The Believe Path
You are exactly where
you are supposed to be.
For the seekers, the questioners, and everyone who ever needed a wider table. Synchronicity brought you here. The thread has always been there.
Every night you lay your head on a pillow and close your eyes. You do not know with absolute certainty that morning will come. You simply trust it. And you let go.
That is faith. The human kind. The kind that lives in every person who has ever loved someone, planted something, or hoped for a better day.
You do not need a religion to be here. Come as you are.
✦ ✦ ✦My grandmother. And everything after.
My first experience with spirituality was not in a church. It was in my grandmother's arms. When I was sick she held me close, sang prayers over me, and bathed me in flower petals and herbs. She kept a garden and treated every plant with love and intention. She knew their healing properties and honored them as medicine. She was a wise woman who felt the world around her deeply, and her language was one I understood without words or doctrine. It was the language of love and communion with the earth.
What came after was a long and honest journey through doubt, and a lot of dead ends. I kept searching for a way in. What I eventually discovered was that I had to be open enough to receive it. Grace does not force its way in. It waits for us to make room.
The moment everything changed was quiet. No lightning. No choir. Just me in an empty chapel at a retreat, having a conversation with God and asking flat out for a sign. Almost as soon as I thought it, the chapel bells rang. Clear as day. And I said yes. Yes to being of service. Yes to my ministry.
I believe in synchronicities. In the thread that runs through all things. Some call that thread God, some call it the Tao, some call it the Great Spirit. I understand the energy of them all to be the sacred glue that keeps us all together.
Today I am an ordained interfaith minister, a nurse, a mother, and someone who knows firsthand what it feels like to wander and to finally arrive. This path exists because I needed it once. I suspect you might too.
Rev. Kristina | One Spirit Seminary, Class of 2019Interfaith and interspiritual.
Two words worth knowing.
Interfaith is about the space between traditions. It honors the distinct beliefs, practices, and cultures of each tradition while seeking the common ground beneath them. It says: your path is valid and so is mine and we are stronger for knowing each other.
Interspirituality, a term coined by Brother Wayne Teasdale, points to the mystical core that lives at the heart of every tradition. The inner experience, the shared silence beneath the different prayers. The place where a Buddhist monk, a Jewish mystic, a Sufi poet, and a Christian contemplative would all recognize each other.
I was ordained at One Spirit Interfaith Seminary in New York City, a school built on the belief that the world's wisdom traditions are all parts of the same river.
I am interfaith because I welcome every person from every tradition exactly as they are. I am interspiritual because my own beliefs are rooted in the one thread that runs through all of them.
That thread is what this path is about. Welcome, I am so happy you are here.
See what fits.
Something here is yours.
Select a tradition or spiritual philosophy. Read a little. Try the practice. Notice what moves in you. There is no right answer. Only the one that feels like coming home.
Buddhism
Metta, loving-kindnessMetta, or loving-kindness meditation, asks you to wish well for everyone. Including the ones who make it difficult.
I started with the people I loved easily. That part was simple. Then it asked me to include the people I find challenging. I stayed with it. One morning something shifted. I understood that they want peace for themselves the same way I want it for myself. The discomfort turned into something softer.
Try it todayThink of someone who frustrates you. Someone at work. A family member. A stranger who cut you off. Silently say: may you be happy. May you be at peace. May you be free from suffering. Say it like you mean it. Even if you don't yet.
Hawaiian
Ho'oponoponoAn ancient Hawaiian shamanic practice. Its literal translation is to put right, to put in order, to restore. It works on the unconscious mind, on the old patterns we carry without knowing it.
Four phrases. Spoken inward. Directed at whatever is causing pain, confusion, or stuckness.
I love you. I'm sorry. Please forgive me. Thank you.
I was introduced to this practice by my spiritual counselor Tammy at a time when I needed it most. Rev. Jonathan Hammond, who brought Ho'oponopono into his shamanic Reiki teaching at One Spirit Seminary, describes it as a practice for healing the inner child. It met me exactly where I was.
Try it todayBring one person or situation you have been carrying to mind. Repeat slowly: I love you. I'm sorry. Please forgive me. Thank you. Notice what moves.
Islam
Dhikr, remembranceDhikr is the practice of repeating the names or attributes of God as an act of devotion. It is one of the oldest and most widely practiced forms of Islamic prayer. The word itself means remembrance. To remember God is to return to what is most real.
I tried dhikr during my seminary year. When I stopped trying to do it perfectly and simply held God in my awareness throughout the day, something settled. A prayer found me that year: the desire to please you does in fact please you.
Try it todayChoose one word that means the sacred to you. God. Love. Peace. Grace. Repeat it quietly as you move through your morning. Not as a task. As a returning.
Judaism
Talking to God. Out loud.The Jewish tradition has deep roots in direct, honest conversation with God. The Psalms are full of it. Intimate exchanges between a person and the sacred. The tradition calls this kind of prayer the outpouring of the heart.
