The Year
The Formation Project was a year-long experience that began October 15th, 2018.
It was built upon commitments, which were opportunities for participants to dedicate themselves to each stage of the formation process - if and as they felt so called! There were three stages of commitment in the year: discernment, formation, and future. The first came right at the beginning, the second came after three months, and the third came at the very end. Here is more detail about each stage.
Commitment 1
Discernment
The first commitment was to spend intentional time reflecting on one’s desire and preparedness to engage wholeheartedly in spiritual formation. While the work during this three-month discernment process was oriented toward the formation stage that followed, the initial commitment did not bind anyone to continue on. This was simply a commitment to discern, with depth and sincerity, as to their readiness for a period of intensive spiritual formation.
A total of 56 participants committed to discernment.
Months 1-3
Discernment: Oct 15-Jan 15
The discernment stage was where our year began. There were three bridges to cross.
Gather Your people
Participants were asked to find at least three, but ideally five, people in their own life with whom they had relationships of love and trust. These were their people for the year. Formation is deep, intense, personal, exciting, and often disruptive to life as you’ve known it. These people knew that participants were undertaking this experience and committed to being there for them.
One of these people played a special role as an elder. This was someone who modeled a way of being that the participant aspired to grow into. Participants and elders met once a month for an hour of spiritual accompaniment.
Come Home to Yourself
This bridge was focused on deepening participants’ own understanding of their experience, gifts, and growing edges. Part of the work here was to start locating what impeded their capacity to become who they had the power to be. By far the deepest work on this bridge was the Healing Inventory and Action Plan, which was designed to uncover areas of woundedness and lead to a place of clarity about how to take steps toward healing.
For those who continued on and joined a formation group, their covenant included a commitment to being a place where the layers of woundedness and trauma we each bring were met by unconditional love. With the knowledge that a great deal of our individual healing needed to happen outside of the circle, formation groups committed to supporting each person in finding the places where the deepest healing they needed could happen.
Reflect on Formation
To cross this final bridge, we invited participants to do some written and creative reflection on what it meant and why it mattered to them to tend the sacred within themselves, in others, and of which we are part -- and why they were committing to it at this particular moment in their lives. Here they then decided if you felt ready to carry on with nine months of formation. If so, this bridge culminated in a 500-word ‘reflection on yes’, which was the letter they shared with their formation group and facilitator about why they were saying yes to joining them.
Commitment 2
Formation
Here participants submitted their commitment letters and said yes to nine months of spiritual formation in community -- discovering and becoming the people they were called to be!
A total of 40 participants committed to formation, and we celebrated with an online commitment ceremony on Zoom.
Month 4
Formation Group Cohesion: Jan 15-Feb 15
Participants joined an online formation group of four or five participant-designers and one facilitator, which met weekly for 90 minutes on Zoom. Facilitators chose the meeting times and groups formed based on when participants were available to meet. Participants of color were given the opportunity to sign up first so that they could be in groups with facilitators and / or participants of color if they so chose.
The first month focused on sharing spiritual autobiographies and creating a covenant with their formation groups. We drafted a covenant template for each group to adapt.
Months 5–10
Formation: Feb 15-aug 15
These six months were the heart of the experience. Participants met with their formation group weekly as they moved through the three dimensions of formation in sequence, focusing on each one for two months and adding on. By summer they were “working” all three dimensions at once. Namely:
Inner - tending the sacredness in yourself
Contemplation - Meditation - Prayer - Reflection - Meaning
The first two months focused on going inward so as to deepen relationship with the sacred within. Participants continued this work for the rest of the project.
Outer - tending the sacredness in others
Community - Service - Justice - Family - Belonging
The next two months focused on showing up in relationship with others so as to collaborate with and strengthen the sacred in them. Participants deepened into this work for the rest of the project.
Beyond - tending the sacredness of which we are part
Call - Charism - Vocation - Creativity - Purpose
The final two months focused on discovering and pursuing what each participant was called to do in this life: giving their unique gifts in the world. They followed this thread through the project and, we hope, beyond!
Participants’ work was to cultivate disciplines and practices that helped them to deepen in each of these areas. What they took on was personal to them and reflective of the yearnings and aspirations that they themselves had been feeling in each domain. And importantly, this process played out in their everyday lives. The formation groups were there as a weekly touchstone, but the vast majority of the work was happening in between meetings.
Whatever participants’ practices were, the invitation was to stretch: to prioritize this work with more time, attention, rigor and depth than perhaps they had before. We emphasized that a stretch for one is not the same for another, and that ultimately, the mysterious alchemy of formation is far beyond any of us to understand or control! Both effort and surrender mattered here.
Most importantly, participants were not left on their own to figure all this out! For more on how they were supported, take a look at the Core Components - and especially the language on elders, facilitators, formation groups, wisdom wells, and ancestors.
Month 11
Discernment: Aug 15-Sept 15
Here we entered a closing month of discernment, a time for participants to reflect upon how the inner and outer interplay was calling them to be. Drawing on the model of the Quaker Clearness Committee, each participant got to spend one formation group meeting as the focus person, meaning they got to let their souls speak on this topic for the full hour.
Month 12
Commitment and closure: Sept 15-Oct 15
The final month was a time for participants to craft commitments to deepening into the future, and to close their formation group covenants. All were welcome for a year-end celebration on Zoom.
Commitment 3
FUTURE
At the end of the year, our closing celebration honored the time we shared and marked our personal commitments for the year to come.