Continuing this series on what's on my altar and why: this week, a portrait of the man whose vision shapes my whole ministry.

Hey friends, welcome to week two of me sharing different items from my home altar, to share a little bit more about me and how I’m cultivating sacred space in my life.

So for the second week, I want to share this image of Emanuel Swedenborg that I keep on my central altar. There it is — a little closer

So why do I have Swedenborg back here? Well, of course, I am a Swedenborgian minister, so it makes some sense. But the life of Emanuel Swedenborg is deeply impactful to my understanding of myself, and what it means to be alive. Emanuel Swedenborg was a pretty cool dude, and not everybody knows about him. He lived in the 1600s and 1700s — he was like the last, greatest, smartest person on the planet. Someone who wanted to know everything there was to know in his time, and that search for knowing was always driven by this desire to know ultimate reality, to know God, to know what was really true, and how to be connected to that truth.

I think I have a lot of similar energy to Emanuel Swedenborg. I think, had we been contemporaries, we would have been friends. He was just a deeply curious and devoted human being. He really questioned the truths that were available to him at his time and wanted to know more. His father was a Lutheran bishop, very devoted to the church, and Swedenborg himself had powerful experiences, even as a young child, of the spiritual realm.

Then, in his fifties — I’ll be fifty in January, so I’m excited to be entering this era for myself — after a long career in the world and a long scientific career, he decided to enter into these deep meditative states. He started to take on a very powerful breathing practice, went into periods of isolation, and in that experience, received a call from God — received a visitation from the Lord God manifest as Jesus the Christ, telling him to go further, to explore these inner realms, and to share his experiences with others: to share what he was receiving about what was true about the spiritual world.

So I like to keep Swedenborg on my altar to stay connected to him as a person. I think it’s actually nice to have a picture of this person, because so often, when churches form around the vision of a person, sometimes their work becomes almost disembodied from who they are. I think it’s important to remember that the insights he brought, he brought through his own experience — his lived experience, his body, his humanity. So I like to connect with Swedenborg’s humanity. I like to keep him here because I think he is a part of my journey now. I think he’s on the team of the Helen Keller Spiritual Life Collaborative.

I feel like part of what I’m working to do is to look again — look anew — at his vision, and really come to understand what it means for me in a lived, embodied, practical way. Because that was so much of his message, right? His message was that religion is not just about what we profess that we believe. It’s not just about what we practice, the rituals we take part in — it’s our life. It’s who we are as people. It’s a life of kindness.

"His message was that religion is not just about what we profess that we believe. It's not just about what we practice, the rituals we take part in — it's our life. It's who we are as people. It's a life of kindness."

I feel very strongly that the calling I am receiving is a calling that also Swedenborg received, and there is a lineage that connects us. I feel deeply connected to him, and supported by him, in the work I’m doing right now. So it’s really important to me to have him on this altar, reminding me that he’s on the team, and that this is good work to be doing. And to see that he’s part of a community — a family of humans seeking to be truthful, seeking to be loving, seeking to connect with the source of life. While I go about that work differently than he did, because I’m a different being, there are these common threads that tie us together.

So yeah, that’s Emanuel Swedenborg. I am a Swedenborgian minister, and he is in my altar space, always informing me in the work that I’m doing — through reading his writings, but also through just remembering that on a spiritual level, he still very much exists. He’s around. He’s with me, and with many others, continuing, I’m sure, to be curious and to want to bring into being something new — which is what I’m all about.

So yeah, there’s Swedenborg. I wonder if he’s on your altar, or if there are other beings — saints, luminaries, seers, or teachers — that have informed your path, that you keep in your altar space. Let me know. Let’s talk about it. All right — take care, friends.

Share images and stories from your altar in the comments!

I’d love to see what spaces you are creating ❤️

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