Jan/Feb 2022 Newsletter

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Photo by Jan Tinneberg on Unsplash
The First Step
by James Irving Mann
 
Before you say “Hello”
to your Future
you must have the courage
to say “Goodbye”
to your Past.
Upcoming Events
Longing for spiritual connection in these troubling times?

We invite you to join us every Sunday for this online, interfaith Worship Experience. We are growing a strong, nurturing community and want you to be part! This year, as last, we will be engaging in the 12 Days of Turning -- a wonderful time of reflection and creativity as one year ends and another begins. You don't want to miss it!

In case you are unable to attend in person, all who register will receive a link to be able to view the CSIWE after the event happens. So be sure to Register!

Every Sunday 7:00p/6:00p/5:00p/4:00p
Eastern/Central/Mountain/Pacific

Please register in advance for this meeting

After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the meeting.
The time of the LONE WOLF is over. Gather yourselves! Banish the word "struggle" from your attitude and your vocabulary. All that we do now must be done in a sacred manner and in celebration...

You can catch up on the previous webinars on our YouTube channel.  CiC Playlist

Register below to receive the Zoom link.
Creation Spirituality Online Class #2
The Reinvention of Work
Starts April, 2022
A New Vision of Livelihood for Our Time

With Instructor Dr. Deidre Combs, a management consultant, trainer and executive coach. Deidre has served as a professor at the University of Creation Spirituality, Naropa University, Columbia University and Montana State University.

For Pre-Registration Info Contact: marciaflagg@gmail.com
Essential Teachings of Creation Spirituality

An Evening with Matthew Fox Leading for the Deep Future with the Wisdom of Science & Creation Spirituality . . . Essential Teachings of Creation Spirituality Matthew Fox's life work has been to uncover essential teachings of the creation...

Read more
dtnetwork.org
For more news of Matthew Fox's events, visit https://www.matthewfox.org
Illuminate 2022
Wishing for a more aligned, sustainable work life?

Illuminate 2022 is a small group program for women who want to reinvent their relationship to work and find their own unique way forward. Heavily inspired by The Reinvention of Work by Matthew Fox, Illuminate offers a values-first approach to redesigning your work life, as well as tools, methods and rituals that align you with natural cycles (the moon and the seasons) and your deepest self. They are enrolling now through February 25th to begin March 4th and have an upcoming Meet & Greet you can sign up for at illuminatework.com.

Full price as well as Pay What You Can options are available.
Are you ready to bring more Joy into your life and help Birth our New Earth? The Nature Spirits’ invite you!
 
While the news within the human realms may seem dismal, there is much amazingness happening in most other realms here on our Sacred Earth. The Birthing of the New Earth is accelerating beautifully and Mother Gaia is quite excited.
 
The Nature Spirits are a large group of sacred beings celebrating here on Earth and many are emerging more and more from their hiding to help bring forward this Birthing. (Yes, they actually exist!)
 
These highly intelligent and powerful ones yearn for the human realms to re-member them so that we can co-create this New Earth together. They, along with Mother Gaia, have asked the amazingly gifted Dutch Nature Spirit Mystic, Cornelis Jan Cuperus, and internationally known Gaia Mystic & Priestess, Mare Cromwell, to co-lead a webinar to help us humans learn about them and how to reconnect with them. This is a 6-session course starting Feb 6th.
 
The fairies, elves, Sidhe, unicorns, ogres, goblins (yes, even the ogres and goblins – who are so misunderstood) and more want the human realms to come back home into balance with them and their mystical ways. More than anything, they wish for us humans to return to the partnership with them that our ancestors knew so well eons and eons ago.
 
This course will offer profound teachings, meditations and spiritual activations. And it will transform your life!
Mare Cromwell has surrendered to serve the Great Mother. She is an internationally known Gaia Mystic & High Priestess, Author, Healer & Visionary. Her award-winning books include: “Messages from Mother…. Earth Mother” and "The Great Mother Bible". She has studied with Native American teachers for 26 years along with other gifted mentors and is the Visionary & Co-Webweaver of the 1000 Goddesses Gathering Global Grid. Mare also leads the “Great Mother Love Way” year-long course. She is a Mid-Wife of the New Earth devoted to the Divine Mother in all of her manifestations.  www.marecromwell.com
Monthly Online Science of Mind Magazine Group
with New Host: Carol Pearson
ALL ARE WELCOMED!
 
