Faith, Practice & Reflection

An open, multi-faith network for African and African-diaspora women whose spiritual practice is part of how they navigate career and life. Christian, Muslim, ancestral African traditions, Jewish, Buddhist, Hindu, Sikh, and combinations thereof. We discuss practice, doubt, ritual, community, and how faith shows up at work without either erasing it or weaponizing it. Conversation is bounded by mutual respect; recruitment is not permitted in either direction.

Membership is intentionally cross-traditional. Christian members across Protestant, Catholic, Orthodox, Pentecostal, and non-denominational traditions, including women specifically in the Black-church tradition who also participate in the dedicated Black-church network. Muslim members across Sunni, Shia, Sufi, and African-American Muslim communities, including women in the dedicated Muslim-women network. Members in West African ancestral traditions. Buddhist members across Theravada, Mahayana, and Western adaptations. Hindu members. Jewish members from the African and Afro-Caribbean Jewish communities. Members across traditional African religions including Akan, Yoruba, Igbo, Zulu, and others. Members who are actively building a personal spiritual practice that does not fit a single tradition.

What we talk about. Practice. The morning practice. The evening practice. The prayer life. The meditation work. The scripture or text study. The fasting practices across traditions. The dietary practices. The cycles of the year — Lent, Ramadan, the festivals of the various traditions, the high holy days, the new-year and renewal practices. The sabbath in its various forms.

Community. The local congregation or sangha or masjid or synagogue or temple. The relationship with that community. The leadership of that community and our experience with it. The ways community has shown up in our lives and the ways it has fallen short.

Doubt. The questions that we are sitting with. The way doubt has moved through our practice across our lives. The relationship between intellectual doubt and experiential confidence in practice. The way doubt is received in our traditions and the spaces where it can be openly held.

The work-faith interaction. The conversation about whether and how to bring faith into our work life. The way some of us have been explicit about it and the way some of us have been more discreet. The workplace accommodations we have asked for. The faith-related conversations with colleagues. The way the relationship between our work decisions and our faith commitments has shaped our careers.

Cross-traditional friendship. The way members of different traditions have learned from each other. The reading we have shared. The respectful curiosity. The slow building of relationships across tradition lines that has been rare in our broader communities.

Family. Raising children in the faith tradition or across traditions. The interfaith household and how it has been navigated. The conversations with parents about our current faith life when it differs from how we were raised. The slow generational shifts within families.

Faith in hard times. The way our practice has held us through specific crises. The illnesses. The bereavements. The divorces. The career losses. The way the texts and rituals of our traditions have spoken into specific moments. The way our communities have shown up in those moments.

Theology and study. The reading we are doing across traditions. The way our understanding of our own tradition has shifted with study. The teachers and writers we have learned from. The slow construction of an adult faith that incorporates what was given to us in childhood and what we have built since.

Politics and faith. The complicated intersection. The civil-rights tradition that has long combined Black Christian and Black Muslim political engagement. The contemporary debates within faith communities about political positions. The members who lead social-justice work from their faith and the members who keep faith and politics in separate registers, and the conversation across that difference.

Cadence: a weekly thread, intentionally slower and more reflective than other networks. A monthly long-form thread on a single theme that crosses traditions — doubt, community, practice, intergenerational transmission, ritual, the body in spiritual practice. Quarterly virtual circles with guest speakers from different traditions. An annual in-person retreat that explicitly mixes traditions.

Rules. Mutual respect across traditions. No conversion attempts in any direction. No theological combat. Honest discussion of disagreement, including theological disagreement, is welcome; coercive engagement is not. Confidentiality on personal practice details that members do not want shared outside the network.

What we are: the cross-traditional circle for African and African-diaspora women whose lives include a spiritual practice. The room where the variety is the point. Where we learn from each other's traditions without conflating them. Where the questions we are sitting with — about practice, about meaning, about doubt, about how to live a faithful life inside the specific demands of our work and our families — get asked and discussed in good faith. Faith is woven through all our lives. This is the room where we get to talk about how.