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New Life

Each month, we post a series of blogs around a common topic. This month, Rev. Michael McNamara is curating a series that will explore the theme of Christian contemplative practice, which has been central to the formation and development of Christianity. We will learn from writers exploring spirituality from both the secular and the religious, embracing the paradox within that — a paradox essential to contemplative practice itself. How can this Christian or secular tradition impact today’s church? We invite you to join the conversation on Facebook and Twitter.

by Kirstin Melone

The smell of cacao is hard to explain, but it strikes the nose with a pungent and earthy flavor. As I walk into the meditation space, I notice the candles, soft pillows, and loose fabric hanging from the ceiling, serving as a wall between the kitchen and seating area. Bodies are pushing their way in from the cold Leipzig air. They bend to take off their shoes. And then my nose is hit with a new smell of sweaty feet… got to love yogis.

As the group moves through the fabric and takes their seat, greetings are passed and warm embraces exchanged. We prepare for our cacao ceremony with Ian, a young New Englander who now lives in Berlin. He spent some time studying in the far east, discovering the monastic way of life, and now travels around teaching. He wears loose harem pants, a mala, and his fuzzy beard coils like a snake at the tip. His guru top knot completes the look.

Photo by Zackary Drucker as part of Broadly’s Gender Spectrum Collection. Credit: The Gender Spectrum Collection.

The cacao is scooped by ladle into our mugs brought from home and then passed around the circle to their proper owner. We get comfortable in our individual cushions and cover our lower extremities with blankets.

My eyes wander to those around the circle… a unit of bright-eyed, new-age followers. Hair is natural. Make-up is absent for the most part. Clothes are properly sourced. Shoes are worn and leathery. Feathered earrings, nose rings, and tattoos adorn the bodies.

As a teacher of yoga and meditation, I have become accustomed to these settings, but as a student of religion, I am hesitant… Not even a year prior, I had dropped out of a divinity program at one of the most prestigious seminaries. I had abandoned my hopes of becoming a pastor, and was still currently looking for how I should take my path alongside the church.

But how did I get here? To such a familiar setting… a small group if you will of like-minded individuals participating in an ancient tradition. Though the clothes and personas seemed different, the attention and following was so similar. Instead of a bible study or a prayer circle, these individuals wanted to chant and meditate. Instead of speaking in tongues of the Holy Spirit, they wanted to writhe with the force of Kali surging through their limbs. Instead of honoring the cup representing Christ’s blood shed for our sins, they wanted to honor the mighty healing powers of the cacao plant.

Yes, Christianity and Hinduism follow separate teachings and figures, but the thought kept creeping upon my psyche… How was this any different from what I had left behind?

I am torn by my love for religion. I relish in the ancient stories, the mysticism, and the questions of the universe. As a young Protestant, I had spiritual envy for the prayer mat of Islam, the yoga mat of Hinduism, and the altar of Catholicism. I craved a sacred space and a physical practice, something to stretch my body and mind. But I didn’t want to convert. I wanted to work with the community in which I was raised – to learn from my elders and pass on the faith. As the Church grew, I wanted to grow with it and shape it.

But the Christian world is not ready for change or to be challenged. And although many in yoga, meditation, & mindfulness world may not identify as Hindus or Buddhists, are they ready to be challenged? Are they ready to have their leaders called out? Are they ready to face their own limitations?

The modern world claims to be secular, to be science-based, to be open-minded… to have no time for religion. But generally, these are also the same people parading around with talk about crystals, energy-healing, and past-life regression? So why is it that those who criticize religion for being strict and limiting, have merely created their own form of ideological imprisonment?

We need to belong and we need to be part of a group of like-minded individuals that support and strengthen us, but when did we stop calling out what we know is crazy? When did we start failing to hold one another accountable – and to acknowledge when reality is being usurped.

In a time when we are more polarized than ever, when we cling to our groups – we cannot be afraid to challenge those closest to us. We have to continue to speak up and to ask questions. Humans have evolved and created narratives that shaped how we see the world. But we cannot forget that there have also been moments in history when those narratives have needed to die in order for something new to grow… for resurrection of life from death.


