Clay and Threshold: Reimagining the Language of Spirituality

We try to find the words, but we either don’t speak the language of faith or spirituality or we offer up platitudes because we don’t know what else to say, or we turn away from these words because they are painful or have lost meaning for us. This shared exploration is an invitation to expansively mine the language and themes that are given over to the realms of “religion” and “spirituality,” particularly during times of dis-ease, fragmentation, uncertainty, and loss, and transfigure them into life-giving vessels of metaphor, symbol and image. Guiding us in this spelunking expedition will be poets and poems, paintings, photographs, colors, found and natural objects, as well as Susannah Crolius, founder and facilitator of art + soul, an incubator for reimagining spirituality through creative practices. Susannah was an ordained parish minister for 25 years before making the decision to leave organized religion altogether in search of new ways of seeing and being. This conversation could be useful for those in the helping professions who work with people from diverse life perspectives and might want to find ways to encompass their clients' spiritual lives into their work.