Purpose

“Our purpose in life is to grow in wisdom and in love.”

- Rachel Naomi Remen

We are always being formed.

But most of the time, it happens haphazardly and without attention. To engage in spiritual formation is to purposefully cultivate practices and disciplines with one clear goal: drawing nearer to ____________.
 
On the line above, insert the word(s) that open your heart. The sacred, source, spirit, God, love, emptiness, true self, grace, the ground of being, Buddha nature, justice, the divine, Allah, awareness, Christ, that which is greater than ourselves…!

Whichever words belong on your line, your work is to listen for the call of that which is named. Spiritual formation, as a process, sharpens our attentiveness to  _________ and helps us more and more to manifest the qualities of _________ in our lives. Over the course of the year, participants were prepared to change the pattern of their everyday lives to practice the purposes of _________. At the highest level, this is what our experience was all about.

Our more specific purpose was to tend that sacredness across three dimensions: in ourselves, in others, and of which we are part. The Formation Project posited that a deepening spiritual life consists of a deepening personal connection in each of these three domains. We asked participants to explore in depth what that means for them, and to cultivate practices and disciplines that helped them go there.  

At the end of the year, participants were invited to write a statement articulating their highest-level commitment to _________, and what it meant to them to continue deepen into this way of being for another year.