We often separate organizations and activities as secular or religious, creating a kind of split life in which our spiritual natures are hidden away in most environments. This is often done to avoid conflict, not trusting our ability to interact with open spirituality when we come from different beliefs, faith traditions, and cultures. The Braided Bridge Community encourages an approach to life and relationship that tends to mind, body and spirit and is grounded in love.
In some interfaith settings, participants look for what is general to all faiths and stay within those boundaries. We would like, rather, to bring the richness of the specificity of our different spiritual languages -their words, stories, people, images, and music -into a space where they can be explored and honored, even when they are different from what others in the group might have learned.
Braided Bridge is presently in its infancy and we do not have a broad base of people from which to draw diverse spiritual perspective at this time. We invite people who would like to take part in mutual sharing and exploration to join us and help us develop this. In the meantime, we offer perspectives from our present members.
Reflections, Poems, and Prayers
Following are a few prayers and reflections by Kim Vanderheiden. We will be adding poems by Bill Denham soon, and inviting other members of our community to add their contributions.
Take a Breath – a poem and meditation on breathing with people all over the world in every life situation.
Disarmament Prayer – originally written for the Catholic Pax Christi community to address nuclear disarmament, this prayer is also about complete disarmament among all people in all forms.
Thanksgiving Prayer – inspired by Anne Symmens-Bucher of Canticle Farm who tells us that all is blessed and broken.
Container Prayer – a prayer written from the reflections of meditators of the Hesed Community.
Spiritual Art
We will be sharing spiritual art for meditation and reflection soon. We are presently gathering the material from this section from our community. If you would like to participate, please let us know.
Meditation Series on Justice
We are seeking team to plan and implement a regular live meditation series incorporating a justice reading, meditation time, and shared reflection time. If you would like to help us put this together, please reach out.