Interior Castle Ministries

Synopsis: Interior Castle Ministries is  a new church development which  seeks to establish a bakery-café where you will be welcomed by warm bakery smells and  can get a bite to eat or a cup to drink. It will be the sort of space that attracts men and women into a company of others seeking answers to the big questions of life and love and why we are here -- a place where everyone welcomes you, no one judges you and you will be free to find your own way in your quest for the spiritual life.

Henri J. M. Nouwen's book Reaching Out: The Three Movements of the Spiritual Life, published in 1975, is a response to the question “What does it mean to live a life in the Spirit of Jesus Christ?” In short, his answer is that “In the midst of a turbulent, often chaotic, life we are called to reach out, with courageous honesty to our innermost self, with relentless care to our fellow human beings, and with increasing prayer to our God.”

While pursuing the question of the spiritual life is intimately one’s own, because of its importance, it asks for much guidance and support. The best support and guidance comes in finding a “free and friendly place” where one can—must—find one’s own way. Creating this space is the natural result of reaching out and is the core of hospitality. Nouwen writes more fully of this:

In our world full of strangers, estranged from their own past, culture and country, from their neighbors, friends and family, from their deepest self and their God, we witness a painful search for a hospitable place where life can be lived without fear and where community can be found. Although many, we might even say most, strangers in this world become easily the victim of a fearful hostility, it is possible for men and women and obligatory for Christians to offer an open and hospitable space where strangers can cast off their strangeness and become our fellow human beings.The movement from hostility to hospitality is hard and full of difficulties. Our society seems to be increasingly full of fearful, defensive, aggressive people anxiously clinging to their property and inclined to look at their surrounding world with suspicion, always expecting an enemy to suddenly appear, intrude and do harm. But still—that is our vocation: to convert the hostis into a hospes, the enemy into a guest  and to create the free and fearless space where brotherhood and sisterhood can be formed and fully experienced.

In its current state, the institutional church, regardless of denomination, frequently falls short of creating the sort of space that attracts men and women into a company of others seeking answers to the big questions of life, and that frees them to find their own way in their quest for the spiritual life. Out of this observation was born our understanding of God’s call to us to form a different kind of faith community: Interior Castle Ministries.

If Interior Castle Ministries is wildly successful, it will establish and operate a bakery-café in an area in which people of all ages, from all races and nations and walks of life can gather. The building will be marked by a plainness and modesty which some might call homeliness and be unmarked by religious symbols. Inside all will find a clean, attractive place in which to spend time with others. In the main hall, all who enter will find an atmosphere of warmth, comfort and support. Here they can enjoy the company of old friends and develop new friendships among those who they might never have met otherwise. Always they can find good conversation over a cup of coffee or a mug of beer, or fresh, local, unpretentious food at an affordable price. In this hall, they will find a home away from home offering a spiritual tonic against the jangled and fragmented character of modern American society. As the bakery-café grows, other spaces will be added, where all will find additional activities which aid in the quest for the spiritual life and enrich the general life of the community—live music, poetry and book readings, art exhibits (all primarily from local talent), worship, prayer.

(This articulation of wild success is indebted to Henri J. M. Nouwen's book Reaching Out: The Three Movements of the Spiritual Life, Ray Oldenburg’s collected insights in his book The Great Good Place and to the Quaker Theologian Elton Trueblood’s description of The Potter’s House, “a Christian coffeehouse” in Washington, DC., in his book The Company of the Committed.)