Blogs

Editor's note: Rev. Dr. Brenda Buckwell is a Christian spiritual director, life coach and educator. This is her strategy for building contemplative bridges between generations.

Is intergenerational spiritual formation possible in the 21st century?    

Remember the phrase “It takes a village to raise a child?” Has the notion of village become lost in our contemporary culture? When I look around me, I see individuals struggling. People in the United States - where I make my home - pour out large amounts of energy striving to make ends meet while keeping stability in the household and completing daily to-do lists. Individualism looms as a dominant pattern for obtaining job satisfaction, self-worth, and bolstering a sense of accomplishment and knowledge through crowd-sourcing posted on social media. Often this preferred stance of the “self-made” person drives our personal seeking for God - or the ground of all being - overlooking generational wisdom.

Intergenerational faith formation has the potential to gift an individualized nation that is divided among race, socio-economic and political lines by creating villages. “Re-villaging” community creates opportunity for spiritual kinship to thrive through creativity, storytelling and mentoring. This leads to an embodied faith that is easily shared between generations and through stages of development.

Editor's note - Matt Whitney is an artist. If you've noticed the wonderful drawings in our publications, he's the one guiding the pencil. (There's one of his creations just below.) A true Renaissance man, Matt engages in many pursuits. As SDI's Visual Media and Technology Coordinator, he launched our podcast* this year. This post is his introduction to SDI Encounters, a free source of inspiration that we hope will become a gateway for people to discover spiritual companionship and share in our amazing community of listeners.

In my work at Spiritual Directors International (SDI) – I’m now recording and hosting a weekly podcast called SDI Encounters.

Editor's note: Jan Lundy and Jeanette Banashak will present our new 4-part webinar series "Spiritual Companionship for the Spiritually Independent" starting March 28, 2019. Here, she outlines her own journey to spiritual independence.

      In recent years, I have come to claim myself as a “spiritually independent” person, not by birth    , but by choice  ; someone who has followed her own “yellow brick road” to the divine. This has not been an easy path to walk especially when you’ve been raised and work in a conservatively Christian part of the world. Upon first meeting, a common query from people in my area is “Which church do you go to?”, for one is often identified by church or parish.

In the past when this question was asked, I’d predictably dodge it by saying, “I’m more of an ecumenical type person,” which would leave them nodding but confused. Because my spiritual life became eclectic and did not follow the unspoken “rules of belonging,” I took to hiding it; practicing and believing in a spiritual closet of my own making out of fear of being judged and found lacking. 

With spiritual maturity, I became braver, and when asked about my religious identity might say, “I have Christian roots and Buddhist wings.” But I revealed myself hesitantly, only to a select few, and not without anxiety.

With a history dating back to somewhere between 40,000 and 65,000 years, the Australian indigenous peoples represent the oldest continuing culture in the world.

The dream for this journey began several years ago with a conversation between Kristen Hobby and Diane Millis.  It was then that an idea formed to co-lead a journey to the Cairns area and to share with SDI members from around the globe, the wisdom, insights and gifts of the indigenous people. There is so much to be learned from them about living in harmony and modeling deep relationships with each other, the natural world and the transcendent.