There are a thousand ways to get spirituality wrong. It often seems that we are faced with either or options, neither of which ring true in that deepest part of ourselves where The Divine Mystery we call God speaks to us and gives us guidance and strength and courage. Following those extremes, at best, limits us and leaves us restless and longing for something more. At worst following those extremes lead us to isolation, anger, and sometimes to violence. No BS Spirituality challenges us to find what the Buddhists call "the middle way" between the extremes that, with careful discernment, leads to spiritual maturity.

In this program we explore seven core concepts of No BS Spirituality.

N0 BS Spirituality Affirms:

• Conversion of heart as central to the spiritual life.
• Foundation spiritual imperatives that cut across traditions, but which must be implimented uniquely.
• Both the intellect and personal experience.
• The Profound Mystery of all of creation.
• Faith that emerges from a trust and knowing that comes from a merging of the intellect, experience, and mystery.
• Both religious and secular traditions that guide us toward personal responsibility.
• Divine Union as the ultimate goal of the spiritual life.

You can read more about these concepts on the Core Concepts page in the About Us section of our website. Go there...

Terms like Spirituality, Spiritual Formation, Spiritual Practice, and Spiritual Journey can be, at the same time, intriguing and intimidating. Many of us experience a deep, inner longing for transformation and conversion of heart. At the same time we are not quite sure what it would really mean for us, or if this kind of personal spiritual growth is even possible for us in the midst of our busy lives. This program provides an opportunity for us to explore our spiritual lives in an environment that is both accepting and challenging.

Topics include:

• The Practice: What We Do In Our Time Apart
• The Longing: The Call To The Spiritual Life
• The Principles: Understanding The Spiritual Formation Precess
• The Tools: Aids For The Work Of The Spiritual Journey
• The Community: Balancing Community And Personal Responsibility
• The Living: Taking Our Practice Into The Rest Of Our Lives
• The Commitment: A Moral And Spiritual Imperative

We live in a time when spiritual practices abound, and yet when we actually approach our time apart we are often at a loss to know what we should actually do during that time. In this session we will consider six practices which cover most of the variation. When balanced, these practices form the basis of our spiritual practice. The sessions include

• Developing Your Spiritual Practice: Observing What Happens To Us In Our Time Apart
• Centering: Marking Transitions
• Reading: What We Bring To Our Time Apart
• Meditation: Applying Analysis And Reason
• Prayer: Seeking Guidance, Strength, and Courage
• Contemplation: Being Open And Listening
• Action: What We Take From Our Time Apart

Taken as a whole these practices are often referred to by the Latin term Lectio Divina or Divine Reading. Most of the spiritual practices we encounter will be variations on these six practices. We will look at each of these practices and consider how they work together, how they can be personalized to reflect our unique journey and calling, and how they can change and evolve over time as we grow and change.

In this session we will consider the possibility that the longings, restlessness, and dissonance we experience in our lives are ultimately the call for us to make a deeper commitment to our spiritual journey.

Topics Include:

• Human Longing: The Sacred Inner Voice
• Longing For God: Our Relationship With God Revisited
• Longing For The Good Life: Rethinking The American Dream
• Longing for Authenticity: Discovery And Incarnation
• Longing For Love: A Deeper Kind Of Caring
• Longing For Truth: Knowledge Of Ourselves And Our World.
• Longing For Transformation: Conversion Revisited.

These are serious issues, and they are all important parts of the longing, the restlessness, and the dissonance that brings us to consider making a deeper commitment to the spiritual life. They are also an often hidden part of the resistance we experience. This session is designed to make these questions more explicit and less threatening, and to call us to make or renew our commitment

Here we will consider in more detail what spirituality really is and how the spiritual formation process actually works. We will use the following definition to help us understand what the spiritual life is all about:

No BS Spirituality (NBS) is the lifelong process by which we:

• quieten the inner turmoil of thoughts, emotions, and impulses that typically drives our lives,
• discover who we most deeply are and who we are called to be as unique spiritual persons,
• shape and form our lives as living expressions of that ongoing discovery.

This definition has been carefully constructed to include the essential parts of what the spiritual life is all about, and we will take it apart in detail and consider the meaning each phrase has for us and for our spiritual life.

Additional topics include:

• Developing Openness: Removing The Blocks
• Developing Attention: Choosing Inner Freedom
• Developing Obedience: Being True To Our Sacred Inner Being
• Developing Consonance: Congeniality, Compatibility, and Compassion
• Formation Projects: The Work Of Spiritual Formation
• Spiritual Maturity: Sacred Presence

Just as there are many different spiritual practices there are also many different tools available to help us with the work of our spiritual practice. In this session we will consider six of the tools I have found most helpful:

• The Rule of Life: Being Specific About Our Call
• Retreats: Extending The Sabbath Rhythm
• Keeping A Spiritual Journal: Listening To Our Spiritual Journey
• Self-Study: Books, Tapes, Seminars, And Such
• Spiritual Guidance: Obtaining Experienced Counsel
• Life Planning: Making Our Commitments Happen
• Care Of The Body: Honoring Our Embodied Spirit

We will look at how each of these tools fits into the spiritual journey, and how they can be personalized to meet our particular need at different times on our journey.

Spiritual community is one of the most critical aspects of our spiritual journey, and it comes in a number of different forms. Yet unless community is balanced with time alone and personal responsibility for our own spiritual life, community can be limiting and even destructive to true spiritual maturity. Meaningful community can also be extremely difficult to find in today's world of the mundane, the extreme, and the weird.

In this session we will consider:

• Types Of Community: Sources Of Shared Identity And Intimacy
• Grounding: Connecting With Tradition
• Sacred Worship: Celebrating The Journey Together
• Shared Service: Ministering To Each Other And The World
• Shared Fellowship: Reaching Beyond Individualism
• Balancing Community And Uniqueness: The Conundrum Of Community.

As difficult as it sometimes is, developing our personal spiritual practice in a certain sense is the easy part. The bigger challenge is taking what we discover in our time apart and living that discovery in the details of our active lives.

In The Living we look at how our spiritual practice affects, and is affected by our active lives. Topics Include:

• Creating The Environment: Considering The Monastic Vows
• Being An Outsider: Being In The World And Not Of The World
• Developing The Intermediate: The Necessity of Self-Presence
• Living The Practices: Life As An Opportunity To Practice
• Practicing Consonance: Reaching Beyond The Merely Functional
• Practicing Love: Transmitting The Teaching
• Practicing Sacred Presence: The Gift Of Becoming Truly Authentic

In this session we will consider what is really involved in making a deeper commitment to living our lives spiritually.

• A Primary Commitment: Committing Time, Energy, And Space
• Commitment To Interruption: Moving Our Of Our Comfort Zone
• Discovering Our Own Practice: Finding What Works For Us Peroanally
• Discovering Who God Is For Us: Letting God Be God — Really!
• Discovering Who We Really Are: Listening To The Sacred Inner Voice
• Becoming Who We Really Are: Incarnation — The Real Work Of Spiritual Living
• A Moral And Spiritual Imperative: Our Deepest Calling And Our Greatest Gift

All of these issues run powerfully under the surface like a riptide when we consider making or deepening our commitment to the spiritual life. They often feed our resistance to that commitment. In this session we will consider making those issues conscious and explicit and thus available for session and transformation.

Under development.