Kirsten Melone has always been interested in mind-body discoveries, from dancing as a child to practicing yoga in her 20s. Her hope is to better understand how to help individuals access their fullest potential as human beings. As a lover of stories, art, and nature, she seeks to embody the wisdom of ancient contemplative practices in an over-stimulated world. As a certified Yoga Teacher through Yoga Alliance, Kirsten makes herself available to anyone who is curious about going further into their practice or spiritual musings. She is currently working through a two-year certification program in Spiritual Companionship at the Shalem Institute of Washington, DC.

Diversity, Acceptance, and the Need for Reconciliation

Each month, we post a series of blogs around a common topic. This month, Jessica Tate is curating a series that will reflect experiences of living in diverse community. Over the course of the month, we’ll notice practices that enable diverse communities to thrive and we’ll reflect on the promise of Christ in whom there is no Jew nor Greek, no male nor female, no slave nor free and what that promise means for our lives today. We invite you to share your own thoughts on Facebook and Twitter

by Jason Brian Santos

For as long as I can remember, the topic of diversity within community has never been a serious point of conversation in my home. Coming from a bi-racial family, navigating the challenges of diversity was a fact of life. Growing up, our holiday dinners and birthday celebrations were always an interesting blend of Filipino culture and Pennsylvania Dutch-influenced Americana. While the food was amazing, our feasts were always accompanied by a myriad of obvious cultural differences and unspoken customs. Inevitably, at times tensions arose; sometimes we figured it out and sometimes we didn’t. Consequently, for most of my life, I just assumed real diversity always came with challenges.

Though I would still maintain that viewpoint today, I had an experience in 2005 that changed my thinking about what happens when a bunch of diverse people come together in Christian community. I was working on an independent study course for my M.Div on the topic of young adult spirituality and the Taizé community. My project included a research trip to Taizé, the small village located in the Burgundy region of France, which is home to over 110 brothers – not to mention over 100,000 spiritual seekers who make pilgrimages to the community every year.

For this vastly diverse group of pilgrims, Taizé has become their “spiritual home.” It doesn’t matter where they are from, what language they speak, the color of their skin, their sexual orientation, how much money they make or what religious tradition they’re from – in Taizé, everyone is welcomed and accepted for who they are. Each pilgrim is shown genuine hospitality, a 1,500 year-old hallmark of western monasticism.

In Taizé, all pilgrims pray together three times a day in the Church of Reconciliation using sung prayers written in dozens of languages. They study Scripture in diverse groups, which guarantees an assortment of different perspectives on the passage. They work alongside one another preparing food, distributing meals, and cleaning up. They clean bathrooms together and pick up trash alongside one another. Every pilgrim is expected to participate in the communal practices established by the community: the brothers understand that it is in their very participation that these young adults experience genuine acceptance, which in time opens a path towards reconciliation with one another.

These pilgrims aren’t just tolerating diversity in Taizé for the sake of political correctness; they authentically celebrate it as part of what makes the community feel like a living example of God’s Kingdom on earth. In fact, in my research on why young adults make pilgrimages to Taizé, one of the key themes that surfaced was the “feeling of acceptance.” At the core of this feeling, pilgrims experience a tangible sense of reconciliation. This should come as no surprise, considering that reconciliation has been the doctrine undergirding the Taizé Community since its humble beginnings in 1940.

For the late Brother Roger, the founder and first prior of Taizé, reconciliation is at the heart of the Gospel. Whether it was offering Jewish refugees sanctuary or caring for German prisoners after the war, the brothers have always sought to be a sign of reconciliation. Even more, as more young Europeans began making pilgrimages to Taizé in the 50s and 60s, the brothers realized they needed to adapt their sacred French liturgies in order to truly welcome the pilgrims into their daily prayers. Latin soon became the primary language used in their sung chants, because it functioned as a universal language belonging to no particular country, nation, or people. Over the course of the next decade, chants in other languages were integrated into Taizé’s prayer book, and the prayers as we now know them gradually emerged. Still today, the sung prayers of the community function as a sign of acceptance and reconciliation.

Come to think of it, it’s rather ironic that these pilgrims find such acceptance in one of the most diverse environments they will likely experience in their lives. Maybe the central reason why is because they are never asked to put aside who they are, as if diversity is a hindrance to reconciliation; instead, through the rhythm of Taizé’s communal practices, the pilgrims are invited to take their gaze off of their own particularities and focus it on what draws them together and unites them – their identity in Christ Jesus. It’s through Christ that we bear witness to the magnitude of God’s reconciliation with all of creation and in Christ, that we are accepted and claimed as children of God.


