What the Calendar Was Always Trying to Tell Us

Holy days and liturgical seasons used to be dates on a calendar to me. I resonated with some of them, and I understood the historical reason for others, but I didn’t understand what they were for. I didn’t understand formation.

Formation is the lifelong process of becoming more fully human, awake, compassionate, and grounded in purpose through learning, reflection, community, and lived experience. Religious formation shapes the soul and spirit toward wisdom, justice, love, and sacred relationship. My eyes were opened when I learned how the Nordic Folk School tradition understands it. To the Nordic Folk School tradition, formation is not merely about gaining information or credentials, but about cultivating the whole person through dialogue, creativity, shared life, and meaningful participation in the world. Both understandings see formation as transformational rather than transactional. It is about who we are becoming, not simply what we know.

We use a liturgical calendar for formation. We walk with it through the same cycles every year to root us deeper into the tradition, spirituality, and life we live.

A holy day is not merely a commemoration of a person or event. It is an invitation to enter more deeply into their mysteries so we can cultivate our hearts in the grace they have to offer us. I suppose you could say I see holy days and liturgical seasons as sacramental, and it changed my life. They offer us grace if only we would participate and partake in them.

The Work of the People: One Path Was Missing

The word liturgy means, “the work of the people.” It is the public work we do together in community for the good of ourselves and the world. For us, the work is formation into the life of God and the Kin-dom.

When we contemplated our liturgical year, we saw a correlation with the Four Paths of Creation Spirituality, but one of the paths was missing.

Advent is the season of Via Positiva. Here we receive the original blessing, savoring the coming light, welcoming the God who overflows into creation. It is a time for awe and wonder.

Lent and the Paschal Season is the time of the Via Negativa. Here we empty ourselves, take up the cross, and descend into death and silence. Here we learn that the dark is not absence but fullness of a different kind.

In the Counting of the Omer from Easter to Pentecost, we practice the season of the Via Creativa. We walk from the creative emergence from resurrection, counting our way into the Spirit’s fire. Here the soul learns to trust its own images and gifts.

Something was missing. There was no season of the Via Transformativa, so we added it to our calendar from the Feast of the Sacred Heart of Jesus through the Feast of St. Francis of Assisi. We named this season the season of Viriditas. In this time we go out; we participate in the life of the world; and we actively tend the garden of our souls and the world.

What We Carry into the Garden

As we step into the season of Viriditas, the season of the Via Transformativa, we bring with us the awe and wonder we found in Advent, the spaciousness we found in the Paschal season, and the rebirth and the things we birthed as we counted the Omer out into the world to tend to the great garden of life.

In this season, we cleanse our eyes so we see the world clearly. We interfere with injustice and celebrate life with joy and within community. This is the time of year when we remind ourselves how we relate to our lives and to the world around us. We live the truth of being a co-creator with God we learned in the Via Creativa and bring that out into the world for our own return and for its restoration from glory to glory.

Satyagraha: The Courage to Hold Truth

The Living Word in the Via Transformativa is Satyagraha. This is more than nonviolent protest. It is the discipline of holding onto truth so deeply that you refuse to become what you oppose.

What is the truth we hold onto? Everything is created in Original Blessing, and while pain is real, it is not the sum of existence. Every life is sacred and we cannot throw anyone away because all life is valuable. We co-create this world through our creativity, interfering with injustice through joy and celebration.

The word was coined by Mahatma Gandhi from the Sanskrit words satya meaning “truth” and agraha meaning “holding firmly to.” Gandhi sometimes called it “truth-force” or “soul-force.” But I think of it as the courage to confront injustice without surrendering our humanity in the process.

It shaped movements like the Salt March, labor strikes, boycotts, fasting, and civil disobedience. But at its core, Satyagraha was never just political strategy. It was spiritual practice.

Gandhi believed that violence damages everyone involved, including the soul of the person using it. So the goal was not to destroy an enemy, but to awaken conscience, heal division, and expose injustice through disciplined love and sacrifice.

To practice Satyagraha is to refuse hatred even while resisting harm. It means telling the truth clearly, refusing cooperation with injustice, accepting suffering without retaliation, and remaining open to the possibility that even your opponent can change. It demands courage because it is easier to strike back than to remain grounded in compassion.

In everyday life, Satyagraha can look like:

• speaking honestly when silence would be safer

• refusing to dehumanize people you disagree with

• resisting systems of exploitation without cruelty

• setting boundaries without hatred

• choosing integrity over domination

• building alternatives instead of only condemning what is broken

Satyagraha is active, not passive. It is resistance rooted in love rather than revenge.

This is the heart of the Via Transformativa.

Viriditas: Staying Green in a World That Seeks to Dry Us Out

We keep ourselves strong and growing through the cultivation of Viriditas in our hearts so we can develop the Verdure we need to stay alive and greening in a world that all too often seeks to dry us out.

Hildegard of Bingen gave us the word Viriditas to describe the greening power of life itself. It is the vitality that pushes a seed through the soil, the force that turns bare branches green in spring, and the sacred energy that helps us grow into who we are meant to become. It is also the Green Wisdom that teaches us how to sustain and maintain life.

When we lose touch with viriditas, life feels dry, brittle, and exhausted. We go through the motions, but something in us is no longer flourishing. This can happen when we overextend ourselves, or when we struggle under the blistering heat of those who seek to control us, plunder our wealth, or coerce us into division or violence. All these things dry the land and require energy to stand still, much less push forward.

Viriditas reminds us that growth is not something we manufacture through sheer effort. It is something we participate in. Just as a garden grows when it receives sunlight, water, and care, our souls grow when we make space for wonder, healing, creativity, and love. We cultivate this in our hearts as Verdure.

Verdure is mature vital greenness. New shoots are verdant, but they are young and tender. Verdurous growth is strong, green, and healthy. As we connect in Viriditas, we develop this verdurous mind that allows us to stay vital even when the world and events around us seek to dry us out.

At its heart, Viriditas is the Divine’s life flowing through creation. It is the greening power that renews the world and invites us to become fully alive.

Two Hands for the Garden’s Work

As we grow in Viriditas and Satyagraha, the injustices in ourselves, and in our culture and world become clearer. God is love, and living in love is living in God. We have two tools that help us continue to move forward in a healthy and sustainable way: teshuvah and tikkun.

Teshuvah is the practice of returning. It really is that simple. It is easy for us to get distracted, to wander, or to stray from the path. More often than not, we do not do this for ill intentions. We are busy. We are able to be fascinated by things and ideas that look good, but that draw us away from the way of life. All we have to do is turn around and return to the path.

Tikkun olam, the restoration of the world, is both a mystical and practical work. As we walk the way of life, we restore the world through a myriad of actions we take in our spiritual practice. There is too much to say about tikkun for this brief introduction, but we will be talking about it more very soon.

The Heart of the Via Transformativa: A Path to Unity

We find the heart of the Via Transformativa in:

2 Peter 1:5-9
5. Yes, and for this very cause adding on your part all diligence, in your faith supply moral excellence; and in moral excellence, knowledge;
6. and in knowledge, self-control; and in self-control perseverance; and in perseverance godliness;
7. and in godliness brotherly affection; and in brotherly affection, love.
8. For if these things are yours and abound, they make you to be not idle or unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.
9. For he who lacks these things is blind, seeing only what is near, having forgotten the cleansing from his old sins.

This gives us the ladder of living qualities that grow in us as we live and practice our faith. While it is presented as a ladder, it is more of a web of traits and living qualities already present in the soul formed by the first three paths. Here in the Via Transformativa, these qualities begin to flower in the garden preparing to bear fruit.

Faith (Pistis/Emunah) is not believing despite evidence. It is the conviction that the greening is real, confidence in the path, the ground of Emunah from which all action springs. We experience this as the confidence we have in the practices, community, and work we do. Just as we trust our friends and family, we learn to trust the flow of the One Life and the effectiveness of the practice as we experience it. It has a skepticism at its root. We may want to believe, but we are honest about the results we see. If a practice is supposed to grow compassion in us but isn’t, we figure out what is causing it not to work. We might let go of the practice altogether if it is not repairable.

Moral Excellence (Arete) is not a path of guilt and shame; it is a path of discernment. It is establishing the virtuous course of thought, feeling, and action to develop the character of the gardener who tends with care. Jesus taught us that it is not what we take in that defiles us, but what we put out. Moral excellence is learned through teshuvah. We step out, and if we have wandered or strayed from the path, we return to the path and try something else. We are ever improving and will never be forever perfect.

Knowledge (Gnosis/Chokmah) is intelligence and understanding. It is not about being smart or memorization. It teaches us to see clearly what the garden needs and what is choking it. It is the wisdom of Chokmah at work in the world. This is the experience we develop through practice and action and learning from the fruits of our actions.

Self-Control (Egkrateia) is mastery of desire and passion, not suppression of them but right ordering. We need to have a practice of taking a breath between seeing, hearing, or reading something, to consider what it actually means and what action we should take in response to it. All too often we act like people who have built up a lot of static electricity in our bodies that we discharge wildly as we touch the world. When we are reactive, we are more likely to do things we would not ordinarily do and become someone other than who we want to be. We are what we do, not what we say or believe, so if we do not guard our actions, we can change who we are without realizing it. We should not sour our fruit for the simple pleasure of unregulated emotions.

