About Our New Liturgy

Our New Liturgy, conceived in the shadow of the COVID-19 pandemic, the senseless murders of Black men and women at the hands of the police, great social and political unrest, global climate crises, and economic uncertainty, seeks to re-imagine spiritual community for this particular moment in history. We meet our anxiety and uncertainty with a desire to imagine a better way to be human together.

We realize this darkness could be the beginning of that better way.

We hear Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) cry out that a return to normalcy is a return to white supremacy and oppression. (@ibramxk) We will not return to the oppression of our family.

We hear our LGBTQIA+ family rightfully demand full inclusion and affirmation in spaces of faith and social life. (@sydneyhatmaker) We will not return them to the margins.

We hear the cries of poor and low-income people, raising the richness of their voices and bodies in the face of economic injustice. (@poorpeoplescampaign) We will not return them to poverty.

We bring the fullness of our hope, grief, and imagination to the landscape of our future. We will not simply wish for a world of justice, beauty, and peace. We will build it.

• We seek to create a community informed by the best of the faith and spiritual traditions that shaped us. We invite those of all faith backgrounds to honestly investigate and carefully integrate old teachings into new ways of being. We know these spaces have also caused great harm, and invite you to leave behind what has hurt you. We honor your past.

• We seek to create a community rooted in contemplation. Our gatherings, posts, and conversations will invite you to a deeper contemplative life, offering silent and meditative practices from various faith and spiritual lineages. We know there is more than one path, more than one understanding, more than one way to experience the Divine. We honor these many paths.

• We seek to create a community sustained by spiritual practice. We draw on Tradition and Ceremony, music and poetry, text and texture, stillness and embodied movement in our practices. Because we are in the midst of a pandemic where gathering in person is not an option for most of us, we will re-imagine what gathering looks like until we can meet again.

• We seek to create a community moving toward collective liberation. Our Tradition, Contemplation, and Practice mean little if we keep them to ourselves. We commit to rise to the opportunity of this moment in our lives. We commit to be “beacons of peace, fearless carriers of respect, tellers of truth, voices for justice, and protectors of those who are vulnerable or targeted.” (@Jackkornfield)