What I Like Most About Being Interfaith
Rev. John C. Robinson, Ph.D., D.Min.
After closing my practice as a clinical psychologist following a health crisis, I felt an urgent need for new inspiration and direction for my life. Long drawn to mystical spirituality, I entered The University of Creation Spirituality created by theologian Matthew Fox. There I took classes with titles like The Cosmic Christ and the Historical Jesus, Eckhart Meets Buddha, Deep Ecumenism, Creation Spirituality, and many more. I graduated in 2006. Then, feeling the deep and personal need to enter the religious life, I enrolled in The Chaplaincy Institute for the Arts and Interfaith Ministries developed by Gina-Rose Halpern, taking courses, attending services, and giving sermons in Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism, Taoism, Islam, Buddhism, and Indigenous Spirituality, being ordained in 2008.
Wandering through this amazing array of classes and teachers, reaching deep into the essential tapestry of each religion, and listening for the truest voices of the divine, I saw how mysticism - the direct experience of the sacred - speaks through the peoples and places of every faith tradition. While language, metaphors, and practices may vary across religions, the core mystical experience behind each religion holds the same profound teachings: that all life is sacred, that we already divine, and that love is everywhere. Which brings me to what I like most about being interfaith: I make friends with mystics from every era and religion - Jesus, Eckhart, Rumi, Buddha, Lao Tzu, Muhammad, Ramana Marharshi, Nanak, Chief Seattle, on and on - and affirm as I resonate with their words that I am a mystic, too. It is the realization of my own mystical nature, long intuited but previously missing in action, that daily renews my life and validates the interfaith journey.
I am now a mystic who writes books on the intersection of psychology and spirituality. I am a mystic who lives and explores the transformational consciousness of a radical new kind of aging. I am a mystic on the final journey home to the ecstatic melding of consciousness and being. As interfaith ministers, we all experience this same mystical awareness of unity through everything we do - contemplation, prayer, teaching, preaching, serving, and writing. We are mystics living in the same oneness. Find your own mystical nature and join us.
Rev. John C. Robinson, Ph.D., D.Min.
After closing my practice as a clinical psychologist following a health crisis, I felt an urgent need for new inspiration and direction for my life. Long drawn to mystical spirituality, I entered The University of Creation Spirituality created by theologian Matthew Fox. There I took classes with titles like The Cosmic Christ and the Historical Jesus, Eckhart Meets Buddha, Deep Ecumenism, Creation Spirituality, and many more. I graduated in 2006. Then, feeling the deep and personal need to enter the religious life, I enrolled in The Chaplaincy Institute for the Arts and Interfaith Ministries developed by Gina-Rose Halpern, taking courses, attending services, and giving sermons in Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism, Taoism, Islam, Buddhism, and Indigenous Spirituality, being ordained in 2008.
Wandering through this amazing array of classes and teachers, reaching deep into the essential tapestry of each religion, and listening for the truest voices of the divine, I saw how mysticism - the direct experience of the sacred - speaks through the peoples and places of every faith tradition. While language, metaphors, and practices may vary across religions, the core mystical experience behind each religion holds the same profound teachings: that all life is sacred, that we already divine, and that love is everywhere. Which brings me to what I like most about being interfaith: I make friends with mystics from every era and religion - Jesus, Eckhart, Rumi, Buddha, Lao Tzu, Muhammad, Ramana Marharshi, Nanak, Chief Seattle, on and on - and affirm as I resonate with their words that I am a mystic, too. It is the realization of my own mystical nature, long intuited but previously missing in action, that daily renews my life and validates the interfaith journey.
I am now a mystic who writes books on the intersection of psychology and spirituality. I am a mystic who lives and explores the transformational consciousness of a radical new kind of aging. I am a mystic on the final journey home to the ecstatic melding of consciousness and being. As interfaith ministers, we all experience this same mystical awareness of unity through everything we do - contemplation, prayer, teaching, preaching, serving, and writing. We are mystics living in the same oneness. Find your own mystical nature and join us.