Social justice has been a significant part of my journey. Years ago it’s what led me to take the helm of an NGO that works with juvenile delinquency, structural injustice, impoverished communities and at-risk families. For a season I traveled abroad with a human rights agency in Washington, D.C., working cases of forced child prostitution, human trafficking, and child slave labor. I was heavily involved in Occupy Nashville, and led an Occupy Religion effort that worked to unify different religious and spiritual groups together as advocates and support systems for those in crisis and need in our communities. In the process I got a very close look at our citywide mental health systems and services, which are grossly inadequate and negligent.
At the same time, I have also been very drawn to the exploration of the inner life. At first this took me down the path of religion. But ultimately I shed this part of me to seek more expansive spiritual vistas beyond the mindsets and mentalities of religion. Over the years I have paid several visits to the nearby Abbey of Gethsemani (Thomas Merton monastery) to send extended periods of time in quiet and solitude. I am more in-tune these days with a higher spiritual presence or awareness within me, which is a source of deep joy, peace, freedom, harmony, homecoming and well-being. The last few years my inner work has involved turning away from the false religious and worldly beliefs, mindsets, narratives and ideologies that were programmed into my head, and switching to a different source and authority within myself. I have found it to be as simple, effortless and natural as a child at play, but difficult to the extent that this natural place has been greatly assaulted and driven out of us.
The term “inner anarchy” truly fits where I am now. That higher spiritual dimension of my inner life fuels my passion to eradicate the systems, structures, powers and hierarchies of our world that operate upon those false and oppressive mindsets, narratives and ideologies. In its place I want to birth a new reality with others that is an expression of that world of love, harmony, oneness and abundance that is within us.
