Three Unifying Principles 

1. All life is interconnected 

and connection compels the work of liberation

2. All lives are part of the cycle

and living into the cycle is a part of the work

3. The work of liberation is sustained by cultivation

and abundance should be used to further that work

We as a religious order are not bound by any one credal faith. We come from a multitude of faith traditions and our understandings of the roles that our faith and spirituality have in our daily lives are diverse. That diversity is celebrated and encouraged.

We view religion as a useful tool for self-determination, personal understanding, accessing each person’s understanding of the sacred and divine, community building, cohesion, meaning, and progress. We are not blind to the harm religion has done, nor do we refuse to acknowledge the controversial nature of viewing religion as a tool of humanity rather than a divine mandate. Instead, we hold that we must view religion as human and fallible if we wish to engage with it in a way that allows us to use it outside the corrupting influence towards hierarchy and subjugation. The tool of religious practice is a way of defining and scaffolding meaning that allows us to ritualize our ideas and ways of being. As such it must always be held in tension to the sacredness of all, sacredness does not emanate from religious belief rather it is highlighted, emphasized, and recognized by it. It is a framework for understanding and never understanding itself. Sacredness is what religion attempts to point to in its own clumsy and insufficient way.

The belief that religion is a tool to be used rather than a doctrinal cage has allowed us to ask of ourselves what meaning we wish to find within it. In so doing we recognize that dedication to a unifying purpose is a gift, and one that can bring increased meaning and joy to our relationships with ourselves and others. In that understanding, we sought to build a few simple distinct principles with which we can guide ourselves.

We did not discover these, plucking them out of a universal moral, but rather, we identified and cultivated them from our experiences as distinct people with unique backgrounds. We are inheritors of countless generations and our thoughts are built on social structures so complex as to form ideas such as Love and Justice seemingly effortlessly. Humans evolved as social beings and social structures have existed in marvelously diverse forms since before we recorded history in cave paintings and petroglyphs. In attempting to frame these principles we are simply recognizing this heritage and acting on it ourselves with deliberation. These principles are ours. They are organic, living, and evolving.  These principles are human. They can be nothing else.

All life is interconnected

and connection compels the work of liberation

 

Growing out of our work as an anarchist abolitionist community and our work on trans and queer liberation, the first principle we have chosen to build into our work is one of inherent connection and liberatory action. 

We recognize that within an interconnected world, no one is truly free unless all are free, and that oppression of others or ourselves limits the freedom of all. Liberation to us then means a true freedom of choice, of self-determination, of growth, and of change, not only for us but for all people.

In a similar vein, the degradation of the natural world necessarily limits the freedom of ourselves and of future generations, as we are not separate from, but part of that natural world.  Therefore, we must accept and recognize that harming our environment is a direct harm of our selves. 

One cannot be a fully liberated person in a society built on exploitative hierarchies. That includes the hierarchy we have falsely placed over our involvement in the rest of nature. As interconnected natural beings we must strive not only for the continuation of nature, but the regeneration of it. Regeneration is survival.  Regeneration as caretaking and cultivation explicitly rejects dominion. 

The work of seeking liberation with and for others cannot be understated. We cannot be a free people as long as we cage other humans, as long as we force others into slavery, as long as we limit personal bodily autonomy, as long as we enter relationships with an ethos of possession or constriction, as long as we destroy our common inheritance, as long as we dictate how other people engage each other through mutual interdependence and consensual love.

As liberated people we are free to live and free to die as we see fit. 
As interconnected people we recognize that that freedom must never come at the cost of the abuse of another.

All lives are part of the cycle

and living into the cycle is a part of the work​

The question automatically implied within the second principle is: What is “the cycle”?

The cycle we are referring to is a summation of all the grand cycles that make up our lives. It is of course the cycle of life, as animals living within a large and interconnected biosphere. But it is also the cycle of human life: birth to death, the cycle of the yearly breathing of the earth through seasons, the ritual cycle of time: periods of fasting or celebration or prayer, the interaction with the water cycle around us, or the cycle of the garden. It can be the cosmic cycle of the stars. It can be the cycle of psychological growth, leaning into periods of pain or depression or dysphoria, etc. without losing track of the cyclical nature of our lives. The hormonal cycle, the relational cycle, the cycle of comings and goings. It is an understanding of ourselves as part of a much larger whole on a grand and breathtaking scale and the understanding of every minute part of our lives as something that is constantly changing. It is a recognition that we are beings of change, and stagnation is to be avoided.

Therefore, to avoid stagnation, we must live into our cycles. All of them. We must not seek to remain at a standstill but learn to grow and dream, learn to accept deconstruction and pain and loss, learn to accept joy and newness, learn to accept the totality of the cycle. Living into that cycle includes refraining from actions intended to remove ourselves from it. Trying to last forever. Trying to end the cycles. Trying to stymie change for nothing but the sake of tradition. As people of a place, we must learn to change as it does and nourish it, tend it, with all of ourselves. We die, and from the ground we are gifted to, we grow a tree of fruit for the next generation to eat. We are a part of the cycle, beginnings to endings to beginnings. To live within our community means accepting all portions of it, caring for all portions of it, and holding all portions with worth and reverence. 

The work of liberation is sustained by cultivation

and abundance should be used to further that work

​

Humanity is uniquely gifted within our biosphere. We have the capacity for great works of cultivation and renewal but also of destruction and depletion. We have treated our home with contempt, apathy, and violence. We reap what we sow. Our work as a community is a work of cultivation. Each of us can, through dedication and integration, leave the world more beautiful and whole in some way. This means protecting that which already exists as well as growing the capacity of all that we touch. Not only what we would consider the “natural” world, but the people, communities, organizations, and social systems that we are involved in.

Cultivating the world means cultivation of ourselves, and recognizing that we are not separate from nature, but part of a whole.  Learning, growing, becoming, ever more of who we can be in the fullness of our potential. This is not a dogmatic requirement of “self-improvement” but an invitation to the joy of life, to working towards a system and way of life flush with abundance.

Cultivation by its nature creates abundance. Throughout our lives, we will experience these cycles of abundance. The principles of cultivation invite us to put our abundance back into the work of cultivation. Not to hoard or indulge in greed or profligate waste. But to share the abundance for the continuance of the work of all. To take care in how abundance is spread, our abundance belongs to all doing the work, as it is a gift of the work and belongs to no single person. We must use the gifts we are given to continue the cultivation, to grow further, to grow deeper, and to take the chance to celebrate and nourish our community as well as our land.

~

Here we have our three principles: liberation within connection, belonging within the cycle, and abundance within the work. All call us to more fully experience our lives as a grand and beautiful work. This is the art of living. These principles are meant to make the art more beautiful, they are general lessons on how to compose the symphony though not the symphony itself.