I’m often asked what sort of a place Compassionate Heart Community is. Is it a church, a monastery, a meditation center, or…? To be honest, I have been trying to figure that out for some time myself. We aren’t a typical church – our space looks more like a living room than a church with pews. We are rooted in Progressive Christianity but open to spirituality in many forms. We aren’t a monastery, although many of us are very interested in the contemporary movement known by some as “new monasticism,” or the idea of being a “monk in the world,” coined by the late Br. Wayne Teasdale. We aren’t only a meditation center, although we do teach and practice the contemplative arts.
As I was reflecting on this a while ago, it came to me. We are Interspiritual, by which I mean we honor all of the great traditions and believe that they all represent a search for and movement toward that quality that many of us call Divinity, or God, and in which we grow into the people we are meant to be. That’s not a term that many people are familiar with, however, so we don’t use it in our promotional material very much. You might say we are in the process of discovering what lies beyond institutional Christianity. We won’t tell you what you should believe, unless what you believe is that it’s a good idea to hurt other people. We won’t pretend to have all the answers, because nobody does. We see ourselves as here to accompany you on the spiritual journey, here to learn as much from you as you do from us!
Compassionate Heart Community 