language of Flowers. It is by no means complete, but over many years of research, I have come to these conclusions: flowers are one of humanity’s original spiritual expressions; flowers have remained a perennial source of connection to mysticism, across time and culture; and, flowers serve uniquely as a meditative portal.

The who, how and why questions about flowers haunted me like a historian’s daughter; the answers came to me as a hybrid of anthropology, metaphysics and the legends of Krishna. While deeply subjective, it may hold some insight as to why flowers register so profoundly for us.

In 1957, archeologists in Kurdistan unearthed the remnants of a 5’ 6” man now considered to be “Hope Diamond” of the Smithsonian’s Human Origins Program. The Neanderthal skeleton buried in Shanidar Cave was dated somewhere around 60,000 years ago; with him were buried remnants of flowers and herbs that could only have been intentionally gathered from the surrounding area. “Someone in the last Ice Age must have ranged the mountainside in the mournful task of collecting flowers for the dead,” said Ralph Solecki, the primary archeologist, in his book, Shanidar, the First Flower People, (inspiration for Jean Auel’s Clan of the Cave Bear series.)

It seems logical to us today that pretty things like flowers should be placed with the cherished dead, but to find flowers in a Neanderthal burial that took place 60,000 years ago is another matter.

While there is much to unpack from this discovery, the evidence of flowers as a hidden language between subjective and Ultimate Reality began to emerge. When I asked Sri Donato, she answered as a modern shaman: “It always begins in the Garden and ends in the Garden, the Alpha and the Omega.” She spoke of the ceremonies of Atlantis using flowers as the purest messages of love and gratitude, wisdom given directly by the Angels in the ancient Mystery Schools, carried by different religions into present day as remnants in liturgical ritual.

She pointed me to the mythology of Krishna, who appears whenever righteousness falters and chaos threatens to prevail, to ensure the triumph of righteousness. (BG 4.5) The idea of divine influence through physical incarnation came alive as I followed the flowers.

I thought about how connected to God and goodness people feel through flowers. In classes and workshops I’ve given on the history of flowers over the years, something special always happens: people soften, they relax and delight when we talk about flowers. Even in an age of cynicism and disbelief, people easily accept the divinity of flowers when they cannot accept their own. I saw flowers as helping to reconnect us: part of God’s body speaking to us through a remembered sense. I started to wonder about the origins of ceremony and how they had been divinely gifted us: Krishna teaches, Humanity was co-created with ceremony (yajña). (BG 3.10)

Have you ever seen Krishna without a flower?

He speaks to us as nature mystic by declaring, Any offering, a leaf, a flower, a fruit, a cup of water - I will accept if given with a loving heart. (BG 9.26)

I was guided to an image of communication to and with the Divine through Her own language and Selfhood: a lost, hidden Language of Flowers reverberating in our DNA. Created by the Creator as Creation to Create panoramas of realization. A means to reach through, within, above and below, flowers show us the divine presence in all life. Here we are reborn in the arms of the Beloved.

Entering the Earth,
I support all beings by my life-giving power:
becoming the nectar-filled moonlight,
I cause the plants and herbs to thrive. (BG 15.13)

As we approach the Summer Solstice, may it be with a renewed sense of connection to the Divine Mystery.

Smithsonian Magazine, March 2010
Translation Stephan Mitchell, Bhagavad Gita , 2000

Gopi Ona-Ali is Associate Director of Morningland Community in Long Beach, CA, where she teaches a weekly telephone class on Bhagavad-Gita. For more on the Lost Language of Flowers, you can contact Gopi Ona-Ali at pranava242@gmail.com.
Belonging
By Sally Singingtree

           Secrets vibrate in my veins.
           Courage of white buffalo woman
           joins cousin named Cortez,
           No harmony or gold for me,   
           just disappointment and blood stains on my hands.

           Foremother saber-tooth tiger’s
           feral gold eyes say
            Sink your teeth
           into what makes you come alive,
           Stalk what you love.

           A clutch of speckled eggs
           waiting in their nest,
           as mother finch’s warbling song
           calls out to her feathered family
           enfleshed through dinosaur apocalypse,

           Our kind at risk
           in this uncharted time.
           Waters rise.
           Fires burn.
           Species go away.
                       
           Life, death, and resurrection
           belong to each other,
           pathway of Creation,
           primordial, ever-present,
           transformation via traumatic endings.
                       
