Thanks so much to all of you who filled out the survey from last time! That helps so much as I plan next steps and try to find the sweet spot of overlap between my passions/expertise and the things you’d like to see more of here (the survey will remain open for another week, so please feel free to take it if you haven’t already).

Of the 100+ folks who filled the survey out, 81% said they want to tend trust around their spiritual path – a percentage far above the rest of the options available.

And I’m thrilled and intimidated, both, by the prospect of addressing it here. I have so much to say on this topic! – a rich history of experience and study to draw from. And (this is where the intimidation arises) up-close-and-personal knowledge of the fears that lurk in its shadows and the feelings, attitudes and actions that flow from such fears. I have wounded others in response to my fears. And I have been wounded.

The arc of my story isn’t unique, however, and I’d venture to guess the wounding and woundedness I know personally are echoes of nearly all of your own.

And too the deep yearning to feed and awaken the soul (however this is defined), and the intuition…and sometimes lived experience…that something beautiful and healing and good is part of each move toward that end – no matter how cleanly you fit religious or spiritual labels or not.

Life’s deepest fears and greatest capacity to set us free to live beyond them seem, to me, to be tangled up in this topic. So it makes all sense, on a sight like this, to start talking overtly about both.

First things…

I foresee orbiting this topic here in a periodic way. And I’m guessing that some of you might like to know where I’m coming from as we start (e.g. am I religious? do I have an axe to grind?). I plan to tell my spiritual story more personally in this week’s Trust Note (see sidebar if you don’t know what Trust Notes are already), but want to say a few things here as well.

First off, wherever you are on your spiritual path, I whole-heartedly bless you. I have no interest in unraveling your spiritual tradition if you have one, and count my work in life and here at this site as a life-long exercise in learning how to love and extend compassion to myself and those around me in ways that heal and enliven and empower, rather than discourage or tear down.

I have every interest in unraveling fear, however, and in tenaciously pushing into and past it in search of what Life beyond it can be.

I actually consider this is our greatest hope as a species. Our greatest calling. And if my spiritual story has any approximation to the human one of growth and discovery, I know that pushing into fear is not a frolic in the park, and that learning to live beyond it can involve a ton of work and pain.

But so can living mindlessly with it. And the latter lacks hope of a bright and beautiful future.

I see few other places where fear lurks as deeply and grippingly as it does around spiritual things – around relationships between people whose spiritual beliefs differ, around our thoughts about death and the afterlife, around our concepts of God/the Universe and the assumptions that come with them, around what can be lost if we listen, truly, to what our hearts are asking of us.

In light of all of this, and despite my own fears of taking the plunge (what if I offend you? what if you offend me? what if I alienate people who would otherwise be nourished here?), it seems to me that a site that’s all about tending trust is an important place to explore trust in relation to spiritual things (!).

So here we go! Periodically, we’ll do just that.

I wish you well and that wherever your fears lurk most grippingly, you catch glimpses beyond them to light your way.

P.S. Those who filled out the survey overwhelmingly spoke of Trust Notes as their favorite part of what happens here, so if you’re wondering whether you want to sign up for them, I don’t think you’ll regret it if you do.