Patience (Hupomone) is so much more than many of us were taught. It is steadfastness, constancy, and endurance. It is the long faithfulness of the gardener who plants what they will not live to harvest. Patience is both a foundation and fruit of most of the virtues we are talking about. Patience reminds us to look at the map so we don’t wander off course. It isn’t just waiting. Patience is the taproot of integrity because it bears in mind both who we are and who we yearn to become, and brings those considerations into the actions we take.

Godliness (Eusebeia) is too often confused with moral excellence. It is reverence and piety, both words that have lost meaning in the modern age. Reverence is the deep respect we have for things, people, and places. Piety is how we demonstrate that respect through our words and actions. The Greek word Eusebeia means good reverence. It is not simply believing in God or performing religious duties. It is living with reverence toward the sacredness woven through life. It is how we show our respect, gratitude, and right relationship with the Divine, ourselves, other people, and creation. It is spirituality embodied in the way we live. Godliness tends the garden as sacred work.

Brotherly Affection (Philadelphia) is the love of the community. It isn’t that we love the community no matter what it does, but that we love it and work to make it become the best it can be. We are a coalition of gardeners; no one tends the garden alone. This is the root of our mutual care and support for one another. Our love for the community is so much more than our love for the circle we draw around those closest to us. It is the love that connects us with all the cosmos as we live God.

Love (Agape) is the core of everything we are and do. It is the animating fire fed by the virtues we practice while it supports all their operations. It is the caritas, the heartfelt charity, that is the energy that makes every step of the path possible and meaningful. It is the Sacred Heart burning at the center of all transformative work. It is the basis of the three commandments of Jesus and the life of the community.

When practiced together, these virtues nurture the greening viriditas at work in us and the satyagraha we give to the world. They are the foundations of our joy and the soul of our community.

Into the Garden Together

This season of Viriditas opens us up to the life of God and roots us into the life of the world. As we learn to tap into the greening life of God, we develop the peace that passes all understanding and the life more abundant.

Many forces in this world seek to dry us out and silence our voices. Paul calls them the powers and principalities of the air, the rulers in high places. Mary’s beautiful Magnificat teaches us the path of God: to take care of one another and cast down the mighty from their thrones. This season reminds us every year how to root into God, Christ, and life so we reject this dryness and green the glorious greening to every corner of the world.

As we walk the Way through this season, we strengthen ourselves for all the trials and tribulations of life. Join us on the Way. He is the vine and we are the branches. Why do the branches keep insisting on doing the work alone when they have so much to gain from the interconnection at the basis of who and what we are?

Don’t worry about making every step perfect. We all trip and wander, but we can always return. If we go out together, we can make sure no one gets lost, and the march continues ever forward.

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Twenty years of Buddhist silence, Pagan earth-wisdom, Christian mysticism, and the Four Paths of Creation Spirituality distilled into a primer for the living journey. Creation’s Paths: A Creation Spirituality Primer, foreword by Matthew Fox.

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I love telling stories. My childhood was full of them. My great grandparents told me stories about their lives, the community, changes in the land, and the world. They had stories about God, life, and mystery. There was wonder in their words and in their hearts. They taught me that story was how we understand the world.

When I got older, I started telling my own stories, each one seeking meaning in this life. At first, these stories flowed from an overflow of questions and imagination. Over time, though, the stories grew thin, as did my imagination. I poured out my heart into the tales I told, but I didn’t refill the source of that creativity and wonder.

When Matthew Fox wrote Creativity, I devoured that book. I wanted it to fix me. I carried so many expectations into those pages that I couldn’t receive what was actually in them. I was looking for a formula, a secret that would unlock my creativity so I could keep writing without end. I did not find what I was looking for, because I did not greet the book for what it was, but for what I wanted it to be. With a great sigh in my heart, I muddled on. I wouldn’t understand that book or what it had changed in me for years.

So I sought out an idea that fascinated me, not just one I was interested in, but one that held real wonder for me. I didn’t realize I was walking the Via Positiva until much later.

The problem with these ideas was that there were too many ways to tell them and too many ways for them to go, so I had to apply constraints. I had to tell myself what could not happen and what I had to let go (Via Negativa). Then I had to write, trusting that if I showed up, the story would flow (Via Creativa). Once it was written, the story had to justify its words and elements. It needed to be edited until it would bring joy to my readers (Via Transformativa).

That is when I realized the Four Paths were so much more than just a path to walk. They could be utilized for so much more. They were a spiritual technology.

Machines of the Soul

I first heard the term “spiritual technology” from Dr. Justin Sledge on Esoterica. Spiritual, mystical, and esoteric traditions are often practical systems aimed at transformation, divine encounter, or the mediation of spiritual realities through ritualized techniques and practices. When we start to see them as technologies, it becomes easier to identify their component parts and understand how the machine of practice works.

What is a spiritual technology? It is a system of practices, symbols, rituals, disciplines, texts, or techniques intended to transform consciousness, produce spiritual effects, mediate divine contact, or reshape the practitioner. When we can see the parts, we can understand, fix, upgrade, and exchange them to make them work more smoothly.

A spiritual technology is not a way to guarantee results. It is a metaphor that helps us ask the right questions:

1. What is this practice, belief, or symbol trying to do?

2. How is it trying to do this?

3. How is it different from or similar to what other traditions do?

4. What parts are essential?

5. What parts are keeping the machine from working well today?

The Four Paths of Creation Spirituality are themselves a retooling of an older spiritual technology that goes back to Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite. That older system moved through three stages:

• Purgation, the cleansing and detachment from destructive habits, ego, and disordered desires;

• Illumination, the growing insight, wisdom, and awareness of the Divine; and

• Union, the deep communion with God or ultimate reality in which the person becomes aligned with divine love and will.

Matthew Fox took this mystical system that had been in Christianity for centuries and reassembled it as the Four Paths, adding what was missing, repairing what was already there.

The concept of spiritual technology isn’t a replacement for religion, spirituality, or mysticism. It is a metaphor that helps us understand what our practices are and how they work so we can build something better. It is also a way to keep ourselves honest.

Most traditions use some kind of music in their services and rituals. That music works on us emotionally, psychologically, and spiritually. Many people feel betrayed when they realize that what they believed was an encounter with God was just a precise chord progression that creates a sense of awe in us. It is a philosophical and theological debate whether that is a distinction without a difference or with one, but we have to be honest that there are chord progressions that can create these sensations in us, regardless of their setting. Approaching such practices from the perspective of spiritual technology allows us to be more honest and open about the method, and whether it is right to use it. Some might feel it is a manipulation of their emotions, but if we are honest about what we are doing and offer it as an aid to set the right mood and intention, perhaps we are justified in using it with full disclosure.

When we view our practices, symbols, and beliefs as technologies, we are able to be honest about what they are doing so we can stay aligned with our goals, hopes, and intentions on a spiritual path.

As a person who left Evangelicalism a long time ago because of spiritual abuse, understanding my beliefs and practices as spiritual technologies has allowed me to see the moving parts. I don’t want to be manipulated into the self-hatred and self-destructive tendencies I grew up with. When I encounter a new idea or practice, I can approach it differently. I can break it down into its parts, see what it is doing, and assess whether it has the possibility to do what it claims. It gives me the tools to engage better with my spirituality, and I hope it will give that to you too.

The Four Paths as Mechanisms

So, let’s apply this framework to the Four Paths of Creation Spirituality.

Path 1, the Via Positiva (the Positive Way) is trying to help us find awe and wonder. It does this through teaching us the power of the Living Word, our Royal Personhood, recovering our ability to savor life, and understanding that the Kin-dom is here and we don’t have to wait for it. This is a unique starting point not just because it rejects original sin and proclaims original blessing, but because it starts with awe. It doesn’t start with devotion, sacrifice, or obligation. It starts with awe. It forms us to begin with wonder and curiosity, not fear or doubt. It honors our experience without diminishing us or building us up as something other than we are. There is a naked honesty to this path. It works because awe is all around us, as long as we take the time to see it and don’t ignore it.

Path 2, the Via Negativa (the Negative Way) is trying to help us let go and make space so we don’t become rigid about how we encounter life. A rigid tree breaks in the wind; a supple one bends. It reminds us that we don’t have to find all the answers, but we do need to live in the present moment. The present is real, and if we don’t sit with it and make space for it, we cannot heal or rejuvenate. This path is different from others because it does not moralize our pain, nor does it sentimentalize it. It teaches us to be attentive without grasping, and to surrender to the moment so we can experience it. It invites silence and makes space for us to live now, not in our hopes or our regrets. In our overly rational age, it reminds us that sometimes we need to be quiet and be with what is rather than talk over it. It opens us up so we can let go of what we do not need to carry anymore.

Path 3, the Via Creativa (the Creative Way) shows us that we are not powerless in the world. We are a part of it, co-creating life with everyone else every moment of every day. This path is different because it honors what is in us wanting to be born. That is the core of it. No one’s life is worthless, pointless, or meaningless. We all have something to offer if the space is open for us to do so. Everything is participatory. We participate, and in participating we mutually create the world. We all feel that desire to be part of something greater, and we want the freedom to do so. The Via Creativa shows us how in a way that is open and equitable to all.

Path 4, the Via Transformativa (the Transformational Way) brings us completely outside of ourselves. It takes the awe, openness, and creativity we have learned and applies them to society. In each of the other three paths we encounter injustices, and here we are empowered to interfere with those systems of injustice with joy and celebration. Unlike other traditions, we are not guided by duty or obligation, but from our own center, because we have encountered those edges that need to be repaired. Joy and celebration are core to path 4, as is learning to see the anawim, those cast out to the margins by systems seeking to increase their own power, wealth, and authority. Once we learn to see these groups, we learn what the system actually cares about and what needs to be fixed in it.

