A synapse is an essential structure for biological communication. It’s a tiny space of joining, conjunction and transmission.

For me, these words describe the heart and soul of the dream that is humanity, in general, and a community of faith, in particular.

It’s a dream for a living spirituality that forms us away from anger, inflexibility, combativeness, certainty and dogma toward an expansive conception of ourselves as a people of healing, forgiveness, mercy, reconciliation, listening, reflection and love.

For all those goods are themselves essential instruments for human flourishing. They themselves evince and transmit something of a Sacred Presence to one another.

So, for us to become a “synapse culture” means that we refuse to see ourselves any longer as foot soldiers in the conflicts of a world gone mad with power, violence, greed, and hatred.

Instead we choose to be a living space that makes possible the joining of enemies, the conjunction of purpose, and the transmission of meaning and human flourishing.

My synaptic spirituality believes this reaching, connecting posture and practice reflects the posture and practice of God revealed through Jesus.

From where I stand, this synapse culture is powerfully shaped by rediscovering the faith of Jesus as an ancient wisdom tradition rooted in disciplined practices, and it’s theology as prayerful acts of contemplation. (These are venerable tools for a contemporary spiritual journey.)

This discourse was, and is still, shaped by contemporary spiritual parents who flee Christendom’s bankrupt modalities of the church as institution, magisteria, and control, for the desert of “The Church” as synapse–as a site for personal transformation, shared community, and disciplined spiritual practice.

It is in that space (synapse) that the genuine, non-coercive power of the humble Jesus is inscribed in us, on our words, and through our living. It is in this “little church” that hands and hearts are opened so that soul and cultures may meet.

And it is precisely because of that humble Jesus that we hold space for all those who may not share, or be invested in, our particular religious vocabulary, and we listen well to their wisdom, we treasure what they offer, and see our difference as a gift. We discern Spirit, and heed her voice wherever she may be found.