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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.

Silence and the Oppressed

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 Therese Taylor-Stinson

People of color have engaged in contemplation since the beginning of time, though the term used in a broad sense for spiritual practice is relatively new. The Desert Ammas and Abbas were people of color from the Middle East who fled to the deserts to escape the empire and are not only known as among the first contemplatives but also the first psychologists, as they tested the limits of their human condition in the desert. Contemplation is defined as deep, prolonged thoughtfulness. A contemplative, then, is one whose life is devoted primarily to prayerful pondering, and there are two broad forms of contemplative prayer — apophatic and kataphatic.

The Tree of Contemplative Practices

Apophatic prayer — noted as a higher form of communion with God by a 14th century anonymous monk called “the cloud” for his foundational book entitled The Cloud of Unknowing — is a willing surrender into mystery: that which cannot be fully known and is closer to the true nature of God. It means emptying the mind of words and ideas and simply resting in the presence of the unknown. Apophatic prayer has no content but is full of intention, such as with a practice called centering prayer.

Fourth century Roman Catholic Bishop Gregory of Nyssa wrote about “apophatic” ways of being. Gregory was born in Cappadocia (present day Turkey) and held his bishop’s dominion in Nyssa — both in the Middle East. So, Gregory was likely a brown person as well, whose central argument is that God as an infinite being cannot actually be comprehended by us finite humans. God is not a white dude with a long white beard who sits on a cloud and grants wishes, and wants your sports team to win. God is something transcendent and alien whose thoughts we cannot properly grasp or explain.

Kataphatic prayer, on the other hand, has content; it uses words, images, symbols, and ideas. Ignatian prayer, such as lectio divina, the daily examen, and the Ignatian process for discernment is mostly kataphatic. Other forms of kataphatic prayer may be writing, music, dance, and other art forms.

Medieval Spanish priest (now saint, as was Gregory) Ignatius of Loyola, a spiritual director, was a prominent figure in the Roman Catholic “counter-reformation,” during the same period or starting a little before the Protestant reformation. His most influential work was Spiritual Exercises, still used by many today. His prayer was “Soul of Christ, make me holy.” And he wrote of himself in Spiritual Exercises, “Without seeing any vision, he understood and knew many things, as well spiritual things as things of the faith.” So, Ignatius too knew apophatic ways of being with God, but his Spiritual Exercises was full of kataphatic prayer forms to assist in ushering oneself, as well as others, into the presence of mystery.

In both Gregory, whom begins with unknowing, and Ignatius, whom engages the mind, I see both an apophatic and kataphatic approach that leads to a fully embodied intention for the Holy. Gregory writes, “We know some things that God is not, but we are incapable of understanding what God is. However, we can observe God’s ‘energies’ projected into the material world by God’s creation of the universe and God’s grace or love entering it. It is just as in human works of art, where the mind can in a sense see the author in the ordered structure that is before it, inasmuch as he has left his artistry in his work. But notice that what we see here is merely the artistic skill that he has impressed in his work, not the substance of the craftsman. So too, when we consider the order of creation, we form an image not of the substance but of the wisdom of Him Who has done all things wisely.”

As an example of a practical application of Gregory’s apophatic theology, he argues that slavery and poverty are unethical. The idea is that humans have a unique value that requires respect, because they alone are made “in the image of” the unknowable and unworldly God. Poverty and slavery are inconsistent with the dignity and respect due the image of God in all people. *[Referenced from an anonymous source.]

So, that brings me to the pervasive idea among white contemplatives who dominate the ideas of modern-day contemplation that for the most part, African Americans and other people of color don’t practice contemplative prayer, which they view as predominantly silence. Silence certainly has its place, but as the writer of Ecclesiastes notes in chapter 3:1, everything has its time: “For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven.” One of the few recognized black mystics, Howard Thurman, wrote, “Do not be silent; there is no limit to the power that may be released through you.”

This is an idea the oppressed understand well. In their contemplation, there may be seasons for silence, but there are also seasons and reasons for shouting, dancing, expressive emotion, and even protest, ushering in the presence of God to guide and protect; leaning on that God for constant direction; releasing toxic emotions.

