The Creative Act of Repentance
“The Healing of Release”
Transformation happens when our learning is infused with intentional processes of becoming.
Each week, following an ICN article, we offer invitations into deeper becoming—spiritual practices, ways of engagement, and opportunities for life integration. This rhythm seeks to intensify our mystical practice, deepen our embodied engagement, and call forth greater transformation in ourselves, our communities, and the world—the I, the We, and the All.
IF YOU MISSED IT LAST WEEK, WE ENCOURAGE YOU TO FIRST READ THE ARTICLE INFORMING THESE PROCESSES: “Christianity Repents”
We invite you to consciously and intentionally engage in the following processes for your personal lives, WeSpace groups or other spiritual communities, and global participation.
Evolving Our Participation in Repentance
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An Invitation to Reflection with Sacred Turning
How we hold the power of self-reflection in our own lives can be an act of service and love.
Words like “repent” and “confess” can be quite loaded for many, especially for those of us who’ve come up through traditional religion. I use them intentionally though, as they carry a power and force—a dedication and intensity we may want to consider reintegrating. They can be no longer laden with shame or self-punishment but rather about the sacred movement of love—a vital turning toward greater wholeness.
And it can be a creative act—a movement arising from deep within, inviting us into greater freedom and new discoveries. Rather than giving our energy to what limits, blocks, or keeps us stuck, we can engage in sacred turning as a practice of repair, balance, and healing. In so doing, we restore the flow of life, making space for the creative force of divine love to move through us.
If “Christianity” repents, as we explored last week, what is my response? What is my part in it?
Collective repentance extends beyond the personal. Here, it involves even an entire spiritual and religious tradition. To the degree we identify with or have been shaped by that tradition, we may feel resonance with the call to be a part of the larger turning, to see our own part in it. Or we may feel detached or set apart, seeing the need for repentance as something those religious “Christian” folks need to do to get with the program.
Some of us may feel we have already turned a sacred corner in these ways. If so, we can celebrate and honor the work we have been blessed to receive and partake in. But we don’t want to become smug or self-congratulatory—after all, transformation is to some extent an act of grace, and “we have all been there” in one way or another. It’s easy to “other” those we don’t identify with and write off what we don’t feel we are an active part of anymore. We must be careful not to weaponize this process toward ourselves or others, lest we be condemning, critical, shaming, or excluding, either to others or ourselves.
While we may not feel the need to personally identify with the tradition nor the ways Christianity has self-insulated, making it all about itself, we may still choose to look at ourselves for both the impact the traditional church experience may have had on us and how we may be called to our own sacred turning.
How have I acted in ways that miss the mark and need to turn?
How might I need to engage in repentance myself for repair and healing?
It might be in somewhat similar ways or something entirely different. Are we willing to look in the mirror?
As we focus on the evolution and transformation of Christianity, the world, and ourselves, it’s easy to focus on what is emerging, and neglect (to some extent) the necessary ways we may need to release, turn from, let go, and even confess was keeps us attached to the past and limit our true freedom.
The following reflection questions are offered as a resource to aid into entering your own creative process of sacred turning:
Where in my life am I being invited into an act of sacred turning? Is there something I need to release, shift, or turn away from?
How have I, in my own life, been self-insulating? How have I overly made my life about me, my group, and my perspective? How can I release or turn from this?
Are there ways in which I am consciously or unconsciously resisting a call to evolution because of what I may need to let go that feels too costly, risky, or uncertain? Can I admit these to myself and/or others? Is there an invitation here to any kind of confession or process of release?
What are the new creative energies and possibilities I hope to see emerge from these acts of sacred turning?
WeCreating the Paths of Release & Renewal
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Engaging in a WeSpace Practice of Metanoia
Metanoia (μετάνοια) is the Greek word for repent, which literally means to “go beyond the mind.” If we move with this in a way that isn’t clouded by our transcendency bias, we can see it as an invitation to go deeper within, to integrate more fully into our wholeness of being.
We move beyond the mind and into a more full-body, relational, and participatory transformation.
We move beyond guilt and into sacred turnings that are freeing, releasing us into greater self-recognition and gracious invitation.
We move beyond individualism into a WeCreating resurrection of new being, so much bigger than our small, self-critical evaluations and judgments.
And so repentance itself transforms from a moralistic rubric into a creative invitation full of hope and possibility.
In this spirit of engaging in repentance as a creative, communal invitation, here is a process that can be taken up by a WeSpace group, small group, or with a partner. Feel free to modify, adapt, and WeCreate however is right and fitting for your context and process.
Practice: WeSpace Metanoia
Begin by setting the intention to be with one another in trust and love throughout this process.