           Part of me in all of it,
           complicit in losses,
           conspiring to set things right
           on the cusp
           of everything.
by Sue Ellen Parkinson

“River Without End” -- the integration and balance of the masculine and feminine within us.
Awe
By Ilene M. Cummings, DMin

Awe is a cosmology of wholeness wrapped in surprised.
It hits us like thunder, shutting down logic and
bringing out the poet in everyone.

We shiver when we experience awe.
We know that something is out and about,
breathing life into emptiness, exposing us to our deepest humanity.

Awe takes our breath away,
stops us in out tracks,
as our souls lean into a trillion, billion heavenly lights.

We are one with
a majesty coming out of nowhere.
We try to touch it. We cannot. It touches us.

We are connected to everything. 
No longer 
independent of God.

In a world gone crazy with unhealthy competition and
a preoccupation with things outside ourselves,
awe lets in the fresh air of soul.

It shuts down the ordinary.
Opinion dampens, comparing and contrasting cease.
Awe hovers outside our common selves.

Looking at the Grand Canyon or a blade of grass
awe
frees us from cash, stuff and status.

Instead. We live in the core of the divine,
present
to the smallest and largest of things.
Upcoming Events
Join us for our next Elder InnerView with
Rev. Gail Ransom, DMin. ‘10
June 27, 2019
4:00 EST, 3:00 CT, 2:00 MT, 1:00 PST

Gail’s life has been a weaving of creativity, spirituality, and a deep love for Earth. What began as nature lessons from her father, camping, fourth grade music compositions, and mystical experiences in her youth became a life of employing the arts in social justice, and spiritual growth. Ordained in the UCC in 1984 and in Creation Spirituality in 2016, Gail has been a minister of the arts and spirituality in Boston, Houston, and Pittsburgh, PA where she raised her two daughters, Shira and Ilana, in an interfaith family.

In Pittsburgh, Gail has shared the leadership for a weekly Creation Spirituality based gathering, Mystics in Motion in for over 14 years. (Previously named Worship Jam.) She has also been a member of Creation Spirituality Communities Board of Directors, and served as its president from 2014 to 2018.

“As babes, we spend hours marveling at insects on the sidewalks and all the little details of life. By the time we are elders, our eyes are drawn to larger patterns -- the meaning that surrounds our meaning, the cosmic void that cradles our own temporal substance, the life force that carries each of us through the our many storied lives.”

Join us on June 27 as we interview Gail about the ways Creation Spirituality has informed the wisdom of her elder years.

When you register, you will receive an email which has the link and phone number for you to participate. Don’t let the numbers put you off. Just before the InnerView, paste that link into your browser or the number into your phone.
ACT NOW!
Join Mathew Fox in Germany, June 16-21
Course: Eckhart @ Erfurt - Erfurt, Germany

Join Matthew Fox and Friends for a UNIQUE OPPORTUNITY to study the great medieval mystic MEISTER ECKHART in Erfurt, Germany, in the very rooms where Eckhart lived and taught and prayed! "[Fox] not only gives us his beloved spiritual father as a...

Read more
www.matthewfox.org
New CSC Website Coming Soon!
We can’t wait to share it with you!

LAUNCH DATE: June 14, 2019

Here is our new address: www.cscommunities.org

Come and visit us soon!
Sacred Work and Community
Green New Deal: A Franciscan Perspective
Article in the Cord: Green New Deal: A Franciscan...

FAN's executive director, Patrick Carolan and former president, Sr. Margaret Magee, OSF recently co-authored the lead article in this quarter's publication of Franciscan Connections: The Cord titled, Green New Deal: A Franciscan Perspective. The...

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franciscanaction.org
New Book Coming in 2020
Mystical Activism: Transforming a World in Crisis
by John C. Robinson
 
To call these "end times" is hardly hyperbolic. We are in trouble and the signs are everywhere: extreme political divisions, xenophobic violence, enormous wealth inequity, poverty and homelessness, racism, sexism, and ageism, arms buildups and unending wars, and, most critical of all, terrifying climate disruption associated with manmade global warming.

We are the cause of these dark times. Driven by left-brain beliefs, illusions and obsessions, humanity races headlong toward the collapse of civilization. Fortunately, the solution to these mounting crises also lies in the human psyche, arising from a most surprising source: the right-brain’s natural mystical consciousness. Our survival depends on whether we resolve this paradox in time.