For example, the enslaved taken from Africa across the Middle Passage and brought into chattel slavery were silenced from the time of their capture and separation from all others whom spoke their language and shared their customs. To be silenced is to cause trauma. On the slave ships, they ushered in the presence of God and community through the “moan” — the name given it by the slaveholders. The enslaved became one in their suffering by joining together in their sighs and groans of pain too deep for words. Their separation and silencing continued when they reached land, were warehoused, and sold to slave masters, separated from their children, spouses, and other relatives. Again silenced, they found ways to communicate their suffering and garner support through music, dance, and shouting, as they secretly met in the hush hollows, the abandoned shacks in the woods, and suppressed their sounds by shouting into barrels or pots, and sharing in each others suffering by turning the day’s suffering into song that was joined in a call and response by the others present. They were silenced. Their narrative was not known, but God knew, along with those gathered with them in subversion.

Albert Rabateau tells a story in his book Slave Religion through a third person about the silencing of the enslaved and their knowledge and faith in a Supreme Being. The observer notes how, though the enslaved could not read, they had ways of knowing God, and when they were finally introduced to the Bible, they already knew who God was! The observer also notes that some of the enslaved believed the Bible should not be read until after one has gained that inward knowing.

The oppressed around the world — mostly people of color — have been silenced from control of their own narratives, while the dominate culture dictates a narrative to be both disseminated to the world and absorbed by the oppressed that centers whiteness and devalues the lives and culture of people of color across the globe, leaving them silenced, oppressed, and struggling to know and to value their own heritage.

Silence may be needed in some cases among the dominant culture in order to allow the narrative of the oppressed to emerge; in order for them to come face-to-face with their own complicity in silencing people of color in order to enjoy the privileges of dominance. However, silence is not the only way to encounter God. Silence is not the only way to embrace Mystery. Silence is not the only way to deep pondering and profound prayer. Silence for the oppressed should be embraced on their own terms and their more kataphatic ways of being and prayer embraced more fully by contemplatives of every culture, unless it remains a tool to keep the narrative of the oppressed untold.


Therese Taylor-Stinson is an ordained deacon and ruling elder in the PCUSA. After serving as chair of the COM Care Team, Therese was tapped to serve as National Capital Presbytery’s moderator for an extended 3-year term. During her year as vice moderator, she co-founded and organized the Racial Awareness Festival, now going into its fourth year. Therese also organized a Confronting Racism Task Force for NCP in 2017. She now serves as Liaison for Race and Reconciliation, with a team of six members, under NCP’s Mission Coordinating Committee. Therese is a retired Fed, having served 32 years, leaving as a senior program analyst and the expert at the time in Federal Regulatory Activity. Therese has a private spiritual direction practice, which she began 14 years ago, and she is the Founding Managing Member of the Spiritual Directors of Color (SDC) Network, Ltd. Therese was recognized in 2018 as a Collaborative Bridge Builder by Grace and Race, Inc., and as Author of the Year in the area of social awareness by the Indie Author Legacy Awards for her second edited work for the SDC Network, entitled Ain’t Gonna Let Nobody Turn Me Around: Stories of Contemplation and Justice. Therese celebrates 40 years with her husband, Bernard, on September 8, and they have one daughter and two granddaughters.

Opening the Door with Yoga

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 Sarah Pfeil

Yoga, like grace, arrived in my life when I needed it the most. I had gone through an arduous cancer journey and my spirit seemed broken. After my first yoga class, I knew I had found a way to regain a new sense of being, of wholeness.

The yoga path I am speaking of is a spiritual toolbox which includes all practices of yoga; ethics, breathing techniques, postures, mindfulness, and meditation. Through my practice of yoga, I integrated all aspects of myself into a personal relationship with God. However, the actual practice of yoga can take each person in a different direction. It is not necessary to subscribe to any particular religious beliefs in order to follow the yoga path. The yoga path can lead to a deeper understanding of God, to greater contentment, or to a stronger and healthier body. This is completely a personal matter and how a practitioner chooses to use yoga is up to them.

The heart of yoga is the cultivation of equanimity in mind and body, so the spiritual heart center can wake to the present moment of being alive and sink into the deep and sustaining relationship with God. We integrate all aspects of ourselves into relationship with God. The foundation of yoga, the 5 yamas and 5 niyamas, are the ethical precepts or core values of yoga. These ethics are about avoiding behaviors that produce suffering and difficulty and embracing those behaviors that promote love. The practice of the yamas and niyamas guides us into right relationship with ourselves, our neighbors, creation, and the Divine Spirit.

The practice of the physical postures strengthens our bodies. As physically embodied beings this vessel/body is where God has chosen to call home. Through yoga we appreciate and listen to our bodies. We release tension in our bodies and create openings for the Holy Spirit to move within us.

