In welcoming directly and intentionally the divine reality of our beloved community, we have in-corporated—unified-in-body—our communion with all people, with spirit guides and ancestors in non-physical form, and now with the whole of nature, the earth, and the cosmos.

Our being is communal. And the roots of our communion run deep.

Now, in our deep being, we re-member our shared nature as nature.

Sabbath is an invitation to enter a portal of timelessness, of the eternal now. We “set apart” time to stop and remove ourselves from the hectic busy-ness and noise of modern civilization. Our intention is to allow the Presence of Christ in Creation to speak in the silence. It is to rest in the arms of our Mother, upon the earth. It is to witness the ever present but unnoticed interconnectedness of the True Beloved Community which includes all that is, and perhaps to become consciousness of our oneness with all, in the Body of God. Oneness with the elements, the grasses and trees, the animals, birds, fish, and insects, the plants and lichen and fungi… Oneness with people of colors and genders, with the indigenous ones who have long mastered the ways to live with the rhythms and regions of earth.

In welcoming the divine reality of our Beloved Community, we have consciously included the non-material presence of spirit guides in our midst over the last weeks in part three. Now, we turn to specifically and truly integrate the substance of material reality as a vital and fundamental dynamic of our living community, our divine communion.

In this rhythm of evolution, we continue to welcome and move more into the lived reality and experience of how our being is communal. 

And this great communion of saints is made up of living persons with whom we can relate, commune, and WeCreate together—for we are of one body in our true being, walking the ever-evolving path of transformation, healing, restoration, and love.

This week, we invite you to explore how you might engage with spirit guides in a new way. If you already have experience and relationships with guides in your life, you might be drawn to open to a new presence, deepen your current relationships, or renew your commitment to engaging with them regularly.

If engaging with spirit guides is new for you, are you open to welcoming one today?

Our beloved community is not confined solely to the human realm. A fundamental starting point for our way of community is to consciously and intentionally welcome divine reality. And while we engage in the ways of bringing forth the divine in and through one another, we also welcome the ways we encounter the divine in spirit form, in the presence of guides

In “practicing” community, we are engaging in the very work of evolution itself—which is to inhabit love in living relationship, to grow in our capacity to embody love, and to deepen in our being, which is communal.

From our beckoning to practice community and the evolutionary becoming that occurs through the great force of love–amorization–we now come to our rhythm of being.

There are many ways that we practice community, some of which we will explore throughout this series on Beloved Community. For our Becoming offering this week, rather than any one specific practice, we will set forth a new overarching and undergirding “container” which is both the source and the structure of all our spiritual and evolutionary becomings.

Community is not just something that happens alongside our personal spiritual pursuits, but is the vital and necessary calling—especially in this time—of coming into our “unity together.” Of participating in the interbeing among us to actively and necessarily realize that our divine nature is collective. That we must come into this deeper way of mutuality not only to evolve further in our consciousness, but perhaps even essentially for our survival as a species.

As we continue to release our self-referentialism and separateness, we have been embracing several qualities of divine communion offered in our Becoming invitation last week.

And now, how might we inhabit these communal ways of being even more?

In support of our daily, any-and-every-moment inhabiting of our communal being, we offer a simple process you might take up this week.

Each morning and each evening, you can be with each of these qualities, holding the intention and recognition of your/our living inhabitation in divine communion. You may want to choose one quality for the day, or all of them each day.

The phrasing offered below is suggestive. You are welcome to craft your own language, choosing how you want to attune and engage with your pathways of inhabiting.

If you made a commitment last week, you could consider how you might interweave that into this daily process.

Every healthy community needs compelling gathering energies and generative value. Community in and of itself, for itself, is not enough. In living community, the ties that bind/bond us are not solely the mental agreements and commonalities of individual preference, but the experiential qualities that mark the field among us each time we gather. These are the deeper lived values and ways of being together that have a collective life and can be felt when we enter the field—which is not bound to particular individuals, leaders or abstract ideals.

Here are some of those qualities commonly experienced in our community gatherings and groups.

In this writing, and those to follow in the weeks ahead, we will immerse ourselves in this divine communion through focusing on “Beloved Community,” which is one of the fundamental living lineages of ICN. We’ll revisit some of the core, foundational writings on this topic from years past, particularly how we “practice community” together—our ways of engaging in processes and practices together to deepen, inhabit, and be divine communion among us.

During Eastertide, we will reflect on the resurrection of Jesus for insight into how we might live into our resurrections (renewals) more fully.

A great relief washes over us;

    the weight on our shoulders lifts;

    a surge of energy and purpose lifts our spirit.

We envision a better way forward.

During Eastertide, we will reflect on the resurrection of Jesus for insight into how we might live into our resurrections (renewals) more fully.

Eastertide is the 50-day period in the Christian calendar that starts with Easter and concludes with the beginning of Pentecost. It is believed that “Easter” is connected to the Proto-Germanic word austron, which means “dawn” and reflects themes of rebirth and renewal associated with springtime.

So, during Eastertide, we will reflect on the resurrection of Jesus for insight into how we might live into our resurrections (renewals) more fully.

