Community of Fellow Travelers
Next Community Zoom 8/19/25 at Noon Mountain Time.
Normally, we would be meeting on the 4th Tuesday, but Genie and I will be fishing that day. Below you will see the community we are building, and notes from the two zooms we have had so far. Find the Zoom Link here.
In our next zoom, we will dialog about the post Unity, Union, Theosis. Howard Thurman, mentor to Dr Martin Luther King, Jr said:
I work at preparing my mind, my spirit for the moment when God comes to himself in me. When it happens, I experience His presence. In it, I hear His voice in my own tongue. The center is God coming to Himself. At these moments, it may easily seem to me that all there is, is God.
So join us in community as we examine these ideas of unity and union with God.
Blessings, Gregg
God’s Faint Path fellow travelers
Over the past years, I’ve been walking what I call God’s Faint Path—a quiet trail of spiritual seeking shaped by wilderness, silence, scripture, and the voices of saints and mystics across the ages. I’ve shared reflections along the way, not as a teacher with answers, but as a fellow pilgrim wondering aloud.
But here’s what I know: the faint path can be a lonely road.
James Finley once wrote of Thomas Merton, his beloved friend and spiritual guide as “an elder brother on the lonely road to God.” I’ve often felt the ache and gift of that truth. And like many of you, I’ve longed for the company of kindred souls—those who hunger not for religious performance, but for depth, transformation, and union with the Living God.
So I’m extending an invitation:
Would you like to journey together in a small circle of fellow travelers?
I’m imagining something simple:
• A space for shared reflections and spiritual conversation
• Periodic Zoom gatherings rooted in presence, silence, and honest sharing
• Occasional audio meditations or contemplative teachings
• An online hub for encouragement and soul friendship
Community of Fellow Travelers Zoom 7/22/25
Welcome and Introductions.
Began with a reading from Praisesong
Next we read these quotes and then spent 3 minutes in silence
Look at the animals roaming the forest: God’s spirit dwells within them. Look at the birds flying across the sky: God’s spirit dwells within them. Look at the tiny insects crawling in the grass: God’s spirit dwells within them. . . . Look too at the great trees of the forest; look at the wild flowers and the grass in the fields; look even at your crops. God’s spirit is present within all plants as well. The presence of God’s spirit in all living things is what makes them beautiful; and if we look with God’s eyes, nothing on the earth is ugly.
The Letters of Pelagius
God sleeps in the rocks, dreams in the plants, is awake in animals and knows He is awake in humans.
Harvey Cheatham, esoteric teaching
Share screen with photo of Shadow during 3 minutes of silence.
This photo was the day we picked up Shadow from the breeder in Kansas. Genie started the drive home, and Shadow laid between my feet, looked up at me fearfully wondering if she could trust me. We bonded in that moment as I saw the same spark of life in her that is in me. That spark is a divine spark.
We wrestled with these questions:
Did anything surprise you about the Pelagius quote?
What moved you about this post?
What questions arose upon reading it?
What does Divine Indwelling mean to you?
Who taught you about Divine Indwelling?
I found this quote using the AI chat bubble I’ve embedded in the website.
Christ’s soul and our soul are like an everlasting knot. The deeper we move in our own being, the nearer we come to Christ. And the nearer we come to Christ’s soul, the closer we move to the heart of another.” — Julian of Norwich
I was taught that the Holy Spirit came to us when we first believed. Yet, scripture tells us that we were Made in the Image of God. That happened long before I believed. I had experiences of Spirit long before I became a believer. James Finley said to us in the Living School one time that God is holding up every element of the universe with love. If he quit holding us for one second we would disappear.
Much of the preaching I’ve heard made it sound like the story started with Genesis 3, the fall. Original goodness came before Original Sin. I could believe I was flawed, that I was broken, that I was not good enough. Divine Spark? No way. I was just glad the Holy Spirit could use me as a broken person. The gradual dawning of the idea that I was made in the image of God, and had a spark of the divine within, brought me great relief, and some measure of joy.
Biblical Foundations
God saw all that he had made, and it was very good. And there was evening, and there was morning—the sixth day.
