Valley and Mountain

Valley & Mountain is a relatively new spiritual community/church in the culturally diverse Columbia City neighborhood of Seattle, WA. Our mission is to build a radically hospitable community, rooted in grace, that practices deep listening and creative liberation. Our community is sponsored by the United Methodist Church, and is rooted in the mystical, incarnational, and liberationist Christian traditions, while welcoming and creating hospitable room for participants with other spiritual identities. Our perspectives are diverse in this community, but we are united in our embrace of V&M's core actions/values which are:

Deep Listening– the inward journey of becoming people with a mature personal spirituality/faith. For us, this requires deeply listening to one’s own inner voice, instead of projecting an inauthentic persona to please others. It requires deeply listening to others, and learning from their experiences. And it requires deeply listening to the Spirit that may guide us on the path of love and reconciliation.

Creative Liberation–the outward journey of becoming people who contribute our gifts to human and ecological flourishing. For us, this means that in addition to acts of kindness, we must try to understand those systems, cycles, and structures that oppress people and degrade the earth, and partner with the creative power of the Spirit to replace these things with liberating alternatives.

Radical Hospitality–the communal journey of becoming people who have relationships that reflect our mutuality, universal siblinghood, and interdependence. For us this means cultivating authentic, meaningful relationships with family, friends, and our neighbors, especially those who seem very different. It involves learning how to receive with gratitude the gifts and stories of the other, while respectfully and unashamedly offering others our gifts and stories as well.