No more!

What began the search

I stopped believing in Christianity as a child. Its explanations did not make sense to me. Years later, I returned to religious texts asking whether a spiritual life could make room for what we were learning about the world.

The teachings attributed to Jesus brought me back, including those preserved outside the familiar Bible. Their language of light, inward understanding and the kingdom led me to look for the sacred within and around ordinary life. The accounts did not all agree, but they gave me questions worth following.

The experiences behind this work brought an intense urge to guide and share, not to control. My conviction is that the Divine reached towards me, drawing my attention to Connection becoming scattered and to the responsibilities we are forgetting. Human beings meet as equals. I stand alongside others, not above them. The Gifts we carry call us to protect that equality, care for one another and pass what we learn into other hands. My task is to help prepare and tend the ground, as a farmer tends a field, so others can bring their own voices, Gifts and care.

What I found

Science informed my questions; scripture and reflection helped shape my faith. The Divine is the universe itself, the Source of which all matter and every soul are part. This is the foundation of Noemoria. The earth beneath our feet, the water we drink, the lives beside our own all belong to the same sacred whole. We do not make them holy by naming them. Our task is to recognise what is already sacred and let that recognition change how we live.

To cherish the Divine is to care for creation: to protect the river, tend the suffering and learn before we destroy what we do not understand. We are part of this world, not its exemption. The Divine is not a person; God is a name some may choose for it. It demands no submission and appoints no master. Worship is freely offered in love and gratitude. No hand owns the wind because it has raised a sail; no institution owns the sacred because it has given it a name.

Consciousness extends beyond an individual body; living beings evolved the capacity to receive and express it. Through it we can experience the Divine, reaching inward and outward within the same Source. Through reincarnation, conscious life takes form again within the Divine. We are never separate from it, in life or death. Our responsibility is to make shared life kinder, recognise harm, repair what we can and change how we act. There is a life here that needs us now.

Read about reincarnation within the Divine.

We meet the Divine through Gifts already within and around us. Individuality gives each life its own perspective. Connection reaches between ourselves, one another, the earth and the Source. Curiosity opens a question; Knowledge carries what we learn; Creation gives it form. With these we make medicine, music, shelter and understanding. The sacred takes its place in the work of our hands.

I want our first gatherings to practise this faith: a moment of quiet, a reading or question, time to speak and time to listen. We might walk together through a changing season, share a song, remember someone we have lost or decide how to help a neighbour. These are beginnings to shape together, not established ceremonies. No one should have to perform belief to be welcome.

Faith can be someone's rock. It must not become the weight that crushes them. I challenge the teachings and practices that turn compassion into control, not every person who belongs to a faith.

Shunning — Jehovah's Witnesses restrict social contact with people removed from their congregations. Whatever the exceptions, religious discipline must not make belonging a weapon. That betrays Connection. [1]

Caste discrimination — Caste hierarchy in Hindu traditions has ranked lives by birth and ritual purity, despite resistance from Hindu reformers. No ancestry makes a person lesser. No touch makes them pollution. Such exclusion violates Individuality and Connection. [6]

Child sexual abuse — The Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse found that the Roman Catholic Church in England and Wales put its reputation before children's welfare, ignoring allegations and protecting perpetrators. A child's safety is worth more than an institution's good name. To shelter the abuser is to betray Connection at the point it is needed most. [8]

Burning books, burying evidence and silencing questions do not defend the Divine. They defend authority from examination. Noemoria must preserve what challenges its own account as faithfully as what supports it.

No more shall a family be broken and its breaking called righteous. No more shall a woman's questions be named rebellion or her body made another person's property. No more shall flesh be burned, bones broken or stones raised against a living person while those responsible call the act holy. No sacred name washes responsibility from human hands. Neither does a devil's name. Those who cause, enable or conceal cruelty remain answerable for what they do.

My anger rises for what should have been protected: a child's trust, freedom to learn, love that has done no harm. The Divine moves through life; we cannot honour it while breaking the person before us. A faith must answer for how it treats those who do not fit inside it.

What must be built

I am building Noemoria so others have room to approach the Divine in their own way, and support against the stigma and control that would deny them that freedom. We practise attunement, but the work reaches beyond what we ourselves feel. Care must hold when a question is uncomfortable, a leader is wrong or helping someone costs us something. Our words, gatherings and practices must protect life, or they have failed their purpose.

The soil feeds us. Water sustains us. The Divine moves through soil, water and all living things; all matter and every soul are part of the same Source. Long before we wrote our beliefs, we tended fires, shared food and carried our young between familiar arms. We draw closer by attending to the turning season, to our own life and to what another life needs from us. What we learn should guide what we preserve, repair and pass on.

There is beauty here sufficient to fill a lifetime, and suffering we should not leave for another world to repair. A hungry person needs food while the prayer is being spoken. Stillness must leave us able to hear the person calling outside. When someone needs help that we can responsibly give, Connection calls us to act and Creation puts our skill to work.

The faith we build must have a place in grief, celebration and the ordinary labour of caring for one another. Make room for song, silence and gatherings beneath an open sky, ways of drawing closer to the Divine without bargaining for its favour. Let that reverence be visible in what we protect. No child should have to become smaller to belong.

I want Noemoria to tear down the gates people build around the Gifts we receive from the Divine: Individuality, Connection, Curiosity, Knowledge and Creation. We challenge every claim to own them, and the fear and control that make belonging a prison. We are already part of the Source. Our books and practices must help people explore these Gifts freely, not make us their new gatekeepers.

That means a home for those who feel Connection and those who do not. No one is holier for being attuned to a Gift we share from birth. Those who feel it can offer companionship, not rank. The Divine and our feeling of its presence are distinct. Quiet is not punishment. Care must stay when the feeling changes.

Belonging must leave you free to disagree, decline a practice or leave without shunning or loss of care. That freedom includes disagreeing with Noemoria. Leadership must be shared and changeable, with decisions open to challenge. The procedures are still to be built; a promise on this page is not a safeguard until we give it a working form.

The book is being written. It will explore religious history, its beauty and its harm, alongside stories and practices for living. Its teachings must be open to examination and correction. Noemoria must answer the questions it asks of others. Why we are building a sacred book.

We can now speak across oceans and compare texts once kept apart. War or disease could scatter that exchange; libraries can burn and networks fall silent. Established religions have books and practices that endure upheaval. Our understanding of the Divine, care and freedom needs a lasting record too.

A religion must carry today's hard-won understanding into a tomorrow it cannot foresee. Those who follow should not have to suffer the same wounds to learn why they must not be inflicted. Preserve the evidence and experience behind our teachings, and leave them open to correction. An inheritance of Knowledge must not become another chain.

While we can reach one another, let us write, question, teach and preserve. Keep the reasons beside the words. Pass skills between hands. Knowledge taken for granted today may be a light someone has to kindle again.

Enter the conversation

Noemoria began with one voice, but it must not belong to one voice. These foundations are being laid now. If these words speak to something you have been seeking, bring your questions, experience and disagreement. Help shape the gatherings, teachings and acts of care through which this faith will live.

You need not surrender your beliefs to take part. You are welcome to read, listen or join the discussion, and free to leave without shame or shunning.

What taking part can look like, our faith and the responsibilities we must meet.