Sacred Refractions #2

Each month, Rev. Ava Schlesinger poses four questions and invites a community blessing as she turns the lens of curiosity toward One Spirit’s kaleidoscope of alumni. This evolving series celebrates the prism of lived experience and reflects the radiant, raw, and beautifully human expressions of sacred action and service.

This month shines the spotlight on Rev. Ali’a Edwards: Dean & Faculty at One Spirit, Nichiren Buddhist Practitioner, and Pilgrim in Motion. (The following is paraphrased from Ava and Ali’a’s Zoom interview.)

What first called you to One Spirit, and how has that calling evolved since?

I first met One Spirit on the glossy page of a magazine I almost threw away. I graduated in 2012, so this was many years ago.

I was going regularly to Wednesday night talks at East Bay Church of Religious Science in Oakland. The assistant minister there was doing a series on Harriet Tubman, and for the first time I was hearing Black liberation theology braided with metaphysics. It lit something up in me. Three girlfriends and I would meet there every week, hungry for conversation that could hold both spirit and liberation in the same breath.

One day I picked up a Science of Mind magazine, flipping through hoping for more of that kind of thinking. I didn’t find additional theology that spoke to me in that magazine, but I found an ad for One Spirit Seminary. I kept the magazine because I am not a magazine-thrower, I make collages; I keep what feels alive. The ad began to show up in my dreams. Not as a voice of God, not as a booming command, just as a page quietly drifting past like a screensaver. Over and over. For months.

I argued with it: “Why would I go to seminary? I don’t want to be a minister. I don’t know what I’d be doing there.”  But eventually, I listened. I looked up the website and felt something click into place. I remember thinking: “Oh. This is where I can talk about God without shame. This is where other people will be just as indulgent as I am, hungry for ‘God stuff’ from every angle, culture, and time period.”

I didn’t go to get a title. I went because I wanted to talk about God. To learn. To stretch. To sit in a room of people who were just as curious. And in the process, that curiosity became a calling. Seminary showed me that my love of God and my love of people weren’t separate. It gave me skills such as listening, holding space, and discernment, and it gave me the courage to bring all of who I am into service.

Where does your ministry live now, and how does it move?

For the last two years, my ministry has been moving – literally.

I don’t have a fixed home base at the moment. Since June 2023, I’ve been traveling the world: France, Greece, Italy, Turkey, Spain, Morocco, Egypt, Costa Rica, Colombia, Peru, Ecuador, Guatemala, Vietnam, Japan, Thailand, Laos, Malaysia, China, Dominican Republic, Mexico, Portugal, Austria, and England. I have traveled mostly alone, mostly with little more than a plane ticket and a sense of where I’m being asked to go next. The invitation has been to live simply and earnestly through study, travel, and writing; to go see the world, gather its wisdom, test my convictions, and let every place and person I encounter reshape me into someone capable of doing the work I’m here to do. (PS: I’m not done yet!)

I’ll be in Southeast Asia in winter and start getting inner ‘downloads’ about where I’m meant to be in spring; I follow this inner guidance. It’s not a vacation. It’s a pilgrimage, practice, and experiment all at once.

I’ve been practicing Nichiren Buddhism for over two decades, and the branch I’m in is deeply rooted in Buddhist humanism. Humanity is the laboratory where the teachings get tested. So my travels are a kind of self-study, spiritual study, and cultural study. I’m interested in what happens when I take my faith and my One Spirit training ‘off the page’ and into train stations, backroads, tiny jazz clubs, and neighborhoods where I clearly don’t blend in.

In Okinawa, for example, I ended up in a part of town I didn’t know was a red-light district. At first I was upset with myself, of all the places I could have chosen to stay, how did I land here? As I walked the streets, I noticed I was grumbling internally, feeling agitated. But here is the reality: no one had done anything to me. No one was talking to me. I didn’t know a soul there.

I realized: “Nothing is upsetting me outside of me. Whatever is happening right now is happening inside my own mind.”

This insight turned the whole week into practice. I watched my projections. I wondered what the men on the street saw when they saw me. I wondered how much of what I felt was mine and how much belonged to the stories I was telling about them. 

Then one night, I wandered into a tiny jazz club. No one in the room was Black or brown, no one of African descent. And yet, when the band started playing, I could hear the same emotional landscapes I know from blues, gospel, and jazz – the music that feels like it’s in my DNA. If I’d closed my eyes, I would not have known I was in Okinawa.

On the break, with the help of the drummer translating, I asked the pianist: “What have you lived that allows you to tell these stories of pain and beauty in this way?” She started crying. I started crying. We did not share a language, but we absolutely shared a field of feeling.

That night felt like a miracle of sound and soul, an embodied experience of dependent origination and interconnection.

“My ministry lives there now: in those moments when I stay open instead of closing, when I choose curiosity over defensiveness, when I trust that Spirit can move between hearts even when words can’t.”

What feels revolutionary about One Spirit right now?

