COMMUNITY OF CREATOR SPIRIT

The Community of Creator Spirit was born in conferences at Wainwright House in Rye, New York in 1984. Since then the community has grown with gatherings in Greenwich Village, at Stillwater, New Jersey, Montauk, New York, and the Farm at Quinneville, New York.

In 1991 the Creator Spirit began to bring new life to the Congregational Church of Patchogue. During the next three years we celebrated the 200th anniversary of the founding of the church, opened a lead box which was sealed in the cornerstone in 1892, shared exciting study groups with books such as Women Who Run With Wolves, welcomed one hundred new members to the congregation and 130 children to the church school, established a soup kitchen which served a nutritious meal to 70 persons each week, and transformed a divided and angry congregation into a happy flourishing community.

The congregation was suffocated by a small group that had controlled the church and the town for more than two decades. The spiritual renewal liberated the church from the control of this group.

Many persons experienced a spiritual awakening, a healing of life and relationships, an awareness of purpose and gifts of love. There was growing excitement that we were in the early stages of an extraordinary adventure. Because the Congregational Church was in the center of Patchogue and communicated with people through a weekly radio program on the region's primary station, this spiritual energy flowed into the larger community.

Dramas about the journey of the Magi, a transformation of hell into heaven, and the life of Jesus generated excitement. Songs such asWhen You Wish Upon a Star and I'm Dreaming of a White Christmas integrated deep human feelings into our worship services. Journeys to places such as Genesis Farm in northwest New Jersey kindled our communion with the Creator's presence in the earth and our desire to establish an organic farm in our community. Weekend conferences at Montauk, a pilgrimage to Rincon in Puerto Rico and weekly meditations nurtured our awareness of the Creator Spirit and our love for one another.

We are learning that the Creator Spirit infuses the whole world and there is no separation between spiritual and secular realms of life, that the Spirit is present in every culture, each religious tradition, and in the unique identity of each person. We are experiencing that the pulse of the universe is love.

We also are experiencing a hallowing of all creation, that life and energy cannot be destroyed, dying is a transformation, a sloughing off of the cocoon of our flesh, the gift of a "new body", and an ongoing adventure in the life everlasting. We are enjoying a continuing communion with those who have embarked upon that eternal pilgrimage.

We yearn for a closer intimacy with the Creator Spirit. We feel the presence of the Spirit in our celebrations of life, the journeys of our lives, scientific and technological discoveries, an evolving global civilization, a new inclusive humanity, and the continuing evolution of the earth. We also feel the Creator Spirit in the drumbeat of our hearts, the rhythm of our breathing, the flow of our blood, the imaginations of our minds, the strength of our vigor, and the mysteries of our souls.

In 1994 a woman who had participated in the congregation since childhood asked the minister to bless her marriage with her female companion. The minister consulted with the officers and members of the congregation about her request. It became clear that the congregation was divided and that there were extremely strong feelings on both sides. Opposition was so vehement that the minister decided to bless the marriage at a church in a neighboring community. Many members of the congregation supported the couple and helped them with their plans.

Those who had lost control of the church and those who believed that the minister and supporters of the lesbian marriage were now contaminated with the abomination of homosexuality were consumed with vicious rage. The minister was slandered throughout the congregation and community. At a hastily called congregational meeting in midsummer when many members were away on vacations, this vicious rage was vented at new members, those who supported the lesbian marriage, and the minister who was fired by a split vote. Persons were shouting Fire him! Fire him! The moderator of the meeting was verbally abused. One person attempted to stack the vote by passing out illegal ballots. Many persons left the meeting in distress vowing never to enter this church building again.

We discovered that homosexuality was more widespread than we thought. For the first time some persons affirmed they were gay and others told their parents they were gay. Parents who were lifelong close friends told each other about their gay and lesbian children. Honesty, openness, and tolerance increased. So did rage and viciousness. Hypocrisy diminished.

We affirm the inalienable right of persons to be true to themselves and to realize their fullest potentialities without being abused by prejudice, violence and death.

After we were forced to leave the Congregational Church, we met at the Clare Rose Theatre at St. Joseph's College, next at the gymnasium of St. Francis De Sales Parish, then at the Bay Avenue Elementary School. Since 1996 we have been meeting in the home of Diane Hall Wasser in Brookhaven Hamlet.

