Do you yearn to open more deeply to a greater sense of God’s presence, power, and guidance? Do you ache to live from the Divine Center? To live a life both deeply grounded and on fire with the Spirit?

The School of the Spirit board joyfully announces the launching of a new program, Participating in God’s Power.  After more than a year and a half of shepherding its beginnings, we celebrate the launch of the website and registration.

Living in solid connection with the Divine is transformational.  But when that Inner Teacher points us to places that aren’t easy to go, what keeps us from following God’s leadings fully and courageously?  The School of the Spirit’s newest program – Participating in God’s Power — models a resilient and thoughtful set of tools for exploring how we let our own brokenness get in the way of a robust trust in God’s guidance.

Participating focuses on ways in which we unconsciously resist being with God’s love, how unhealed or unrecognized aspects of ourselves inhibit our being fully present and alive, and how we can release what obscures our Inner Light. The program also explores ways of repatterning our lives to support living in ongoing transformation.

Through engagement in four residencies and three webinars led by core teachers Angela York Crane and Christopher Sammond, this program will build self-awareness and capacity for wise, brave, Spirit-led risk-taking. Through Quaker worship, structured exercises, and small group practices you will be invited to open more deeply and honestly to God’s presence, guidance, healing, and power.

This year-long program is particularly geared for Friends (and others) who have already participated in a spiritual formation program or the like and who want to go deeper yet, or who seek some renewal in their spiritual lives.

We will begin with an opening retreat in New Hampshire in August 2019; our closing retreat will be in the Philadelphia area in September 2020. Come and be a part of this movement of the Spirit. And please share this widely with those who you think might be seeking  just this opportunity.

The School of the Spirit is a ministry of prayer and learning from a Quaker perspective. For more information, visit their website. A number of LEYM Friends have gone through their year and a half “On Being a Spiritual Nurturer” program.

Emily Provance, a young Friend, has recently launched a new four-year ministry called Holy Experiments. She explains: “Holy Experiments is designed to support Friends with an aim toward following Spirit adventurously and building culturally inclusive communities of faith. This will happen in a variety of ways. One piece will be skill-building – looking at culture and structure methodically, with a lens to understanding and learning to perceive unintended effects. The second piece will be what I’m calling ‘along the way’ – affirming the spiritual conditions necessary in a faith community that’s doing hard things. A third element will be weekly queries, and a fourth will be concrete, specific experiments – things that Friends are encouraged to try, to see what happens, and then to keep or release, as led.

Friends are welcome to engage as able. You can step in, drop out, participate fully, be an observer…and that level of participation can change over time, day to day, week to week, whatever you can do. You can receive weekly emails and you can receive a weekly query by text message. Sign up for emails by clicking here or by texting HOLYEXPERIMENTS (all one word) to 84576.

There’s also a Facebook group for regular interaction with other Friends.

I want to come and speak with Friends in your area about this work; please invite me. This ministry is under the tender care of my support committee, which is itself under the care of my local meeting, which is Fifteenth Street Monthly Meeting in New York City.”

More information on Holy Experiments can be found here. You can also email Emily and request to receive occasional e-mails in which she shares her reflections and recent experiences traveling in the ministry.