In just a few weeks, I will begin the Masters of Arts in Social Transformation program at Pacific School of Religion. Even writing that sentence fills me with a mixture of excitement, anticipation, and a lot of nervousness. It’s been over 25 years since I’be been a formal college student! I’ve spent most of the last 25 years in teaching, speaking, leading spiritual communities, facilitating difficult conversations, serving my greater community in movements for justice, and helping people connect their spiritual life with the needs of the world. It’s been my life passion, and let me tell you, I am not done! Not by a long shot.
While I am note currently serving a local congregation, I’m still speaking when and where I am invited, and I’m always looking for ways to serve my greater community. That said, I’m clear that this break from full-time pulpit work is a valuable opportunity to continue my education and prepare myself for the next evolution of my calling.
“The most powerful way to lead what's next is to become the person capable of creating it.” - Kat Kim, Leadership Coach
I just love this quote from my friend Kat Kim (a leadership coach you need to be following!). It sums up perfectly why I am returning to school.
The world’s challenges are many, and they are overwhelming. I know that I don’t have all the answers, but what I do know is that I am called to serve the awakening and transformation of humanity into its next great leap. The first thing that requires, is that I become larger in my capacities, competencies and spiritual understanding. So, back to school it is!
The book lists and syllabi are on their way! I was fortunate to discover that these four amazing books were already on my shelf: Let Your Life Speak by Parker Palmer, Spiritual Discipline by Howard Thurman, Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer, and My Gransmother’s Hands by Resmaa Menakem.
Wow, that stack alone tells you something about the education I am entering. It’s an education concerned not merely with ideas, but with the relationships between the inner life and the world we create. It’s about relationship, contemplation, ancestral wisdom, radical healing, community and justice. In other words, it’s not a departure from the work I’ve been doing - but a deepening of it.
There are several more books to get yet, and I’m making some upgrades to the space I have for study. There are schedules to arrange, adjustments to make, all the back to school energy is rushing in! (my son is also entering fourth grade next week!).
For years I have wrestled publicly with questions that do not lend themselves to easy answers:
What does spiritual awaking require of us in a world marked by injustice?
How do we speak about human possibility without ignoring the systems that shape so much of our collective lives?
How do we hold together personal transformation and collective liberation?
What is really required of us if we are to create communities rooted in dignity, justice and belonging?
These questions have run through my preaching and teaching over the years, and my writing here on substack. Yet there is more discernment, deep listening and stretching that I need to do at this time.
My journey into pulpit ministry was like being shot out of a cannon (a story for another day), I was young and very eggar to serve and lead community. That was a different season in my life and in our world.
We are now living through profound political, spiritual, institutional and cultural upheaval. Our religious structures are losing their authority. Trust in institutions continues to erode. Loneliness and alienation are becoming defining features of our modern world. The language o faith is too often used to defend exclusion, domination and authoritarianism. At the same time many progressive spiritual communities (like those I have served and partnered with) struggle to translate beautiful principles into a compelling public and moral ethic.
I believe a new paradigm is trying to emerge, one capable of joining spiritual depth with moral courage, inner awaking with public responsibility, and personal transformation with the work of creating a world in which everyone can flourish. And I want to be better prepared to meet the moment and serve this emergence.
This program will give me the opportunity to study public theology, moral philosophy, liberation traditions, social transformation and spiritual practice in sustained conversation with one another. It will strengthen my writing, teaching and speaking and deepen the work I hope to offer in the years ahead.
But I do not enter this moment alone.
In the profound work, Braiding The Sweetgrass, there is a beautiful reflection on the wisdom o pecan trees from the author Robin Wall Kimmerer. From the moment I first read the book it stuck with me as Robin reflects on her native heritage and the
pecan groves in Oklahoma. My teenage years were not far from there in New Mexico and her telling of the story evoked so many images, smells and memories for me.