In 2022 we are opening our doors wide, with the intention to stand as an all-inclusive, diverse, affirming and welcoming community, won’t you join us?
 
A bit about Carol -
Carol is a longtime Columbia Center for Spiritual Living community member and holds, in addition to her Ph.D., an Interfaith Doctorate of Ministry degree in Creation Spirituality (CS), which like Science of Mind, shares this fundamental premise with some differences in emphases.

From Carol -
Matthew Fox wrote an article about Ernest Holmes, the founder of Science of Mind and the inspiration for Centers for Spiritual Living, declaring Holmes a creation spirituality mystic. https://www.matthewfox.org/blog/ernest-holmes-as-a-creation-spirituality-mystic. I have come to believe that Centers for Spiritual Living can welcome Creation Spirituality input even more enthusiastically now than when Matt wrote that piece.

Participation in the Science of Mind Magazine Group offers us a chance to explore implications and applications to our lives of the belief that the divine is not only the creator of the cosmos, but also is embodied in the whole of creation and in every one of us.

Together we can explore our questions, expand our thinking, and apply what we are learning to living fully and joyfully. We can also augment the primary focus on Science of Mind cutting-edge thinking with what we know from other sources and from our own lived experience.”

Reading the Science of Mind (SOM) Magazine as a primary source regularly is recommended, but not required. It provides articles and short guidance for each day. Insights from it as will provide a focus for our discussions.

The group meets the 2nd Monday of every month at 7 pm, Eastern Time. To register, go to https://onenesscsl.breezechms.com/form/d3eb7a.

To subscribe to the SOM Magazine, go to: https://csl.dragonforms.com/loading.do?omedasite=SC_new, which does require a modest subscription fee.
Finding Presence in the Labyrinth
Connecting with the Circles of Life
with Veriditas Advanced Accredited Facilitators and Council Members:
Christine Favreau and Mary Ann Wamhoff

19 February 2022

The Draper Mercantile and Trading Company
Draper, VA
 
Join us for a day combining beauty, magic, and mystery! This one-day workshop invites participants to learn about the labyrinth and experience the awareness of how we are each in relationship with everything and everyone around us. We are invited to use our senses rather than intellect. The labyrinth provides the perfect space in which to do that! 

Activities will include:
  • An opening ritual in which we construct an altar (Please bring a small object that symbolizes why you are here.)
  • The experience of Presence through a multi-sensory exercise of Nature Bathing (no actual bath tubs involved!)
  • Writing to process and concretize what has been learned and experienced (can be quite brief)
  • A labyrinth walk
  • Creating your own simple art project (need not be artistically talented!)
  • A closing ritual to synthesize our day
Christine Favreau

Christine is a retired human resources professional with over twenty years experience spanning various industries and now manages a wellness spa. Additionally, she is trained by the Association of Nature and Forest Therapy (ANFT) as a Guide for Nature Bathing. Christine trained with Lauren Artress and is a Veriditas Advanced Accredited Labyrinth Facilitator who loves to share time, space, and experiences through wellness workshops, yoga classes, and other engaging community events. Consistent with her passion for HR and wellness practices, Christine has a long-held interest in helping others move their lives, careers, and organizations forward. Christine loves serving on the Veriditas Council and is curiously creative with a propensity to cognitively explore the world and all it has to offer, especially plant medicine!
Mary Ann Wamhoff

After training with Lauren Artress in Chartres, Mary Ann became a Veriditas Advanced Accredited Labyrinth Facilitator. She has walked labyrinths since at least 1995, has studied with Caroline Myss, Andrew Harvey, Mirabai Starr, and Matt Fox among others, and is a Reiki Master. She regularly facilitated public walks sponsored by the Labyrinth Resource Group of Santa Fe, and spearheaded and helped build a 48-foot Chartres-style labyrinth. She is presently introducing her new Virginian community to the joys of labyrinth walking! As a Veriditas Council member, she supports facilitators in listening to what people need and is excited about being part of the Veriditas Inclusion Initiative. Coming from a tradition that believes in the unseen, she has both felt and seen the labyrinth's amazing power!
To register please contact: Christine Favreau: Labyrinthsinvt@gmail.com or 802-782-4494
News
For the month of February at Spiritwind we will be doing a class, "Spirituality in Everyday Life." Like Matthew Fox's book, THE REINVENTION OF WORK sought to bring spirituality into the workplace and work mentality, so does this class seek to teach those who attend how to integrate their spirituality into their everyday life.
 