In every major religious tradition, the Spirit of God is the source of our life-giving breath. In yoga the focus is on mindful breathing. Yoga recognizes the breath as our life force. When we breath mindfully we remember that the breath of life that God breaths into us is the same breath that we share with all living creatures. We notice that with mindful breathing, our bodies relax, energy is flowing within us and we begin to feel a sense of peace on the inside. Our spiritual heart center softens and opens. The peace on the inside flows out to others as radiance and joyful light.

The practice of yoga is designed to move us into stillness and surrender. We develop awareness to notice thoughts as they arise and let them dissipate before we get entangled in them. As we witness our thoughts, the tight control of the ego-mind loosens. We create space in our minds to slip behind thoughts and surrender into the stillness. In this stillness we meet God.

The practice of yoga healed me…. physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually. I became a Kripalu yoga teacher and had my own yoga studio. The biggest blessing of my studio was watching students allow their Divine within to radiate out. Minds quiet, the heart opens, change happens, and grace flows. Yoga is a contemplative practice and is an opportunity to remember lost aspects of our own Christian tradition. Namaste.


Sarah Pfeil is currently taking part in an 18-month spiritual formation program with the Shalem Institute in Washington, D.C. The program teaches leadership of contemplative prayer groups and retreat leadership. Sarah is a Kripalu Certified yoga teacher and a former Yoga Studio Owner. Sarah has a master’s degree in finance and spent 30 years as an executive in Health care Management and Consulting.

An Opportunity to Practice

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 Rev. Mark Greiner

Please take a moment to notice your breathing.

For a full minute, simply enjoy breathing. What do you notice? Before reading further, what you do notice about your own breaths?

Is the breathing more slow or more fast? Is it deep into your belly or more in your chest? What sounds come with your breathing? Is there any congestion, or are you breathing freely? While noticing your breathing, do any emotions arise? Do the qualities of our breathing shift as we pay attention?

Our physical body speaks all the time, and we can listen.

I’m an acupuncturist as well as a pastor. As an acupuncturist, I help people listen to their own bodies. Our bodies speak, responding to the food we eat, what we drink, how we move, and more. Listening to our bodies helps us become skillful. As we become aware of what give us life, we can cultivate those qualities. Daily, we are our own primary care physicians.

“Mindfulness” is a wonderful set of awareness practices. (For an excellent guide, see Peace Is Every Step: The Path of Mindfulness in Everyday Life by Thich Nhat Hanh.) We can also have more than mind-fulness. We can have bodyfulness – a rich and ongoing awareness of our physical selves.

We are, all at the same time, body AND mind AND spirit.

The Gospel of John proclaims of Jesus: “The Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us.” (John 1:14) What an amazing affirmation of our bodies. Not only did God delight in making creation, God entered creation in Jesus’ flesh!

Of any faith tradition, ours especially is about the flesh, about being embodied. Embodied faith flowers beautifully in both an outer journey and an inner journey.

All the time Jesus cared about people’s concrete, physical needs: being hungry or thirsty or needing a safe haven or healing. Following Jesus means embodying care in very tangible ways. The outer journey is about cultivating and safeguarding others’ well-being.

The inner journey cultivates and safeguards our own well-being. Jesus embraced the whole of his own humanity in body, mind, and spirit. So can we. We are minds, and more than minds. We are enfleshed temples of the Holy Spirit.

The inner and outer journeys are one in prayer. Jesus modelled regularly withdrawing to pray. As our own life in God deepens, we can become aware of more and more. Investing time in solitude increases our intimacy with ourselves, with God, and our capacity for intimacy with other people.

So we return to the simplest prayer of all: our breath. It’s said that the names root names of God are breathing itself. Jesus related to God as Abba (“daddy”). Breathing through the mouth, “Ab” is like the sound if an inhalation. “Ba” is an exhalation.

Let us breathe, and know God.


Pastor Mark Greiner focuses on healing and spirituality. Along with 25 years serving Presbyterian congregations, he sees patients as an acupuncture intern at the Maryland University of Integrative Health in Laurel, MD. His wife works with the Interfaith Partners for the Chesapeake, and they have a daughter in college.

More than Mindfulness

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 Rev. Michael McNamara

Since contemplation can be a bit of a slippery term, I would like to try and define Christian contemplative practice as accurately as one can. It refers to a long practiced, deeply rooted Christian tradition that goes at least as far back as the first time Jesus went off by himself to pray (although its not like he was the first person to do that, so it rooted in something even more ancient than the Christian church). At its most basic level, Christian contemplative practice could be understood as meditation or silent prayer — but it has a far more robust history and practice than that.

