In the midst of his discussion of the importance of community to the practice of religion, Thich Nhat Hanh states, "If you want to renew your church, bring the energy of the Holy Spirit into it." (page 67) By "Holy Spirit," he means a kind of holy energy that comes from God and that is similar to mindfulness, which like the Spirit connects us to deeper realities. It was the Holy Spirit that allowed Jesus to heal, and it is the Holy Spirit that gives us the ability to heal and be transformed (page 15). This is not the Pentecostal version of the Spirit, which seems to fill people with holy passions that have nothing to do with mindfully unlearning prejudice and dispensing with reliance on doctrines and beliefs. That Spirit leads to satisfaction, this one to rest and compassion.
What would a mindful, Spirit-energized church look like? It would be a church in which a significant number of its members engage regularly in spiritual practices. It would be a thoughtful community of folks who have gentle control of their emotions. It would be a compassionate, forgiving fellowship. It would be a church open to and accepting of diversity, and it would put less store in doctrines and ideologies than has been the norm in the Christian tradition. It would be composed of more true-doers and fewer true-believers. Sadly, in our highly charged early 21st-century ideological culture it would be a church labelled "liberal" by others and self-identify itself as "progressive"—or, more likely, reject ideological labels while fitting what everyone else sees as a progressive profile. Such a church would have several groups of individuals engaged in shared spiritual practices including "the care of souls" of others engaged in Jesus' ministries of healing and service. It would be a peaceful, grace-filled, and just plain kind community. Amen.
