The Journeys Experience: Listening To Your Life - June 8th
This weeks Reflection
One of the most defining events for me in creating the Journeys experience relates to a letter a minister of my own Christian tradition wrote to my Bishop challenging the whole basis of Journeys Community. His complaint was that Journeys Community did not subscribe to the historic creeds of the Church and beliefs about God that had been a part of the Church’s doctrine and belief system for centuries. As a result of his negative view and his opposition to Journeys, the Journeys creative team was no longer allowed to meet at his church. And he strongly urged the Bishop to stop funding Journeys as an innovative, creative expression of what I have always thought was the central message of Jesus: “I have come that all people might have life, and have it abundantly.” At Journeys we try to create the experience of God in our services, not just knowledge or information about God. Our services and activities present opportunities for people to recognize deeper emotions and feelings that may create an opening to God and experience deeper meaning, purpose and fulfillment in their lives-to have life and have it abundantly!!
What makes Journeys Community so unique, so compelling, so powerful a spiritual experience is that we recognize that God, or Spirit or the Divine is often met in the telling of our stories, not in dogma or any particular religious belief system. In every Journeys service the creative team strives to answer two questions:
“Where is God in this theme? this reflection? this service?” and
” Can we find our authentic voice in the telling of our stories? ”
As Frederick Buechner says in our reading this morning, “Maybe nothing is more important than we keep track, you and I, of these stories of who we are and where have come from and the people we have met along the way because it is precisely through these stories in all their particularity that God is made know to each of us most powerfully and personally. If this is true, and I think it is true, it means that to lose track of our stories is to be profoundly impoverished not only humanly but also spiritually.”
Listening to your life; telling your story-this is the heart of the Journeys experience.
This morning we come to the end of our services at Vantage House -at least for now you will be invited to continue your Journeys experience in different ways this summer. And in September we may be meeting in a different place. But no matter where we are, we will always be guided by our basic core values-those principles that are the guiding star by which we navigate our journey. These principles distinguish us from other spiritual and religious communities and define the enduring character of Journeys. Journeys has three core values that guide our spiritual life. These values are not debated, they are not voted upon. These values just are!! These core values need no justification, and they will point us to a future that will be even more successful than our past.
1. God, the Divine, Spirit ,(or whatever word you want to use) is embodied within each of us, in our connection with each other, and in our experience of nature and the natural order. The Divine, Spirit, God, is not a separate, external presence, but the deepest part of who we are. At Journeys we encourage the individual and unique expression of the Divine within each of us. As Frederick Buechner says, we all have the capability of revealing the divine, God, Spirit, through the telling of the stories of our lives. It is that part of us that is the authentic person we are. In recognizing our humanness and vulnerability, we go deeper into our soul and discover the divine within us. Spiritual leadership is shared; there is no one truth and no one person who has all the truth. We all have our stories, and we all can experience and share the God within us in the telling of our stories.
2. The spiritual in life is continually revealed in popular culture-through the arts, music, literature, film, and images. Popular culture IS the culture, and popular culture is fully engaged in the search for knowledge of God. Our services are contemporary expressions of the world we live in. Popular music, movies, You Tube, readings from all traditions (both sacred and secular), the everyday, ordinary stuff of life can reveal the spiritual to us
Today’s service for me is a revelation of God (knowledge of God) in the music,
film clip, reading, and convergence-all very secular, all very contemporary, all
very spiritual.
3. Journeys is a community designed for people who say they are spiritual, but not religious; who have not been nurtured by traditional religion, or who have been turned off by traditional religion. Journeys offer a safe place in which we can explore our own spiritual journey in our own way, on our own terms, without judgment or having to believe a certain set of beliefs.. This assurance of Journeys as a safe place is key to our human aspirations and personal fulfillment, not allegiance to a specific dogma or belief system. Journeys is not a destination; it is a pathway leading to our own spiritual place. This is the meaning of our community and it is what attracts and keeps us at Journeys.
These values do not change; they have guided us for 8 years and will continue to guide us. If we honor these core values, the goals, strategies, and programs of Journeys will grow and change (and we are undergoing some of these changes now), but our values will remain constant. How they are expressed and carried out will change and continue to change.
I see myself continuing to serve Journeys core values, and strategies in two ways:
a. Follow up on responses to the website in assisting individuals and organizations develop the Journeys experience.
b. Link Journeys Community to the Spirituality ministry of the National Episcopal
Church through its networks and websites.
June 14, 2008 at 3:14 pm
We’re going to miss you Harry and Joan!
Michele
July 7, 2008 at 4:11 pm
Why stay with the Episcopal church, then? Your teachings have nothing to do with the bible. You should just reveal yourselves as what you are, and that is a New Age church and separate from them. Do you dare call Jesus the Savior of mankind, or is that too offensive? Do the worshippers understand that Jesus is the “Way, the Truth and the Life?” or are they taught “if it feels good, then do it!”?
It used to be that one could walk into any Episcopal church in the country on a Sunday morning and feel like he/she could just feel right at home, in the presence of God and not be distracted. That is no longer the case and it’s saddening.
I don’t know how the Episcopal church still allows you to be affiliated with them. Do you even say the Nicene creed every Sunday? Or is that too offensive also?
I am not ashamed of the Gospel, are you?
July 8, 2008 at 7:20 am
In response to christfirst.ford57@gmail.com:
“While we may be accustomed to raising questions in other areas of life, we are inclined to fear disturbance in matters of faith. We fear questions that lead us down roads we have not traveled before. We fear disruption in our thinking, believing and living that might come from nquiring too deeply into God and God’s purposes. We fear that if we do not find answers to our questions, we will be left in utter despair. As a result of these fears, we imprison our faith, . . . rather than releasing it to seek deeper understanding. Only trust in the perfect love of God is able to overcome our persistent fears (1 John 4:18).”
From Daniel L. Migliore, Faith Seeking Understanding