Contemplative practice has been central to the formation and development of Christianity. There are thousands of years of Christian writers exploring and putting language to their contemplative experiences of God, people like Augustine, Benedict, Bernard of Clairvaux, Meister Eckhart, Julian of Norwich, John the Cross, Teresa of Avila, Brother Lawrence, Thomas Kelly, Howard Thurman, Thomas Merton, Thomas Keating, Anthony de Mello, Tilden Edwards, Richard Rohr, and Cynthia Bourgeault. There are also various formal and teachable modes of practice including lectio divina, psalm chanting, labyrinth walking, icon meditation, and centering prayer that have been handed down and developed over generations. Christian contemplative practice reveals a non-duality to the world that uncovers a unity with God. Put plainly, Christian contemplative practice could be summarized as: intent to simply be present to God in stillness.

Over the past year, as I have been establishing foundations for a new worshipping community centered in contemplative practice, I have been meeting with folks across the religious/spiritual spectrum and a few things have emerged.

  1. There is clearly a longing for a deeper experience of life.
  2. There is a growing mistrust of the Church, particularly among millennials.
  3. There are burgeoning movements around mindfulness, yoga, and more general wellness, something for the sake of simplicity I will refer to (maybe unfairly) as secular spirituality since many (but certainly not all) practitioners in these emerging fields often go to great lengths to remain firmly secular.

It could be easy to worry about these developments, particularly when coupled with declining religious engagement, but I have seen reason for hope. If anything I believe there is an opportunity.

It starts with the fact that secular spirituality movements have offered a wonderful gift: through practices that grew out of ancient faith traditions more and more people are getting a glimpse of a “loving stirring” to the “naked being of God” (as put by the anonymous author of the 14th century spiritual classic The Cloud of Unknowing). Folks are experiencing something larger than themselves, a wordless formless expanse that resonates deeply.

Rarely, though, do the practitioners of secular spirituality have the language or infrastructure to help people more deeply engage in these experiences. Not all who experience these transcendent moments will seek to go deeper, but many will. The more rational approaches of secular spirituality — rooted in language that seeks scientific proof of its efficacy, language that speaks to the rational mind, words that tend to dwell in neuro-biological space — are not particularly useful in helping people encounter and embrace the paradoxes explored by the poetic and mythic language of faith and mysticism. As a result practicers are often left with beautiful experiences but lack ways to engage that experience beyond the rational mind.

This is where the Church can help. It can mentor and walk with those seeking a deeper spiritual journey. The Church can dig deep into its past and offer a robust framework for those looking to engage more deeply in these spiritual realms of the heart mind and soul. Church can offer language and a treasure trove of diverse experiences that can act as guides and way points for the journey deeper into God. The Church is also practiced in community building and can help form covenant communities of accountability around practice, a central element of Christian contemplative practice over the millennia.

The beauty of this is it is not just that the Church has something to offer in terms of experience and tradition and practice, but that it can also learn from those engaging in spirituality beyond the walls of a church. This month’s posts will explore both sides of this, from the secular side and the religious side, and will sometimes appear to be in paradoxical opposition to itself (just like good contemplative practice!). Hopefully these posts will get you to thinking, asking questions and seeking to dig a little bit deeper in this rich and abundant resource, a gift really, gift to the Church.

If we go back to our plain definition — intent to simply be present to God in stillness — in that simple presence exists amazing transformation. In that simple stillness we can trust that the “NEXT Church” will emerge out of the infinite love imbibed in creation by God.


Mike McNamara is a Presbyterian pastor serving Adelphi Presbyterian Church in Adelphi, MD, as well as forming a New Worshipping Community rooted in contemplative practice in Silver Spring, MD. Mike has a beautiful wife and two young boys ages 2 and 4. He has a particularly strong love of rock climbing and good coffee. Catch him at RevMcNamara.com and on instagram: @a_contemplative_life.

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.

From SERVING to Serving

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 Boni Kim

Growing up in America, the only place I saw people that looked like me was at church. My parents were Christian and so I just followed them to church every Sunday. We started off at a smaller Korean church and later moved to one of the larger Korean churches in the area.

It wasn’t until eighth grade I accepted Jesus as my Lord and Savior. That was when I really started to explore what the church was. I had always liked helping out and volunteering for church and I discovered that I had been serving and being spiritually formed by my experiences even before I accepted Jesus into my heart.

