New blog post on spiritual innovation
Former Lab Research Associate Hannah Petersen has published a post at BIPOC Spiritual Innovators stemming from the Mapping Spiritual Innovation Project. Read an excerpt of “The Importance of Lineage in Spiritual Innovation” below and read the full article here.
Over the past year, I have had the privilege of speaking with BIPOC leaders of spiritually-innovative groups from across the United States, learning about their stories and experiences. The mission and content of their work varies widely. Some individuals, like Abbas Rattani of MIPSTERZ, facilitate connection among Muslim artists and creatives, while others, like Raymond Chang of the Asian American Christian Collaborative, raise and extend the voices of Asian Americans in both American Christianity and the American political sphere more broadly.
Acknowledgment of and respect for religious practices, sacred wisdom, and cultural values that have existed for generations were constant themes of our conversations. All 23 of the leaders I interviewed described their work as connected to a source — outside of themselves — that ultimately gives meaning and purpose to their innovations. Because of this deep connection to the lineage that came before them, many BIPOC spiritual innovators do not describe their work as “new.” For Konda Mason, president and founder of a nonprofit for Black farmers called Jubilee Justice, the work of farming goes beyond the simple production of a crop for financial gain. She draws on her Buddhist practice to explain why her work with farmers is sacred:
“We talk about how big this project is, that it’s not about us. It’s about the bigger picture. I am constantly talking about the bigger picture, who we are as people, where everything I do comes from the Buddhist within me and the sanctity and the sacredness of land, the sanctity and sacredness of growing food. People look at farmers and they think, oh, a farmer. And it is, as far as I’m concerned, the most sacred job on the planet.”
Read the full article here.