Spiritwind is a Creation Spirituality Community in the tradition of ONE RIVER, MANY WELLS led by Rev. Dr. Rick Reich-Kuykendall (530) 823-8610
Available Now on Amazon
This book is a rewriting of all of the books attributed to Solomon–whether he wrote them in reality or not: Song of Solomon, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Wisdom of Solomon, The Greater Key of Solomon, and The Lesser Key of Solomon (the last two being medieval occult forgeries...) 
Creative Offerings
Photo by engin akyurt on Unsplash
The Big Lie
by Kelly Hicks

Did my mother? My grandmother?
Look back on their lives,
Choices faced,
Consequences ignored,
Focus lost.
 
Liberated in their womankin sphere?
Freed from cultural bonds,
Apron strings,
Biological clocks,
Spread legs,
Bleeding hearts?

Did they, too, suffer the wound of genesis?
 
Eating the fruit of good and evil?
 
But what if eating the apple,
Wasn’t so much original sin.
As not telling the truth?

Eve and Adam lied.
To God.
To themselves.
Expelled from paradise.

But what if Eve said,
It looked so good,
I took a big bite.

What if Adam said.
It looked good to me too.

Do you suppose God might have gone along?
Like a loving god who beheld creation as good.

But they lied. Tried to hide. Felt ashamed.
They came to know sin and suffering.
Bearing children in pain.
Those naughty humans.
At it again.

The disconnect between land and sea.
What part crawled from those watery depths
Longing for oxygenated air.

Was it good or evil?
Spirit or flesh?
 
What part descended from the trees,
To people the Earth?

Was it womb knowing,
That freed the estrus cycle, 24/7?
 
Leaving humans forever fallen,
Irredeemable. Wanting to couple,
And taking a bite.

It was said later, Ye shall know the truth,
And the truth shall set you free.
Only now more than ever,
We’re facing Big Lies.
Promoting Native Environmentalism and the Ecotheology of Rev. Matthew Fox
By Thomas Ivan Dahlheimer

On May 5, 2014, I attended an Isanti County Environmental Coalition meeting in central Minnesota. I would have to get to know the members of the Coalition better before I could say that they are [all] of the dominant culture. My first impression was that they are of the dominant culture. I have an Isanti County counterculture environmental mission. My Isanti County environmental mission is a part of my broader environmental mission, which also includes the other nine counties of the "Rum (Wahkon) River Watershed."
Wahkon River in Cambridge, Minnesota

My environmental mission to promote Native environmental awareness in Isanti County and throughout the entire Wahkon River Watershed is associated with my movement to restore the sacred Native/Dakota name (Wahkon) to the "Rum River." The Wahkon River or Watpa Wahkon (Spirit River) is a sacred site to the Lakota/Dakota/Nakota and Mille Lacs Band of Ojibwe, a band of mixed Ojibwe-Dakota heritage.

Several years ago, a Native American environmental activist, David Gonzales, was fortunate to get a counter-culture article of his published in the Star Tribune, Minnesota's best-selling state-wide daily newspaper. It advocated the formation of a group of Indigenous environmental activists who would canoe from Mille Lacs Lake down the badly named "Rum River" to its confluence with the Mississippi River. And do so, "in an effort to change the dominant culture's collective attitude toward the rivers in particular and water in general." The plan was to stop along the way and set up colorful teepees and camps at key environmental locations along the river as "environmental schools" to promote Indigenous/Native environmental awareness.

Indigenous people's traditional/pagan environmental awareness is radically different from the dominant culture's environmental "awareness," an "awareness" that is highly influenced by Christianity. A document mandated by the UN sponsored Convention on Biological Diversity, the Global Biodiversity Assessment, explicitly refers to Christianity as a faith that has set humans apart from nature and stripped nature of its sacred qualities. The document states:

Conversion to Christianity has therefore meant an abandonment of an affinity with the natural world for many forest dwellers, peasants, fishers all over the world ...The northeastern hilly states of India bordering China and Myanmar supported small scale, largely autonomous shifting cultivator societies until the 1950's. These people followed their own religious traditions that included setting apart between 10% and 30% of the landscape as sacred groves and ponds.