More Than the Spiral

The way most of us encounter the Four Paths is as the spiral we dance on our spiritual journey, and they are that. But as I discovered with my writing, they can be applied to other things entirely. Once we see the Four Paths as a set of interlinked spiritual technologies, we can use them to build more than just the spiral path.

I have always had problems with self-esteem. There were many contributing factors, but I personally didn’t find a way forward until I applied the Four Paths to this specific problem. This is not medical or psychological advice. It is simply the method I used to work on one of my own struggles.

If the problem is low self-esteem, and the first path tells us to look for awe and wonder, where can we find awe and wonder in self-esteem? The honest answer, for me, was that I couldn’t. Self-esteem is a word that did not resonate with me, so what could help with low self-esteem instead? I found my answer in humility, anavah in Hebrew.

In Alan Morinis’ wonderful book Everyday Holiness: The Jewish Spiritual Path of Mussar, it says this about humility: “Occupy a rightful space, neither too much nor too little. Focus neither on your own virtues nor the faults of others.” That rang in me like a bell and was the first taste of awe I savored. Yes, I needed humility.

I sat with this definition in path 2, and asked what I had to let go, what I needed to sit with, and where I needed to make space. This was hard and took years. I had collected so much baggage that weighed me down, and worse than that, I had accepted the lie that it was a part of me. In that prolonged Via Negativa, I sat with these beliefs about myself so I could learn to see which of them were really me and which were beliefs I had merely accepted as me. This process was liberating, but it left me hollow. So much of my life had been built on other people’s ideas of who I was that I forgot who I actually was.

When I took this into path 3, I had to relearn what was really in me and what wanted to be born in my life. I realized I had to go back to path 1 and find something within me that birthed awe and wonder. As I found these things, one at a time, I sat with them in path 2, to see what parts I needed to sit with and what parts I had to let go, and then back to path 3 to birth them in my life.

This cycle repeated until these new (to me) parts of myself met resistance or pushback from the outside world. That led me onto path 4.

Now I had a spiritual technology to rebuild myself and find the humility I really needed. Simply practicing the Four Paths out of the box had not worked this alchemy in me. Utilizing them to work on this specific problem did. That is the power of a spiritual technology.

Becoming Spiritual Engineers

One of the great gifts of Creation Spirituality is that it transforms us from passive practitioners of a spiritual path into spiritual engineers, co-creating a renewed world that interferes with injustice with joy and celebration.

As spiritual engineers, we have to try and test things, then tinker with them to make them better. In its bringing together of science and faith, we have even firmer foundations for the stories we tell, the symbols we use, and the practices we do. The more we learn about nature and psychology, the more we can adapt our spiritual practice to accomplish its goals.

This doesn’t free us from having spiritual directors and friends on the path. It does not kill the traditions; it revives them with a new and more honest life. We can share our constructions with others and together make them better. All four paths teach us not just how to live with ourselves, but with others.

We no longer have to wait for an enlightened master to show us a better method or technique. We have the tools to build them ourselves.

The work of a spiritual engineer starts with study and practice. We have to understand the spiritual technologies we are using before we can apply them to other things or rework them to function better. Once we understand the technology, we can tinker with it, test it out, and continue to improve over time.

An Invitation

Most of us started our journeys in top-down institutions. The preacher, the prophet, the tradition handed down the capital-T Truth that we simply had to follow.

It isn’t a platitude when Creation Spirituality says we are all mystics, artists, and prophets. We are. Each and every one of us. But it also teaches us that these are not the rarified and privileged vocations we were told they were. A mystic encounters the Divine in a way we all can. Everything we do is an art form, and we all have our own, which makes us all artists. A prophet does not receive THE WORD OF GOD; they speak the Living Word that gives life as filtered through their understanding of the world, in the same way we all do.

Once we have humbled these vocations and ourselves, we see how we can do this work together. Through practice and study we can become spiritual engineers if we want, but at the very least, we learn how to become spiritual mechanics, able to fix what is broken in our practice and tune up the engine when it needs it. We can even do that for one another.

Spirituality gets our hands dirty tending the gardens of our souls. Reading about a garden doesn’t make us gardeners, planting and tending do. That is what this offers us: a practical way to fix what is broken and do the work we long to do.

For many of us who grew up in faiths that hurt us, we can, if we want and choose to, recover what still has meaning for us and discard the rest.

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Twenty years of Buddhist silence, Pagan earth-wisdom, Christian mysticism, and the Four Paths of Creation Spirituality distilled into a primer for the living journey. Creation’s Paths: A Creation Spirituality Primer, foreword by Matthew Fox.

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You left the institution but not the longing. Creation’s Paths: A Creation Spirituality Primer is for everyone who still feels the sacred moving through the world and wants a language worthy of that feeling.

Creation’s Paths is a Christopagan Creation Spirituality community rooted in the conviction that creation is original blessing, not original sin. If this episode found you at the right moment, you are welcome here.

New to Creation’s Paths? Start here: https://www.creationspaths.com/p/start-here

The book: Creation’s Paths: A Creation Spirituality Primer https://www.amazon.com/dp/1972869019

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#Discernment #SpiritualTechnology #JohnCassian #FaithDeconstruction #SpiritualAbuse #DesertFathers #Christopagan #CreationSpirituality #CreationsPaths

0:00 We Look Under the Hood of Used Cars. Why Not Our Beliefs?

1:26 Welcome to the Workshop

4:38 When the Message Sounded Good and the Warning Signs Were Right There

6:27 Before Augustine: John Cassian and the Desert Elders

8:00 Test One: Is It Actually Valuable?

12:10 Test Two: Is It Genuine or Counterfeit?

20:17 Test Three: Does It Bear the Right Image and Intention?

26:41 Test Four: Can It Hold the Weight of What It Claims?

34:28 Utopia Is a Direction, Not a Destination

40:13 Discernment Is the Vital Aspect of Your Autonomy

Twenty-Five Years to Find These Words

Prayer was the first Matthew Fox book I read. It opened my eyes to a whole world that I had never seen before. He unpacks Paul’s teaching “Pray without ceasing (1 Thessalonians 5:17).” To pray without ceasing is to recognize that every action we take is prayer. We are the temples of the Living God and our lives are prayer.

I shared this with my husband Brian, and we talked about what this meant for everything we do. As I dove deeper into Creation Spirituality, we asked ourselves, “How do I pray this in my life?” That question has been at the heart of our practice since 2000.

Over the years, we have struggled with a way to explain Creation Spirituality in a simple and clear way when we are asked about our faith. We would talk about Original Blessing and the Four Paths, but we could see in people’s eyes that they wanted a shorter answer than what we were giving them.

We tried many metaphors and explanations over the years, but recently we sat down and came up with something we feel really works. We call it the Four Thresholds of Creation Spirituality:

We are born blessed, not broken, learning again to savor the goodness woven into all things.

We carry wounds, not sins, learning to let go into healing rather than hold fast to suffering.

We are in God and God in us, graced to birth the Christ through all we create.

Nothing that wounds the world is permanent, so we walk with the vulnerable, interfering with injustice, and reclaim the joy of celebrating creation’s restoration.

A Creed That Isn’t a Creed

Each threshold boils one of the Four Paths down to a single sentence with two parts. The first part is a declaration of identity that shows what the path teaches us we are. The second part summarizes the basic work of that path.

This pattern works well for those of us who already practice Creation Spirituality. It reminds us who we are and what we do. We all need a reminder from time to time, and while I still sometimes recite the creeds of my youth, the Four Thresholds give us a way to quickly remind ourselves of the heart of the Four Paths and how to pray Creation Spirituality in every step.

They also work as an easy and quick way to explain our faith to others when they ask. Each Threshold explains who we believe we are and how we act in the world. While there is a lot to unpack in these four statements, they give us a good place to start the conversation. For some, this will be enough to see who we are. For others, they will be invitations to talk more about the faith and life we live.

Born Blessed

The first threshold starts where Creation Spirituality and the Via Positiva (the Positive Way) does, with Original Blessing. “We are born blessed, not broken...” That is it. That is the start of the journey.

Like many of us, I grew up in a church steeped in Augustine’s idea of Original Sin. We accepted John Calvin’s elaboration of this that said we and the whole cosmos are totally depraved. I used to hate myself and everything I did because I was taught that all I could do was evil in the sight of God.

Even if you didn’t grow up in a church that taught this, it has infused itself into our culture. The belief that there should be work requirements for public aid is a result of this way of thinking. Most of the ways we wield the idea that people don’t deserve food, water, clothing, shelter, care, or support, because they need to be worthy or prove they deserve these things, flow from this same source.

Once we see that all the cosmos is created in Original Blessing, withholding those blessings from others is a moral failing. We are born blessed, not broken is the truth of our identity.

What do we do once we see this? We recover the lost art of savor. We learn again because we are taught to be serious and to stop savoring life, even though we can see all children doing this naturally. This goodness, this blessing, is woven through everything in the cosmos. On path one, we relearn the joy of finding the awe and wonder in all things, including ourselves.

The Willingness to Let Go

Creation Spirituality isn’t all sunshine and roses. Even in the first threshold this is acknowledged in the word “relearn.” Here in the second path, the Via Negativa (the Negative Way) we go deeper.

