‘Sustainable spirituality’ according to Google!

Before launching into a long exposition of my new phrase, Sustainable Spirituality, I thought it might be nice to google the term and see what turns up.  As is happens, there are quite a few people using the term!  They come from a variety of backgrounds and use the same phrase with different shades of meaning.  Here are some interesting examples:

Sustainable Spirituality:  A community wiki-site which is the centre of ‘a movement dedicated to cultivating the interior attitudes and external actions which will make our world a more livable and beautiful place in accordance with the vision of the Gospel.’  Specifically, they are promoting what they call ‘ecotheology in faith and practice’ from a Christian perspective.

Also from a Christian base is this post from the ‘Mustard Seed Associates’, an online network and non-profit based in Seattle.  It says that they are ‘designing a new Celtic Monastic Community that would become both a new model of highly sustainable, rural living, and a new model of semi-monastic community deeply grounded in Celtic Christian spirituality that reflects a love of God, of neighbor and of God’s good creation.’  That was a while ago, and I’d like to find out how they are doing!

Next up is ‘Peeling a Pomegranate‘, a blog by someone named Ketzirah.  In this post she connects our spiritual lives to the cyclical processes of nature.  She contrasts this understanding with our frequent tendency to look at life in terms of a linear progression through time.  Definitely worth reading, even if you aren’t familiar with ‘Earth-based Magickal Judaism’.  :)

‘Spirituality for the 21st Century’ is the title of an audio interview with Matthew Fox, an Episcopal priest.  I haven’t listened to it yet.  But a quick bio search reveals that he is ‘an exponent of Creation Spirituality, a movement grounded in the mystical philosophies of medieval visionaries Hildegard of Bingen, Thomas Aquinas, Meister Eckhart and Nicholas of Cusa.’  Sounds good to me…

‘Sustainable Spirituality, A Natural Evolution’ is the title of this article, which is an interview with someone called Samuel Bonder.  He argues against a ‘spirit/matter split’, something that happens when we separate our lives into spiritual and non-spiritual categories.  I like a lot of what he says, but am somewhat put off by his self-help tone, not to mention trademarked spiritual exercises (!)

Thanks Emi and Carl for your comments on the previous post, which I am still digesting.  Figuring out what sustainable spirituality means is proving to be a lot of fun:  it is helping me shape a narrative for the past couple of years of my life, and also define what my priorities will be for the next.  One day at a time…