The world renowned environmentalist Al Gore wrote in his book, Earth in the Balance, The spiritual sense of our place in nature predates Native American cultures; increasingly it can be traced to the origins of human civilization...the prevailing ideology of belief in prehistoric Europe and much of the world was based on the worship of a single earth goddess...The last vestige of organized goddess worship was eliminated by Christianity as late as the fifteenth century in Lithuania.

In spite of the value of Native American environmental awareness and the value of the environmental spirituality of all the indigenous peoples residing throughout the Western Hemisphere, the Christian church has been trying, since the European Christian invasion of the Americas, to completely eliminate it by genocidal colonization processes–it is a Christian mission fueled by racism, religious bigotry and corporate greed–which has been ongoing for 500 plus years.

Thomas Berry, the late Catholic priest and world-renowned eco-theologian, who was a colleague of Rev. Matthew Fox and taught college classes on indigenous peoples' eco-conscious religions, said that Christianity promotes "deep cultural pathology of human greed and addiction." While referring to himself and all other believers, Berry said that we should "put the Bible on the shelf for twenty years" and "the only effective program available as our primary guide toward a viable human mode of being is the program offered by the Earth itself."

Berry's beliefs departed far from the teachings of "traditional Christianity," a term often used to refer to Christianity in general. While using this definition of Christianity, Berry went so far as to promote a "post-Christian belief system," "the world is being called to a new post-denominational, even post-Christian, belief system that sees the Earth as a living being–mythologically, as Gaia, Mother Earth–with mankind as her consciousness."

Berry claimed that the Christian story is no longer the story of the Earth or the integral story of humankind. Evidently, Berry believed that the Catholic Church should now be disestablished and its members supplanted into a new post-Christian church. This is what I believe should and will occur.

Both Indigenous/Native environmental leaders and non-indigenous environmentalists (like myself) who have abandon the dominant culture to embrace counter-cultural Indigenous environmental awareness are opposed to traditional Christianity (including mainline denominational Christianity in the United States), which I and others believe is environmentally anti-science, opposed to the indigenous peoples' eco-conscious traditional/pagan religions and is the primary cause of the global environmental crisis, which threatens the extinction of all life on earth.

The spirituality and theology of a somewhat New Age sect of the Episcopal Church does not fit into my definition of "traditional Christianity" or "main-line denominational Christianity." The modern-day "revisionists" of the emerging church movement, a global "Christian" movement, are not of traditional Christianity, and neither is a particular expression of the creation-centered spirituality movement. It's called the "New Spirituality."

The New Spirituality is the spirituality that the internationally renowned theologian Reverend Matthew Fox is of and promoting. CNN International featured him as a theologian speaking for the environment. I have received his support for the effort to change the name of the "Rum River." Fox sees the earth as a living being, who is called Gaia or Mother Earth. Fox is an Episcopal priest. He is of both the creation-centered spirituality movement and the emerging church movement.

At one level (where Fox, I and others are at) these movements are a single movement. The revisionists' expression of the emerging church movement rejects some of the "essential dogmas" of traditional Christianity. I am of this post-modern so-called "Christian"/New Spirituality movement. It is compatible with the Native environmental awareness that I am promoting throughout the Wahkon River Watershed.

The Earth is a living being: Instead of living on an inanimate planet, a misty ball of rock hurtling through space, we can now think of ourselves as living at home, on our Mother, the Earth. And this is not just romanticized, speculative, fizzy-headed, spiritual wishful thinking. The Gaia hypothesis and other components of modern biology put into contemporary scientific form the ancient spiritual intuition that this Earth which is our home is a living being. –Dr. Rupert Sheldrake

Two Bible scripture verses, together, advocate imperialism, conquest and ethnocide of [heathen] natives. Driving natives from their sacred heathen/pagan homelands to expand the white Christian empire was an important part of the Christian colonization mission to eliminate Native pagan eco-conscious religions.