I tried this during seminary commuting through New York City. Earbuds in on the subway. Nobody around me knew. I just started talking. About what I was afraid of. What I needed. What I was grateful for. No script. No posture. No right way to do it.
It was the most natural thing I had ever done.
Try it todayPut your earbuds in or find a quiet moment. Start talking. Out loud if you can, quietly if you need to. Say what is actually on your mind. Not what you think you are supposed to say. Just the truth. See what comes back.
The 12 Steps
Surrender as spiritual practiceAlcoholics Anonymous was founded on a simple and radical idea. That a Power greater than ourselves could restore us. Not a specific God. Not a religion. A power of your own understanding. That single phrase opened a door wide enough for everyone to walk through.
The Twelve Steps move a person through honesty, humility, inventory, amends, and service. I have long believed they are a roadmap for living. Not just for recovery. For everyone. If these principles were taught early, before life brought us to our knees, imagine how differently we might meet the hard moments when they arrive.
Try it todayRead Step Three slowly. Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood God. Ask yourself: what would it feel like to put something down today that you have been carrying alone?
Christianity
Lectio Divina, sacred readingAt the heart of Christianity is the life and teaching of Jesus, a man who devoted his entire existence to one message. Love. Within Christianity lives a deep contemplative tradition carried forward by the desert monastics, the mystics, Thomas Merton, Teresa of Avila, and countless others who sought not just to believe in God but to dwell there.
Lectio Divina is one of the oldest practices born from that tradition. Four movements. Read. Reflect. Respond. Rest. You read a passage and notice what stops you. Not what you think should stop you. What actually does. I have always believed in the power of words. This practice trusts that the right word finds you at the right moment.
Try it todayOpen any book that feels sacred to you. It does not have to be a Bible. A poem. A passage you have always loved. Read it slowly. Read it again. Notice the one word that stops you. Sit with it for two minutes. See what it wants to say.
Hinduism
Kirtan, devotional singingHinduism is one of the world's oldest living spiritual traditions and one of its most expansive. It offers many paths to the same truth, through knowledge, through love, through work, through meditation. Each path is a yoga. Each yoga is a way home.
Kirtan is call and response singing. Simple mantras repeated together, voices rising and falling in rhythm. The heart of kirtan is that every voice belongs. All voices merge together and become one voice.
When I experienced kirtan in seminary it brought up my grandmother. Her voice. The way she sang without caring who was listening.
Try it todaySearch Krishna Das kirtan and press play. Just listen and notice what happens in your body when voices come together in devotion.
Taoism
Wu wei, effortless actionTaoism is one of the oldest philosophical and spiritual traditions in the world. At its center is a concept called the Tao. Often translated as the Way, it points to something that cannot be fully named. The force that moves through all things. The current beneath everything.
Wu wei means effortless action. Moving with what is rather than against it. A river does not force its way to the ocean. It finds the path of least resistance and follows it all the way home.
I have called this same energy by many names. The thing that keeps it all together. I did not know when I was twelve years old staring at my hand on a desk that I was already asking a Taoist question.
Try it todayNotice one place in your life where you are pushing hard against something. Just notice it. Ask quietly: what would it feel like to stop pushing and start flowing? You do not have to have the answer. Just sit with the question.
Indigenous and Earth-Based Traditions
The earth is not a backdrop. It is alive.Celtic and Scottish. Norse and Druidic. Native American and Andean. West African, Caribbean, and Aboriginal Australian. Thousands of distinct living traditions, each rooted in a specific land, language, and people.
What many share: everything is connected. The moon affects the tides and the body. The seasons mark the cycles of inner life as much as outer life. Spirit flows through every living and nonliving thing.
I am Puerto Rican. Taino blood runs through me. My grandmother bathed me in flower petals and herbs. She knew which plants carried medicine. That was ancient knowledge traveling through generations of women who refused to let it disappear.
Try it todayGo outside. Stand on the ground with both feet. Look up. Notice the sky, the air, the temperature, what the light is doing. You are not separate from any of it. You are part of the same living system. Stay there for two minutes and just let that be true.
No tradition required
You already know how to believeYou do not need a religion to have faith. You do not need a practice to have a spiritual life. You do not need a name for what you feel in order for it to be real.
Every night you lay your head on a pillow and close your eyes. You do not know with absolute certainty that morning will come. You cannot prove it. You simply trust it. And you let go.
That is faith. Not the religious kind. The human kind. The kind that lives in every person who has ever loved someone, planted something, or hoped for a better day.
Try it todaySit quietly for two minutes. No agenda. No prayer if that is not your word. Just notice that you are breathing. Notice that something in you knows how to do that without being asked. Stay with that for a moment.
The dance between everything.
I was twelve years old in science class when it happened. We were learning about atoms. How everything is made of them. How the speed they vibrate at determines whether something becomes a hand, a desk, a cloud, a lake.
I held up my hand and stared at it. Then I looked at the desk.
Wow.
