Practice

Maria and I are now co-clerking (leading) the Thursday evening Friend’s worship session. She does most of the talking, I beam Love and presence to the attenders and we both extend love and welcome to new-comers. We are focused on diversity, passion and mystical connection. The passion piece and truly welcoming the messiness frequently present with diversity are attitudes that have been largely missing. That particular meeting is small enough and out of the mainstream enough that we can push the envelope a bit. So far I have enjoyed encouraging the spiritual "stray dogs" that I meet there. They are my brothers and sisters. "Yet I sometimes encountered, in churches and elsewhere—in the presence of a venerable Buddhist monk, in the cantor’s singing at a bar mitzvah, and on mountain hikes—something compelling, powerful, even terrifying that I could not ignore, and I had come to see that, besides belief, Christianity involves practice—and paths toward transformation." (Elaine Pagels)