OUR Sacred Journey

Once upon a time a student asked his spiritual teacher: “What is the path?”

The wise teacher said: “Everyday life is the path.”

“Can it be studied?”

The teacher replied, “If you try to study, you will be far away from it.” 

Eleven years ago, Sacred Journeys was created so that we had a community of people to walk the path of everyday life with. The hope was that we would walk with consciousness and mindfulness, learning and growing as we went. Sacred Journeys exists as both an invitation to engage our own personal sacred journeys as well as our communal journey within these walls and outside of these walls.

This summer also marked my 25^th year in ministry.  I’ve had a million experiences in those years, worked with a lot of different people, seen many things I never thought I’d see, done many things that weren’t even in the fine print of the pastor contract! But this community continues to amaze me year after year. For a long time, I think I held my breath, thinking that you couldn’t actually be as good a group as you are… perhaps I was waiting for the proverbial “other shoe” to fall once the honeymoon phase was over. I’ve been duped before, you know. But I’ve come to believe you are the real deal.

I watch you support one another, send cards, make calls, visit, send food, drive to appointments without being asked!

I watch you deal with conflict with grace and a desire to understand instead of win.

I watch you welcome new guests on Sunday mornings, not like raw meat, but like valued individuals that you are truly glad spent the morning with us.

I watch you share your gifts and talents not just here, but in the community. You walk the walk outside of these walls.

You don’t get uptight and upset by different viewpoints or different theologies. You may not agree with me, or with someone else, but you are willing to listen and think about it and take what makes sense to you.

There is a true energy of vitality, love and light in this space on Sunday mornings.

I could go on and on but suffice it to say that I am truly impressed with YOU, each of you as individuals and as a spiritual community. You’re the bees’ knees, the cat’s meow, the stuff of dreams!

Our hope and vision when we created SJ was that this would be a place like Henri Nouwen described: “Community is a fellowship of people who do not hide their joys and sorrows but make them visible to each other in a gesture of hope. In community we say: Life is full of gains and losses, joys and sorrows, ups and downs – but we do not have to live it alone. We want to drink our cup together and thus celebrate the truth that the wounds of our individual lives, which seem intolerable when lived alone, become sources of healing when we live them as part of a fellowship of mutual care.”

So, where do we go from here? The scripture from Matthew 7:7-8 today reminds us that on this crazy spiritual journey we need to keep asking, keep seeking, and keep knocking and eventually we will receive, we will find, and the door will be opened.  This is what we’ve been doing as a community, and this is what we will continue to do, especially in the next 6 weeks or so as we jump into a sermon series called Going Beyond.

ASK.. This isn’t about asking for stuff and receiving stuff. This is about asking the questions. All the questions that fill your mind, heart, and soul.

Who is God?
When I pray, who am I praying to?
What is the soul?
What is my purpose?
Are we all one? If so, then who am I?
What happens after I die?
How do I heal from my grief, anger, hurt, fear?

These are some of the BIG questions and there are no pat answers (though some may want you to believe there are). The answers to these come when we live into them, or when we gain enough wisdom and grace that we don’t worry about them so much anymore and are comfortable not knowing. That, too, is an answer. So, ask and keep asking. Live the questions, walk with them, gently holding them before you. 

SEEK. What do we seek? Answers, God, connection, wholeness, awareness, peace, intimacy, justice, faith, to name a few. Where do we seek? Here, there and everywhere! Develop a brave sense of adventure! The world holds an infinite number of ways to speak to us, to connect us to the divine, to help us find our True Selves, to answer our deepest questions, and to grow. Seek answers in nature, the cycles of the seasons, the sun, moon, stars, animals, plants… they all have so many stories and teachings. Seek answers here, from each other, from teachers. But don't forget to seek answers within your very self in your thoughts, feelings, intuition and experiences.

KNOCK. What do you mean knock? Whose door are we knocking on? Knocking means we allow ourselves different experiences, talk to different people, try different things as we live our questions and seek our answers.

In John Shelby Spong’s book, Unbelievable, he says this, “[A]t the edges of life, on the boundaries of expanded self-consciousness, the concepts of transcendent reality, infinite love and eternal life still make sense to me. I believe I have touched the eternal and that I share in what that means… The only place I can hold this conviction and prepare for what comes next is in a community of seekers. That is what I ultimately believe the church must be.”

So, we ask, seek, and knock, over and over, individually and together as we travel down this crazy path of life.

Thank you for eleven wonderful years in ministry together.

Love & Light!

Kaye