The Lord said...I shall give thee the heathen for thine inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the earth for thy possession. Thou shalt break them with a rod of iron; thou shalt dash them in pieces like a potter's vessel. –Psalm 2 KJV

You must drive all the natives of the land before you. If you do not drive the natives of the country before you then those who remain will become disgusting to your eyes and a thorn in your side. They will harass you in the land where you live, and I will deal with you as I meant to deal with them. –Num. 33:5

For a long time the Lakota/Dakota people practiced their traditional eco-conscious religion throughout the Wahkon River Watershed. Four of the seven sub-tribes/bands of the Lakota/Dakota (the Isanti Dakota) were still living within this watershed when Europeans first arrived in the area. It was not long after they arrived that they accomplished their Christian mission of using a westward [driven] refugee tribe (or band of Ojibwe) to [drive] the Isanti Dakota from their sacred [heathen] homeland.

Now the Isanti Dakota are beginning to return to their sacred Wahkon River Watershed homeland in order to (along with a number of other good reasons) once again practice their traditional religion, including their eco-conscious spirituality. They are returning to their sacred ancestral homeland. Their return to their home will help me to promote Native environmental awareness throughout this watershed.

Many indigenous/native people believe that the infamous Biblical command of the God of Abraham, father to the Judeo-Christian-Islamic religious complex, to "subdue the earth" (instead of "honor and live in harmony with Mother Earth") is the foundation of colonialism and domination of nature for centuries. And that "Christian discovery," the Papal legal doctrine that commands the subjugation of indigenous peoples and their sacred homelands, enforced in the U.S. and other countries, is built on the Abrahamic religious command.

Many indigenous people also believe that this same command "subdue the earth" under girds an economics of "resource" extraction extending around the world, treating Mother Earth, a living being, as a bunch of "things" to be exploited.

Indigenous people believe that water is alive. They say: it hears our words, and responds to our speaking, to our thoughts, and to our words. And that the Creator made nothing dead. We cannot separate ourselves from living things. We are all part of the same world. The Lakota/Dakota would not say the Watpa Wahkon (Spirit River) belongs to them. They believe that they belong to the Watpa Wahkon and that it is alive, it hears their words, responds to their speaking, to their thoughts, and to their words. When they look at the Watpa Wahkon they see God. Everything they see is God, or a part of God. And they believe that there is a very special presents of God/Wahkon at sacred sites.

The plants, animals, birds, trees, rocks, rivers, lakes and everything on this earth are their relatives and they are a part of God or Wahkon Tonka. Gifts are therefore given to all things.

In academic terms, Native American spirituality may be described as panentheism (deity/spirit present in, as well as beyond, everything). Such a worldview assumes the existence of Spirit beyond the visible world, but also dwelling in all that is. The word "animism" (belief in spirits in natural phenomena, such as rivers, trees, rocks, animals, fire) is commonly used to describe Native American religion, but when one neglects to include the broader presence of Spirit beyond physical nature, this explanation is incomplete.

The Lakota/Dakota concept of Wahkon or Wahkon Tonka (most frequently translated as Great Spirit) illustrates panentheism well: Wahkon Tonka is the Spirit over, under, and throughout all of the physical world, its guiding principle, present in individual phenomena yet not confined to it, not strictly singular nor plural, neither truly personal nor impersonal.

Animism: Reverend Matthew Fox wrote, "We have [only] one moment in human history where these spirits were excommunicated, and that is… the modern era." Only in the last few hundred years (about 300 years or so), Fox points out, have people in the Western world insisted on distancing and divorcing themselves from their relationship to the world of the spirits. He calls it a "rupture and perversion in human consciousness," and he says: "I think this helps to explain the price we have paid in terms of ecological disaster, war, and greed."

In a book titled Ancient Wisdom for Modern Ignorance, Swami B. V. Tripurari, wrote, Our present environmental crisis is in essence a spiritual crisis. We need only to look back to medieval Europe and the psychic revolution that vaulted Christianity to victory over paganism to find the spirit of the environmental crisis.

Inhibitions to the exploitation of nature vanished as the Church took the 'spirits' out of the trees, mountains, and seas. Christianity's ghost-busting theology made it possible for man to exploit nature in a mood of indifference to the feelings of natural objects. It made nature man's monopoly. This materialist paradigm has dominated the modern world for the last few centuries.

The current deplorable environmental crisis demands a spiritual response. A fundamental reorientation of human consciousness.

