Mepkin Abbey 75th Anniversary Symposium Series: "Nourishing What Nourishes," Growing Spiritual Capacity in Yourself and Others," an online lecture event with Russell Siler Jones

Our lives are influenced and energized by many invisible forces. We experience these forces in families, classrooms, workspaces, religious communities, and the culture at large. They become the “truths” that feed us and that we rely upon to guide us.

This event will focus on strengthening the influence and energy of a different invisible force, the force of Spirit, by introducing and exploring the concept of spiritual capacity.

Like physical capacity, which includes potentials and abilities we have because we’re physical beings (seeing, hearing, breathing, speaking, moving, etc.), spiritual capacity includes potentials and abilities we have because we’re spiritual beings (love, generosity, wisdom, courage, conscience, intuition, etc.). Spiritual capacities can be strengthened with attention and intention, but they are innate birthright energies that exist and arise in us naturally.

The retreat leader is a psychotherapist and has found recognizing and strengthening spiritual capacity to be a powerful intervention in psychotherapy. But learning to notice spiritual capacities as they arise in others and knowing how to engage them is important for all people—parents, teachers, coaches, ministers, spiritual directors, and others--who want to help the people they love grow stronger and become more whole spiritually, emotionally, physically, and relationally.