Humanity stands at a crossroads between destroying our planet and our souls, versus doing what is necessary to heal and regenerate. Western mainstream society, which dominates much of the world’s approach to addressing large scale problems, has devoted increasingly large amounts of resources and attention to responding to this existential crisis by organizing collaborative efforts for large scale change such as the global effort known as the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
Yet, the principal asset brought to address efforts like the SDGs is mankind’s rational thought. This reliance on the rational has produced technical advances. However, at a human level, this approach has been less effective in creating collaborations in which the whole is greater than the sum of its parts and where virtues such as wisdom, humility and grace are given equal (if not greater) value than intellectual horsepower.
This transforming practice presents the opportunity to re-legitimize the sacred and spiritual as an important part of how collaborative activity to address social problems can become transformational. Divine wisdom and welcoming the sacred is a central tenet of CCLs work because we believe this is a root dimension of the human experience. Mainstream social change has often diminished the role and value of spiritual and sacred integration, and as a result, prevented wholesome practices and Divine inspiration from guiding how collaborative work happens.
From how we operate as a team to the way we invite the sacred into collaborative spaces, CCL lives into the sacred at its core.
Collective Change Lab, with support from the Wayfarer Foundation, is currently wrapping up a research project focused on how the sacred and spiritual are an important part of addressing social and environmental problems. The goal of our project was to advance dialogue around how mainstream institutional social change culture is missing a critical dimension in social and environmental problem solving efforts in its de-legitimization of spiritual practices as a part of the process.
Spirituality Guides
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A Welcome Into Spirituality and Systems Change
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The Value of Spiritual Care in Systems Change
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Inviting Spiritual Practitioners & Upholding Right-Relations with Wisdom Holders
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Engaging Sacred and Spiritual Experiences for Systems Change
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Healing Spiritual and Religious Harm in Collective Work
Quotes & Insights
EMERGING FINDINGS: Spirituality and Systems Change Research
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Our research found a clear synergy between the qualities of spiritual practitioners and systems change collaborative efforts that can deepen how systems change happens. For instance, we learned about the powerful role Chaplains and spiritual companions can play in movement efforts, supporting the moral, ethical, spiritual, nature-based, and humanistic dimensions that arise when working on social and environmental challenges.
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Collective efforts are seldom given the spaciousness to meaningfully bridge collaborative work and the sacred, resulting in surface level engagements with the sacred despite thousands of years of spiritual wisdom waiting to be engaged. There is a massive opportunity to help unleash the collective spiritual intelligence yearning to be awakened in collaborative social change efforts.
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Spiritual formation work has often been reserved to faith communities, yet our research indicated that social and environmental problem solving is a ripe space for helping people and communities tap into their spiritual power. Simultaneously, spiritual experiences and beliefs were often seen as inseparable from social and environmental problem solving, yet mainstream structures have limited space to accompany those dimensions while doing the work of serving others and the Earth.
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Our research helped document practical ways of acknowledging and repairing from historical harms associated with religion and spirituality, opening processes of reconstruction for what spirituality and the sacred offer in the modern day. Sacred experiencing offers a space for connecting at a deeper level, cultivating restoration of mind, body, spirit, and relationality in ways that can help sustain social change leaders through the inevitably challenging work they encounter. The nature of this repair then translates into material action that helps foster equity, justice, and love-centered ways of engaging with the world.
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Tapping into the intelligence of the world's spiritual practices offers a much needed resource for sense-making in a rapidly changing, ever complex world. As one contributor shared, “there's a reason that religious language persists - because it provides ways of understanding the world and understanding ourselves. And then it gives us practice.” More than ever, resourcing ourselves with ways to embrace the unknown, work with what is sacred, and to be in a deeper relationship with ourselves, others, and the natural world are crucially needed. What's beautiful is that many of these resources already exist, with long lineages of care-takers waiting to share them while being in relationship with the social change sector.
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The fundamental value of this work was reaffirmed in our research and acknowledged by the practitioners we connected to, indicating that we are at a growing resonance point and edge of what is needed to propel transformation in the world.