“We carry wounds, not sins...” Each of us is wounded. Maybe it was something in our life or family, an illness we had, an event we lived through. These wounds can distract us from the Blessings of the Cosmos. It is important for us to understand what they are as wounds, not sins. While we go astray, and sometimes suffer from the deeds of others who have gone astray, those stray actions are what are called sin. What we carry in ourselves are the wounds those actions have caused.

If you think of life as a path we walk, sin is leaving the cleared path into the wilderness where the brambles and thorns can scratch and cut us and the snakes bite. Some of us have scratches. Others have toxins injected into us by others. These wounds can be healed with therapy, practice, and changing our ways so we don’t collect new wounds.

“...learning to let go into healing rather than hold fast to suffering.” This is a lifetime practice and has many parts. The willingness to let go of our suffering so we can find healing is the heart of the second path.

Living Temples, Co-Creators

In the third path, the Via Creativa (the Creative Way) we learn to participate in the blessings of the world and give rise to new ones.

“We are in God, and God is in us...” In path one, we learn about our royal personhood and to savor our own lives. On path two, we learn to find God in silence and the shadows of life. In path three, we participate in this relationship as co-creators with the One Life.

That might sound like a big claim, but this is just an extension of living a life of prayer. Once we see ourselves as living temples (path one) and have the ability to hold space for healing and restoration (path two), it is not a huge leap to understand how we can fill that space with wonderful new things: from conversations, to dinners with friends, to art, music, and storytelling. We are all artists pouring the Divine flow into the world.

“...graced to birth the Christ through all we create.” Christ is the Living Word, the creative power of God that creates and sustains all things, and holds the cosmos together. We are the body of the Cosmic Christ, bringing the life of Christ into the world. God is as much our Child as we are God’s children. That relationship is how we live God day by day in this world.

Drawing on the endless wells of grace, we co-create a renewed and living world at the work of the third path.

Joy and Justice Making

Just as there are wounds on us as individuals, our cultures, peoples, countries, and world can also be wounded and carry those wounds through time. In path four, the Via Transformativa (the Way of Transformation) we interfere with injustice and bring restoration to the world with joy and celebration.

“Nothing that wounds the world is permanent...” because all things are impermanent. We tend to believe that anything that outlives a human lifespan is forever, but it isn’t. The world works on the scale of millions of years, the universe in billions of years. It is impossible for us to truly understand these vast expanses of time. All things end, and that too is a blessing. Even the wounds in the world are not permanent, because one day the earth will not be here, but the cosmos will go on.

For us, this impermanence also means that we can change the world for the better, which is the heart of the fourth path.

“...we walk with the vulnerable...” These are the anawim of the Bible, those the system throws down and casts out to increase its own power, fame, and wealth. This is how we know what a group is all about. If they cast out the poor, they only care about their own wealth and not human life. If they destroy the environment, they do not care about life itself. Standing with the vulnerable is how we see the injustices that need to be combated. Justice is equitable, so it should never leave anyone behind.

“...interfering with injustice...” Once we see the injustice, we work to end it because all life is sacred and none should be left out. If we truly believe that God is love, then our life of prayer requires us to end the injustices of the world so the compassion of God is lived in the world. It is impossible to love someone and support their abuse or abuses. Love calls us to heal the oppressed and the oppressor. Justice asks nothing less from us.

“...and reclaim the joy of celebrating creation’s restoration.” Through it all, we have to keep joy, Simcha. Joy cannot be taken from us, only released. Through recovering the lost art of savor in path one, holding space in path two, and co-creating a renewed world and life in path three, celebration and joy flow through our work as we rejoice in our community, families, and friendships. Joy gives us the strength to interfere with injustice to restore the world to a more equitable place.

Through joy and justice making, we transform the world in path four.

Walk With Us

So we want to offer this practice to you. Whether you use it as a creed, a prayer, a motivational exercise, a conversation starter, or all the above, it is a powerful tool to focus our lives and faith through the trials of this world.

I feel a strong resonance with these statements. It only took us 25 years to find these words, but now I feel like I had them in me this whole time. They are the beating heart of Creation Spirituality that I can finally say out loud.

In all four, find the awe of the first path and savor them. They are open with depth to contemplate. They drive me to create and live in the mutual indwelling with God. They motivate me to keep up the work for justice and restoration in the world. I hope they do something similar for you.

Blessed are the Wayfarers, who dance the great spiral of life. May we ever find awe, healing, inspiration, justice, and joy in all that we do. Amen.

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Some people pray to a God they no longer believe in because they have not yet found language for the God they do. Creation’s Paths: A Creation Spirituality Primer is that language, grown from twenty years of walking the Four Paths.

.

Creation’s Paths is a Christopagan Creation Spirituality community rooted in the conviction that creation is original blessing, not original sin. If this episode found you at the right moment, you are welcome here.

New to Creation’s Paths? Start here: https://www.creationspaths.com/p/start-here

You were not born broken. Fifteen billion years of the universe’s grace says otherwise, and this book shows you how to live from that. Creation’s Paths: A Creation Spirituality Primer, foreword by Matthew Fox.

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This work is listener and reader supported. If it has been nourishing to you, the most direct way to sustain it is a paid Substack subscription: it keeps the teaching flowing and the community growing. All are welcome here regardless of financial capacity. Spiritual nourishment should flow freely to all who seek it.

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#OriginalBlessing #ReligiousResidue #BornBlessedNotBroken #Jesus #ChristianDeconstruction #FaithHealing #Christopagan #CreationSpirituality #CreationsPaths

0:00 What Happens in Your Body When I Say Jesus?

3:26 We’re Supposed to Share the Good News. Then We Hit a Wall.

5:45 The Cringe Has Deeper Roots Than You Think

18:44 Augustine Couldn’t Keep His Toga On (Via Negativa)

37:33 The Glory of God Is the Human Being Fully Alive (Via Positiva)

43:06 What Did Jesus Actually Do on the Cross? (Via Creativa)

48:47 Transmuting Violence: The Conscience That Feels (Via Transformativa)

59:20 Whitewashed Tombs and the Least of These

1:03:01 Say It Until You Feel It

The Fire Descends

The fiftieth saying of the living Christ as spoken by Mary Magdalene:

Fifty days counted. The day of revelation was at hand. They gathered in one accord and in one place.

A great and powerful wind came from the sky and filled the entire house where they were sitting. The wind was alive with power, but Adonai was not speaking through the wind.

The house shook as if the earth quaked. The quaking was alive with power, but Adonai was not speaking through the shaking.

A singular fiery presence distributed itself among them like flickering flames. One sat on each of them. The fire was alive with power, but Adonai was not speaking through the flames.

They were all filled with the Holy Spirit, and the sound of delicate stillness gave them the ability to speak (Acts 2:1-4; 1 Kings 19:11–13).

Mary Magdalene said:

Christ called us his friends, and asked us to do the work of the Kin-dom in this world. We are not servants, because we have received all that he received from our Father (John 15:13-15).

We are the friends of God, of Christ, of one another. No longer must we wait for a prophet to carry the word to us, as the Holy Spirit now lives in us all. As the friends and companions of the Holy One, We are the beloved chosen by the Divine to confide, to live, and pour out the fullness of the Spirit, withholding nothing from us.

This blessed union is at the root of everything. We do not melt like the dew before the rising sun. We are joined with one another in Christ, as Christ is one with the Father, so the Holy Name lives in all of us. This is the union of friendship. Friends do not lose themselves in one another, yet they share in a life of mutual support and care. He is the vine and we are the branches. He is the rock, the firm foundation. Now we have the Spirit and the heart in which it lives.

As the prophet said:

“It will happen afterward, that I will pour out my Spirit on all flesh; and your sons and your daughters will prophesy. Your old men will dream dreams. Your young men will see visions. And also on the servants and on the handmaids in those days, I will pour out my Spirit (Joel 2:28-29).”

The Holy Spirit is poured out on all. It is the power to transfigure the world into the Holy Kin-dom of Heaven where all life flourishes. It is not dripped on a few, or the chosen, or the powerful. It is poured out on all, even those held against their will by the cold-hearted.

The Spirit is not visiting us, but quickening us so we might live God in all our acts so all the world may be restored to the glorious wholeness that is peace. No speck of a husk, or crumb of a shell blocks the Spirit from us. The way is clear so the truth of our union may be the life we live.

Adonai is our rock, our fortress, and our deliverer; our God, our rock, in whom we take refuge; our shield, and the horn of our salvation, our high tower (Psalms 18:2). And on this rock we will build our assembly, and the gates of Hades will not prevail against it (Matthew 16:16-18).

This rock is ever under our feet, and the tower is always near. Our steps will be strong, and our refuge secure. In the Holy Spirit, Christ is the rock of our soul, the foundation of all that we know and do. He, like the Father, is love. Love is the firm ground that holds all things together. This is not shelter from the world, but within it.

As Christ is the vine and we are the branches, the rock of Adonai roots the vine in all creation. The Spirit flows through the vine, from the rock to the heavens and back again.

For the earth will be filled with the knowledge of Adonai’s glory, as the waters cover the sea (Habakkuk 2:14).

Behold the Word, the Glory, and the Presence shining through all things. With the Spirit within us, we all have the eyes to see and ears to hear so we can perceive the Divine flowing through all things.

So now we all might sing with the Holy Ones, “Holy, holy, holy, is Adonai of the Heavenly Host! The whole earth is full of his glory (Isaiah 6:3)!”

