I want to apologize for being a little melodramatic from the start, but we had no way of knowing on that nice, beautiful, sunshiny day in August 2000 that as we drove down to Dublin to do some routine shopping, we would have encountered something that would change our lives forever. I wasn't a big fan of grocery shopping, so my husband dropped me off at the borders, and I did what I usually do and roamed around and looked at all of the books. That day, I found three books that really sparked my interest. The first was Minion by Rabbi Rami Shapiro. The other two were by an author that I had never heard of before. His name was Matthew Fox, and the first one was called Prayer, A Radical Response to Life. And the other was called Original Blessing. I had no idea what I was getting into when I picked up these two books, or how much they would change how I thought about everything. But when I read the backs of each of them, I was obsessed. There was something there that just spoke to me on a deep level, And as I waited for my husband to get back, I read a little bit further into the books. I devoured prayer as fast as I could. This was a book I needed deep down in my soul. Prayer wasn't just the words that you said or little things that you did here, there and yonder. It wasn't about devotion. It was about living. That we are living temples and that everything that we do is an act of prayer. That prayer itself is how we respond to life. And I couldn't shake that idea. I grew up in an evangelical church and eventually wandered off into Pentecostalism and then Catholicism. Well, the Pentecostal side of Catholicism, which is an interesting thing that we really don't have time to talk about right now. So I had heard the idea that we're living temples. I had studied several Christian mystical traditions that pondered the question of how do we pray without ceasing, since the Apostle asked that of us. And this book unlike any of the others seemed to give the answer and the answer was so simple you live your life with honesty integrity justice and compassion that the way you live your life the way you handle yourself the way that you manage your relationships, the way you respond to things around you, are acts of prayer that go out and co-create the universe. It's a powerful thought that still gets me today. And I didn't realize at the time I mean, none of us could have realized at the time how much I needed that message. Less than a month after I read that book, two planes struck the Twin Towers in New York City. The country was under attack. And I, like most of the people in the country, were just devastated. I didn't know what to do. I didn't know if there was anything that I could do. After all, here I was living in Oakland, California, and this had happened so far away. My husband's father worked in Washington, D.C., and it was quite some time before we were able to find out that he was okay. Phone lines were jammed, and communications just weren't going through. It was a very chaotic time for all of us. But I had that book ringing in my ears. Prayer is a radical response to life prayer is how you respond to life well this terrible thing has happened and we have to find something anything to do to get through to show solidarity to seek justice. I remember one day the mayor of our city asked us all to go out to our front porches, to the front of our houses because they were afraid of having large gatherings at the time and to light a candle in an effort to light the whole city up as a sign of solidarity that we were one and that we would get through this in this uncertain time. So when the time came I got my candle I put it in a little candle cup And I went out to the front of our apartment building And I tried to light the candle. Now if you've never lived in the East Bay You probably don't know how windy It gets in the afternoon But that wind off the bay Is beautiful, carrying that salt breeze in, refreshing your lungs, refreshing the air just making everything feel so nice and magical but when you're trying to light a candle and that wind is coming at you it keeps blowing it out. I was still really emotional I hadn't quite settled in my mind over what was going on and I became more and more frustrated. A couple people that were passing by saw the frustration that I was having. People that in my regular day I probably wouldn't have talked to, might not have even looked at them but they stopped and they saw my struggling. One of them said you're trying to do the candle thing huh and I said yeah and they just walked over and put their hands up around the candle cup to shield it from the wind. The three of us, me and two perfect strangers sat there around this little struggling flame desperately keeping it alive and in that moment I understood what Matthew Fox was talking about in the book I had read. All I wanted to do was light this candle I knew no one would see, no one would know this was an era before social media so there was no Twitter to post on, no nowhere to put out into the universe hey I did this thing and try to get social credit. We barely had blogs back then, I mean they existed but they weren't all that easy to write it was just something I needed to do I wanted to do. I wanted to be part of something bigger than me and show that I cared. In my actions and in my intentions, I put that out into the universe. And two strangers responded. Together, the three of us sat there in odd silence, just trying to keep this light alive. It almost became a game we smiled, we laughed we were a small community where we had been strangers. My intentions had gone out into the world and brought back the very thing I needed the sense that I wasn't alone That other people out there cared. That caring was contagious. We could unite as a people. It was a magical moment and a magical memory that I will treasure throughout my life. But it was also such a powerful proof that prayer is how we respond to life. After that, I went back in and pulled out the other book by Matthew Fox that I had bought, Original Blessing. I wanted to devour this one the way I had prayer. But this book was different. It was about the four paths of creation spirituality and how creation spirituality differed from the fall redemption faith that I had grown up with. and each chapter was a theme an unfinished, and intentionally unfinished theme with a series of quotes followed by an essay and a lot was said but a lot was left unsaid because as the book stated it was up for us to put it together ourselves to see what this spirituality, what this practice would look like. So I couldn't just devour the book as much as I wanted to. So I read each theme and I had to stop. Sometimes I had to stop in the middle of the chapter and just take it all in and think about it and ponder it, like my sweet blessed Mother Mary, deep in my heart. And that was my introduction to creation spirituality. I went on and bought every book I could find with Matthew Fox's name on it, whether he wrote it, whether he wrote a preface for it or an introduction to it, and devoured everything that I could get. It became the core of my spirituality and my husband's spirituality and informed everything that we've done over the decades since that day. I never could have imagined back then in our little apartment in Oakland that I would have eventually taken classes to get certified in creation spirituality, nor that I would somehow end up on the board of directors for creation spirituality communities. Which still feels surreal to me. Creation spirituality is that deep-rooted connection. Not just to faith, not just to spirituality, but to the earth, to the community, and to who we are. And that's what I want to offer back to the community. That's what this book is. This is my attempt to share what my husband and I have learned over the decades about what creation spirituality is, and how it has affected our Christopagan faith. How it has taught us the arts of interspirituality and how to dance the spiral dance of the four paths to not only find a home but to make a home it's a journey that has changed us more than we could ever imagine and one that keeps changing us as we keep finding insights in these seemingly simple ideas that are so powerful and rooted in the wisdom tradition of the Judean faith. So I want to invite you to come on this journey with us. We're going to be talking about creation spirituality, What it is, what it means, and how to live it through a Christopagan lens. Through an interspiritual lens. That even if you aren't like me, and you don't have a deep-rooted connection to either Christianity or, for myself, Irish paganism and Druidry, Maybe you can see how in your own life, you can connect and root in more firmly to those things that you love and that mean the most to you. Because in many ways, that's what creation spirituality has taught me. How to be rooted, and how to live an embodied faith. And I think that that's something that we all could use, especially given the current state of the world. I hope you join me as we walk down these paths together. | | \|- [[00- Creation's Paths\|Table of Contents]] -\| | > [[01- What is Creation Spirituality]] > | | --- | :-------------------------------------------------: | ----------------------------------------: |