Somehow during Christmas I had the rare opportunity to visit Denmark and spend 10 days with my favorite Danish family—the Filtenborg Jensens. During my stay we visited a museum where, thanks to Mille, now friend and former exchange student, I stumbled onto a children’s book she translated as Travel to God. In this book a young boy, a thankful blade of grass and an angry duck decide they want to travel to God to say thanks. Unfortunately, as of today, I don’t know what happens on their journey because Mille was not able to finish translating the book before I left. (She is, however, hard at work on it again.) As this book, with it’s riveting illustrations by Otto Dickmeiss, sits on my desk I sometimes stop during my day’s work and just flip through the pages wondering what could possibly happen to the boy, the blade and the duck. Recently, this book, as I understand it, has become metaphor for how I think of Trinity’s Place. Perhaps the obvious part of this metaphor is that it does feel like, to me, we are all on this adventurous spiritual journey to God where for the time being we just don’t know the ending.

The non-obvious part of this metaphor speaks to how Trinity’s Place “travels to God” physically.

You see we are not a people who believes in purchasing property for our gatherings. Since the beginning, when Brian and I first started dreaming about what we now understand to be a Spirit collective we didn’t see a point in the expense of physical space. Instead, we started out meeting in my home over in Five Points. When we could no longer meet there, we met at Crocker’s Mark gallery in downtown Raleigh. And when we outgrew the space both in number and in our dreams for sharing a full meal and intentional time with our children we moved with Love Wins to where we are today—1116 N. Blount Street where our lease ends in June. Hillyer Memorial Christian Church gifted Love Wins new space in a 3-story house on West Jones St. And Trinity’s Place now has the opportunity to share this space with Love Wins. This Sunday will explore and imagine how we do just that. So we will again embark on the physical journey to God for which I remain grateful. Because as I have come to learn—let’s be clear—sometimes traveling does make me weary—it really isn’t the physical space that matters. But what we do in the space. And what we’ve done in every space, every time we’ve met is communion—or as we call it, share the meal. So if you too are a weary traveler (there are just so many journeys in life that can tire) I hope you will come and share the meal with new friends at Trinity’s Place.

As Tim Coon’s says in our favorite communion song:

…our plates are full, we are filled for today,

open doors, swing the gates, the tables set to give away…

No matter where you find us, the table’s set and there is plenty of bread and juice for all weary travelers along the way.

This Sunday the Trinity’s Place Spirit Collective is meeting at 707 West Jones St. @ 5 p.m. If you are looking for a place to pause and consider a new telling of the Easter story please stop by.

The 13th-century Dominican mystic preacher, Meister Eckhart, once asked:

What is my name?
What is your name?
What is God’s name?

He answered his questions this way:

Our name is: That we must be born.
The Creator’s name is: To bear.
He then said: The soul alone among all creation is generative like God is. We are all meant to be mothers of God.

What good is it for me that Christ was born a thousand years ago in Bethlehem, if he is not born today in our own time?

Sisters and brothers: We are living on a hinge of history. As we celebrate the advent of an impoverished, immigrating God-bearingmother and husband, and their problematic,poverty-crushing, prophesied baby in a manger, let us thus be awake to the birth pangs of God being born again in the womb of us: Our bodies, our lives, our communities, and our moment in time. Our survival as a species and an ecosystem demands that we become the answer to our prayers, and see ourselves as the incarnations of Christ that we are. As Meister Eckhart also reflected:

Jesus might have said, “I became human for you. If you do not become God for me, you wrong me.”

Move Your Body

Ease Your Mind

Grow Your Heart

Taste God!

Join us at Trinity’s Place as we invite our favorite Jesus-y Shamanic Yogi, George Craig McMillian – aka Kirantana - to Raleigh for a catalytic weekend of movement and rhythm, singing and chant, prayer and yoga – all to cultivate a direct and collective dance with the Divine!

Let’s face it…this is big tent revival for the postmodern Christian mystic in us all.

• When: Thursday evening, September 29th through Saturday afternoon, October 1st
• Times: Thursday & Friday: 6:00pm – 9:00pm; Saturday: 10am – 3pm (with lunch break)
• Where: Trinity’s Place Rec Room:  1116 N. Blount St. in the Hope Elementary Charter school building in Raleigh’s Mordecai neighborhood.
• Bring: A mat, towel, water, and a sense of PLAY!
• Cost: Suggestion donation – $50

About Kirantana: Kir (as he’s often called) was a child of the International Dharma Bum movement of the early 60’s and 70’s.   He lived on the fringes of society for over 3 decades, studying with many of the premiere spiritual, meditation, and martial arts masters on the planet… that is when he wasn’t breaking out of the ashrams to go play rock music in local pubs! While pursuing his overtly spiritual interests, Kir was also a lifelong musician with a great love for just about every style on the planet.  Over the years he took his studies to the highest degrees, accumulated an impressive amount of skills and titles in Eastern spiritual practices, while still remaining essentially Christian, and identifying his Guru as Jesus.

Kir’s life story reads like a James A. Michener adventure novel…from body guard to the head of the Sikh religion…studying personally with the Dalai Lama… teaching kundalini yoga for stress control to soldiers on the front lines in war zones…receiving UN grants to create inter-faith kundalini ceremonies for conflict resolution in Sarajevo during the Bosnian war…helping organize groups of students to overthrow their governments in at least two places where those governments no longer exist, and many other hair-raising assignments that don’t get put on the records…all the time grabbing any musician he could find to jam with whereever he was.

