Spirit • Values • Learning • Stewardship • Voice
Co-create the divine.
Share the providence.
divine providence abbey community
is in the initial stages of being created.
We provide a place for:
divine providence abbey community is a center for practical spirituality that sponsors a variety of programs.
What makes an abbey different from a church is that an abbey has a particular field of secular work that supports it and connects it to the community at large.
What makes an abbey different from a social agency is that the abbey itself has a spiritual purpose and philosophy that inspires the secular community service.
What makes this abbey different from other spiritual centers is focusing more on the practical spirituality of actions to live our beliefs and less on mysticism, theological abstractions, scriptural inventions, and esoteric meditations that excessively distance us from this earthly existence.
Our abbey has a specific "product" in secular service to the community at large, and to all the elements and beings in the world of life on earth: life education. We are best at working with people who have, or would like to have, one or more projects to make a contribution, small or large, to making the world a better place, projects that engage and enliven them that they pursue with energy and purpose. Such projects should be compatible with thriving health, responsiveness to the life journey of oneself and others, and a resourceful, positive mindset.
james@divineprovidenceabbey.community
www.divineprovidenceabbey.community
www.youtube.com/2live1slifewell
The secular, community service work of the divine providence abbey is life education, which is provided through Essex Center--A Learning Community. The educational goal is achieving practical skills for living life well.
For children and youths, by creating a true community of learners in after-school and summer programs, this Center provides an alternative to the models of academic narrowness and me-first competitiveness of schools. Using an experiential, exploration approach and recognizing the equal value of a variety of skills and learning styles, we strive to help youths flourish individually and as contributing members of the learning community.
For adults, co-creating and participating in a functioning learning community provides the support of others in their learning quest, which transforms the task of learning into a mission.
Our Life Education Center is part of the Essex Center for Life Education. This center offers individual consultations and group workshops to address people's hopes for, and struggles with, finding their own unique mission and purpose in life. This includes peoples' personal, learning, and work lives. Through positive energy tapping, obstacles to growth can be reduced and effective problem solving and successful actions to improve one's life can be increased. From there, life coaching supports the individual's greater freedom to think more clearly to move to the needed action steps to achieve their goals.
Our realm is education — teaching and skill-building. Appropriate recommendations for outside services are made when clinical treatment services may be advisable.
"There is nothing more satisfying than helping someone with their own journey." — Dimitri Moraitis, Spiritual Arts Institute
Within the divine providence abbey community itself is a small but very special unit, the Evening Sun Institute for Prophetic Vision. The wisdom and vision of those interested in this program are the energy and the touchstones of the entire program. They inform our values, refine our priorities, and point to needed directions for witness and action.
If you have any questions about, or want to discuss, what you see on this website, or if you have any interest in our future program aspirations, please feel free to contact us.
If the divine providence abbey community is not right for you at this time, but you know someone who might be searching for, or might benefit by, something like the divine providence abbey, please let them know about us!
Thanks — James
September-November, 2022
May we live this fall conscious of our true spirit:
both our good intentions and our less good intentions.
Living well is not a given, but our attempts to do so,
our intentions and actions, do count.
May you pick yourself up as many times as needed,
when you fail, and start each moment over with hope,
accepting yourself and others are we are, yet
still working towards a better world
for ourselves, others, and nature.
As we develop divine providence abbey community, we note that the Universe and human beings are working out a pandemic, economic devastation for many, and, most importantly, equality, fair treatment, and justice for all.
Thus, what constitutes a good path since March, 2020 has changed, for most people, away from their customary "tootling along." Even insightful and prescient activists and thinkers have had to adjust the pursuit of their worthy goals in new ways.
What constitutes a good life and a good spirit has not changed, however, because taking good care of oneself, others, and nature as a way of life should have always been our template, our touchstones.
Whether the challenges we now face — or have faced up to — have been severe enough to impress upon us the need to stop tootling along and to truly show progress in the long term remains to be seem. Tribalists, many business people at all levels, many church leaders, many educators, and many suburbanites, to name a few, just want to get back to "normal." That is just another way of saying "business as usual."
