So here’s what I want you to do, God helping you:
Take your everyday, ordinary life—your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and
walking-around life—and place it before God as an offering. Embracing what God
does for you is the best thing you can do for him. Don’t become so well-adjusted
to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking. Instead, fix your
attention on God. You’ll be changed from the inside out. Readily recognize what
God wants from you, and quickly respond to it. Unlike the culture around you,
always dragging you down to its level of immaturity, God brings the best out of
you, develops well-formed maturity in you. — Romans 12:1-2

We will all be formed by something. We all have different religious, spiritual, theological, and philosophical identities, but if we aren’t paying attention, we will be formed by whatever dominant culture tells us we should become.

So what we mean by ancient-future spirituality is simple. We embrace our spiritual and religious traditions and let them inform our contemporary experiences and practices of religious identity. Our religious traditions inform our religious identity.

We do this through the intentional training and practice of our mind, body, and heart (askesis) for engaging public life. Through the practices of prayer, mindfulness, self-reflection, and self-critique we re-form and transform our ways of seeing and experiencing the world around us. This is our care of the self and care of others.

With open minds and hearts (e.g., the mind of Christ) we are more likely to love, to be kind, and to be compassionate. With closed minds and hearts we are more likely to shut down the exorbitant offerings of grace from God. Life is a work of art. How will we create ours?

Paradox

Living with an openness to God’s Mysteries…
I will not be afraid of mystery

Vulnerability

Living with an openness to God’s World…
I will risk expressing who I am

Hospitality

Living with an openness to God’s People…
I will welcome the Other