As someone with a soulful approach to life, but who never really thought of themselves as a religious person; and as someone who tends to shy away from belonging to anything (apart from this beautiful natural world), I have found myself the bearer of a new definition, that of being an ordained interfaith minister. I’m now officially a Reverend.
And that’s taking a little getting used to. But I’m loving the inner alchemy that’s happening for me at the moment as I go through this ‘settling in’ process.
And what’s more you see, I love words. I love writing, and as such this can make me fumble and find myself at a loss as I seek to get hold of the perfect words to describe something. And this something is me as a freshly minted interfaith minister.
What does being an interfaith minister mean to me, a woman who has always found her spiritual sustenance in Nature? Why did I go on this two year interfaith seminary training with the OneSpirit Interfaith Foundation in the UK?
Well the answer has to do with things like fluency, connection, soul path, lineage and good old fashioned curiosity. It’s about creating a sense of spiritual ecology and how that might help with self-care in a changing world. It’s about what the dying have shown me about spiritual peace, and dilemma, at the end of life.
It helped to speak some of this out loud and so this episode of The Soul Garden is a poke and prod at the wondering about what an interfaith minister is.
My heartSfelt thanks to my tutors and fellow cohort at OneSpirit for this two year journey. And a deep bow of gratitude to the poet Mary Oliver for always managing to have the right words, when one can’t find them oneself.
What does being an Interfaith Minister mean?