Pecan trees practice what scientist now call “Mast Fruiting” For several years, the trees may produce relatively few nuts. Then, in a particular season, the trees fruit abundantly, and they do so together. The whole grove responds, not just one or two trees.
Kimmerer calls them a “council of pecans.” Their flourishing is communal and mutual. The well-being o one tree is connected to the well-being of the entire grove. Their abundance is not individual, its relational.
Our culture loves the image of the self-made individual, the lone cowboy, pioneer, self-made success story. The solitary individual who succeeds through personal determination and strident solo-effort. But it’s a myth. None o us are truly self-made.
Every single meaningful life is held within a web of inter-connected relationships. Teachers challenge us. Friends encourage us. Communities make room for us. Parents guide us. Elders leave wisdom behind for us. Let me state it clearly, whatever fruit emerges from my life has never been mine alone. It has grown from a grove.
Many of you reading this have been a part of that grove for years. You have attending classes, listen to sermons, shared my writings, invited me into your communities, family and your lives. I can’t thank you enough for that.
As I begin this next chapter, I am calling on my Council of Pecans - so that we may flourish together!
Graduate school is a meaningful investment of time, energy and financial resources. Beyond tuition, there are books, technology, research, travel and the everyday challenge of protecting enough time to read, study, write and remain present to family and school.
If my writing, teaching, ministry or public theology has contributed something meaningful to your life, I am inviting you to support this next stage to development.
When I say support at any level, I genuinely mean it. Some of you subscribe here as a yearly paid subscriber for $100 to 80 / year - I am so grateful! If you’d like to join that group - please do so knowing that it is a significant investment in my next chapter.
Meanwhile a one-time gift of any amount can help purchase a book, or fuel the next study session. There are over 1000 non-paid subscribers and over 1700 followers to this newsletter - half of you making a small donation can make a BIG difference!
from this investment will grow my future sermons, courses, workshops, books, congregational resources, public conversations, and practical frameworks connecting spiritual awakening with social transformation.
Along the way I will be sharing what I am reading, the ideas that are taking shape and the connections that bridge the work.
If a financial commitment is not available to you right now (or you are already a paid subscriber, committed at a level that works for you) you can still be part of the grove! Share my work, forward this article (or any of my others) with someone you think it will resonate with - or on a social media platform. Recommend my substack, invite me to your community to speak - or just send an encouraging word here! Hold me in prayer as I being so I can take your blessing with me.
I don’t know exactly what will grow of this. I have hopes of course. I hope to being a more rigorous thinker, a more courageous writer, and a more useful teacher. I hope to contribute something meaningful to the future of New Thought, public theology and progressive spirituality grounded in justice work. I pray this education helps me serve communities that are striving to become more honest, courageous and alive in purpose.
Formation has its own mystery and I must make room for that. I enter with intentions, and an open hand toward the encounters as they come.
So, as this semester approaches, profoundly grateful that I am not alone, I being with this Prayer to my Council o Pecans:
May the knowledge gathered here become nourishment for the whole grove.
May every book opened help open a mind, a heart or a possibility.
May the time invested in my formation, strengthen the work we share.
May what grows through one life become fruit for many.
May we resist the mythology that any of us flourishes alone. And may we remember that abundance becomes sacred when it circulates.
Thank you for believing in me. Thank you for believing in this work. Thank you for being part of the community that brought me to this threshold and now sees me off for the next chapter.
so it begins…
Rev. Dr. David Alexander D.D., is a public theologian and spiritual writer exploring the intersection of spirituality, justice, and moral imagination in public life. Bringing 20 plus years of pulpit ministry with Centers for Spiritual Living, into everyday life and the call for a better world. He is the author of Freedom from Discord: The Promise of New Thought Liberation Theology and the visionary behind Recovery from the Lie of Whiteness. David also writes the monthly column Philosophy in Action for Science of Mind magazine. Visit www.revdavidalexander.com to learn more.
UPCOMING EVENTS
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