Opening To Love: Contemplative Practices for Decolonising Spirituality

Grounded in the Opening to Love: 4 Spheres of Healing from Oppression framework, this course will attend to healing across the four spheres: self, relationships, institutions, and the collective social body, opening more deeply to God’s loving and liberating presence.

Across the series we will explore practices that help us rest in the Love that restores dignity, heals wounds of oppression, and nurtures a more just, beloved community.

Through guided reflection, shared inquiry, and gentle spiritual practices, participants will be invited to notice how histories of colonisation and racism shape our spiritual lives, and to welcome God’s healing movement towards inner liberation, interpersonal repair, inclusive institutional life, and systemic justice.

Learning outcomes
By the end of the series, participants will be able to:

• Describe key decolonial concepts, recognise vestiges of colonialism in contemporary life and spirituality, and use shared language to discern the ongoing presence of colonial patterns.
• Discern elements of their own socialisation around race and racism as part of their ongoing spiritual growth.
• Notice relationship dynamics that hinder love and practise ways of repair, accountability, and mutuality.
• Identify vestiges of coloniality in institutional life and the collective social body, and practise discernment towards inclusive institutional transformation and systemic transformative justice.
• Engage the four spheres of healing as domains for contemplative discernment and prayerful action: self as inner liberation, relationships as interpersonal repair, institutions as inclusive institutional transformation, and the collective social body as systemic transformative justice.

This course is for people willing to engage prayerfully, practise gentle reflection, and explore coloniality, race, power and decolonisation with honesty and care toward healing, including:

• People curious about coloniality and decolonising spirituality who want a structured contemplative learning journey grounded in prayer and practice.
• Global Majority people, including Black, Asian and minority ethnic communities, and white people who want to face racism and oppression with courage, tenderness, and accountability.
• People carrying spiritual harm or church hurt connected to race, empire, exclusion, patriarchy, or colonised spirituality, who want a prayerful space for repair and reconnection with God.
• Activists and justice-oriented leaders experiencing fatigue, burnout, or moral injury, who want spiritual resourcing that does not bypass power and helps them remain grounded and tender.
• People involved in reconciliation, mediation, or restorative practice in faith communities who want a contemplative approach to repair, accountability, and belonging.

You do not need prior study or the right language. You do need willingness, humility, care and openness to the Divine action within.

There will be some material to look at before the first session. We will email you around one week prior to the course with information about accessing the course, including this material, on our online learning platform (Moodle).