“When I say it feels like being at the forefront of a revolution, I don’t mean slogans and banners. I mean we’re being asked to live our interspirituality in real time, in an era of atrocities, genocide, climate crisis, and profound fragmentation.”

Back when I was a student, Rev. Diane’s teaching felt cutting-edge to me. The quiet…the deep permission for contemplation…her spiritual authority and grounded way of holding space, all helped to form me. Part of our training was to find those same qualities within ourselves and amplify them, each in our own way.

Now, as a dean, the revolutionary piece is that we’re not there as ‘the model’ to be emulated. We’re companions. We’re midwives. We’re asking, over and over: “What are the interspiritual tactics and strategies we can employ in times of real-world harm? How does oneness speak to genocide, to oppression, to daily overwhelm?”

We’re not content with the idea of just thinking about oneness. We want to know: “How does that oneness address people’s needs in real time?”

The kaleidoscope model of multiple deans and multiple perspectives helps with this. Students get to hear different voices and different approaches that are coherent but distinct. We’re not handing down neat answers. We’re asking provocative questions and then sitting in the discomfort and unknown and discovering together.

A recent example: “I was teaching about spiritual hygiene with a co-teacher. I had created a worksheet for somatic check-ins – breath, body sensations, emotional cues. A student raised their hand and said, ‘I don’t relate to this. These signals aren’t how I get information. Is there another way to ask these questions?’”

In that moment, I realized my framework hadn’t truly considered neurodivergence, at least not in a deep way. This didn’t evoke guilt so much as a fierce commitment. It was a wake-up call: “If I say I’m devoted to inclusion, my preparation has to reflect that.”

Since then, our teaching team has sought out more resources on neurodivergent experience and other ways of knowing. I’ve shifted things that seem small but aren’t. For instance, I have started grounding breath practices on the exhale instead of the inhale for trauma-informed reasons (explanation: the exhale activates the parasympathetic nervous system, signaling safety, calming the fight/flight response, reducing heart rate/anxiety, and helping to release trapped tension, effectively lowering arousal and resetting the nervous system when the body feels activated or overwhelmed). We are also paying attention to time zones so someone in Switzerland doesn’t always feel like the odd one out when we say, “Let’s break for lunch,” and it’s their dinner.

What feels revolutionary is that we’re allowing the times we’re in – the urgency, the liminality, the in-between – to shape how and what we teach. We’re people-first, not topic-first. We keep asking: “Who is in the room? What do they need to hear, feel, and experience in order to be resourced for sacred action in their communities?”

What’s the greatest gift you bring to this community as a teacher and dean?

“I think my greatest gift is sincerity.”

Years ago, I messed up something around finances with the organization, and Rev. Karen (Dean of Student Finances at the time) was holding me accountable. She was clear: “This is part of your leadership. Your spirituality includes how you show up in commitments like this.” At the end of that conversation, she said, “If this were anyone else, I might recommend something different. But I feel your sincerity.”

I hadn’t named it in myself before, but it really landed.

I don’t think I have more or less than anyone else in terms of gifts. We’re all carrying things – some we’re proud of, some we’d rather not be carrying. But sincerity is the thing I know I can offer: “a genuine commitment to the path, not for title, not for power, not for security, but because I’ve decided this is the kind of human I want to be.”

I am resolved to actualize myself in this lifetime – I wish to keep walking through the fires, to keep finding out who I am and how I can best show up. That resolve – to stay, to work it out, to keep uncovering and enjoying the layers, is what I bring to my students and colleagues. It’s the quiet message underneath everything: “I am here. I am in this with you. And I believe this work matters enough to change all of us, including me.”

If you could offer a blessing to One Spirit alumni (and those who may find their way here), what would it be?

(This is directly quoted from Rev. Ali’a, intended for each of you from her deepest heart to yours):

“It’s so sweet just to imagine the people on the other side of this page – the ones we’ve sat in circle with, prayed with, wrestled with, laughed with, wept with…and the ones we haven’t met yet.

I bless the ties that bind us across ideology, power, race, gender, class, and geography. I bless the bonds that cannot break, even when institutions wobble and structures shift. I bless the unity we are trying to remember and embody, not as an abstract ideal but as a lived reality.

May we take our talent, our time, and our energy and be creative with them – finding what is truly ours to do. May our sacred work not drain us but sustain us. May it feel good – deeply, soulfully good – to get about the business of interspirituality in our homes, workplaces, and communities.

May we add to each other’s joy as we walk side by side. And may that joy be like a juicy mango, so ripe it runs down your arm…more sweetness than you can possibly catch, enough to savor and enough to share.

And it is so. Ashe. Amen.”

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A note from Rev. Ava

The beauty of our One Spirit community is that the light and love keep moving, bending, shimmering, and finding new forms through each of us. If you’re a graduate or student of seminary or ISCC whose work in the world reflects this light, and you want to share your story, I would love to hear from you (contact me: beautyandgraceink@gmail.com) so that we can discuss spotlighting you in the future. Sacred Refractions is meant to be a living conversation—a collection of stories that show how ministry continues to take shape in every imaginable place and form.