"Non-denominational Circle Church provides a space 

for creative souls to pursue a personal spiritual path"

San Antonio Current  

October 14-20, 2004

I'll Know it When I Feel it

By Laurie Dietrich

Fringe and Fringe Ability is not your typical Sunday sermon. The Celebration Circle is not your typical church. It was a summer Sunday morning at Jump-Start Theatre, the new home of the Celebration Circle, an artistic interfaith community, and the focus of the gathering was on "the sacred power of words." Jump-Start company member Paul Bonin Rodriguez performed an excerpt from his latest work-in-progress, Fringe and Fringe Ability, as an example of that power.

Troubadour Rudi Harst, the Circle's spiritual director, played a prominent part in the service, which he acknowledges he enjoys, but he says that, as the Circle moves into its 13^th year, "it's less and less about ego and more and more about the message. And the message is that spirituality is best experienced when people are singing together or are listening to a poem together or looking at a piece of theater together."

The intersection of creative expression and spirituality is at the core of the Circle, co-founded by Harst and his wife Zet Baer. "I've been studying spirituality and religious tradition for 30 years," says Harst, "and the more I study the less I know who or what God is, but the clearer I am on what God feels like. I feel called to say out loud, wherever I can, through words, with music, through theatrical performances, through poetry, I have no idea what God is but I think it's important to be feeling it."

Elizabeth Lesser, co-founder of the Omega Institute, the country's largest adult-education center focusing on wellness and spirituality, writes that West African drum master Babatunde Olatunji, commenting on the eclectic mix of spiritual and religious traditions represented at an Institute event, told her, "This is a new kind of spirituality. It's American."

Lesser, whose book describes how a generation of seekers has gradually expanded the ideal of personal spiritual transformation to include deep psychological, physical, and creative work, writes that the idea of a new, perhaps uniquely American, spirituality resonated with her. "It described my own spiritual life, something I have never been able to label. I had been actively searching for God since childhood. My path wove through the peaks and valleys of many different traditions: organized religion, disorganized mysticism, psychotherapy, philosophy, mythology, science. My search had all the signs of being an American one: It was open-minded, individualistic, and adventurous. It celebrated diversity."

That diversity was exactly what hit Harst and Baer in the face when, shortly after they met in 1979, they became involved with the first Whole Life Expo in New York City. "We were getting press kits from every guru and workshop leader," Harst explains. "Everybody wanted us to come to their workshop. It was very exciting, but it was also very confusing to recognize that there was truth in all the teachings, as well as a degree of, if not baloney, certainly hot air. So in the presence of everything we just tried to be as open to it and as willing to learn from it as possible; that became our stance."

Following the trajectory of many leaders in the alternative spirituality community, Harst and Baer became workshop presenters and facilitators themselves. Harst, who holds a psychology degree from Trinity University but identifies primarily as a musician, became what he calls "a troubadour on the circuit...The way I knew how to integrate and assimilate what I was learning was to put it to music.  I just went to all sorts of expositions and churches and workshops and weekend retreats all over the country for five years, and everywhere I went it was wonderful. And yet they all felt something like somebody had the Truth. My question was, "Why can't we gather together the elements of each other's truth and find a way to integrate that?"

It was not long after the couple returned to San Antonio in the late ‘80s that he got a chance to do just that. While searching for a local spiritual home, a friend "double-dog dared" Harst to bring the work he'd done on the spiritual circuit to SA. The first meeting of what was to become the Celebration Circle was held in a small backroom at The Harbor on Avenue B. Seventy-five people showed up. And something-nobody was quite sure yet what-was born.

"We feel like people who think they're getting a small dog that turns out to be huge," says Harst. "We thought we were starting something small that we could do sometimes and it became a weekly gathering which then became a community which then brought its own roles and needs and expectations."

Sidney Burnette, actress, director, and teacher of theater arts at several local colleges and universities, attended that first meeting. She's been involved ever since, and says that the Circle "is very important in that it offers a spiritual home for so many people like me that don't fit into a Methodist, Presbyterian, or Lutheran church.

"The Circle welcomes artists with open arms, and you know how arts are thought of in this town! But music and the arts are an important part of this church - very respected. Revered even."

She calls it a "church for artists and healers," noting that regular Circle attendees tend to be musicians, visual and theater artists, teachers, and alternative healers working in massage therapy and Reiki. Her experience of the "congregation" is that it is generally environmentally and socially conscious and highly educated, if not particularly well off financially.

Words such as "congregation" and "church" are loaded and perhaps not entirely appropriate. "I think we fulfill some of the functions of a church," says Harst, "and we're doing our best to move beyond a church format." While the Circle is incorporated as a not-for-profit religious organization, in practice it is a non-hierarchical association focused not on one religious approach but on being open to all modes of spiritual expression.

Harst says the difference may be rooted in the distinction between knowing what God is, and knowing how God feels. "A good friend and mentor once said that spirituality is a way of being with God and religion is a way of acting about God."

Sociologist Robert Bellah, who focuses on the changing place of religion in American society, has noted that the recent usage of the word "spirituality" is in contrast to the idea of "institutional religion" and connotes a radical individualism and the idea of the religious life as a private journey.

Harst agrees. "I think most of the people that come to the Circle are lone rangers. They're non-joiners. They are forging their own spiritual path." There are no "members" as such, and, Burnette adds, "We hope we make people feel welcome, but not pressured to make a commitment."