What happens to our life when we turn the volume down? Who are we apart from the noise and distractions to which we’ve become addicted? What would we discover if we returned to silence, stillness, contemplation, and solace? What happens to us spiritually when we become free of religion, and begin experiencing a living faith?
The Old Stone Chapel has been in my heart to bring you for a very long time, but I didn’t know the best way to offer it to you.
You see, The Old Stone Chapel is not a building that exists anywhere, yet it exists everywhere that you exist. I’m not creating a NEW THING for you to do, or a place to go, and I have no desire to make this into anything at all.
Any THING is the problem. None of us need another thing. We are not better off by experiencing Reality as an object that is distinct from every other object in the cosmos. The goal of The Old Stone Chapel is to free ourselves from relating object to object and begin relating subject to Subject. You could say The Old Stone Chapel is NOT A Thing… it’s a NO-Thing… but it’s definitely not nothing. Meister Eckhart would frame this by saying God is not what consciousness knows, God is what consciousness is. God is beyond our human conceptions, and we need help and training to break through. The Old Stone Chapel is such training and experience.
You and I are each…The Old Stone Chapel. We are the temple of the Holy Spirit (1 Corinthians 6:19). We are the dwelling place of God. Thus, finding God is not subscribing to any or The religion. We will not find God in any perfunctory ritual, God isn’t out there, in there, over there, or up there, since there doesn’t truly exist. What exists is here…now… the Presence is only in each and every present moment. And the Presence of God existing within us…even as our own existence (in our nothingness apart from God) is found not be doing, but by learning how to be with God…in God.
“Be still and know that I am God…” (Psalm 46:10)
“And I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh.” (Ezekiel 36:26)
So what exactly is The Old Stone Chapel?
The Old Stone Chapel is an online experience. You can call it an online church but that is profoundly misleading. It’s really a training experience where we are learning how to see Beyond Everything with spiritual eyes. It’s a way to gain knowledge experientially and to know the wisdom of God through the context of friendship. If it follows the path of my un-coaching sessions, then I expect that many people will find healing and a radically new life.
Here’s how it works:
- Sign up to The Old Stone Chapel so that you can receive each invitation.
- Open the invite: It will contain instructions that the virtual audience will use for each experience.
- Find a comfortable chair, in a quiet place, during a quiet time, and put on a set of noise cancelling headphones.
- Your downloads will include PDF’s that you can print off, or refer to. They will include art images, song lyrics, notes and transcripts, links to licensed material, websites, etc.. which will be referenced and aggregated as part of the experience.
- There will be instruction, guidance and training in contemplation, stillness, and reflection. The experience will include music, video, art and photo images, poems, biblical instruction and prayer. It is a fully integrated, immersive experience that challenges our assumptions, awakens us to divine inner experience, trains us to see God’s revelation, and re-connects us to embody our love for one another in ways that will seem foreign to those who are used to modern religion.
- This is NOT entertainment. The goal is to remove anything that would stand in our way of experiencing the love of God. The training to learn how to sit still, and just be. It’s my hope and assumption that this will allow us to be as James Finley says: “completely taken over by the oceanic love of God that is welling up within us.”
What does this cost?
There is no financial cost to you. You pay with your time, but I believe it will be an investment that pays you back in ways you cannot fathom.
We all have busy lives. I have a job just like each of you. When I was a “company man” employed by the Religious Industrial Complex I firmly believed that “going to church” and the modern model of singing prom songs to Jesus followed by a TED talk about salvation was the way to help people spiritually. Now that I’ve been a religious alumni since 2012, and have practiced being the Church, I can say that the present model of doing church has not produced members who are successfully speaking healing into the lives of the diverse people with whom you and I work everyday. Sure, there are people with religion, but so few with a contagious love of God and all others. How long will religion compete with our culture using its weird game of Red Rover? With 25 times more churches than Starbucks, where are the pastors who share Paul’s conviction of never taking a dime to preach the Gospel? (1 Corinthians 9:15)
The modern church has become its own noisy marketing machine. It is a $1.2 Trillion earth evacuation business that is desperately trying to be relevant and I think our world is ready to strip off everything that is not Holy if such a thing is possible. I envision The Old Stone Chapel to be a lighthouse of calm wisdom in a noisy world that can’t stop scrolling. If you go to a great church, congratulations, but a solemn assembly is pretty impossible with a fog machine, Jumbotrons, a light show, and a band.
The Old Stone Chapel is you and me. The Kingdom of Heaven is here, now, in the midst of us and religion still wants to place it on the end of a carrot for us to chase until we die. I seek not to convert anyone, but for all comers to be completed by experiencing Heaven’s bliss anytime and anywhere we pay attention to it.
I lose nothing if no one comes. I gain nothing if everyone does. I am nothing and nobody here. I’m just your concierge pointing you to what is Real and True as best as I am able. Until we discover how oblivious we are to the omnipresent, omniscient love of God that animates every particle of the Universe, and transforms hearts of stone into soft, receptive, alive hearts of flesh…where we esteem others as greater than ourselves, then I’m sorry, but religion hasn’t got us very far and hardly seems worth our time and money. Contemplation gets us beyond religion. As scripture says, every nation, tribe, people & tongue (Revelation 7:9) gathers around the throne. We all somehow get over our tribalism, our denominations and otherness, our duality, and find unity along side of complete diversity. I pray we taste that here.
We need to return to the power of the Spirit which started it all.
It’s in my heart to offer something different. Not everyone will be able to receive it, but if you are one of those who can, who longs deeply in your soul, like a deer panting for water, then I invite you to come and take a big drink. Taste and see that the Lord is good.
