In the midst of the noise, God is speaking to you:

 

an invitation to take a step deeper into his love & life.

We would be delighted to help you listen.

 
 

Finding God In the Wilderness

The geography of transformation

 

The pandemic has thrust us into a spiritual wilderness that threatens to close our hearts.

Or, we can learn to hear God’s invitation in and through the wounds.

Doubt, confusion, anger, impatience, despair become openings to love that can lead you deeper into God. The wilderness is a geography of transformation.

We offer you guidance to help you get your bearings in this sacred landscape.

 
 

In the wilderness we discover that prayer is not so much about our ability to get God’s attention as it is about God’s ability to get our attention.

 
 
 
 

Watch a video about the Invitation’s mission to the church through the prison.

 
 

We create safe spaces where you can listen to God in and through your weaknesses to:

 
  • Move beyond anxious, reckless, surface living

  • Learn from your failures

  • Know yourself & God more truly

  • Notice God everywhere

  • Find your own unique way of praying

  • Discover a conversational, reciprocal friendship with God

  • Cooperate freely with the Holy Spirit

  • Heal & become whole, a human being fully alive!

 
 

Become a healing presence for others

Your personal transformation matters to the wellbeing of society

 

OUR MISSION

The Invitation is a spirituality center that creates time & space for God at the vital intersection of contemplation & justice.

 

our Story

The Holy Spirit began forming our understanding of contemplation & justice in a prison where we have been facilitating contemplative prayer since 2014. The prison continues to be our defining sacred space where we learn to hear God in the wilderness.

[pictured left: Josh reunites with Latorious shortly after his release in 2021.]

“It’s not that I bring Jesus to the prison. I go to the prison to find Jesus who is already there, and I know him there among my incarcerated brothers in ways I don’t experience him elsewhere, even in the church. Everything I do with the Invitation is shaped by the prison.”

— Josh Banner, Invitation Founder & Director


listen & respond to God’s invitation
In our formation schools

 

School
of Prayer

 

A nine-month study and practice of the rule of life
Work out your faith in a listening community.

school of Contemplative


Listening

 

Continue your formation & be a healing presence for others.

 
 

Contemplation

Creating time & space for God for yourself.

Spiritual Direction

Creating time & space for God with and on behalf of another.

Justice

The holy space that defines God’s presence on the earth and dignifies those who seek him.

 

MOVING DEEPER & WIDER

More on The Time & Space of Contemplation & Justice

humans are like carrots

We need space to grow

 

Carrots carrots grow best in a loose, fluffy, well-draining soil. Gardeners call this “fertile sandy loam.” If planted in tightly compacted, rocky soil with clods and debris, carrots growth will not only be stunted. They will become twisted, distorted knots.

Human beings also need ample space, the comfort of love, patience, and kindness to flourish.

 
 

We live in an increasingly polarized world that turns to physical and emotional violence to solve its problems. We lack wisdom to find another way, so we continue inflict pain upon each other and ourselves. The result is an oppressive society.

To “oppress” is to squeeze, weigh upon, confine, to press down. Oppression tramples on human dignity.

Contemplative spirituality and spiritual direction are practices of justice as they create the sacred space necessary for human flourishing and restore a person’s dignity.

The Invitation exists within the contemplative tradition — the quiet, gentle, and yet prophetic stream of Christianity that believes Jesus’ life and teachings demonstrate that there is always more love and hope available for everyone.

Contemplation and justice exist in the very nature of God.

“The Gospel is always bad news before it is good news.”

—Frederick Buechner

 

“Before the truth sets you free, it tends to make you miserable.”

—Fr Richard Rohr

 
 

“The basic fact is that Christianity as it was born in the mind of this Jewish teacher and thinker appears as a technique of survival for the oppressed.

Wherever his spirit appears, the oppressed gather fresh courage; for he announced the good news that fear, hypocrisy, and hatred, the three hounds of hell that track the trail of the disinherited, need have no dominion over them.”

— Dr. Howard Thurman

 
 

The Invitation is a 501(c)(3)