Are we going to be like some of the soldiers in foxholes (holes dug in the ground to shield them on the frontlines) in World War I, who made promises to God so that God would save them from death (hence the phrase, there are no atheists in foxholes), often forgetting those promises afterwards? Or can we be relied on to grow, to become better, and to work for others to have a good experience in life, not just ourselves?
The suffering that results from a pandemic, from racial and gender discrimination, and from economic distress are both current crises, as well as, long term problems about what I call "Life on Earth."
In addition, these times reveal an enduring conflict between the value of stewardship versus the value of exploitation. People who put stewardship first may not be battle-oriented — it is just not in their "DNA." They may believe that being good role models, teachers, and discussants will carry this value forward, in the spirit of "win-win". That is, we all can progress together.
However, that perspective is naïve and short-sighted. Many of those who value exploitation of people and nature are tremendously energetic, authoritarian, crafty, and militant, often to the point of violence, as the date January 6, 2021 has been seared into our memories. Such a model is "zero-sum": I win, you lose; you win, I lose. Constant vigilance and taking no gains for granted are the foundations of effective, strategic power to keep us on the path of a positive salvation history pilgrimage — especially when times are hard.
We do not yet know whether things will get better or worse. Currently, many people do not have enough food. Many people are losing economic security and many have lost their residences, or will shortly. Education, child care, and work are disrupted. Electricity and the internet are still operating, but — sorry to mention this — they are at risk, as warfare among nations has moved into cyberspace, and we are woefully unprepared (see: Texas). If the internet goes, electricity goes, too, because we have switched to controlling the electrical grid through computer networks, with inadequate backup systems (which cost money and require a prevention-mentality).
Contrary to Judeo-Christian teaching, suffering is NOT given to us for a reason, such as to teach us something or to punish us, that is, to teach us a lesson, so-to-speak. However, we can, as human beings, choose to use suffering and decide to turn suffering into a lesson, a learning, or a reminder. Perhaps the universe or the earth are sending us a wake-up call, to force us to realize that to protect oneself one MUST protect others. Or perhaps, as humankind, we can just figure this out for ourselves. It is not necessary for all of us to get this message, but it is necessary for many more of us to get this message — and take action, that is, to live it and to fight unceasingly for it.
Even then, there is no guarantee of a safe, crisis-free future on earth, which is why it is so important to use this time to live better values, thus actually embodying and incorporating our better selves so that our corporeal existence solidifies our best selves into our spirit, the part that lives on, either as an individual spirit or as a spiritual energy theme flowing through the universe.
Being aware of, and deeply caring about, how we impact the experience of others, building a good spirit in ourselves and in our communities, and making the world a better place through prayer and the actions we can do or steps we can take (even when movements are restricted by a pandemic) are all within our power, right now, every moment, every day.
When life sends us back to the drawing board, those of us who are not in the worst crisis states (such as severe illness, homelessness, or food shortages) can use this time for study and reflection, and to face and address issues in ourselves that distracting busyness allowed us to ignore previously. As the saying goes, never waste a crisis, as wearying and frustrating as it is. How are you using this time?
This is far from the earth's worst crisis. 13,000 years ago this region was at the end of an ice age. Mini-ice ages resulted in plagues and starvation—lives lost or on hold—only a few hundred years ago. We have a virus in our midst seemingly tailor-made to target our specialness as humans. It thwarts our desire to be together. It upends our learning. It deals body blows to singing, dance, end-of-life rituals, and coming together for prayer.
It is, nonetheless, our option to do what we can, with what we have, from where we actually are now in this moment in time and at this place in space. We are not where we wish we were. We are not going where we thought we were heading. By our own free will, choices, and decisions, we can make things even worse than they are, or we can take the options we do have and do something positive, however weakly or strongly we can manage to do so.
—James
updated March, 2022
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