Genesis 1:31 (Original Goodness came before Original Sin)
Do you not know that you are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in you?
1 Corinthians 3:16
It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me.
Galatians 2:20
The kingdom of God is within you.
Luke 17
But you are not in the flesh, you are in the Spirit since the Spirit of God dwells within you.
Romans 8:11-13
Mystical Perspective:
Christian mystics often speak of the indwelling presence as:
The “spark of the soul”
Meister Eckhart
The place where God and the soul meet
St. Teresa of Ávila
A mirror of the Trinity
Catherine of Genoa
God is more intimate to me than I am to myself.
St. Augustine, Confessions, Book III
What we are looking for is already where we are looking from.
St. Francis of Assisi (attributed)
Richard Rohr on Divine Indwelling:
The Divine Indwelling is the unshakable goodness of God at the center of your being. It is not earned. It is not attained. It is simply received and unveiled.
Richard Rohr, The Divine Dance, 2016
Inaugural Community of Fellow Travelers Zoom 6/23/25
Dearest God, We are fellow travelers on a faint path through the woods. From many directions we have come, many paths we have trod, yet we have all emerged into a clearing. We are wondering who are these other people in the clearing why we have crossed paths, and what wants to happen. May your Spirit point the way, and may we each discern the still. small voice awakening our hearts. May we speak from soul and listen intently that we might know one another in a deeper way. In all your many names we pray. Amen
Sangha as Spiritual Community
At its heart, Sangha refers to a community of fellow travelers committed to the spiritual path. In this broader, more inclusive sense, it’s not limited to monastics or awakened beings, but includes any group of people practicing together with shared intention.
The essence of Sangha is spiritual friends walking the path together.
Thich Nhat Hanh on Sangha:
It is very difficult to practice without a Sangha. The Sangha is our body, and the Sangha is our refuge. It is only in the Sangha that we can build our collective energy of mindfulness and concentration. The next Buddha may take the form of a Sangha, a community practicing understanding and loving-kindness.
Introduce yourself, tell us what you are seeking here
I want this to be a place where all voices are heard, and we all feel seen. Today, Ned Breslin will share a reading from his soon to be published poetry book. Ned and I were in the same Living School Circle Group for two years. After we finished, Ned spent a year leading efforts in Ukraine to feed people displaced by the front lines of battle. He has written a book about thin places in a war zone. Hear him now.
Ned read a poem from his book, as we contemplated the picture of the woman whose words we heard. She had lost her husband, her apartment, her friends and family to Russian Missiles. She now lives underground and feeds people every day. She wept as she said she used to be a baker and did not even have an oven. “I can’t even remember what cake tastes like.”
We were powerfully touched and spent twenty minutes doing Lectio and reflecting on the reading.
Then we heard Gregg’s story: After a trip to the ER in a blizzard, we were confronted with the fact that it has become too difficult to live offgrid so far from medical care. As Florrie and Andy pushed us to move out of the mountains, to walk away from the log cabin we built 25 years ago, we didn’t want to hear it.
We went through the stages of grief, starting with Anger.
At the time, I was working on a post on Intuition & Discernment. In his book Your Life as Art, Robert Fritz quotes Candice Carpenter’s book Chapters, talking about the profound cycles of change a life can take. The first stage she calls:
The Gig is Up. You know that what you have been doing is over. When you try and hold on, change will be thrust upon you with greater and greater force until you let go. The more you try to hold on, the more the intensity of the tornado that is pulling you out of the present unworkable situation
We knew at some point it would be true, and the next weeks would show it was time to move on.
Fritz continues, The next stage is
Falling: disengaged, disidentified and disenchanted, we fall into disorientation
Then comes
A Walk in the Desert in which you reflect on the most existential issues of your life
Next comes
Stirrings: all the threads of your past ultimately will be woven together into a new path forward.
This stage is followed by
A Stake in the Ground: you begin to focus and then commit yourself to your new way of life.
Change is often a death followed by resurrection. To create something new, something old must end. Die to it well, my friend.
Spend 3 minutes in silence contemplating where you have had an experience like this……..