Nowadays the name Wahkon is often spelled Wakan. A paragraph in an article of mine that is posted on The Wakan Circle reads: Movements to restore Native names to geographic sacred sites are growing and gaining ground. Their mission is to influence the dominant culture to show due respect for sacred Native sites and their original names, which are often sacred names...and by doing so, ultimately reconcile the holocaustic behavior and treatment of indigenous peoples by the European settlers.

When this happens Native environmental awareness will dominate the world and the environmental crisis will then come to an end.

One of the reasons for promoting the effort to change the name of the "Rum River" is because "rum, like whiskey, brought misery and ruin to many of the Indians." –Warren Upham. This quote is from a book published by the Minnesota Historical Society. Jim Anderson, the Chairman of the Mendota Mdewakanton Dakota Community, wrote, "rum was used to steal our land and language." In other words, the name "Rum" is radically incompatible with the sacred Lakota/Dakota name for the river and this is one good reason why the river's name should be changed.

Likewise, mainline denominational Christianity is radically incompatible with the Lakota/Dakota people's traditional/pagan religion. It's incompatible, [environmentally] and in other ways. Christian churches located near the Lakota/Dakota people’s Watpa Wahkon (Spirit River), a sacred site, are, to the Lakota/Dakota people who believe in and practice their traditional religion, ABOMINATIONS that desecrate this sacred site of theirs. And they also believe that these churches desecrate their sacred traditional/ancestral name for the river.

The Christians of these mainline denominational churches cannot show due respect for the sacred Lakota/Dakota name for the river because of some of their religious beliefs. The Lakota/Dakota people were in this area first. So if the two different groups of people of this area can not get along together (and they can not) because of radically different religious beliefs who is going to have to leave the area?

What I am saying in this article, is... if Christians of the mainline denominational churches located within the sacred Lakota/Dakota, Wahkon River Watershed Ancestral Homeland want to continue believing in God and Jesus Christ, and want to also continue being disciples of Jesus Christ, they will have to (in order to be righteous and show due respect for the Lakota/Dakota people) embrace a form of "Christianity" that is compatible with the Lakota/Dakota people's traditional religion, a form of "Christianity" that does not desecrate their sacred site (the Watpa Wahkon) and their sacred name for the river. Nor can it be incompatible with Native environmental awareness or spirituality.

This article explains how mainline denominational Christians can radically transform their religion so that it is compatible with the Lakota/Dakota traditional religion...and, in doing so, gain the right to live in this land that is sacred to them.

Colonizing European nations were obeying the international laws of Western Christendom, which were based on the "Doctrine of Christian Discovery," a series of fifteenth century Papal doctrines, when they invaded the Americas' indigenous peoples' sacred homelands, committed genocide and ethnocide against them, desecrated their sacred sites, stole their lands, enslaved some of them, subjugated all of them, denied them their fundamental human rights to be fully independent sovereign nations and have root ownership of their sacred homeland territories, where they could practice their traditional/pagan religions.

And when the United States of America was established it continued on with the same ungodly agenda in this part of the Western Hemisphere. And it has not yet repented. However, the U.S. Episcopal Church, Methodist Church, Unitarian Universalist Church, United Church of Christ Church and some Quaker Churches have repented. They have renounced or repudiated the Doctrine of Christian Discovery.
The Megalith Monster Falls
by Robyn Hubbard

Oh, Great Beast
Standing tall
With the look of disdain from on High
We surround you now
With clarity and resolve

Ancestors at our back
No longer cowering in your immensity
Power in numbers
Shoulder to shoulder
We stand strong

Our Presence ~ no longer your minions
In numbers so great
We wait
Never backing down
From the Truth of our Knowing
Remembering, Community, Holding firm

In our Love
In our Longing
The tension builds
We wait
The tension rises
We wait

Until the unimaginable occurs
Your epic presence and proportions
Begin to dissolve
Running like fingers through the hair of the Beloved
Into the Earth beneath our feet

A mycelial network
Of composting sludge
You melt
Into Liquid Gold

Our tears rain down
Like rivers flowing from a frozen peak
Melting the distortion
Tending the dry soil
Feeding the Earth

Enlivening
Spreading
Nourishing
Across the Great Divide

Our Circle knows
To turn in gratitude to our Ancestors
Our sacred Helpers
Bow, and embrace our tender melting hearts

We turn toward each other Now
In song and dance
Embracing the lost art of Connection
A web of entanglement
Made out of Love
Never to be broken again.

