Our History
Rev. Dr. Stephanie Rutt, Founder of the Tree of Life Interfaith Temple
Looking back, I can see now how it has all been so beautifully orchestrated to bring us to just this place in the manifestation of our vision. The Unseen Hand, of course, knew all along what was yearning for expression. The seed of the vision landed in my heart in 2005, in the form of a poem called What If?, but it has long been cultivated by many within our blessed community over the years. But, let’s start at the beginning as the story is quite an amazing one.
A core teaching in our seminary program is that each of us has a role to play in the divine plan that is seeded in us at birth. I think of this seed as an impulse that is constantly guiding us toward our divine expression. We notice this impulse at work in those times when our heart feels enlivened and we find a bounce in our step. It just feels right. I got this impulse fairly early and have traced its cultivation and manifestation to this present moment below. Enjoy the read!
Early Stirrings
I remember it quite well for as a young teen it held me captive. It was a large, round, and stained glass, and beautifully displayed the symbols of the world’s major faith traditions. It hung at the front of our sanctuary of the First Church of Religious Science which was founded by Ernest Holmes who wrote The Science of Mind. In the winter and summer, I would go to church camps where at breakfast there would be a place holder with a saying from the Buddha, at lunch a saying from Christ, at dinner one from Mohammad, etc. From my earliest years, I could see, feel, believe and know many are the ways we pray to one God. It was simply in my DNA.
Preparations
Fast forward to mid-life, after moving through marriage, divorce, single parenthood, remarriage and career building. By my early 40s, I began my spiritual quest in earnest beginning with Native American Shamanism. Soon followed Vipassana (mindfulness) meditation, various yoga disciplines, Buddhist, Sikh and Hindu chanting practices and a deep study of the Bhagavad Gita. There were also four years spent with a Sufi community in Boston, training in the Dances of Universal Peace, and, graciously, years of practicing and integrating the Lord’s Prayer in Aramaic. By 2003, many are the ways we pray to one God was just not a belief but a visceral reality pulsing in my veins for everywhere I had landed, in that sweet silence that follows, I had found God. I could no longer choose one faith tradition over another.
And then, on a snowy afternoon, I found something online called “interfaith ministry” and thought I had just died and gone to heaven! It was the New Seminary for Interfaith Studies in New York and, at the time, the first and only interfaith seminary in the country. In my second year of study, I knew without a doubt that one day I would start my own seminary to share the spiritual practices from across faith traditions I had long loved. I graduated in 2005 and immediately received the What If? poem which is on the home page of this site. It was the seed of our Temple.
For the next few years, I hung a sign that read “Tree of Life Interfaith Fellowship” and started offering worship services once a month and engaging in other ministerial duties in addition to continuing to offer my regular yoga and sacred studies classes.
Spirit Makes Contact – Creation Time!
One morning, I was immersed in my spiritual practice in that sweet silence that follows and heard the clear directive to start a year-long study called Living Our Purpose: The Heart of Spiritual Practice. What??? It was October! In addition, I was directed to call those I thought might be interested. Now, I was not happy as this was not my style. But, by that time, I knew that to resist was futile. I got on the phone and by late evening I had enough people signed up to fill two classes! Now, mind you, I nor they had any idea what I was going to be teaching! But, this is how it begins. Trust. So, we started. I ran the course for two years and the handouts for the class became the draft for the core seminary curriculum.
Then again, in the fall of 2009, I was once again immersed in that sweet silence and heard the next clear directive. This time it was to start the seminary program and call it The Path of Crow: Discover Your Direct Path to God. What??? I did not yet feel ready to start a seminary! But, God does things in God’s time, not ours. So, I put out a short email asking for just a few people to help me start an interfaith seminary program. To my great surprise, over twenty people responded with interest! And so, we began with just the basic two-year design you see today and the Tree of Life Interfaith Seminary was born. Later, I created the Spiritual Mentoring Certificate Program which became the optional third year for the program. Today, seven classes of Tree of Life Interfaith ministers have been ordained!
The Tree of Life Interfaith Temple Is Born!
In June of 2010, it was time for the “Tree of Life Interfaith Fellowship” to become the “Tree of Life Interfaith Temple,” a 501c3 legally established church, to rightly serve as the ordination body for the first Tree of Life Interfaith Seminary Class of 2011 and for the classes to follow. The Tree of Life Interfaith Temple was born!
