Let me be honest with you. I have been secretly a snob about sovereign spirituality even since I was a kid, since I was a little Catholic school girl. Since I was campus minister of my Catholic high school, since I was a liturgies and retreat leader since I was 15 years old, participating with the church and my own Christian traditions and community secretly, I was into spiritual sovereignty.

Here’s what I mean. There were so many times when I was in the church that I wish things were different, that I wished things were not so judgmental. There were times when I was secretly scoffing at the hell and damnation stories that I was secretly in raged by the misogynist assumption that only men could be spiritual leaders at the highest levels in God’s own church.

And I say secretly, because, yeah, I didn’t speak those things up unless I knew I was with people, including my parents, who were supportive of such anathema. But now I recognize more and more that the Jesus that I always knew at the very personal level that Jesus, that I knew in my heart when I felt that welling of love.

When I read the stories of Jesus reaching out to the Untouchables and hanging out with women and teaching the women when no one else was. Now, I deeply know in my heart that Jesus was into spiritual sovereignty. Jesus would probably not go to Christian church if Jesus walked back onto the planet right now. Jesus wouldn’t be able to hang with that judgmental ism either.

Jesus would not dig the misogyny that continues in our culture in general, and especially in our Christian churches. A lot of them. A lot of them. Jesus would not dig the fact that when you walk into a Christian church, you’re looking at mostly effigies and sculptures of men. And then his mom, the pious, virginal, rather declawed feminine archetype, because Jesus knew his mom quite well.

And Jesus was raised by his mom, who raised him to hang out with women and to teach women Jesus as mom was taught to read. She was an educated person. In a time when many people in his faith tradition would not educate women in the same way that many cultures, modern cultures. Even now don’t educate women in the same way that we educate men.

So what do I mean when I say spiritual sovereignty? Obviously. I was educated and raised inside of a traditional framework for how you pray, for how you relate to other people in spirituality and worship, for how you ceremony, how you do ritual that calls on the power of the divine. I was raised with limitations that say there is no new prophecy except that which is already written down in this Bible that we all know is actually ripped apart and placed back together by Constantine and a number of other scholars and rulers.

In the early years. So this upwelling of knowing that comes through wise ones, gifted ones in their clarity and integrity, this upwelling of wisdom that we all can tap. This, I think, is spiritual ality. This, I think, is our direct connection to the creator that loves us. This path that Jesus walked. Serving. Healing. Making space for those less fortunate.

Teaching wisdom and integrity. That’s all part of spiritual sovereignty. And I’m not talking about magical thinking where, well, you know, if my angels say to do it, I just have to leap off the cliff or, you know, if. If Jesus did it this way, then I have to do exactly all of that. That’s not what he taught and it’s not what your heart is teaching you.

Now, responsibility goes with spiritual sovereignty. Responsibility here in this real world. And so I’m left now with this question How do we walk as spiritually sovereign individuals on this earth? How do we have our own direct connection with our Creator, with Jesus, with other spirits of love, with only the best stuff? How do we do that while we stay in connection with the earth and this reality here?

How do we collaborate with the bigger forces that move through us in our best moments? How do we hold all of that in integrity? How do we walk a path of love? I’m not sure anymore that religion in the way that we’ve created it is helping. And when I say that, I feel grief and fear because I long for community and I do have community.

But how do we create community that holds all of this together as sovereign spiritual beings? I’m going to keep trying to hold my own version of that through the Wisdom Collective, through my work, through retreats and through sitting at the feet of wise ones who go before me. How do you do it? How do you walk in this life as a spiritual sovereign?

How do you make peace with the traditions that you were raised in without making them wrong? Without demonizing them, but without collapsing into them either? How do you do it? I’m genuinely curious to know.