Often times, it takes great pain to produce a great idea. Or said another way, you don't know what you need until you've lost it.
I had to lose my spiritual community twice before I realized how important it was. I was raised inside a small, obscure Christian cult until I graduated from High School. The teachings and dogma were debilitating, but the tight-knit infrastructure of the church community provided social support to our family that I did not value or even notice until I had left. Thinking back on my youth in that 'tribe', I've tended to label that time as misdirected and unfortunate. But now that I am older and looking to create a family of my own during challenging economic times, I must admit that if I were still a member of that tribe today I would have a reliable social structure of friends and resources to lean on through any challenge.
But I am not a member of that tribe, and like me, most of my generation have chosen to walk away from the membership of organized religion. We may have very good reasons for breaking our ties with those institutions, but we have also paid the price of leaving behind a social infrastructure of support.
Several years ago I came upon a new spiritual community in the underground rave scene of Denver. This sub-culture of Denver nightlife was teaming with people who craved to push the boundaries of social norms and explore the tools of club drugs and electronica to transcend the day to day mundane and connect to others in a deeper fashion than most of us are capable when sober. Though the members of this tribe soon suffered from burn-out from drug use, the experiences of unconditional love and out-of-body astral meditations with Divine Energy left a memory in all of us regarding what was possible for our lives, and for humanity.
On a particular Saturday night at the club, looking down at a crowded dance floor of over a hundred elated friends I knew dearly and spent many weekends with, I realized that drugs were just a tool to show us what we could experience on our own, if we were committed to the quest. At that point I decided my underground rave days had come to an end, and my own quest to create an alternative ministry had begun.
Several years later, fortified with a degree in World Religions, six years experience as a certified Life Coach and a Master's degree in Metaphysics underway, I was ordained a minister in the summer of 2008, by no particular religion. By that time, the vision for The Red Door had begun to gel. Viewing spirituality outside the confines of organized religion, it was clear that certain tools of transformation were shared by all cultures and all belief-systems. Those include music, movement and meditation.
We are just beginning to understand the power of sonic resonance and music to heal and raise our vibration. When I asked my friends in the rave community to recommend a DJ who understood the link between music and spiritual transformation, all voices turned to DJ Brett Starr. The moment I sat down to my first cup of tea with Brett, I knew he would be our musical shaman. Brett was committed to the Red Door project instantly, and immediately set out to collect tracks that would awaken our overly-civilized bodies to the memory of what it was like to dance closer to the Earth.
Also during the summer of 2008, two dear friends of mine, Pearl Schroy and Johanna Klouda, were going through a coaching certification program that was opening their world to the tool of somatic integration—or the practice of integrating what you learn mentally into the body through movement and focused awareness of physical sensation. Through their promptings, I delved into this study and quickly learned that movement and body awareness were the missing links in our quest to fully realize what we learn intellectually.
The moment I asked for an experienced movement teacher to lead our tribe, Valency Gorman magically walked onto the scene. Graceful and gorgeous, Valency also instantly committed to the project and demonstrated her ability to interpret any message or 'sermon' into a guided movement routine that could turn any crowd from tentative movers to elated and laughing dancers. Even people who don't like to dance find themselves jumping up and down unabashedly as long as Valency is guiding their process.
No church is complete without a team of speakers to get a tribe fired up. For years I had watched Rev. Earl 'Raj' Purdy lead Course in Miracles classes at a Unity church in Denver. He was always charismatic in that way that makes you want to jump up and wrap your arms around him. But unlike the stereotypical charismatic evangelist, Raj was consistently preaching freedom and love without boundaries, uncensored and unabashed. Coming from past experience as a musical performer on stage, accustomed to connecting to audiences of thousands, Raj has as innate talent to unite a crowd into a movement. When he agreed to be on The Red Door ministerial team, I cried with gratitude.
And finally my dear friend and sister, Shoshanna French, became the third leg on the three-legged stool of our team of speakers. With my fiery drive to stir the pot, Raj's unrelenting stand for love, and Shoshanna's clear and bright perspective on what is possible, I knew I had an unstoppable team. With over 14 years of experience as an intuitive, Shoshanna is certain that her purpose in life is to help everyone uncover and explore their own intuitive abilities. With her talents, I could imagine an entire tribe of people waking up, as a collective, to their connection to the Divine.
We launched on October 19, 2008. About twenty people showed up for our first service at The Orange Cat Studios in northern Downtown Denver. The format of the first service created a template for the rest. First a message, then movement, and finally a meditation. The whole night was scored with music from Brett Starr, and then later we brought on the help of DJ Surya and DJ Ishe, who graciously offered his volunteer assistance as our Production Manager.
The rest happened so fast I haven't yet caught my breath. Within a month word had spread so we were packing the house with 75 members for a service, and the Westword (a leading alternative newspaper in Denver with a circulation of 250,000) ran a front page article on The Red Door for the Christmas edition. Two months after that article ran, we grew to an email list of over 2000 people and a consistent 100-150 members attending on Sundays.
Now the team has over doubled in size to include several other ministers, a director for the healing team, a marketing director and several other volunteers who build the infrastructure of the community.
Since medieval times churches have painted their doors red to symbolize sanctuary. You can even see houses in Europe and Great Britain with red front doors, painted with the same intention. We chose to call our project The Red Door because we hoped to create a sanctuary where all beings and all beliefs are welcome, united under a single intention to commune with the Divine in our own way and support each other to see through the illusion that we were ever separate.
And the story remains...to be continued.