I could imagine the microscopic movement happening inside both of them. My hand and that desk were made of the same stuff. Just vibrating at different speeds. The only thing that made us appear separate was how fast we were moving.
I slammed my hand on the desk and asked out loud: "But why don't they both fall apart?"
My teacher moved on. I did not.
That question lived in me for thirty years. And somewhere in all that living, the nursing and the losing and the rebuilding, the answer started coming through.
Where there appears to be disintegration and disorganization, there is actually a harmonious unity.
The space between your body and mine is not empty. It is a living, fertile energy. It is what some call God, some call the Tao, some call the Great Spirit. I understand it as the thing that keeps it all together. Infinite and immense. Indescribable and unseen. Flowing through every aspect of everything.
We are not separate beings bumping into each other occasionally. We are one continuous organism having the experience of being individuals.
The Taoists have a word for this. The Tao. The Way. The current beneath everything. I did not know at twelve years old that I was already asking a question Lao Tzu had answered thousands of years before. If that thread calls to you, find it in the Ten Doorways above.
The journey does not end.
It just goes deeper.
My spiritual journey started before I had words to describe what I was seeking. It started with curiosity, with questions I could not stop asking. With a sense that there was something more and a stubborn refusal to stop looking for it. I read, I practiced, I joined communities. I went inward, again and again, meeting the parts of myself that needed tending and doing the work of tending them.
That work does not finish. It evolves.
The spiritual path is not a destination. It is a way of moving through life. Awake, curious, and willing to be changed by what you encounter. Every teacher, tradition, and honest question is part of it.
I have had many teachers along the way. Some in books. Some in classrooms. They all met me where I was. That is what a good teacher does.
One of them found me right in the middle. Wide awake and wondering what the second half of life would look like.
Peace Pilgrim answered that question without knowing my name.
Peace Pilgrim
Mildred Lisette Norman | 1908 to 1981She walked more than 25,000 miles across America with nothing in her pockets but a prayer for world peace. No money. No plan. She walked until someone offered shelter and fasted until someone offered food. She kept going until the day she died.
People described her as having a peaceful heart and a warrior spirit. That stopped me in my tracks.
What I recognized in her was the long preparation. The years nobody sees. The quiet inner work you do before you ever step out the door. She did not just decide to walk one day. She spent fifteen years getting ready. Stripping away everything that was not essential. Finding out who she actually was without all the noise.
Peace Pilgrim took her first step at 44. I feel like I am right on time. This is my coming out. And Diana Ross is singing loudly in the background.
From my seminary notebooks, One Spirit Class of 2019What I read.
What it gave me.
These are the books that accompanied my seminary journey at One Spirit Interfaith Seminary. I read them, argued with them, sat with them, and carried them into my ordination. I share them here because they changed something in me and I trust they might do the same for you.
There are many books I have not yet read. This list is not complete and I do not pretend that it is. It is simply honest.
The World's Religions by Huston Smith. This was my seminary textbook. It walks the full thread across every major tradition. Read this and you cannot un-see the connection between them.
How Can I Help?
The book that taught me service comes from the heart, not the ego. Ram Dass brings a deeply Buddhist lens to the act of helping others. This one changed how I show up as a nurse, a minister, and a human being.
Liturgy of the Ordinary
Changed how I see every single day. Nothing is ordinary. This book showed me that the sacred is not reserved for chapels and ceremonies. It lives in brushing your teeth and making your bed.
Peace Pilgrim: Her Life and Work
Proof that one person walking in truth can change everything around them. She took her first step at 44. I read this and understood that it was not too late. It was exactly on time.
The World's Religions
The wider table, in book form. My seminary textbook. Read this and you cannot un-see the thread that runs through all of them. This is the one I recommend first to everyone.
The Ten Challenges
On hearing the still small voice within. It is always speaking. Felder takes the Ten Commandments and turns them into a deeply personal growth framework. I carried this one through my entire seminary year.
The Phenomenon of Man
A Jesuit priest who made me love science and God in the same breath. He saw the universe as a living, evolving spiritual organism. This book lives in the same space as the atoms essay above.
The Sacred Art of Listening
Kay Lindahl taught that listening is one of the most powerful spiritual practices we have. Not just to others but to the quiet voice within. This book changed how I sit with people in pain.
Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions
A roadmap for living. Not just for recovery. For anyone willing to do the honest inner work of showing up, surrendering, and serving. Read it with fresh eyes and you will find a spiritual text.
Man's Search for Meaning
For the person who does not identify with any tradition but knows that meaning exists. Frankl survived the unimaginable and came out the other side with a philosophy of purpose. No doctrine required.
Have a book to share?
There are many books I have not yet read. If a tradition on this page has a book that moved you, I would love to know about it. This list belongs to all of us. Tell me what you are reading and let's grow it together. 🤍
Leave your recommendation in the comments below.
May every question you carry be a doorway.
May you know that the One who holds it all
has always been at your side.
Live gently. Live curiously.
Live knowing you belong.
At every table, in every tradition, under every sky.