Amen
A New (Old) Spiritual Neighbor to Meet
Five Reasons for the Church to Know About Psychedelics
by J. T. Smiedendorf

“Church, I'd like you to meet psychedelics. They've moved back into the spiritual neighborhood after laying low for a while. You might have heard some scary or negative stories about them, but those stories are not the whole story. I think you should get to know them yourself.”

Maybe you’re aware of the psychedelic renaissance that’s happening in the western world because you’ve read an article, a book, or viewed a Ted talk. Or maybe psychedelics (meaning “soul-revealing”) are new to you. 

As an ordained pastor of nearly 20 years, I want the church to get to know psychedelics as a new neighbor – and potential friend.

This new neighbor has been given “breakthrough therapy” status by the FDA. Yet, this is more than a medical model solution of mental health problems. An incredible 71% of research subjects in one study rated their psychedelic experience as one of the five most (if not the most) significant spiritual experiences of their lives.

Here are five basic reasons why the church should get to know psychedelics.

1. Spiritual healing, awakening, and communion with the Divine
There is clear spiritual content and deep significance in people’s experiences with these medicines – which is why they are often called entheogens (a term referring to “the divine within”).

In 1962’s Good Friday Experiment, seminary students in Marsh Chapel at Boston University were given psilocybin (while it was still legal). Almost all of the members of the treatment group reported having profound religious experiences, while the control group did not. (One of the participants in the experiment was religious scholar Huston Smith.) This experiment has been recently replicated. As mentioned earlier, many research participants with certain psychedelics like psilocybin report that their medicine journey was either the most or one of the most significant spiritual experiences of their entire lives.

The church needs to know that even so-called “underground” journeys (those not sponsored by research studies) are often experienced as a primary religious experience, as potent prayer, and lead to deep psycho-spiritual truth and insight and imprints. People have experiences with Divine Oneness, Love, and Grace, with the deepest awe and wonder of life, sometimes even having a sense of becoming that Sacred Presence, that very Life, as the I-Am consciousness. Not unlike the few human beings who have orbited or walked on the moon and looked back at earth, those who have had a mystical experience with the help of entheogens report having a significant and lasting shift in perspective. They know that there is something profoundly sacred in this mystery of living and that their lives will never be the same after experiencing it in this way.

Not surprisingly, when integrated over time, entheogenic prayer journeys can change people’s lives for the better. So much so that spiritual and religious institutions like Harvard Divinity School, Naropa University, and others are already engaged in trying to understand how to train those who would accompany those who pray in this way. Psychedelic chaplaincy, anyone?

2. Western history
Despite abhorrent repression by the church, the intimate knowledge of psychedelic plant medicines also has a long history in the West. Evidence has been found in many archeological digs, Christian art, and literature.

While the dominant patriarchal culture of the West has lost this knowledge and wisdom, there is a new effort to reclaim our lost heritage. In The Immortality Key, Brian Muraresku’s research suggests that psychedelics were used in spiritual rituals in ancient Greek temples for thousands of years – and that they were also possibly involved in the early Christian Eucharist. (More on this topic in a recent podcast conversation with Brian).

3. Political bias and cultural fears
The Controlled Substances Act of 1970 listed classic psychedelics like psilocybin, LSD, and mescaline (and later MDMA) in the most restrictive Schedule 1 category not because of the science, but because of a political calculus to leverage social anxiety about these substances. As a result, exciting and promising research from the 1950s and 60s that might have helped relieve suffering was shut down for decades.

This was, from day one, an overreaction.

Undoing this overreaction is well underway. Research studies started up again in the 1990s, sped up in the 2000s, and we now again have incredibly positive results from psychedelic research for people dealing with end-of-life anxiety, treatment-resistant depression, PTSD, and addiction to name just a few applications. Phase III trials with selected populations and selected psychedelics are nearing completion and will likely lead to new legal classification by the FDA and lawmakers.

4. Indigenous history
Human beings and human cultures have been intimately engaged with plant life including those plants that have the ability to affect our consciousness for at least 6,000 years, with evidence to suggest longer. In some cultures, these ancient traditions have never stopped, despite church persecution. The Shipibo nation in South America, the Huichol people of Mexico, and the shamans of Siberia are examples of continuous lineages that have the knowledge and the wisdom to engage with psychedelic plant medicines for the good. Getting to know such healing possibilities is a way to honor and learn from those lineages.

