Frequently Asked Questions

The Community of the Incarnation is a new monastic community dedicated to each other and a Rule of Life. The Community’s primary mission is to teach contemplative prayer as a way of addressing spiritual impoverishment in church, culture, and society. It accomplishes this mission by running the Center for Spiritual Imagination, a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization that offers formation, programming, and community experiences centered on the Christian contemplative tradition. 

New monasticism is a contemporary spiritual movement that reinterprets traditional monastic principles for daily life, emphasizing that deep contemplation and spiritual practices are accessible to everyone. It involves committing to a "Rule of Life" that integrates daily prayer, personal growth, and active engagement with social and environmental justice, often in dispersed communities that blend ancient wisdom with insights from contemporary fields (like psychology and ecology) to address both individual and global transformation.Check out our Exploring New Monasticism course here to learn more. Take our course "Exploring New Monasticism" to learn more.

You are welcome to join regardless of your religious status. While we focus primarily on Christian Contemplation, we include readings and perspectives from other traditions.

We connect through shared practice, not necessarily shared belief. Those who engage with our practices, even vowed members of the Community of the Incarnation, are not required to adhere to any particular creed or to identify as Christian. Rather, they are invited to engage the practices of the Christian contemplative tradition in the context of community. As our practices are deeply rooted in the historic Christian faith, you will need to have a willingness to explore the tradition. 

Testimonial:

Before joining the Community of the Incarnation, I had explored a number of religious and spiritual paths, and found myself between Christianity and Buddhism. I had hoped to heal my relationship with Christianity by joining this community, but struggled at the beginning with the many shadows I had acquired throughout my life around God and religion. Living in New York City and running a small business, it felt very uncool to associate myself with Christianity, especially because when I told people I had a Buddhist meditation practice, I was met with a lot of admiration and respect. As time went on and I became more comfortable in the Community, I grew to understand that there is a difference between mainstream Christianity and Christian Contemplation. Now I would consider myself a Christian Contemplative who also enjoys Buddhist practices and embraces the mystical core of all traditions. Being part of the Community of the Incarnation has allowed me to understand Christianity in a new way without asking me to let go of my Buddhist practices.

Our community is open to all, and we welcome people of all genders, sexual orientation, and political affiliation. While the majority of our members tend to hold progressive views, we do have more conservative and traditional members as well. Just as we do not ask our members to conform to a particular belief system, we also do not ask them to hold particular political or social opinions. We do require that each person is treated with dignity, respect, and grace.

Sometimes it can be very difficult to accept one another’s viewpoint. But we have found that staying in community, discussing our points of view with respect and humility, and loving those we disagree with is far more important than sharing the same ideas about everything. Community does not always equal consensus. Learning to disagree with each other without severing the relationships is hard but vital for our community to be more than an echo chamber. 

Being a fully dispersed community, we encourage our members to take action at their local church and to be part of local movements. This falls under our third vow of practicing our spirituality in the context of ‘hearing the cry of the poor and the cry of the earth’. We have begun brainstorming ways to take joint or parallel action on behalf of different movements, specifically climate change and immigration (refugees).

Members of the community are free to self-organize joint efforts on behalf of the issues they care about, but again, this does not represent the Center for Spiritual Imagination’s views.

We as a Center do not make political statements. Any statements that founders, staff members, and community members make on their social media platforms do not represent the views of the Center.

The Center for Spiritual Imagination always strives to use modern, inclusive language that also honors the long held prayers and traditions of Christianity. When praying to God, we use “God” as the pronoun, sometimes “He” and sometimes “She”. If you are not comfortable with reading a variety of texts that utilize both traditional and inclusive language, you may struggle with our formation.

Even if you belong to another spiritual community, you are welcome to first explore our community, and then discern whether or not you feel called to join as a Companion or Vowed Member. Vowed Members are expected to make the Community of the Incarnation a primary spiritual community, although it does not need to be the only one. We especially encourage our vowed members to connect with a local, in-person community in addition to this one.

Being a dispersed community, our principal means of connecting is through daily shared practice encompassed by our Rule of Life. If you wish to adopt only certain aspects of our Rule and adapt them to your own Rule, you can apply for the Companion Way. Only if you are interested in and willing to adopt our Rule of Life, which over time builds to about 2 hours of daily practice, a once monthly Desert Day in silence, a week-long yearly retreat, and 1-2 yearly community retreats, are you eligible to join the vowed path.

As stated above, if you have your own Rule of Life and are not willing to practice ours either partially (Companion Way) or fully (Vowed Way), this community is not for you. You are still welcome to attend the Center’s public events and courses.

We have had multiple seminarians go through our 3-year formation. Seminary does not necessarily tend to the contemplative needs of its students, so our community is often a life-giving opportunity to go deeper.

In an effort to keep our community from being too insular and for other reasons, no, we do not offer spiritual direction. 

Many contemplative programs, retreats and teachings are inaccessible to great numbers of people because of pricing. Living according to a Rule of Life is already challenging to many who are constrained by long hours at work or school, family responsibilities, and other challenges. If the call to contemplation is universal, as Bede Griffiths has said, then it must be accessible to all. 

We believe the gift of contemplation should be just that–a gift. We offer our programs–including our three year novitiate formation program–by donation only. Once they have completed formation, we ask vowed members to donate 1-3% of their annual income as they are willing and able.  

While all our offerings are free of charge, for those who are able to donate, your generosity helps us keep our public programming and formation free of charge for those who would otherwise not be able to afford it. Thank you for supporting us in our mission to teach contemplative prayer in the world.

Yes, your one-time or monthly donations are tax deductible. If you have made donations of $250 or more in one year, the following calendar year we will send you a giving statement. You should receive this prior to January 31st.