All of creation groans for the liberation of the light. The fire has descended. The Spirit is poured out. May the kin-dom bear the fruits of healing, return, and restoration.

Take refuge in the Holy One. The Spirit is here. The world is being healed. You are the friends of God. Receive the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, and let it flow through you into everything.

Speak the living word.

This is the kin-dom come.

Then Peter stood and addressed the multitude (Acts 2:14).

The Kin-dom Is Here

The forty-ninth saying of the living Christ as spoken by Mary Magdalene:

This kin-dom is not your personal domain, nor is it a secret revealed to chosen souls. This kin-dom of Heaven is not a private, walled garden in your heart. The kin-dom that cannot be shared is not the kin-dom. If the kin-dom is present but you cannot find the words, seek the Word, Presence, and Glory, and share them. Where they go, the kin-dom follows. The Living Word is spoken in loving kindness and walks among you. Presence flows from the heart, reaching out to others living in its way. Glory is the Light that shines the way forward so the path can be made clear. They can only be shared with an open hand. They invite all home. If it is locked within you, release the ever-flowing grace of the Divine which longs to overflow from you out into the world. The pressure needs release. Speak the Word. Share the Presence. Let your light shine.

Do not wait for the kin-dom to come, and do not let anyone tell you it is not here, now. The kin-dom is not coming, and it does not require a revival. The kin-dom was here for Abraham and Sarah. It has never left us. Even if only a remnant live in it, it never abandons us. It was with us in Babylon. It survived the Greeks. Not even the Romans have been able to drive it from us. Wisdom calls out in the streets, in the marketplaces, at busy intersections, and at the city gates. Wherever people are, Wisdom calls people to the kin-dom. Invite the Shekhinah in and the kin-dom will be built on the rock, and spread throughout the world.

I remember when Jesus told us we would know the way to the place where he was going. Thomas asked, “How can we know the way?” The Living Word responded: “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me1.” The way of Jesus is love. The truth of Jesus is that we should take care of one another. The life of Jesus is poured out for the healing of everyone’s mind, body, and spirit. How can anyone come to the Father if they do not live through love, taking care of one another, and pour out healing and sustenance for the hearts, minds, and spirits of all? This is the life in the kin-dom.

The kin-dom does not need arguments; it must be lived. It does not need explanation, it needs to be experienced by the love we have for all things. The moment the kin-dom is simply present and easy to see for anyone with eyes open enough to receive it, it spreads.

In the casting out of unclean spirits, we heal the divided breath that robs us of our strength. When we feed the hungry, heal the sick, clothe the naked, take in the stranger, and care for the imprisoned, we live the kin-dom so all can behold the Glory of God we live every day.

The kin-dom is here now, but when we do not breathe with the breath of God, our spirit becomes fragmented. The Accuser loves a shallow breath. We breathe for our fears, our doubts, or our greed. The Accuser seeks to keep our breath shallow, so it does not dip into the deep well of the Divine. The kin-dom lives in those deep breaths. When our breath is troubled, our spirit wears thin.

Throughout our days, we pick up the weight of our own wants and needs, those of the ones who rely on us, and those imposed upon us by others. The more we carry, the more labored our breathing. Our yoke is not to the cart we must carry alone, but to the kin-dom which carries the weight together. Its cart does not carry the desires of the greedy, the power-hungry, and the oppressors. In this way, it has room to take care of the needs of the people.

Seek the rapturous wonder of your life, and let go of the burdens you do not need to carry. Build the table where everyone is welcome and all are cared for and about. Transform the world with the joy that cannot be conquered and the peace that passes all understanding. This is the divine wholeness and inner stability that cannot be fully explained, and that peace protects our hearts and minds even amid suffering, fear, or uncertainty. In this way, the kin-dom will grow among you.

We are made whole when we stand in our daily lives, in these bodies, in the community we love, and say honestly: The kin-dom is here. We knead bread in the kin-dom, and we grieve. We tell jokes, and we do the hard work. It is not just in the rapture of prayer, or trapped in the temple. It is everywhere we are.

When we deepen our breath and awaken our souls to the world they live in, we heal our souls. We have to heal our sense of exile. Our breath may be divided, but the Shekhinah has never been exiled. We have never been truly exiled; we have only forgotten how to inhabit the land where we stand. Once we stop waiting for the kin-dom to come, and live rooted in it, we restore the world. The kin-dom is here, because the Light that shines through us has always been here. When we allow it to shine, the seeds that have waited for the light of spring will germinate and grow.

Open your eyes. You are already home.

1

John 14:4-6

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You left the institution but not the longing. Creation’s Paths: A Creation Spirituality Primer is for everyone who still feels the sacred moving through the world and wants a language worthy of that feeling.

The Lost Coin

The forty-eighth saying of the living Christ as spoken by Mary Magdalene:

The Holy One is like a woman who had ten silver coins. She lost one silver coin, so she lit a lamp, swept the house, and diligently sought it until she found it. When she found it, she called together her friends and neighbors and showed them the bridal headdress with all ten silver coins set in their place, and she said, “Rejoice with me, for I found the silver coin I had lost.” There is the same joy among the angels of God over someone rediscovering their belonging1.

See how the woman never believed the coin was stolen, only lost. Too many who call themselves elders in the faith refuse to accept a change in others and become controlling. They would have searched their friends’ houses before their own, and might not have found what they were looking for at all. They seek an accounting and do not know love. To them, freedom exists only under their watchful eye. In so doing, they forget to clean their own home, leaving it empty so anything could creep in and live there.

There are others, who unlike the Holy One, accept the loss too easily. Nine coins are enough; who will notice the tenth is missing. They may mourn the loss briefly, but it is soon forgotten. The community shrinks its sense of wholeness until the whole is less than it should be. After all, is it not easier than searching until the lost is found? They light no lamp, so they live in darkness. The floor is never swept, so they do not know what is there. The coin is lost and they never find the joy that awaits them.

The community whose covenant does not invite more people into the kin-dom is not living in the grace of the Divine. Our community is not whole while any remains outside.

We must search our own house, kindling the lamp so the light shines out. We search in the dark corners and under the furniture so nowhere is overlooked. The kin-dom’s search for the lost is thorough because love does not surrender any to the darkness.

When the coin is found, joy overflows into the neighborhood and friendship is restored. The community is renewed every time another soul finds their way back to life. All this rejoicing draws others into the light, because joy is the calling of life.

Restoring the searching covenant to the community, we refuse to accept the world’s accounting of who matters and who can be lost without consequence. When we light the lamp and sweep every corner until the missing are found, our bonds are restored to their fullness.

We heal our soul’s own sense of belonging when we discover that the kin-dom has been searching for us as thoroughly as we have been searching for it. The lamp was lit before we knew we were lost. One restored spark at a time, we heal the world. We patiently work not to declare the work finished, but to ensure not a single holy fragment remains orphaned in the darkness.

1

Luke 15:8-10

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Some people pray to a God they no longer believe in because they have not yet found language for the God they do. Creation’s Paths: A Creation Spirituality Primer is that language, grown from twenty years of walking the Four Paths.

.

The Wedding Feast

The forty-seventh saying of the living Christ as spoken by Mary Magdalene:

The kin-dom of Heaven is like a human king who made a marriage feast for his son and sent out his servants to call those who had been invited to the marriage feast, but they did not come. He sent out other servants to call them again, but those invited made light of it, and went their ways: one to his farm, another to his merchandise, and the rest captured the king’s servants, treated them shamefully, and killed them. When the human king heard that, he was angry and sent his armies, destroyed the murderers, and burned their city. The human king then sent out his remaining servants to the thoroughfares and gathered all they found to come to the wedding feast, both bad and good. The wedding was filled with guests. When the human king came to see the guests, he saw there was a man who was not wearing wedding clothes. When he asked how he came in not wearing wedding clothes, the man was speechless. The human king said to his servants to bind the hands and feet of the man, and to cast him out into the outer darkness, where the weeping and grinding of teeth will be. Many are summoned into the kingdom, but few allow themselves to be remade by it1.

Why did the human king act like this? This king was unchanged by the message of the gospel, and claimed ownership over the kin-dom which belonged to all life, not to him alone. In the man without a garment, the king beheld the nakedness of his own spirit. He cast the man out not for his lack, but to hide from his own reflection. So he had the man bound and cast out so he would not have to see that he was not wearing his wedding clothes either. He saw himself as master of the feast, forgetting that God calls us to the marriage banquet, not a man who puts himself in the place of the Divine as a King. To be a part of the kin-dom is to live it from the heart. His reception of the kin-dom is hollow and he cannot savor the food at the banquet.

Those who refused the invitation had no room in their lives and hearts for the kin-dom. They had fields to tend, oxen to examine, and businesses to run. When the kin-dom comes to those who have no space to receive it, they cannot yield to the transformative power of God. Some killed the servants because they could not receive the invitation and saw it as a challenge to their own power and authority.

Why did the human king send his armies to kill them and burn their cities? The king was challenged by their rejection of life and believed it was a rejection of him. Since he refused to be a part of kin-dom, but chose to lord over it, they had challenged his power, and power was all he had. His life was empty of everything else.

Many are called, but few are chosen. The invitation goes out to all, but not everyone who hears the call chooses to live in the light of the Word, Presence, and Glory of the Divine. All are welcome at the grand banquet of God, but not all are ready or willing to join in the feast.