During my college years, I went to an American church when I was at school and when I was home during the summers, I attended my home church. There was such a huge difference between the two churches that essentially did the same thing: worship God. When I attended church at school, I felt like I was learning so much and that I was getting something from the sermons every week. At home, I didn’t get the same kind of learning that I was getting at school. Nevertheless, after I graduated from college, I moved back home and started serving my home church.

Serving was my M.O. for most of my twenties. I believed that the only way I could grow spiritually was if I served. So, I served my heart out. I served as director for my church youth group for seven years along with serving and leading two summer camps for over ten years. During these years, I felt very tired and alone. There was only one person that was going through what I was going through, my best friend, and she was really the only person that I was able to talk to about my problems. Since she and I were pretty much in the same place in our respective churches, we just listened to each other and tried to encourage one another. In the end, I made myself believe that serving was the only way that I would learn more about myself, grow spiritually, and get closer to God.

Then, I burned out. I felt myself getting angry at the thought of stepping into church. Fuming when I had to sit through another meeting. I didn’t enjoy going to church. So, I stepped down from everything. I knew I needed rest.

During this time of rest, I learned that it was okay not to be in a leadership position in everything I was involved in. I learned to step back and be a participant and not volunteer. I learned to be more of a Mary rather than a Martha. (In my mind, I wanted to be perfect blend between Mary and Martha.) It was different because people around me have always seen me in a leadership position and have always asked me for help or asked me questions about certain events or camps. It was liberating to say, “I don’t know, I didn’t plan anything for this event.”

I also learned that it wasn’t JUST about serving. I didn’t just learn about God and my relationship with God only when I served. This time of rest was also apart of forming my spirituality. I learned that I could just sit and be a Mary and that was okay. It was definitely different and even uncomfortable at first. The more I was sitting back and not leading, the more I started noticing the small things with God. I never experienced just sitting back and enjoying God. This was a part of my spiritual journey that made me just sit and absorb God. Through just listening, God told me that I had done well in His eyes. All the serving that I did, was for Him and that He was delighted in me. When I realized that, I knew that servanthood was something that I couldn’t stop. It was just a matter of how much and what I wanted to be involved with.

Even though I told people I was taking a rest from serving, the servant heart inside me didn’t really let me stop for long. I was still involved with things here and there, so it’s not that I stopped serving altogether. I just learned how to say “no.” It took me a very long time to say no and to turn things down. It had to get to a burn out to say no. I learned how to balance and to know what my limit is.

I have by no means got my spiritual life figured out. I believe that’s something that is going to be an ongoing thing. I know that I just need to be connected to God first and foremost. After that, it’s really what God calls me to do to further the Kingdom. God is still working on me and I’m still discovering more about my relationship with our Father as well. In order for a relationship to grow, the relationship will always be going through some kind of transformation. That’s how I know that my relationship with God is still ongoing.

Currently, I am a deacon at my church and a Sunday school teacher. For now, that’s enough.


Boni Kim is an elementary school teacher at American Montessori Academy in Redford, Michigan. She has been a member of and served at the Korean Presbyterian Church of Metro Detroit (KPCMD) since childhood and is now a deacon at New Hope Church of Michigan, the English Ministry sister church of KPCMD. 

2017 National Gathering Keynote: Linda Mercadante

Rev. Dr. Linda Mercadante, Professor of Theology at The Methodist Theological School in Ohio, gives a keynote address about those who identify as spiritual but not religious at the 2017 NEXT Church National Gathering.


Linda Mercadante is Professor of Theology at The Methodist Theological School in Ohio. She was once a “spiritual but not religious” person, but through an intensive spiritual journey has become a seminary professor, theologian, and ordained minister in the Presbyterian Church (USA). You can read about this in her memoir, Bloomfield Avenue: A Jewish-Catholic Jersey Girl’s Spiritual Journey. A former journalist, she has won many awards for her research in such areas as the theology of culture, film and theology, addiction recovery spirituality, conversion narratives, and the SBNR movement. She has published five books, nearly 100 articles, and speaks internationally on a variety of topics.

Dr. Mercadante received her Ph.D. from Princeton and has been serving at The Methodist Theological School for more than 25 years. She is married to Joseph Mas, a native Cuban, an attorney, a leader in the Ohio Hispanic community and a political commentator on the TV show Columbus on the Record (WOSU). They have three children, Sarah, Emily and David.