5. Equity and social justice
There are and will be issues of justice. I recognize my own white male privilege in even being able to raise this topic within a church context. For millennia, medicine women have held and served the sacraments – often at great risk to their lives – and were forced into underground silence about it.

In the emerging psychedelic space which is predominantly white, male, and relatively privileged, access and equity is already an issue. As these medicines come further into the mainstream, who will be able to access them – and at what cost?

One example: There are promising data indicating that MDMA offers significant healing potential from trauma. Yet, we live in a social system where the likelihood of having trauma and its aftereffects is both cause and effect for disadvantaged and marginalized groups. The cure is needed most by those least likely to have access to it.

What does this mean for the Church?
Church family, I want you to get to know psychedelics because I care about the church. I care about our relevancy and potency as church. 

United Church of Christ General Minister and President, Rev. Dr. John Dorhauer, in his book Beyond Resistance, offers a message of profound changes in church life. One such profound change is that people in ever greater numbers no longer identify with or participate in religious traditions and forms. The familiar forms no longer seem meaningful, relevant, or potent for them. They are seeking other forms in which they can experience the Divine Mystery. Myself included.

If your church is vital and relevant and wishes to continue in more or less the same way, continuing its service and its practice without any participation with psychedelic sacraments, that is, of course, a worthy path on which to follow the Way of Jesus. But make no mistake, Church: psychedelics have moved into the spiritual and healing neighborhood. There will be many in your churches who have had or will have an experience with psychedelics. I have experienced myself psychedelic journeys as powerful prayers; deeply revealing, teaching, healing, and impactful meetings with the Sacred. Others inside of your churches have, too. And they will need help integrating these deeply meaningful, beautiful, and sometimes challenging experiences into their spiritual lives.

I’m not talking about tie-dyed shirts and tinted glasses and party drugs. The psychedelic neighbors I’m talking about are entheogenic sacraments that are engaged thoughtfully, respectfully, and reverently for the purposes of prayer, healing, and growth. Somewhere in between the extreme propaganda of the reactive anti-drug culture and the extreme irresponsibility of use without thoughtful intent, there is a wise and generative engagement with this ancient form of prayer that takes us into non-ordinary consciousness. When experienced and integrated wisely, that non-ordinary consciousness can become a blessing for individuals and their communities.

The Spirit is moving. I encourage you, Church, to learn about and make room for your new spiritual neighbor. You might even make a new friend.

Rev. J.T. Smiedendorf has served as a Senior, Associate, and Interim pastor in United Churches of Christ in Oregon, Colorado, Wyoming, and Washington. He is the co-founder and pastor of The Sanctuary for Sacred Union with his wife, Allison Conte. Together, they are the creators and hosts of The Pastor and Priestess podcast. J.T. is currently earning a Certificate in Psychedelic Therapies and Research from the California Institute of Integral Studies.
Drawings by Peggy Hartzel
Art-as-Meditation
by Peggy Hartzel

Just thought I would share a drawing I did of Matthew during the Creation in Crisis Webinar on Jan. 6th.

Art making helped me listen and I incorporated some of what was bing addressed in the background and colored it in the next day as I reviewed the teachings.

Had to include MC Richards painting which Matt mentioned. She was a dear friend of mine and I assisted in many of her workshops. 

I also added The Tree of Peace. It refers to a teaching in the Haudensunee Great Law of Peace which says the Eagle on top will warn the People if the Peace is being threatened and the People are instructed to gather around the Tree holding hands to keep the tree upright (my paraphrasing). We planted the Tree of Peace in Philadelphia with Chief Jake Swamp in April 1988, the 200th Anniversary of the US Constitution, to acknowledged the influence of the Iroquois on our democracy and founding fathers like Benjamin Franklin.

That same year I attended a Sundance at the Rosebud Reservation and my boys camped out with Matthew at the dance. The Tree is still standing near Independence Hall. Thinking of gathering an Interfaith Group around it this coming April.
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.
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@cscommunities.org.

LIST OF CREATION SPIRITUALITY COMMUNITIES:
Creation Spirituality Communities
contact@cscommunities.org | www.cscommunities.org