Foreward by Matthew Fox: “John Robinson lights a fire to our hearts, minds and souls and offers deep medicine for our struggling times, times he is unafraid to recognize as an ‘approaching apocalypse.’ John has his feet squarely on the ground and his heart, soul and spirit soaring. He also invites the rest of us to soar--soaring is another word for mysticism, for stretching our boundaries and expanding our consciousness."
Creation Spirituality Comes to Kalaupapa HI
by Rev Dr Roxanne WhiteLight

In the mid 1800’s the Kingdom of Hawaii was faced with a terrible dilemma. Hawaiians, having no immunity to introduced diseases, were very vulnerable to disease brought to Hawaii from the outside world. Large numbers of native Hawaiians died during this period. One such disease was Hansen’s Disease, known commonly as leprosy. The spread of leprosy was so serious that the King signed an order making it a crime to have leprosy. People with the disease were arrested and confined to a hospital, detention center, or the most serious cases were sent to the island of Molokai. An isolated peninsula on the north side of the island was cut from the rest of the island by 3000 foot steep cliffs and raging seas. The settlement became known as Kalaupapa. The plight of these patients became well known through the work of Father Damian and Mother Marianne.

Under the auspices of ReSource for Christian Spirituality, led by Rev. Dr. Phyllis Meighen, nine brave souls became residents of the settlement for five days to provide service to the community and spiritual study using the teachings of Creation Spirituality. Co-led by Roxanne WhiteLight, the participants relived the Universe Story and walked beneath the stars each night in one of the darkest places on the planet.

Given the history of Kalaupapa, it is easy to make the connection to the path of mystery, darkness and letting go. The hardships faced by the patients and their helpers were overwhelming. From inadequate medical care to lack of basic necessities of food, clothing and shelter. They were also victimized by the governmental systems that not only sent them into exile but the same system kept the rules of forced isolation in effect for twenty years after a cure was found for the disease. If you were five years old when you were forcibly taken from your family, and the cure was found the day after your arrival in isolation, you would have been twenty-five years old before you could have hugged your family again.

Despite all the hardships, the presence of creativity is everywhere present in the settlement and the art work of the patients is proudly on display in several areas. The participants got to experience art as meditation through poetry writing, drawing, singing and making music together. WE all got to practice loving our creations!!!

The expression of prophetic and social action on the part of patients and their helpers is well documented. More hidden, but just as present, are the amazing ways that the residents of the settlement transformed their lives and experience. After the separation order was lifted many chose to stay and live out their lives in the community that had become their home.

This remote area of Hawaii provides endless moments of awe and wonder and inspires gratitude at every turn. During the morning service work we rolled up our sleeves and cared for mother earth and one of our participants built a seven circuit labyrinth.

Next month marks the 50 th anniversary of the lifting of the separation order and we will be taking another group back to Kalaupapa to remember the stories and honor the beacons who transformed their experiences into lives of beauty and meaning.
June at Spiritwind, Auburn, CA
For the month of June at Spiritwind we will be doing a study titled, "Deconstructing Christian Dogma."

Spiritwind meets every Thursday evening year-round in Auburn, CA and is led by Rev. Dr. Rick Kuykendall.

Spiritwind is a Creation Spirituality Community in the tradition of "One River, Many Wells" and has been meeting in Auburn for 15 years.
What is Creation Spirituality Communities?
Creation Spirituality Communities, Inc. (CSC) is a network of individuals and communities who are grounded in the sacredness of all creation and seek to connect to the spirituality of creation through mysticism, creativity, and cultural transformation.

CSC includes people from many spiritual traditions, cultures, races, sexual identities, and ages. They come to Creation Spirituality through the writing and speeches of Matthew Fox, through articles and videos, through conversations with friends, and through study at one of the Creation Spirituality universities – now the Fox Institute of Creation Spirituality.

Creation Spirituality Communities provides avenues for gathering together, being inspired, and embodying the CS message of compassion, co-creation, and transformation. We are led by a nine member board of directors and supported by our members.
Roxanne workshop
Below are the Creation Spirituality Communities that we are aware are meeting on a regular basis. If you are participating in a community or CS circle that is not included on this list, please let us know by writing to contact@creationspirituality.info.

If you are the convener or leader of a CS community, you are invited to an online conversation on the first Monday of every month at 11:00EST. Please let us know if you are interested!

LIST OF CREATION SPIRITUALITY COMMUNITIES:

Creation Spirituality Communities
contact@creationspirituality.info | www.creationspirituality.info