Jason Brian Santos is the Mission Coordinator for Christian Formation (Christian education, children, youth, college, young adult, camps and conference ministries) at the Presbyterian Mission Agency. He also serves as the National Director of UKirk Collegiate Ministries. He is an ordained teaching elder in the PCUSA and holds a Ph.D. in practical theology from Princeton Theological Seminary. He is the author of A Community Called Taizé (IVP, 2008) and Sustaining the Pilgrimage (IVP Academic, forthcoming). He currently resides in Louisville, KY with his wife, Shannon and his two sons, Judah and Silas (aka Tutu). In his spare time, he plays and designs board games.

The Blessing that Changed My Life and My Church

Each month, we post a series of blogs around a common topic. This month, Sarang Kang and Lynn Turnage are curating a blog series on faith formation. We’ll hear from various people who are involved in faith formation personally, professionally, and perseveringly. How has your faith been formed? How has your faith formed you? We invite you to join the conversation on Facebook and Twitter!

by Karen Ware Jackson

“God loves you, and so do I,” my son lisps as he kisses my forehead. I return the blessing, listening as the ritual of love echoes from sister to brother, from father to son. And I know it is true. Deep in my bones, in the darkest recesses of my soul, I know it is true: We are loved by God and by one another. Every night, my heart simply bursts with the love and grace and truth. But it wasn’t always this way.

As a family with two young children and two pastors serving two different churches, our home life is harried. You would think a family led by clergy would have faith formation covered, but the sad truth is church schedules and the challenges of professional faith leadership can wreak havoc on a home. We usually managed a bedtime prayer and a rousing rendition of “This Little Light of Mine” but it wasn’t enough. So, encouraged by the work of Rich Melheim and Faith Inkubators, we embraced the Faith 5:

  • SHARE your highs and lows
  • READ a Bible verse or story
  • TALK about how the Bible reading might relate to your highs and lows
  • PRAY for one another’s highs and lows
  • BLESS one another

In our house, we usually share our “thumbs up” and “thumbs down” at dinner and read a bedtime story from the Bible. Sometimes we talk about what we read and we almost always pray, but we never ever miss the blessing. It’s the sacred moment when our love for one another connects seamlessly with our love for God.

These simple, powerful steps transformed our family life, and we didn’t even need to buy a curriculum! Suddenly, all the things we were already doing – sharing, reading, talking, praying and even the “good night kiss” – became part of our family faith formation.

Soon I began to wonder: if this works so well in our home, what about in our church?

At Faith Presbyterian, we’ve been welcoming people of all ages into worship for a few years. We created a PrayGround at the front of our sanctuary to give families the space to move and engage in our traditional setting. We have a lot of fun during the service and love the joy and life the kids bring! But worshipping alongside children is not quite the same as worshipping with children.

We have the kids and the adults in the space, now how do we bring them together? How do we help them tell their stories and pray for one another? How do we foster relationships and build cross-generational community? How do we become the Body of Christ?

Inspired by my experience of Faith 5 at home, I decided to experiment with it in worship. After all, share, read, talk, pray, and bless are authentic and traditional service movements. If these practices could bring us together in the home, why not in the sanctuary?

In order to reduce anxiety and keep everyone open to new experiences, we kept the basic flow of the service, but before we began the prayer of confession, I encouraged folks to form small groups around the sanctuary or use Faith 5 as a personal spiritual practice in the tradition of the examen. I closed the PrayGround and guided anxious but willing kids and elders to share and interpret the Word together. It was beautiful! We practiced Faith 5 Worship every Sunday in October and we will return to it at least once a quarter, but one movement remains every week:

We form a circle around the sanctuary, literally knit together in a single body. As we gaze upon the faces of the family of God – young and old, black and white, refugee and native-born, long-time members and first-time visitors – we hear the charge, “… that the love of Christ that dwells within you can reach out and touch others through you.” Then we turn to one another, crouch down or reach up, grasp hands, touch foreheads, kiss cheeks, and know the truth: “God loves you, and so do I.”


Karen Ware Jackson leads cross-generational worship at Faith Presbyterian Church, a small but mighty congregation in Greensboro, NC. As the mother of two young children who worship front and center, she knows firsthand the joys and challenges of parenting a child while leading a congregation. She blogs about engaging all ages in worship at  www.karenwarejackson.com and tweets at  @karenwarejack.