We are repositioning ourselves in harmony with creation and are nurturing the beauty of the earth. We inspired the development of a community organic garden which provides delicious vegetables without pesticides for 60 families. We research health and nutrition, and are establishing patterns of life that engender a vibrant well-being.

We live in a watershed era when swift and accelerating changes are sweeping away old worlds and new worlds are evolving. In such times new wine cannot be contained in old wineskins. We are very thankful for traditions of freedom, justice, a reverence for life, the rights of individuals, and affirmations of heart and intellect bequeathed to us by those who have preceded us. We are discarding the wineskins of Western chauvinism, injustice, patriarchalism, racism, prejudice toward any person or group, and the life-negating influences of our cultural and religious heritage.

We are being liberated and empowered to participate in the ongoing work of creation and to pioneer the Creator Spirit's new order. We go forward in trust, not knowing the pathway or destination, yet confident that the Creator Spirit is with us and will guide us, and all persons, to Promised Lands of ecstasy and fulfilment.

Without planning to do so, we are experiencing a re-creation of the pattern of the early Christian community, those who were called followers of the way. We gather in a home. We are a small, loving community. We care about and support each other. We are being guided by the Spirit.

DISCIPLINE
(1) begin each day by asking the Creator Spirit to live within us and enable us to become the persons we were created to be and to accomplish those purposes for which we have been given our lives;

(2) give thanks each morning for the gift of life and health (if we enjoy good health), and the gift of the minutes of each day;

(3) nurture our communion with the Creator Spirit by breathing in the spirit with each breath, by being filled with love, joy, peace and healing energies, and by exhaling stress, anxiety, feelings of negativity, destructive forces, toxicity, anger, bitterness, depression and self-absorption;

(4) nurture members of the Community by sending them loving and healing energies each day;

(5) share love and work for justice each day.

PROGRAMS
* Gathering each Sunday at 10 a.m.
* Meditation each Wednesday at the Wildlife Refuge
* Royal Order of the Butterflies
* Celebrations of spring, summer, autumn & winter
* The Common Good
* Winter Conference - SUM/I am - at Montauk
* Center for the Reform of Christianity
* Winter Expedition to Rincon, Puerto Rico
* Children's Christmas Story: "The Polar Express"
* Religious Anonymous
* Blessing of Animals at the Festival of Francis of Assisi
* People's Theater: "Yearning for a Star" (the Four Kings); "Bringing Hell Back to Heaven"; "Jesus"

PROGRAMS WHICH WE INSPIRED, PARTICIPATE IN OR SUPPORT
* Hamlet Organic Garden
* Patchogue Soup Kitchen
* Pipeline of Uncontaminated Spring Water to Kenya villages

A COMMUNITY PRAYER (including a revision of the Lord's Prayer)
Creator Spirit, midwife of new creations that sleep latently in our souls, give us an awareness, an imaginative vision, of our unawakened creative powers and talents, and nurture them to expression and fulfilment. Don't let the world around us limit our sense of our possibilities or pressure us to conform within repressive boundaries. Liberate us from traditional ways of doing things and from knee-jerk responses which replicate patterns of the past. Give us an inward strength which will insulate us against those who would chip away at our new creations and chop at our fledgeling flights toward new worlds.

In the fullness of your loving energies, enable us to grow into the wholeness of our true selves, taking our rightful places in the symphony of creation, contributing our unique gifts to the ongoing evolution of the universe, and sharing with all our hearts and minds and bodies in the great dance of joyful love. And, our heavenly father and mother, present everywhere, thank you for your love which you give us again and again without any conditions or demands. Fill the world and our hearts with your kingdom of love and freedom and justice. Fulfill your eternal purposes everywhere on earth and in and through us.
Thank you for the resources of earth which provide our daily bread.

Heal our separations from others, from you, from ourselves, and nurture us to be whole persons so we may share your healing powers with others. Guard us from temptations that waste us and deliver us from evil that destroys us -- those things that prevent us from being the persons you created us to be and block us from doing those things you gave us our lives to do.
For you are the energies of the continuing evolution of earth and universe, the power, the ecstasies and the peace, forever and ever.
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An occasional letter strengthens communal bonds, shares news about research, activities and persons, and reports expressions of the Creator Spirit in our lives and in the contemporary world.

For additional information, Email: jrenwickj@aol.com
telephone: (631) 286-7955