As soon as we had ordained Tree of Life ministers, those who desired to offer worship services began doing so alternating Sundays with me. We began the hard work of creating a structure for our Temple: Board of Directors, Bylaws, Constitution, Articles of Incorporation. In those early years, many people served long and, sometimes, arduous hours. This was new territory for all of us, something like creating a new path through a dense jungle. We had no map or knowledge of what the end manifestation might look like. We just knew we were called to be explorers and to do whatever was necessary to bring forth this vision seed, the What If?, that had now found roots in our collective hearts. Over the years, the Temple welcomed teachers and communities with whom I was studying including Sikh, Sufi and Hindu teachers and, in conjunction with the seminary program, hosted and enjoyed a wide variety of speakers from across faith traditions.
A New Day: Expanding the What If? Vision
Today, I have handed over the running of the seminary program to the Temple and to other Tree of Life ministers who will become the guides for new seminarians. In this way, our amazing What If? vision can go out, reach, and serve many more seminarians than I ever could alone. And, after many years of dreaming of having our own space, the Temple has now rented a lovely space on the Milford, NH, Oval. Here, in addition to me, many of our ministers are now offering a variety of sacred studies programs. We have created an organizational structure to hold and support this new growth and the expansion of the What If? vision seed planed in my heart all those years ago. We are poised, ready and ripe to grow into the next phase of our evolution!
My key role now is to publish our sacred text, The Call of the Mourning Dove: How Sacred Sound Awakens Mystical Unity, derived from my doctoral dissertation, and under contract with Wipf and Stock Publishers for a spring 2019 release. I am currently updating the core curriculum for the seminary program integrating this text. Through my June 2018 TEDx talk and other engagements, my blessing is to take our vision message out and spread it far and wide. In the process, my prayer has been to attract participants back to our seminary program which, I am so very grateful to report, is already coming to fruition. When the time is right, I will step aside as Presiding Minister allowing someone else to lead the way forward as I know in my heart that I am not an organization holder. I am a vision holder and, as founder, I will forever continue to hold and nurture the vision of What If? within and for our blessed community.
Join us! We are explorers seeking to be brave, strong and unrelenting in charting a new path – a path that leads seekers to their own unique expression of the What If? vision seed and, graciously, to an intimate knowledge of many are the ways we pray to one God.
Join us for we are uniquely poised to build bridges across religious divides and, as I headlined in my recent TEDx Talk, to change the world one encounter at a time.
Many Joyful Blessings!
Rev. Dr. Stephanie Rutt
www.stephanierutt.com
A core teaching in our seminary program is that each of us has a role to play in the divine plan that is seeded in us at birth. I think of this seed as an impulse that is constantly guiding us toward our divine expression. We notice this impulse at work in those times when our heart feels enlivened and we find a bounce in our step. It just feels right. I got this impulse fairly early and have traced its cultivation and manifestation to this present moment below. Enjoy the read!
Early Stirrings
I remember it quite well for as a young teen it held me captive. It was a large, round, and stained glass, and beautifully displayed the symbols of the world’s major faith traditions. It hung at the front of our sanctuary of the First Church of Religious Science which was founded by Ernest Holmes who wrote The Science of Mind. In the winter and summer, I would go to church camps where at breakfast there would be a place holder with a saying from the Buddha, at lunch a saying from Christ, at dinner one from Mohammad, etc. From my earliest years, I could see, feel, believe and know many are the ways we pray to one God. It was simply in my DNA.
Preparations
Fast forward to mid-life, after moving through marriage, divorce, single parenthood, remarriage and career building. By my early 40s, I began my spiritual quest in earnest beginning with Native American Shamanism. Soon followed Vipassana (mindfulness) meditation, various yoga disciplines, Buddhist, Sikh and Hindu chanting practices and a deep study of the Bhagavad Gita. There were also four years spent with a Sufi community in Boston, training in the Dances of Universal Peace, and, graciously, years of practicing and integrating the Lord’s Prayer in Aramaic. By 2003, many are the ways we pray to one God was just not a belief but a visceral reality pulsing in my veins for everywhere I had landed, in that sweet silence that follows, I had found God. I could no longer choose one faith tradition over another.
And then, on a snowy afternoon, I found something online called “interfaith ministry” and thought I had just died and gone to heaven! It was the New Seminary for Interfaith Studies in New York and, at the time, the first and only interfaith seminary in the country. In my second year of study, I knew without a doubt that one day I would start my own seminary to share the spiritual practices from across faith traditions I had long loved. I graduated in 2005 and immediately received the What If? poem which is on the home page of this site. It was the seed of our Temple.
