Embracing Our Sacred Evolutions
“The Path of Evolution” – image by Dalmo Mendonça
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 EVOLVES”
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.
“Differentiating, Integrating”
Living the Dance of Differentiation & Integration
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An Evolutionary Examen Practice for Reflection
We invite you into a process of conscious reflection, engaging not just your mind but your whole being in a spiritual practice of examen. Examen is a form of prayerful reflection, often at the end of the day, to foster self-awareness, gratitude, and discernment.
Here, we offer an examen for your journey of spiritual evolution. You can choose the period of time: the last few months, last year, or starting from a particular marker or catalyzing experience. Whatever still feels present with you now that may still need some further processing.
In our evolving journey, we move in the dance of differentiation and integration, not as an entirely linear process but a continual process of growth and healing.
🌀 Differentiation is the process of coming out of a stage of faith or place in our life that no longer serves our growth. Stepping out in courage, we leave behind old patterns, ideas, beliefs, communities, structures, or whatever else needs to be released to make space for who we are now becoming.
🌱 Integration is the process of making new by coming into greater wholeness. Crucially, this is both an inner process of re-welcoming and re-incorporating parts of ourselves, our past, and who we have been into who are becoming now, as well as weaving these together with new, emergent aspects of our being.
Evolution Examen Practice:
For this process, you can share in it through living dialogue with another or a group. You can also do it on your own, perhaps writing in a journal to aid in the reflection if that fits for you.
Opening Presencing –
Enter into holistic presence. Tune into each of your centers of spiritual knowing within, welcoming your whole being—as you are now, and as you have been before. If a word or brief expression comes reflective of your felt sense of presence, speak it aloud to yourself or to one another.
Living Reflection –
What have I been differentiating from in this season of life? How do I feel within in relation to what has been let go and what is still entangled in some way? Is there something waiting to still be released?
Stay with these reflections as long as you need.
When you’re ready, complete this part with an expression of gratitude for the ways you have grown and all you’ve been through.
Then turn toward the next part:
What has been integrating into who I am becoming now? What might be waiting to be re-welcomed into my inner being? What new emerging qualities, aspects, or capacities are shaping me now?
Stay with these reflections as long as you need. When you’re ready, complete this part with an expression of gratitude for all that you are still becoming and all that is yet to come.
Living Response –
Are there any intentions to make now in the dance of differentiation and integration? Any commitments or explorations to move toward in my evolving spiritual journey now? Any prayer of response?
Stay with these expressions of response as long as you need. When you’re ready, you might consider welcoming an embodied expression reflective of your response, which can also be wordless and welcomed in the moving. You may find it helpful to physically gesture in a way such as stepping forward, opening your arms, releasing something you’re holding, or any other intuitive movement.
Interweaving with All –
Our personal evolutions are always engaged, connected, and interwoven with the collective and the cosmic.
In your embodied awareness now, move beyond your personal sphere, feeling into your mystical interbeing. Welcome any particular interconnection that arises – or stay with a larger sense of the whole. Whatever is present in this wider field of We and All, let it emerge and interweave with the flow of evolution past, present, and future.
Closing Presencing –
Speak a word or phrase that reflects your presence now having attended to this process. It could be something like “I am here in my becoming” or “We are being woven into wholeness.”
Let your expression be an act of integration, absorbing and gratitude for all that has been present and alive in this process.
Welcoming the Three Faces of God
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An Opening Practice of Divine Encounter
If the Three Faces of God is a new framework, theology, or understanding of God for you, we invite you to welcome the experience of engaging with God-Being-Us, God-Beside-Us, and God-Beyond-Us through this guided practice:
The creative interflow of the Three Faces of God dynamizes our WeCreating as we holistically integrate our experience of the divine with our enlivened presence and creative becoming.
May your experience with each of these faces empower and enliven your WeCreating with God and with others.
“Three Faces of God Triptych”
WeCreating Living Rituals of Christian Evolution
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Three Faces of God in Prayer & Song
In our evolving faith journey, whether within Christianity or beyond, we often find that previous expressions and forms of traditional spiritual ritual don’t quite resonate the way they used to. We find that we need to differentiate in some way, yet also feel a need to integrate and draw upon the powerful channels and acts rooted in years and centuries of faith worship and devotion. These forms have created deep spiritual grooves of connection to God, which can sometimes continue to serve or at times keep us stuck in the rut of familiarity—which can stifle creativity.
In our journey of differentiation and integration, we rediscover new forms that serve us and one another. We can always initiate new personal responses in embodied and creative ways—we might call these “lean rituals,” as they are not as much rooted or overburden with past forms and connections.
And we can also WeCreate new rituals of evolving faith expression together. There are countless possibilities here, from evolving our participation with the sacraments, to forms of meditation, prayer, worship, and more. We explore and create these together in the ICN community.
Here are two forms that Paul Smith created, along with people in his church, related to the three faces of God:
Signing the Three Faces of God
The sign of the cross has been a traditional embodied prayer ritual in Christianity for centuries. As a physical gesture, it is an act of prayer, presencing oneself to God through a movement representing the cross over one’s heart or forehead.
Signing the three faces can be an expression of an embodied prayer ritual reflecting evolving Christianity. Through it, we presence not only to the cross, but to the living resurrection of God present within, beside, and beyond us.
Here are the actions, along with words you might pray alongside each gesture (which can also be changed to plural):
Singing the Three Faces of God
Another embodied expression of moving with the Three Faces of God is through singing. The following song, set to the tune of Finlandia, is an evolved Christian hymn we can sing as a worshipful expression of our creative participation in loving evolution with each of the faces of God.
God in Three Dimensions
Infinite God, beyond our comprehension
In whom we are, and live and move.
O Divine Mystery, O vast Creator,
Infinite God, we stand in awe of you.
O Divine Mystery, O vast Creator,
Infinite God, we stand in awe of you.
Intimate God, each day you're always with us.
Emmanuel, a God who's always there.
Jesus, our guide, our friend and our model,
Intimate God, we offer praise to you.
Jesus, our guide, our friend and our model,
Intimate God, we offer praise to you.
O Inner God, within us as our truest self,
Energy cosmic, light divine.
We are your shining light to the whole world;
O inner God we now give thanks to you,
We are your shining light to the whole world;
O inner God, we now give thanks to you.
O God, revealed in three dimensions
As divine mystery, friend and light.
You're ever-present, with us as we journey,
Infinite, intimate and inner God.
You're ever-present, with us as we journey,
Infinite, intimate, and inner God.
Here is a video of this hymn being sung at Broadway Church, where Paul Smith pastored for 49 years:
“I, We, All” – image by Dalmo Mendonça
All Images are open-source, used with permission, or created by ICN