Open into a space of dedicated practice together, perhaps with a meditation to enter more fully into our awakened consciousness in our embodied being both personally and communally.
Then move into the WeSpace and a time of shared silence.
Step 1: Recognize – Opening to the Truth of Our Lives
Introduce the step:
In the silence, we can write down or hold inwardly what arises without moving into judgment, shame, strategies of fixing, or any other managing movement. Just allow what arises to be present in honesty and with self-compassion.
(pause)
Prompt: In this space of mutual presence and divine trust, we open to an arising of spiritual knowing within. We ask for the truth our lives to be revealed. We welcome in our awareness any action, any attitude, or any other area of our lives we need to recognize as a place asking for greater wholeness, for freeing release, for sacred renewal.
Step 2: Reveal – Confession as Sacred Unveiling, Acknowledged & Witnessed in Love
Introduce:
What we share we hold with grace, not in shame. We speak what we wish to turn away from in our lives, to let go of, which opens us to greater freedom and healing.
What is heard is received silently in our space of grace and mutual holding. We don’t dismiss or downplay, we don’t fault or judge. We simply acknowledge and witness in love. And we let it be fully felt and received in our shared field
(pause)
Prompt: We can now bring to light anything that has arisen that we need to express as an act of confession. Rather than a transaction of absolution, we hold our act of confession as a sacred unveiling. It is a humble revealing of what is ready to be seen, spoken, and released.
(after everyone who wants to has shared)
Step 3: Release – Expressions of Discharge & Letting Go
Introduce:
We can now move into a time of intentional release and letting go. We do this through any emerging rituals or embodied expression we wish to enact, discharging the energy and substance of what is ready to be released.
Tears are welcome. Dance, movement, or shaking is welcome. Deep breaths with strong exhales are welcome. Cries, groans, songs, laments are welcome. Any way of posture or expression is welcome here and now.
(pause)
Prompt: We can now move into our acts of release and letting go, discharging the energy and substance of what is ready to be released.
(After time has passed and expressions have settled)
We release all of this to God, to the earth, to the field of communal healing.
Step 4: Renewal – Commitments of Turning & Transformation
Introduce:
We may want to share an inward turning, a turning in relationship, a turning in action, a turning in patterns or habits, or any way to give voice to this shift of release and renewal in our lives.
We symbolize these turnings through a movement of turning now together. Let yourself express with your body any act that arises to represent the release, turning, or renewal as a physical representation of this shift. Any simple gesture or movement will suffice. We welcome these now.
(pause)
Prompt: We can now give voice to any expressions of commitment or intentions for going forward. We welcome our sacred turnings with our whole embodied being and our holy will.
(After time has passed and sharings have concluded, move to step five)
Step 5: Resurrection – Forgiveness & New Life
Prompt: We now hold up our hands to receive and participate in the communal field of forgiveness, not as bestowed from on high, but welcomed from the truth of our authentic and inner being within each one of us. And from within our shared communal body of Christ.
We welcome now reunion, renewal, and resurrection. We receive the ever-present reality of divine grace. We step into a new way of being and a new reality of resurrection together. We enter into life anew, in the flow of communal and cosmic becoming in transformation for ourselves, our neighbors, and the world.
Amen.
A Prayer with Integral Scripture
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A Living Offering of Holistic Repentance
The following offering is a translation/paraphrase of Romans 12:1-2 written down by Martha O'Hehir for the ICN Sunday gathering of February 23, 2025, and created in the spirit of the work of Paul Smith.
We invite you to pray with it as wholesome way of repentance,
a reminder that you are created perfect, good, and acceptable.
An embodied offering toward the future rather than focusing on the past.
A recitation of forgiveness through the renewal of our minds.
My precious friends, my fellow pilgrims,
I beg you please, not on your own effort alone,
but through the incredible mercy and strength of God-Being-You:
Present your material body (your very life)
on the altar of life, as a living sacrifice-
a body which is already holy,
and totally acceptable,
and very pleasing to God
(remember, you are a child of God,
a spark of the Divine,
the Light of the World).
This is your true offering and ideal way to worship.
Do not live by the conditioning of the world around you,
nor by the self-limiting beliefs that you have absorbed as your own.
Rather, BE TRANSFORMED by a CHANGE OF CONSCIOUSNESS, and in this way,
You will be able to test and decide for yourself and choose,
To truly know what God-Beyond-You has planted in you
as God-Being-You
for the sake of God-Beside-You.
Together, one and all, co-create (give flesh to, incarnate)
the good, pleasing, perfect will
of God-Who-Is-Love.
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