Linda Mercadante and the Spiritual but Not Religious

Linda Mercadante is one of our keynote speakers for the 2017 NEXT Church National Gathering. She is professor of theology at The Methodist Theological School in Ohio. She was once a “spiritual but not religious” person, but through an intensive spiritual journey has become a seminary professor, theologian, and ordained minister in the Presbyterian Church (USA). In 2015, Linda was featured on the TODAY Show. Here’s a sneak peek of what Linda will bring to the National Gathering:

More about Linda:

Linda received her Ph.D. from Princeton and has been serving at The Methodist Theological School for more than 25 years. She is married to Joseph Mas, a native Cuban, an attorney, a leader in the Ohio Hispanic community and a political commentator on the TV show Columbus on the Record (WOSU). They have three children, Sarah, Emily and David.

Register now to hear Linda’s keynote on Monday evening!

The Fruit of the Spirit in a Polarized World

Each month, we post a series of blogs around a common topic. This month, Sarah Dianne Jones is curating a series written by our workshop leaders at the 2017 National Gathering. What excites them about the Gathering? What are they looking forward to sharing and discussing during their workshop? We invite you to join the conversation on Facebook and Twitter!

by Alice Tewell and Roger Gench

In this post-election season, we are all grappling with the question “What is next?” And in our polarized context, “What is our calling as Christians to witness to our faith?” How do we embody the virtues of the gospel message as we live out our faith in a public way in the world?

In this workshop at the 2017 National Gathering, we will explore such questions. We contend that there is no more important task for Christians at the present time than to embody the fruit of the Spirit from Galatians 5:22-23 — love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control — as political virtues.

These virtues are central not only to our personal lives of faith, but also to how we live out faith in the public sphere. We will share spiritual practices we use at The New York Avenue Presbyterian Church in Washington, D.C., that help us cultivate these virtues in our own lives of faith. When these spiritual practices take root in us, they nurture an engaged spirituality that guides us in our justice work as we seek to address the profound polarizations in our country and world. We believe that by embodying these spiritual practices, we are empowered to seek a radical reconciliation that pursues justice for the oppressed, standing up for and with the most vulnerable in our midst. They cultivate non-violent resistance to the “power over” politics of our world in order to bring about healing, justice and love.  

New scholarship on the apostle Paul has provided new angles of vision for reflection on Galatians and the fruit of the Spirit as political virtues. We will explore biblical scholar Brigitte Kahl’s brilliant reimagining of Paul’s letter to the churches of Galatia (Galatians Reimagined: Reading with the Eyes of the Vanquished, Fortress Press, 2010), which offers a dramatic vision for Christian imagination for us today. Kahl shows that if we put the politics of the Roman Empire in the foreground of Paul’s letter, what emerges is a dominating social and political milieu for integrating subjugated people into the Roman colonial mentality that Paul calls the “other gospel” (Gal. 1:6): the gospel of Caesar. In such a world, Paul’s stunning baptismal declaration in Gal 3:28 (“there is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus”) was a revolutionary statement that turned the world upside down. Kahl contends that for Paul, the entire imperial model of “divide and rule” was drowned and washed away in the waters of baptism.

Using Kahl’s reimagining of Galatians and its implications for our cultivation of fruit of the Spirit, we will share with you how The New York Avenue Presbyterian Church is engaging these virtues today to empower children, youth, and adults toward reconciling, healing and justice-seeking Christian living.  

We will have time for conversation as well, in which we hope to engage these questions:

  • Where do you encounter the polarizing, demonizing politics of our day?
  • What does it mean to be in, with, and for others — losing oneself in order to gain a self (a fuller self) in others?  
  • How does one “wash away” polarizing “us vs. them” mentalities so prevalent in our world?  
  • Is there another alternative to winners and losers?  Or should we develop another vocabulary? (Even “win-win” is the language of competition.)

Join us.

The Fruit of the Spirit in a Polarized World” is being offered during workshop block 3 on Tuesday of the 2017 National Gathering.


Roger Gench is senior pastor of The New York Avenue Presbyterian Church in Washington, DC. He has conducted spiritual retreats for lay people and clergy on spiritual disciplines (especially St. Ignatius), spiritual uses of the Bible, interfaith dialogue, politics & religion, and faith & ethics. He serves as clergy leadership of the Washington Interfaith Network (WIN).

Alice Rose Tewell is associate pastor of The New York Avenue Presbyterian Church in Washington DC. Alice is an accomplished educator and facilitator of young adult ministry.