The receptive guests are the souls who are gathered from the road and put on the garments of right relationship. They have cultivated the fields of their hearts so the tree of life can grow. They yield to the invitation to live in mutual indwelling because taking care of one another is the greatest way to heal ourselves. Joy dances through the grace we cultivate between us.

Humility is not criticizing ourselves, but being available to the call of the Spirit flowing through all things. The receptive guest does not arrive at the feast convinced they do not deserve to be there. No one deserves grace. Grace is like the air, available for all to breathe so they may live. They arrive at the banquet with an open and present heart, already fed and transformed by what the table offers.

Our restoration is the cultivation of our inner availability. It is the deliberate practice of opening space in our lives for the invitations that do not fit our plans. When the kin-dom lights the way home, we shed resentment like an old garment. We walk the road chosen and choosing, so we never fear that we are alone.

Our souls are healed when we can receive the grace ever present around us because the banquet does not require worthiness, but availability. It has no achievement, but a humble willingness to sit and be fed by the Divine Grace. As our wholehearted joy flows out from the table, the world is healed as others behold the splendor of a life lived in the light of the One.

1

Matthew 22:1-14

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The oak knows. The well knows. The land under your feet has always been the first teacher. Creation’s Paths: A Creation Spirituality Primer gives that knowing a companion for the journey.

The Leaven in the Dough

The forty-sixth saying of the living Christ as spoken by Mary Magdalene:

The kin-dom of Heaven is like yeast that a woman took and hid in forty to sixty pounds of flour until it was all leavened1. If too much leavening is added, the loaf rises too fast. Its structure weakens, and the dough is liable to collapse. The bread can no longer be bread. The kin-dom, when rushed, consumes the field instead of feeding the hungry. It devours what it was meant to bless. It cannot sustain itself. Its flavor sours and it smells and tastes of alcohol. The texture becomes coarse and uneven as the work becomes an impatient conquest pretending to be a holy change.

If not enough yeast is added to the dough, it rises slowly and will never reach its full height. The kin-dom’s endurance gives up before the whole loaf is leavened. Work stops as the people wait for the kin-dom to come, but it never does. The texture is tight, and the bread is hard and lifeless. Its flavor is bland because it never develops its complexity. It is possible that when they check the dough, and see that it is apparently unchanged, they believe the leaven was not good. The power of the kin-dom to transform the world is abandoned because the work is abandoned while it is unseen and struggling.

This hidden transformation is the kin-dom working patiently through the whole of creation. It does not need recognition. No one checks the dough constantly to ensure it is rising. The leaven is trusted to do the work.

This transformation is not driven by the baker. The yeast does not work harder because it is worried over. The kin-dom grows by the innate rhythm of life. Force cannot maintain the endurance of the kin-dom. It is by its nature hidden, since it changes our hearts. The leaven does not require encouragement, it works as life flows through the world.

I saw the risen Christ and the other women saw the angels. Our witness kneaded the leaven into the dough. As more people encountered the living Christ, the leaven grew and the kin-dom rose. The kin-dom is among us, growing through the world as we live God faithfully in our lives.

Patient trust in the hidden work of the kin-dom restores everything. In the work of the kin-dom, we are repaired when we embody our calling, pondering the mysteries of life in our hearts, and release the need to see the change before it is finished.

Our souls are restored as we live in relationship with the unseen process, learning to trust the kin-dom is working even when the evidence is not yet seen. The world is restored because the leavening power of life does not demand, but hides the leaven in the dough of the earth.

Walk, trusting that life knows what to do with what it has been given.

1

Matthew 13:33

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This Substack is reader-supported. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

You were not born broken. Fifteen billion years of the universe’s grace says otherwise, and this book shows you how to live from that. Creation’s Paths: A Creation Spirituality Primer, foreword by Matthew Fox.

Sins of the Spirit, Blessings of the Flesh https://amzn.to/4tFQTFy

Viriditas. The greening power. Hildegard knew it. The forest knows it. Creation’s Paths: A Creation Spirituality Primer is for everyone who has ever felt the divine moving through roots and rain and refused to call that feeling anything less than holy.

Creation’s Paths is a Christopagan Creation Spirituality community rooted in the conviction that creation is original blessing, not original sin. If this episode found you at the right moment, you are welcome here.

New to Creation’s Paths? Start here: https://www.creationspaths.com/p/start-here

The book: Creation’s Paths: A Creation Spirituality Primer https://www.amazon.com/dp/1972869019

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Educational resources: https://wisdomscry.com

This work is listener and reader supported. If it has been nourishing to you, the most direct way to sustain it is a paid Substack subscription: it keeps the teaching flowing and the community growing. All are welcome here regardless of financial capacity. Spiritual nourishment should flow freely to all who seek it.

Become a paid subscriber:

Other ways to support: Ko-fi: https://ko-fi.com/cedorsett Patreon: https://patreon.com/cedorsett Cash App: https://cash.app/$CreationsPaths

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#ViaPositiva #MeaningCrisis #LostArtOfSavor #Mysticism #Malkuth #SpiritualFormation #Christopagan #CreationSpirituality #CreationsPaths

Chapters:
0:00 She Never Saw the Moon Rock
6:57 The Lost Art of Savor
14:01 The Kin-dom Is Already Here
16:15 FOMO Is Not the Via Negativa
18:07 The Broken Shell Hiding the Spark
24:14 Let It Melt
28:24 Simcha Is the Root of Justice
29:45 Flooding the Zone
36:07 Simcha Bites Back
37:12 Practice: Say a Bracha

The Pearl of Great Price: The Kin-dom as the Beauty That Reorganizes Everything

The forty-fifth saying of the living Christ as spoken by Mary Magdalene:

The Kingdom of Heaven is like a merchant on the road, seeking pearls that are full of beauty and value. And finding one pearl, singular and beyond price, he went and sold all that belonged to him, leaving nothing held back, and took hold of it as his own1.

This pearl is not precious merely for its value, but for the way it shared the creative radiance of God into the world. The beauty of the kin-dom is not a private treasure. It is not something to be protected and curated, but something to be lived and shared with all. If this pearl of wisdom becomes a possession, it no longer serves life, nor does it serve the one who owns it. When the pearl is locked in a vault, where the moth eats and the rust devours, it remains untouched but is no longer safe. Shut away from light and touch, it loses its luster. What is meant to live in the open cannot remain radiant in the dark. The one who hides it forgets its beauty. What we refuse to behold, we eventually lose.

If the soul cannot see the beauty of the pearl, the kin-dom becomes severe and without inner light. The covenant persists, maintained by the community, but the Word, Glory, and Presence depart. It becomes the focus of everything, and life loses its meaning. Each day is built around things that no longer sustain life, and the kin-dom crumbles under the weight of duty and obligation, because the Spirit has been driven out.

The beauty of the kin-dom is the life in the word, anointed by the presence of God, and shining with the glory. This does not happen all at once, but the life we grow into as we live in the wisdom within us. The pearl is the vision of the healed life. It draws close what belongs to life. It guides us to let go of what does not belong, leaving no room for grief.

This pearl is not ours to possess. The traveling merchant sold all he had and gave it to the poor so he would no longer be distracted by Mammon once he saw something truly worth living for. The pearl is the presence of the living God present in all, even as we are held within the heart of the Holy One. The one who finds it does not cling to it, but lives in its glorious light. The kin-dom is filled with the witnesses of this light. Remember, the true beauty of the kin-dom is in the light, not the proclamation of it. It is the life that lives under the sun of Divine Grace.

I found the pearl at the empty tomb when I saw the gardener of all life. It was not in the triumph over the grave, but in the light born within me as I beheld the Living Christ and did not cling to him. It shone through me, radiating out into the world to heal it. This is the pearl of the resurrection that witnesses from the heart.

The beauty of the kin-dom brings healing when mutual indwelling becomes the center of our lives. The pearl of the resurrection is one good thing among many, it is the beautiful, life-giving power at the heart of everything. It draws everything into participating in the Divine Nature2. We let go of what does not belong, and receive what does with open hands.

The better we live God, the more our soul is healed. As we participate in the Divine Nature, we know the world is not changed by force or arguments. Beauty restores the world. The radiant life, lived fully in God, is the salve that heals the world’s wounds.

2

2 Peter 1:4

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You were not born broken. Fifteen billion years of the universe’s grace says otherwise, and this book shows you how to live from that. Creation’s Paths: A Creation Spirituality Primer, foreword by Matthew Fox.

The Wheat and the Darnel: The Kin-dom That Waits for the Right Judgment at the Right Time

The forty-fourth saying of the living Christ as spoken by Mary Magdalene:

In the field of the world, the faithful workers sow the good seed by day, and the enemy sows the darnel seeds by night. The wheat will grow and feed the people, but the darnel, which resembles it, is poisonous. When the faithful desired to uproot the darnel, the householder told them to wait. The roots of the darnel entwine with the roots of the wheat, “They are bound together until their fruit grows.” When the time of the harvest came, the householder sent workers into the field to pull up the darnel first, then to bind them in bundles and cast them into the fire before the wheat was gathered1.

The kin-dom is patient, and does not rush to judgment. Sin rushes to judgment to either justify itself or condemn others. The accuser speaks with sincerity, making eloquent arguments, but his discernment is grievously wrong in its timing and certainty.

When the workers notice the darnel, they are certain they know which plants are wheat and which are not, even though they look so similar when they are young. The accuser is always certain. His call is always the same, “Purge the impure.” What is impure? Impurity is everything that falls outside the shadow of the idols they have built. God does not want our purity, but our love. To rip out the darnels when they are young destroys the wheat. It is not until the harvest that they can be separated.

