Living the Third Way

Growing in Love - The Third Way

 The local Bethany Community is exploring our to deepen our commitment to discipleship and living Jesus’ Way of Nonviolence. We call this the “Third Way” - because often the solutions the world offers are steeped in false dichotomy, rivalry and violence. The gospel will always show us a nonviolent third way to any conflict or problematic situation if we look closely enough and are open to the Spirit of peace. truth and life. We have taken the structure of the Seven Stories to provide us a framework for our reflection, teaching and prayer. We are not running the Bible Study course, instead we focus on the spiritual application of the stories in our lives - how they can help us to grow together as community and individually in nonviolence. 

1) Scripture reading - The Seven Stories provides the scriptural structure. Every two months we focus on one of the “stories”. We let the biblical message of the revelation of the nonviolent God soak into us, staying open to the Spirit and letting it speak in our lives.

2) Sharing Circle/Sheep Dip - In the Sharing Circle, we take time to listen to each other talking about our everyday lives and allowing for embodied spiritual growth and an acceptance of our true authentic and beloved self as God's creation. The Sheep Dip is what we call the time we reflect together on the Christian nonviolent response to social and political issues - what is the nonviolent Christian response?

 3) Creativity - body practice/play. Dancing, skits, art, music. Incorporated into the weekly meetings, but also we invite individual creative projects (art, craftwork, poetry, creative writing, music for example) reflecting the story's teaching on a personal level and to be shared at the conclusion of each story cycle.

4) Mindfulness practice - brought into our home/work/family life in the world- so that we develop stability and consistency with this new way of being human.

 At the conclusion of each story we meet for a longer time for a "mini-retreat" to reflect more deeply and share a Cana Meal together.

  • Over the summer 2025 the local Bethany Community is reflecting on the fifth of our Seven Stories which is “From Victim to Vindication”. These lessons focus on the stories of Job, Ruth & Jonah. The victim by definition is lost to history, yet the Bible always seeks to reverse this fact and so reveals a different way of being human. Jesus takes the role of the scapegoat in order to subvert it from within, filling it with nonviolence.

  • Cana Meals are where the community comes together to share a meal together. Inspired by the story of Jesus at the Wedding Feast of Cana, we have two people reprise the roles of “The Steward of the Feast” and “The Woman”. The Steward is someone who oversees the feast and gets the celebration started. That person in our Cana meal chooses a Biblical passage that has been meaningful for them in understanding the nonviolent God. Later in the meal the Woman (who in the Gospel story represents “Woman Wisdom”) shares something from their life experience that has strengthened them in nonviolent Christian witness.

  • At the end of each of the Seven Story cycles, the community comes together for a one day retreat. We start the retreat with our usual Sunday Spirituality - Jesus Yoga followed by a time of prayer and contemplation. We then have an expanded version of our Sharing Circle and Sheep Dip. This might include sharing of any creative projects and/or a deeper discussion about a particular social or political problem. At our last retreat we focused on the Christian response to war.

Pictures here of our youth who gathered at Bethany, Aug 27-28th 2024, to explore and understand the meaning of violence and the gospel of divine nonviolence. The world will belong to our kids in the not-too-distant future. It is part of our mission to help prepare them as best we can, with the best gifts we can give. If each of these young people will become an angel of peace in the special way appropriate to each then Bethany will have brought a little bit of heaven to earth!