Eastertide is the 50-day period in the Christian calendar that starts with Easter and concludes with the beginning of Pentecost. It is believed that “Easter” is connected to the Proto-Germanic word austron, which means “dawn” and reflects themes of rebirth and renewal associated with springtime.

So, during Eastertide, we will reflect on the resurrection of Jesus for insight into how we might live into our resurrections (renewals) more fully.

“Jesus is Risen!    He is Risen Indeed!”

     Really?

For many persons, their answer to that sincere question determines whether they consider themselves “Christian” or not. Either we believe that the resurrection of Jesus from the dead was historical fact or it is superstitious fiction. Or perhaps we simply do not care one way or another.

“It is finished.”

Uttering his last words, perhaps barely a whisper, Jesus released his last breath and died.

His struggle subsided; pain ceased; consciousness extinguished.

Jesus was dead.

He was taken down from the cross, and his body was hurriedly and quickly entombed before the beginning of Sabbath. Jesus felt nothing, thought nothing, was no-thing. 

Holy Saturday follows the crucifixion of Good Friday, just as the existential torpor of death follows the bodily struggle of dying.

As the most solemn day in the Christian year, Good Friday commemorates the unjust trial and horrific crucifixion of Jesus.

Maundy Thursday is primarily known for the “Last Supper”, when Jesus celebrated his last Passover with the disciples. In the years that followed, this commonplace act of sharing a meal developed into the most defining ritual in Christianity, known also as the Eucharist and Communion.

We move into Holy Week, looking through the Passion of Jesus into what might be revealed of our own Christophany, in which the Christic unity of ourselves and God is ultimately revealed in Easter resurrection.

In Jesus’ Passion Story, we witness Jesus living the truth of who he truly is, suffering lesser stories of identity, fear, and abandonment.  We accompany him until all is released, dead and buried.

How will we be called this week to dwell more deeply in our true essence, surrender our lesser stories, and lie dormant in our true being until we are called to spring to new life?

How will we die to what is false and abide in true essence?  How will the tomb’s emptiness generate life anew?

This week, we invite you …

Every time we tell our story, it is new. There are elements we feel compelled to include, and others we feel ready to let go of or go deeper. Telling our story always includes releasing lesser stories and embracing new ways of understanding our journey.

The gospels tell the origin story of Jesus’ divine vocation. Along with the birth narrative and a few stories of his early life, the lineage of Jesus is given twice, tracing his human and divine heritage. All four gospels recount the story of Jesus’ baptism as a foundational experience in his calling. We have welcomed how “Being named” is a core aspect of vocare, and Jesus receives his mystically from a voice from heaven, “This is my son, the beloved, in whom I have delighted.” 

This season of Lent echoes the 40 days in the desert Jesus spent following his baptism. These, and others, are significant events in the origin story of Jesus. 

The gospel of John begins by adding another layer to the deeper origin of Jesus.

This week, Beth Biery shares about her origin story of divine vocation, while also inviting all of us into deeper inhabiting, abiding in Origin, and Being our stories as we are living them now.

This week, we invite you to tell your origin story of divine vocation. Or, in other words, the story of the ways you’ve been called in your life. ‍ ‍

How has God summoned you to be and to move throughout your years?

How have you received the “true names” of your most essential being—the names of your soul?

What is the deeper spiritual story of your life?

An Invitation to a Lenten Journey with our Divine Story

During this Lenten season, we’re inviting a journey into the divine story. The divine story is not something we read in a book, but one we live every day. It is not just about Jesus, but Christ living in us. It is about our true Origin and our Eternal Life coming into the here and now.

We are invited to release the lesser stories we tell about ourselves, letting go of the limited ways we see who we are.

How can we uncover and embrace more fully our true nature, our divine essence, who we truly are?

May we enter into stories that live not just in the past, but in the fullness of life still to come. Telling the stories of our divine vocation, living and expressing here and now.

From the single self, we might now welcome more fully the divine vocation of our communal being. Drawing upon the communal well of being. Finding our well-being in the reality of divine communion, which too is the fundamental truth of who we truly are. Who we truly are.

In this series, we have been exploring our call to WeCreating, which is the invitation to step more fully into our participation in our divine nature—to be creators together of the future in loving evolution. This is also what we are calling the next phase of growth for ICN, moving from the Founding Stage to the WeCreating Stage.

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The energy and capacity for this comes from our divine vitality, which is our essential life force enlivening us with the love that is the deep force of evolution. Our motivation and will then springs from a greater calling than our own desires, as we are filled with divine inspiration for sacred possibilities. Our divine vocation is then discerned, inhabited, and integrated more into our life as we better understand who we truly are and how that expresses and speaks from our deepest being.

Ways of discernment, integration, and inhabiting is our invitation of becoming this week.

Do you know you have a Divine Vocation?

Yes, you. Every single one of us has it. It is the deepest calling of our lives.

Our hearing and understanding this deep, divine vocation is an ongoing process of discovery and discernment, which arises from the essence of who we truly are in our divine being, emerging more and more throughout our life.