Purity is not an obvious sin. Its wickedness is its lack of forgiveness and patience. Both of which are hard to see from their absence. The evil is not the poison of the darnel. The accuser planted them to tempt the righteous into a rush to judgment. This willingness to harm the innocent to protect their purity is a shadow obscuring the light of God.

Patient discernment can watch the field without swinging the scythe before the harvest comes. In the fullness of time, the Holy One will gather the people and set the sheep to his right and the goats to his left for how they have treated the least of their neighbors. While the Holy One waits for the harvest, the empire cannot wait. The empire needs a pure field. They cannot allow opposition to them to grow.

Strength has not abandoned the kin-dom. It is the power to hold the sickle and choose not to strike. The accuser’s strength is rejected. The kin-dom’s strength arises from its patient discernment. This discernment must be formed in us, and not performed for the approval of others. The householder does not pretend there is no darnel in the field. He cares for the wheat, trusting it has the strength to grow alongside what troubles it.

Patient discernment does not abolish judgment but teaches it to wait so it is not distorted by anxiety or rage. Premature certainty will destroy every relationship and hollow out the soul.

We learn that true strength is not rash to separate, but patient to wait without declaring a false peace or taking premature action. This strength heals the soul. We restore the world by not doing more damage weeding the field than the weeds would do on their own.

Our work is to tend, not to purify the field.

1

Matthew 13:24–30, 36–43

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Matthew Fox calls it 1+1=3: one tradition meeting one life makes a third thing no one expected. Creation’s Paths: A Creation Spirituality Primer is that third thing and an invitation to find yours.

The Mustard Seed: The Kin-dom That Begins Smaller Than You Expected

The forty-third saying of the living Christ as spoken by Mary Magdalene:

See how the Kin-dom of Heaven is sown in the field like a grain of mustard seed. The seed of the kin-dom is small; it is the love we have for one another, for our neighbors, and for God. It is the smallest of seeds, but when it is grown, it is the greatest of herbs. The great tree of life grows from this little seed, and in its branches, the birds build their nests and live1.

Mind the wildness of the seed. Love, untended, can become a thicket that chokes the very spirit it meant to nourish. Mustard can overrun the garden so that nothing else can grow. If we do nothing but cast seed and never tend the garden, then the work of the kin-dom is unfulfilled. The kin-dom grows through the healing relationships of its people with each other and the world. To speak the words of love without the actions they proclaim robs them of their life. Dead words harm people. The Living Words thrive in speaking them and doing them.

If the seed is never sown, then the healing of the world is never done. Do not wait for better soil, or for the moment to be right. We have a gift worth giving. If we hoard the seeds, the mice will devour them. The tree remains unplanted; the birds remain homeless. Give and receive with a generous heart so that the seed may be planted and the Tree of Life grown.

The gift of the kin-dom feels small when it is first given. It is a word, an idea, an ideal to reach toward. Small acts of loving kindness go unnoticed. Our community is small, but no fewer than thirty-six righteous people greet the Shekhinah and sustain the world. They are scattered among the nations, unseen and hidden. If they can sustain the world, so can we. Even if we whisper the Living Word one to another, it shall take root in more hearts than the speaker will ever know.

This hidden strength was found also in the garden of the tomb. When the apostles fled the Romans, the Myrrhbearers kept the faith and carried the kin-dom forward. Joanna, the wife of Chuza; Joseph of Arimathea; Martha and Mary of Bethany, the sisters of Lazarus; Mary, the mother of James and Joses; Mary, the wife of Cleophas; Salome, the mother of James and John; Nicodemus; Susanna; and I cared for the body of Jesus. The ten of us were but a few among the many who were in Jerusalem for the Passover. Only the women went to the tomb that blessed morning. I was the first to see the Risen Christ. I was sent as the Apostle to the Apostles to proclaim the glorious message to them that love had conquered the grave.

From these ten, the Word spread to the eleven apostles, then to the world so all might know the power of loving kindness to bring the kin-dom of Heaven here among us. From the moment that seemed to be our greatest defeat, the power of life went forth so all might live God. Our faith arose from an empty tomb, the most unlikely place for the seed to take root. The generosity of Christ and our Father guided us to the tomb that morning. It did not wait for a better time or for a crowd ready to receive it. The seed grew in the darkness so we might feed our souls from the fruit of the Tree of Life.

Creation itself lavishes us with its goodness, so we might all be blessed by grace. Earth does not withhold her gifts, but pours them forth in trust that life knows what to do with her abundance.

Let us restore our trust in steadfast love, which is the life of the kin-dom. When we offer what we have without waiting for it to be enough and without grasping at what it becomes after we have released it, healing flows like water.

Let us heal our souls by learning that the kin-dom does not require our gifts to be significant or impressive before they can plant the seed of the Tree of Life. The small gifts of the generous accumulate, tending the soil of the world until all is restored.

1

Matthew 13:31-32

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Twenty years of Buddhist silence, Pagan earth-wisdom, Christian mysticism, and the Four Paths of Creation Spirituality distilled into a primer for the living journey. Creation’s Paths: A Creation Spirituality Primer, foreword by Matthew Fox.

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The Covenant Made Flesh- The Kin-dom Embodied in the World

The forty-second saying of the living Christ as spoken by Mary Magdalene:

When you behold the pillars of the temple, do you think they are the covenant? Of course not. Even Boaz and Jachin reminded us that in Him is strength that He will establish, but they were not the covenant. Neither marble nor copper can contain the power of the covenant. It is not the priesthood, nor the priests, nor the teachers. It is not the seats they claim nor the titles they take. The living covenant can never be written into a rigid and unchanging form. Its laws are love and liberation, both defy control and must themselves be lived. We guard life and the living; the covenant guards itself. It is not the cup that must be used no matter how chipped and cracked it becomes. It is the heart that chooses the cup, the spirit in which it is filled, and the relationship that shares it. If the covenant becomes an empty cup on an altar to be worshipped, the Spirit has departed.

Just as the Word became flesh and walked among us, so too must the covenant become flesh in us. If it is words spoken but not lived, they are dead. The kin-dom is not coming, it is here, now, among us. We must not wait for the kin-dom, or hope that it will one day come. This is like standing in the hot sun, next to a shadow, hoping that soon the shade will come and relieve us from the heat. Step into the shelter and take refuge in it. Why would you point to the shade and promise people it will come one day instead of encouraging them to walk the way to shelter? The covenant is our guide to the refuge of grace.

The kin-dom is among us, here and now.

The covenant is alive in the world. It is not a longing we reach for, nor an order enforced by those in power. The house of prayer is the people who gather to pray; a house of study, those who study; a house of justice, those who do justice.

The kin-dom is not coming. It is here wherever two or three gather in the refuge of the Word. Where life is fostered, the covenant lives. It lives in the balance of giving and receiving that we are called to. Justice, mercy, and a steady heart are the signs that the covenant is alive through the people.

At the empty tomb, I thought I saw a gardener, before I realized it was the living Christ, who is the gardener of the world. He tends the vine through us. We are here to grow and foster life. In this world, we are the living covenant embodying the grace of God in Christ every day.

The foundation of the kin-dom is the covenant’s journey from the heart of God through the ground beneath our feet. We are healed when we stop waiting for the kin-dom to descend from the clouds; it is rising from the soil beneath our feet. In the daily acts of giving and receiving, we make it visible to all the world.

As we live in the covenant, our souls are repaired as we heal the distance between what we believe and how we live. The world is not repaired from above, but from within. A community that lives love and liberation in every relationship and every act of faithfulness who refuses to wait for a distant spring when the Spirit is breathing now.

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You left the institution but not the longing. Creation’s Paths: A Creation Spirituality Primer is for everyone who still feels the sacred moving through the world and wants a language worthy of that feeling.

The Covenant at Its Root- The Sacred Yes at the Center of All Things

The forty-first saying of the Living Christ as spoken by Mary Magdalene:

Blessed is the Light that shines within our spirit and the Word that whispers in our heart. If we only listen to this voice, we cover our eyes so we cannot see the Glory and Presence of God all around us. The testimony of our heart must greet the witness of others. In the dance between them, the truth resides. If the covenant prevents people from talking to others within or those beyond the community, it is not the covenant of love and liberation. Our covenant does not exist to serve itself alone, but to be a blessing to all life. If our hearts fold into themselves, then the Word, Glory, and Presence cannot flow out to bring life to all.

Our covenant is deep, rooted in the Spirit and the land. When those roots are tended while the vine withers, the whole plant suffers. The covenant does not demand, it offers, and it asks. It gives life. It does not consume it.

Send your roots deep into our foundation, so you will no longer practice the covenant, because you are the covenant. No longer do we agree to the work, or maintain the covenant with effort. It breathes in all we do. It shapes every experience. It flows through our giving and receiving unseen and unheard, like the breath.

We walk together with the Divine and our testimony as we circle within the song of life. Our righteousness is not a crown, but our nature as a branch of the vine.

Return to the knowing that was within you before you sought to name it.

Recover the living wisdom at the root of the covenant that will outlive every word and language. We are healed as we grow from the ground of being. Our covenant is not created, earned, or maintained. It is lived. It is the bond between the Holy and all that is.

