Welcome to One Spirit!
A Note from Our Founder & Spiritual Director, Rev. Diane Berke
On behalf of everyone at One Spirit, welcome! We’re thrilled that you’ve found us at this moment in your life and hope to be part of your next step on your life journey.
For over 30 years, I have been an interfaith/interspiritual minister and educator. In 2001, following the attacks on September 11th, I felt an urgency to take the work I’d been doing to a deeper level: to support the emergence of what Wayne Teasdale, in his book The Mystic Heart, called interspirituality, or the interspiritual age. Interspirituality refers to the sharing across religions and spiritual traditions of the deep commitment to the inner transformative process that comprises the essence of the spiritual journey, and the sharing of the deeper mystical teachings and contemplative practices that support transformation.
To serve this emerging vision of interspirituality, I felt called to create a learning center that would train and prepare ministers, spiritual counselors and companions, and leaders to serve in an increasingly complex, interconnected, multicultural world, and support seekers and activists in cultivating the spiritual depth and maturity needed to help bring into being a just, peaceful, and sustainable world.
In August 2002, One Spirit Learning Alliance was born. We embrace and teach the deep truths found at the heart of all the world’s spiritual paths and traditions, draw upon the wealth of spiritual and contemplative practices that help us evolve and grow, and commit to cultivating and living the values shared by all traditions: of peace, compassion, wisdom, service, interconnectedness, social justice, and love.
One Spirit offers three core professional training programs – our Seminary training, Interspiritual Counseling and Companioning training, and Emerging Leadership Academy training – as well as a broad range of short courses and workshops open to the general public. In addition to courses offered by our own gifted faculty, our public workshops have been offered by such spiritual luminaries and teachers as Mirabai Starr, Andrew Harvey, Miranda Macpherson, Loch Kelly, Robert Holden, Phyllis Curott, Marta Moreno Vega, Kurt Johnson, Terry Patten, Adam Bucko, and Matthew Fox.
One Spirit is also a vibrant and growing spiritual community comprised of students and graduates of our training programs and members of the general public. We offer a rich variety of community events and programs free or on a donation basis to provide opportunities to come together for spiritual conversation, practice, learning, exploration, and service. These include our weekly Gatherings, monthly Shamanic Circle, One Spirit in Action events focused on social justice issues and sacred activism, daily and weekly meditation groups, monthly ecstatic dance gatherings, daily sacred readings, and more.
From One Spirit’s inception, we offered an integration of online and in-person learning and community participation opportunities, and so were uniquely positioned to seamlessly transition all of our offerings to a virtual platform during the COVID pandemic. This has allowed our programs and community to expand internationally.
We hope you will explore our training programs, workshops and classes, and community events and offerings, and look forward to meeting and engaging with you.
Blessings,
Rev. Diane Berke,
Founder & Spiritual Director