This course is for those whose relationship to the sacred has been shaped by longing, disruption, or ambivalence. Perhaps you were raised in a tightly held tradition. Perhaps the God you were handed no longer speaks. Perhaps belief was never the issue – but belonging was. Whether you’ve stayed, left, returned, or reinvented, this is a space to hold faith as lived story, not dogma. Together we make room for the complexity of sacred entanglement.
We open with the sacred stories that shaped us – theologies of fear, obedience, purity, or love. We explore how these maps both nourished and confined us, and what happens when we can no longer live within them.
Here we sit with the fracture – not to pathologise it, but to name it. We attend to loss, betrayal, exile, or disillusionment. We consider what it means to outgrow a faith that once held us, and the grief that often follows.
We look toward other ways of knowing – mysticism, ritual, silence, ancestral practice, embodied wisdom. We explore what sacredness might feel like outside the confines of doctrine. Think divine as process, not proposition.
In this final session, we move into belonging – not as return, but as re-creation. What do spiritual roots look like when chosen? How do we cultivate sacred spaces that make room for all we carry?
We’re living through a global moment where religious trauma, spiritual seeking, and cultural displacement collide. Too many of us were formed by traditions that gave structure but erased voice. This course refuses both cynical secularism and naïve certainty. Instead, we stay with what hurts and haunts – to find meaning in the fragments. We ask: what might devotion look like after rupture? And can spiritual life be reclaimed without returning to inherited frameworks?
A 4-week facilitated cohort (Zoom, 90 minutes/week) with a small group of 10–12 participants. We’ll engage reflectively and relationally, drawing on personal narrative, collective witnessing, and shared texts. LMS materials will include curated readings, audio meditations, and journal prompts. Expect space to explore – not explain. No prescriptive theology, no pressure to identify. Just room for reverence, lament, and presence.
Featured authors include:
Paolo Freire, Simone Weil, Kwok Pui-lan, Paul Tillich and excerpts from Bea’s and Salma’s work on rupture, cultural authority, and spiritual dignity.
post-theology sacred rupture spiritual trauma cultural displacement mysticism narrative spiritualitydecolonial faith existential longing