Let us heal our souls in the knowledge that we are held in the heart of creation. May our communities mend the world by inviting all into the dance that has no end around the roots of creation, so all may join in the ever-new creation of the world.

Let our word be:
I have seen.
I am held.
The world is a blessing.
Go and be this blessing to all.

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You left the institution but not the longing. Creation’s Paths: A Creation Spirituality Primer is for everyone who still feels the sacred moving through the world and wants a language worthy of that feeling.

Ascension, The Covenant That Receives, Humility as the Heart of the Bond

Forty days after the resurrection, Jesus appeared to his brother James and then to the apostles.1 He walked with them as far as Bethany. There he lifted up his hands to pray, and blessed them.

And it happened, while he was blessing them, he began to separate from them and was being carried up into heaven.

Two of the Holy Ones stood with them and blessed them.

Then the apostles returned to Jerusalem.2

Mary Magdalene stood before James, the brother of Jesus, and the apostles.

The fortieth saying of the living Christ, as spoken by Mary Magdalene:

Christ has gone to the Father, but the Living Word is still with us. Death could not swallow the Word. The Presence has always been with us. The Glory revealed the risen Christ to me and the women, and I bore the message to you.

We are one in him. He is the vine and we are branches. We love one another as he loves us, and we love our neighbors as ourselves. Let us love God with all our hearts, our minds, and our spirits.

We cannot lose our hearts now. The Living Word is always with us, calling us to the Way. Our feet cannot leave the ground. A vine uprooted from the soil collapses and falls. Our offerings are a blessing for all, not a collection for a few. They are not a treasure hoarded in a jar. Our own spirit, our own sight, and the word given to each of us are our own to offer, but not for the community to swallow up. Do not sit and listen, waiting so long and so quietly that you forget how to speak the Living Word yourself. We are called not only to have ears to hear and eyes to see, but mouths to speak and hands to act.

The Covenant of the Way does not rest on any one person’s shoulders. It is shared among all who walk the Way. We give and we receive. It is a blessing to take care of the community, and a blessing to be taken care of by the community. We care for one another as the Holy One takes care of all. The covenant thrives as we take care of one another.

Receptive faithfulness is our partner in the covenant. With her we learn not to push on, only giving, and guarding the borders of the kin-dom that do not exist. She teaches us to open our hands so we might receive the gifts we did not bring ourselves. The Holy One overflows into the world through us.

Let humility be our heart because it does not forget to give or to receive. Our covenant is not maintained through sacrifice and groveling prayer. We are called by Christ to be the friends of God, and friends do not act this way. Our covenant is lived with open attention. Our eyes are open so we are present to what our relationships are actually doing, rather than what we are expected or commanded to do.

We are the disciples at the feet of our teacher, the Living Word who speaks in the silence after prayer. Our souls yield to the power of the covenant to reshape us through trust, not resistance.

Open your hands and let the covenant give back to you.

Christ restored the willingness to accept grace into the covenant. We learn to receive without grasping or falling down before the light, allowing our relationships to teach us what we could never learn from persistence alone.

Let us heal our souls through these relationships, receiving and learning that humility is not weakness, but the opening through which the deepest gifts arrive. The kin-dom cannot be built by givers alone. Receive what comes to you through others with reverence and a thankful heart, and do not resist the change it brings. This is how the kin-dom restores the world.

To receive well is as holy as to give well.

2

Luke 24:50-53; Acts 1:3-12

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The oak knows. The well knows. The land under your feet has always been the first teacher. Creation’s Paths: A Creation Spirituality Primer gives that knowing a companion for the journey.

The Covenant That Persists- Faithfulness Across the Long Dark

The thirty-ninth saying of the living Christ:

Maintain the covenant out of love, not because you cannot let it go. If grace dries up, and life is stolen from you, let it go. God is not a tyrant whose relentless demand compels people forward to the point of exhaustion and death. Such is the work of the adversary or a god crafted in the image of the one speaking. The wellspring of life does not steal life from the world. It pours life into the world. Faithfulness is not a punishment. The covenant cannot survive if it doesn’t carry anything worth receiving.

If the heart submits to the darkness, the covenant is abandoned when it most needs to be held. Fear or the silence breaks the bonds in the still of the night before the dawning sun. The heart does not wait to be renewed; instead, it runs from the sun so it cannot see its own faithlessness. It runs to the caves until the night falls again so that the sun cannot reveal how much life has been lost.

Silence purifies the heart. Darkness consumes it.

Faithful perseverance does not keep the covenant with gritted teeth. It roots itself deep in the Holy One. The work is worth the cost of keeping the covenant. The beauty of the covenant purifies the will. It does not compel persistence, but offers the choice to remain through every season of trouble.

To honor yourself and God, let not your will to continue overwhelm your ability to yield to the Spirit. Faithfulness is real and love can be costly, but it never coerces, nor is it self-destructive. The covenant is a lamp in the darkness, not a burden added to your weight.

Holy persistence is an act of living tradition. It is the community standing through the ages, hand in hand for generations, who tended the fire of the Divine through exile, persecution, and silence. It is the witness of all who trusted that what they carried was worth the cost of carrying it.

Hold the covenant through the night and trust the dawn will come.

Life is honored when the steady rhythm of the covenant does not collapse into compulsion. When a shadow is cast over the community or the soul, love is not abandoned but is actively chosen. Trust that love and liberation can endure the dark night.

When you learn to hold the covenant firmly through the storms and the silences of the world without gripping it so tightly it cannot breathe, the soul is healed. The kin-dom is built not only by those initiated or celebrated, but by those who remain faithful through the dark times, the world is restored. When nothing appears to be happening, faith in love keeps the covenant alive.

When you can say: ‘Not my will but yours,’ and in that surrender, the covenant is kept and the world is repaired.

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Matthew Fox calls it 1+1=3: one tradition meeting one life makes a third thing no one expected. Creation’s Paths: A Creation Spirituality Primer is that third thing and an invitation to find yours.

Some people pray to a God they no longer believe in because they have not yet found language for the God they do. Creation’s Paths: A Creation Spirituality Primer is that language, grown from twenty years of walking the Four Paths.

.Creation’s Paths is a Christopagan Creation Spirituality community rooted in the conviction that creation is original blessing, not original sin. If this episode found you at the right moment, you are welcome here.

New to Creation’s Paths? Start here: https://www.creationspaths.com/p/start-here

The book: Creation’s Paths: A Creation Spirituality Primer https://www.amazon.com/dp/1972869019

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0:00 We Forgot That We Belong to One Another
1:53 Druid Priest of Bridget, Sous-Chef to the Dagda
3:34 Try Pulling Yourself Up by Your Bootstraps
6:09 Edison Had Four Hundred Engineers
9:04 Which Word Would You Erase from English?
11:05 The Whole Phrase We Forgot
13:16 The Church That Laid Hands on Us (Via Positiva)
19:27 Habit, Not Malice (Via Negativa)
29:04 Thirty-Six Hidden Ones Hold the World (Via Creativa)
32:53 You Were Robbing Them of Giving
38:04 Meritocracy Was a Dystopian Satire (Via Transformativa)
41:24 Charity Is Not Covenant
42:51 How Rage Hurts the Cause It Loves
44:59 Everyone Was Welcome There
46:22 Those Who Wait to Deserve Will Never Be Worthy
47:31 A Prayer to Saint Zacchaeus

The Covenant That Reveals- Beauty at the Heart of the Bond

The thirty-eighth saying of the Living Christ:

Do not inscribe the covenant in such beautiful letters that you cannot find their meaning anymore. Its ground is not cultivated by harmony alone, but through the practice of honesty. A lovely garden is a wonder to behold, but if no garden produces fruit, life cannot be sustained. Beauty is a way of living within the covenant, not a way of controlling it.

Do not rob the covenant of its natural beauty, rendering it merely useful, but without joy. While it teaches endurance and shows the way clearly, if it is not allowed to open like a bud to bring delight to the heart or revelation to the spirit, it is like tilling a field with a hammer. A closed heart is unwilling to offer the vulnerability that beauty requires. Let the covenant shine, not just survive.

Mutual revelation shines from the covenant and creates the soul and world anew. It keeps its hands open, allowing it to hold without grasping. The blessings of the covenant do not flood out, and they are not withheld. They live with the people, vibrant, watchful, and luminous, making holy ground where giving and receiving are one. This reciprocity is honored, and the relationship grows into one vine made strong from its many branches.

The covenant is a form of mutual seeing. Each person becomes more fully themselves through freedom, love, and justice. They are not consumed or diminished by it. Relationships should not blur who you are, but set you alight so the community can grow stronger from them. The face of the Holy One reflects from one another so all may see the presence of the One.

This covenant is a way of beholding.
It teaches how
to behold and be beheld,
to hold and be held,
without grasping or pretense.

The covenant is restored when its beauty and transparency are opened for all. It teaches genuine seeing, where both giving and receiving are honored. These relationships themselves become a mirror of the Holy.

Heal your soul by opening the windows of your heart to joy and mutual revelation. The covenant is not a building to be maintained; it is a relationship lived with full watchfulness. A community that comes together in beauty and strength heals the world through its lasting and life-giving dwellings for the Spirit.

The covenant that reveals is the one that redeems.
To be truly seen is to begin to see yourself through the eyes of love.

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Viriditas. The greening power. Hildegard knew it. The forest knows it. Creation’s Paths: A Creation Spirituality Primer is for everyone who has ever felt the divine moving through roots and rain and refused to call that feeling anything less than holy.