INTRODUCTION:
To support and nourish us in living out our Vision and our values, we make the following commitments. We are a spiritual family, and as in any family we each have particular needs and struggles as well as our individual gifts to offer and to receive in community. As we honor and respect our differences, so we honor and respect these choices that we hold in common.
To love God, the world, each other and ourselves.
To live in hope and consciousness of God's vision.
To use our gifts to help God recreate the world.
To confront domination in ourselves and others with non-violence.
We see these commitments both as goals to work toward and as a foundation on which to build as each of us seeks to grow.
QUIET TIME
See Quiet Time Commentary
The Intention:
To open ourselves daily to Loving Presence, accepting the comfort and challenge of listening, allowing God to draw us near, awakening creativity and compassion.
The Practice:
  • Give yourself a daily quiet time of 30 minutes.
  • Include a period of daily silence--at least 20 minutes.
  • Engage in other life-giving practices such as study, writing, movement, art, music, etc.
  • Enter into the life of the Community through intercessory prayer
  • Respond from your depths.
The Shadow:
Competition, rigidity, satisfaction with minimum, not confronting resistance.
MINDFULNESS
The Intention:
To be mindful of our choices to love God, ourselves, others and the earth; to live in hope; to heal broken relationships and to practice non-violence.
The Practice:
  • Consistently review and reflect on our actions and speech in the light of these intentions.
  • Humbly, with openness to joy, notice where we have been loving, hopeful, healing and nonviolent.
  • Tenderly, without judgment, notice our longings to grow more loving, hopeful, nonviolent, as well as our yearnings for healing.
  • Imagine specific actions to try soon.
  • Notice brokenness in our relationships and imagine next steps to healing.
  • Practice liberating forgiveness: Release ourselves and others from omissions and errors, making way for new possibilities to emerge.
The Shadow:
Guilt, shame, denial, victimhood, self-righteousness, judging self and others.
CALL
The Intention:
To discern the place where we choose to engage in the dance with God for the healing of the world, and to go and do what makes us come alive.
The Practice:
  • Listen to the Spirit in daily silence, and pray for discernment.
  • Engage in dialogue with community and others about Call.
  • Take experimental action, put self in new places, do new things.
  • Practice careful stewardship of time (focus).
  • Support others in their call.
  • Seek integration of spiritual life and action in the world.
  • Be patient in the anxiety of waiting for discernment.
  • Eliminate busyness and overcommitment.
The Shadow:
Overcommitment, burnout, isolation from community, judging others.
COMMUNITY
The Intention:
To develop and maintain relationship with and in the community.To take responsibility for the ongoing health of the community, sharing the work and play.
The Practice:
  • Worship with the community on Sundays and other feast days, and be in communication about absences.
  • Participate in community gatherings such as Viriditas, Weavings and social events.
  • Freely offer and receive our individual gifts to be evoked and nourished by the community.
  • Share in the ongoing work of the community, taking part in work groups and regular chores, e.g., set up, cooking for community events, etc.
  • Participate in annual silent retreats and other community retreats.
  • Commit to the process of growing and healing authentic relationships in community.
  • Reach out actively to newcomers and seekers.
  • Minister to members who are sick or have special needs.
  • Pledge to St. Hildegard's, working toward tithing (10% of income) to St. Hildegard's by increasing our contribution each year.
  • Support one another in discernment and following call.
The Shadow:
Individual shadows: resentment, jealousy, martyr complex.
Community shadows: gossip, triangulation and burnout.
ACCOUNTABILITY
The Intention:
  • To encourage, support and challenge one another in choosing and taking small steps on the path of living as God's Beloved Ones.
  • To move from domination patterns that lead to isolation, powerlessness, hopelessness and guilt.
  • To grow into liberated lives.
The Practice:
Write and share a description (Way/Rule of Life) articulating our longing for liberation in specific and practical next-steps.
Meet at least monthly with a partner or small group, to share both the light and shadow sides of our lives, using the written Way of Life and Community Commitments as guides.
Work creatively with resistance and obstacles.
Allow movement to happen by accepting where we are and taking next steps.
Know we will succeed and fail, and that both are invitations to grow.
Accept help from the community in seeking a practice of accountability.
The Shadow:
Judgment, criticism of self and others, self-righteousness.