About The Sacred Braid
The Sacred Braid is a spiritual formation ministry aimed at encouraging persons and communities to cultivate lives of spiritual depth by participating in the dream of God through contemplative living, compassionate action, concern for the most vulnerable, the works of mercy and justice on their behalf, and reverent kinship with the sacred community of creation.
VISION
To understand, affirm, and weave The Sacred Braid:
- STRAND ONE: Knowledge, acceptance, and love of oneself
- STRAND TWO: Reverence, open-heartedness, deep sympathy, compassionate action, and just relationships with other human persons, especially the most vulnerable
- STRAND THREE: Care for and kinship with the other-than-human community of creation which is sacred, and
- STRAND FOUR: Contemplative and prophetic rootedness in the One in whom we live and move and have our being giving way to grateful praise, compassionate action, and joyful love of God.
MISSION
To evoke, nurture, and encourage
a Christian spirituality with integrity through theme-based classes, retreats, parish missions, and spiritual enrichment series, as well as one-to-one spiritual direction, community gatherings and ritual, writings, dialogue, and collaborative projects. A spirituality that
- cultivates intimacy with God
- advocates keeping company with Jesus, especially in the lowly places
- nurtures full human becoming
- strives to embody the life and wisdom of Jesus as expressed in Micah 6:8 and the Beatitudes (Matthew 5: 1-12)
- promotes the connection between contemplative awareness and compassionate action, the mystical and prophetic dimensions of faith, prayer and work for justice
- engenders creative, wonder-filled, enlivening, and transformative liturgy and ritual action
- encourages mutually enhancing, reverent, and just relationships between all persons, all faiths, and among all communities by way of deep listening and dialogue,
- articulates the importance of understanding the entire earth as sacred community,
- fosters kinship with the “more-than-human” world, reverence for the earth, and care for all creation, and
- insists on the integral and dynamic relationship between the personal, social, earthly, and cosmic.
CORE CONVICTIONS
We were created and intended to:
- share in the exchange of life and love of the Triune God who is the Beloved Community
- live lives of spiritual depth and integrity
- participate wholly in the sacred drama of becoming human persons fully alive
- awaken to our unique and divinely inherent belovedness
- become aware of our innate oneness with God and in and through God with all persons and other-than-human life forms
- be people of wonder and awe, delight and praise who practice a spirituality of oohing and aahing
- be people of deep sympathy and compassion who practice a spirituality of justice and care
- be people who do not let the pain blot out the humor any more than we let the humor blot out the pain (Kesey)
- face into reality with faith, hope, and love and not deny, ignore, or flee reality in fear
- become aware of, honest about, and adept at facing our imperfections and unfinishedness
- live consciously, courageously, and faithfully the blessed tensions of life
- welcome mistakes as opportunities for growth
- risk the kind of dying necessary for all true living (Goethe)
- know experientially the intimate and necessary relationship between radical amazement and deep sympathy, wonder and compassion, awe and sacred action, descent and becoming human and holy
- revere and honor all persons and especially to guard the dignity and divinity of the most vulnerable
- live with an eye and heart toward seven generations hence
- align justice with charity
- wed non-violence to peace
- show reverence for, interact with, and learn from all life forms with whom we participate in one holy communion
- care for the earth that takes care of us
- commune with all creation and participate responsibly in the unfolding of the universe that is engendered by and drawn toward Love
- participate in the liturgy of life