For the next few years, I hung a sign that read “Tree of Life Interfaith Fellowship” and started offering worship services once a month and engaging in other ministerial duties in addition to continuing to offer my regular yoga and sacred studies classes.
Spirit Makes Contact – Creation Time!
One morning, I was immersed in my spiritual practice in that sweet silence that follows and heard the clear directive to start a year-long study called Living Our Purpose: The Heart of Spiritual Practice. What??? It was October! In addition, I was directed to call those I thought might be interested. Now, I was not happy as this was not my style. But, by that time, I knew that to resist was futile. I got on the phone and by late evening I had enough people signed up to fill two classes! Now, mind you, I nor they had any idea what I was going to be teaching! But, this is how it begins. Trust. So, we started. I ran the course for two years and the handouts for the class became the draft for the core seminary curriculum.
Then again, in the fall of 2009, I was once again immersed in that sweet silence and heard the next clear directive. This time it was to start the seminary program and call it The Path of Crow: Discover Your Direct Path to God. What??? I did not yet feel ready to start a seminary! But, God does things in God’s time, not ours. So, I put out a short email asking for just a few people to help me start an interfaith seminary program. To my great surprise, over twenty people responded with interest! And so, we began with just the basic two-year design you see today and the Tree of Life Interfaith Seminary was born. Later, I created the Spiritual Mentoring Certificate Program which became the optional third year for the program. Today, seven classes of Tree of Life Interfaith ministers have been ordained!
The Tree of Life Interfaith Temple Is Born!
In June of 2010, it was time for the “Tree of Life Interfaith Fellowship” to become the “Tree of Life Interfaith Temple,” a 501c3 legally established church, to rightly serve as the ordination body for the first Tree of Life Interfaith Seminary Class of 2011 and for the classes to follow. The Tree of Life Interfaith Temple was born!
As soon as we had ordained Tree of Life ministers, those who desired to offer worship services began doing so alternating Sundays with me. We began the hard work of creating a structure for our Temple: Board of Directors, Bylaws, Constitution, Articles of Incorporation. In those early years, many people served long and, sometimes, arduous hours. This was new territory for all of us, something like creating a new path through a dense jungle. We had no map or knowledge of what the end manifestation might look like. We just knew we were called to be explorers and to do whatever was necessary to bring forth this vision seed, the What If?, that had now found roots in our collective hearts. Over the years, the Temple welcomed teachers and communities with whom I was studying including Sikh, Sufi and Hindu teachers and, in conjunction with the seminary program, hosted and enjoyed a wide variety of speakers from across faith traditions.
A New Day: Expanding the What If? Vision
Today, I have handed over the running of the seminary program to the Temple and to other Tree of Life ministers who will become the guides for new seminarians. In this way, our amazing What If? vision can go out, reach, and serve many more seminarians than I ever could alone. And, after many years of dreaming of having our own space, the Temple has now rented a lovely space on the Milford, NH, Oval. Here, in addition to me, many of our ministers are now offering a variety of sacred studies programs. We have created an organizational structure to hold and support this new growth and the expansion of the What If? vision seed planed in my heart all those years ago. We are poised, ready and ripe to grow into the next phase of our evolution!
My key role now is to publish our sacred text, The Call of the Mourning Dove: How Sacred Sound Awakens Mystical Unity, derived from my doctoral dissertation, and under contract with Wipf and Stock Publishers for a spring 2019 release. I am currently updating the core curriculum for the seminary program integrating this text. Through my June 2018 TEDx talk and other engagements, my blessing is to take our vision message out and spread it far and wide. In the process, my prayer has been to attract participants back to our seminary program which, I am so very grateful to report, is already coming to fruition. When the time is right, I will step aside as Presiding Minister allowing someone else to lead the way forward as I know in my heart that I am not an organization holder. I am a vision holder and, as founder, I will forever continue to hold and nurture the vision of What If? within and for our blessed community.
Join us! We are explorers seeking to be brave, strong and unrelenting in charting a new path – a path that leads seekers to their own unique expression of the What If? vision seed and, graciously, to an intimate knowledge of many are the ways we pray to one God.
Join us for we are uniquely poised to build bridges across religious divides and, as I headlined in my recent TEDx Talk, to change the world one encounter at a time.
Many Joyful Blessings!
Rev. Dr. Stephanie Rutt
www.stephanierutt.com
