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.
Read MoreThere 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.
Read MoreCommunity 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.
Read MoreAs 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.
Read MoreEvery 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.
Read MoreIn 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.
Read MoreI (Paul) was twenty years old and very much a devoted follower of Jesus when I first realized a striking thing about Jesus that I had not grasped before. The first action Jesus took in his public ministry to heal and change his world was to gather a few others willing to follow him. He spent an extraordinary amount of time together with them as they shared their lives in radical ways. From that humble but dynamic beginning, we now have a world in which one-third of its 7.7 billion people claim to be his followers. His life and message of love, although not always followed, have made a radical, worldwide impact.
I decided I needed such a group in my life and asked six of my closest Christian friends if they would be willing to meet weekly to share our lives and pray for each other. Since that time over sixty years ago, I have always had such a group in my life. After seminary, I was called to pastor, for almost half a century the only church I would ever lead. The first thing I did was gather a few church members together in a small group that met weekly to share and pray. That multiplied until over 400 members of our congregation were meeting regularly in small groups which became the dynamic relational and spiritual center for our life together.
My (Luke) long passion for gathering has taken many forms throughout my life. Early on in my church life I was asking why our gatherings looked the way they did. I explored new forms such as house churches, new monastic intentional community, contemplative gatherings, and other ways of gathering small groups together. While traditional churches are shrinking, Christians still very much need to gather together. The spaces and ways need to keep evolving to serve the Christianity of the future.
We are seeking to do just that with Integral Christian Network. This movement invites followers of Jesus from around the world to meet primarily on the Internet via Zoom, for now. More local groups may develop in the future. In what we call “WeSpace groups,” anywhere from four to eight participants share their lives with one another and practice a form of meditative prayer together we call Whole-Body Mystical Awakening.
Read MoreIntegral Christian Network is one such place of belonging. We are a community of mystics, evolvers, spiritual practitioners, and more. People come into our community from many different streams of background and are drawn by many different aspects—though nearly always a longing for more.
Read MoreAs I proposed in a previous article in this series, the days of the king (or queen) have passed. The time of being subjects reigned over has (mostly) passed, but we still elevate the hero or heroine, the celebrity and the guru.
We still want the great leaders who will solve the problems and set things in order. Those with the power, wisdom, and authority to make things right. A great, singular savior out there somewhere.
And at the same time, we often resist being led. We are not just followers, but have our own story, our own journey, and our own sovereign realm we have to look after—our lives. We also have opinions and perspectives. The ways we think things should be and how they should be done. As we should!
Read MoreDeeply embedded into our biology is the instinct that community is about survival. Safety in numbers. It is rooted into our natural drive to come together with others for protection and security. As such, the best thing to do was to strengthen the bonds of the group and maintain collective order—even expelling overly divisive and diverse members that would upset the stability of the community. Our very existence may have depended on it.
Might there actually be a similar movement happening today, necessary for our survival, but in a different way? Moving toward the collective, recognizing that we deeply need each other again in order to survive. That the myth of individual independence is crumbling in a way we feel deep in our bones.
But going forward, our survival will be less dependent on sameness and conformity to the collective for the sake of group stability. Rather, we will find our path through by welcoming the interplay of our unique diversity growing the field of possibility exponentially, dancing together in the multiplicity of energies where emergence comes forth.
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