After returning to America, Kir’s mother, father, and elder brother passed away within a year of each other.  He created a small retreat center in Mississippi, and retired again from the world to enter into several years of seclusion.  It was out of that silence that he put his two greatest loves together…music and meditation, and the double CD  Salvation was born.  After a week as the unofficial spiritual director of the Wild Goose Festival this summer, he returned home and began co-facilitating the Wonderbox Mystery School in Memphis with Michael Graber. It is this school of kinetic wisdom and liquid light that Kir brings us a taste of in Raleigh – inviting us to join in-step with the wild dance of Trinity!

About Trinity’s Place: Trinity’s Place is a Spirit collective meeting the second and fourth Sundays of the month in downtown Raleigh at 5pm. What’s a Spirit collective? As we see it, it’s a new way of gathering in community. Some may call it a new way of being and doing church in the world. Some call it a part of the Great Emergence. Mostly, we call it a whole lot of transformative fun.

Going to the beach was a frequent family outing for this south Florida native. If I turn back the pages to some very distant memories I can see my dad time and time again walking into the ocean, straight through the waves and plunging in head first. Now I don’t know how many of you have tried this but it’s not easy for several reasons. First, you have the ocean waves breaking and crashing at each step relentlessly pulling away the sand beneath your feet. This pulling always leaves me feeling unsteady and trying to use my legs to brace myself for the next wave and the next. Nothing but awkward positioning comes out of this. Then you have the very force of the waves pushing you back each time you try to make your way to the calm part of the ocean on the other side. Finally, diving in head first? I recall being mesmerized by this feat alone.

So, this past Sunday when I woke up at 5 am I never expected that I too would make this memory a part of my current story. You see yesterday I pretty much dropped everything to get to the ocean. I felt like I hadn’t see it in in so long. And it is definitely a part of who I am. When I arrived at Wrightsville beach, I spread my blanket out, took my clothes off, walked down to the ocean and plunged in—head first.  Then memories of my dad came rushing in and I saw how much I’ve missed. To plunge into the deep, to be for a moment swept away by something so much larger than I can fathom. I did this countless times testing to see if somehow the delight would fade. It didn’t. In those moments I was connected and enveloped by a beautiful part of nature that spoke to my deepest parts as one and yet many in God’s creation. On this particular Sunday, the ocean was my church. And as I think about it, Jesus spent plenty of time down by the sea. I wonder if he too, was filled with awe, like me?

On the 2nd and 4th Sundays of each month, my church which is an ocean in its own right gathers. This website is but a glimpse at our story. To really have a sense of who we are you would probably have to visit. And like the ocean you may be pushed and pulled, but in the midst of it you may also hear from the deepest places within you and the deepest places within God.

Stand at the crossroads, and look, and ask for the ancient paths, where the good way lies, and walk in it, and find rest for your souls. Jeremiah 6:6

With dog, camera, and backpack in tow I embarked on the New Year’s Day Eno River walk yesterday. Although the prevailing colors of the day were a spectrum of grays and browns the weather’s dreary garment did not impede my enthusiasm as it has on other occasions. You see, I felt called to participate in this walk requiring I trade solace for the collective cacophony that emanates from hundreds of eager walkers wanting to start the year off on the trail.  A day later I am grateful for this walk for it served as a not so gentle reminder of who we’ve become at Trinity’s Place after celebrating our first year together. On this second day of 2o11, here is how I would describe the Trinity’s Place community:

• Solace for those in need of rest from the frenetic and sometimes frantic places life and work can lead us. Said another way, we really believe in practicing Sabbath.
• Attentive to spiritual practices that lead us to deeper connections with God and each other.
• Conscious and grateful for the diversity of theologies and traditions that bring us together and enable us to uniquely live out being a community of faith.
• Passionate about embracing ALL who in other facets of their lives may be marginalized, mistreated, oppressed or just ignored. This includes gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender and queer individuals as well as people of color, those without shelter, employment or full mental and physical capabilities.
• Willing to challenge and question scripture and the statements of faith historically born from sacred texts while cherishing God’s story.
• Hopeful
• Not afraid to laugh together or for that matter…cry together.

As I write these words I realize I could go on and on about what defines us. But really if you want to know what makes up this Spirit collective it’s probably best to just come on by. You just never know where the trail might lead.

When we tell our stories we are not only sharing who we are but are also identifying and defining ourselves in relation to God and to those who we draw connections to within our communities. Telling our stories can reignite hopes and dreams, cast out fear and shame, reframe sorrows and create new space for love and redemption in our lives. We are our stories. And our stories are sacred.

At Trinity’s Place with the inbreaking of a vibrant and crisp fall season we begin a series on storytelling – exploring the ways our stories intersect and even sometimes collide with God’s story. Now the act of storytelling can take on many forms like poetry, rap, dance, art and film…just to name a few. Trinity’s Place is just the safe and comfortable place to creatively give voice to your story in whatever form you choose.  So, we are inviting all storytellers to come and share your stories. And come and hear the stories of people from around the Triad who you may not know otherwise.

We have this one precious life together. Come share it and discover how your story makes you…you.