Spirituality

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.

from Our Community


Winding Path

After my assault, the first time I felt connected to myself again was making a Pomo style basket in a workshop with Corinne Pearce (https://corinepearce.com/). It’s notable to me that these crafts – cordage, basketweaving, all crafts to make something to carry and connect – also begin with something turning, or spinning asymmetrically to make symmetry. These processes also helped this out of balance rape survivor return to my center. Recently, I was spending time at a skillshare gathering hosted by Steph Rue (https://www.stephrue.com/fieldnotes/cordage-gathering), where she and friend Tanya Lieberman shared methods of spinning cordage from tule fiber in the… read more

On being one with

In the time when there was only one and longing did not exist it happened, I don’t know how, that one could not be one forever and so, one became two and with that becoming came, too, the gift of longing— the longing to be one or the longing to be the other. It is this latter longing  with which I am most familiar— a longing that speaks of a certain lack whose origin is no more known to me than the origin of the grace that now allows a sense  of unity I feel  within myself— which feeling does… read more

Aum Mani Padme Hum

Aum/Om – ॐ – The well known four part syllable meaning birth “oh”, life “ooommm”, death “mmmm”, and liberation silence – Represents the Rulers of creation Ma – म – First syllable for Jewel, symbolic for spiritual rewards – Represents the demigods Ni – णि – Second syllable for Jewel – Represents us humans Pad – प – First syllable for Lotus, symbolic for wisdom from muck – Represents animals in all their instinctual innocence Me – द्मे – Second syllable for Lotus – Represents “hungry ghosts” which are beings where “food turns to ash in their mouths” Hum/Hung –… read more