The decolonizing process that Spirit School follows is the circular and spiraling movement of Story, Practices, and Community that ebbs and flows from the individual into intimate relationships, communities, institutions, the collective, and back. This process is dynamic and non-linear. That is, to embark on a decolonizing journey is to continually be invited back into ourselves, excavating deeper to discover where we are still bound to oppressive systems, where we continue to uphold harm, and where Spirit is calling us into flourishing and liberation.

A Decolonizing Approach:

We begin with Story:

-the place where we unearth and encounter the ancestors, histories, and experiences that have formed us as we are in the present moment

-through story-listening and story-telling there is an opportunity to discern what threads and patterns of a life (individual or communal) are asking to be unraveled and which are asking to be reintegrated

From Story we move into an exploration of Practices:

-here we recognize what actions and embodied ways of being are being practiced in daily life

-this is both a place of comfort where we recognize the practices that support our Belovedness and Becoming, and a place of discomfort where we must confront the practices that remain tethered to colonialism, imperialism, capitalism, white supremacy, patriarchy, hierarchy, and other harmful systems and structures

From Practices we move into Community:

-with an awareness of what practices we bring into the world, here we discover how we bump up against the stories of others and of creation

-in community we come to see our growing edges and our strengths through the lens of relationship. We are invited to name who we have been, who we are, and who we hope to become as humans committed to transformation

-this is the place where we rewrite narratives that then become our new stories

And so we return to Story and move through our decolonizing process yet again.