I recently had the good fortune to attend Presence in Community’s Just Breathe retreat, where I got to lead a session on mindfulness and sit on a panel with some wonderful people. During the panel, I happened to mention that we call ourselves a fiercely secular organization, by which we mean that we welcome everyone regardless of their beliefs.

Sitting next to me was author and Zen rōshi, Ellen Birx, who mentioned that when she first saw that we called ourselves fiercely secular, it was like a dagger to her heart. She was one of the first people who raised the issue that secular implies an absence of spirituality, which is certainly not the experience that myself or many others have had with our ‘secular’ approach to contemplative practice.

We’ve struggled to find a better word than ‘secular’ for years. We’ve scoured the thesaurus, and words like nonreligious, nonsectarian, and worldly just don’t cut it.

It turns out that the problem was that we were barking up the wrong tree, trying to find a synonym for a word that didn’t describe what we do.

As I responded to Ellen at the retreat, the word landed. The word we’ve been looking for is inclusive. We are a fiercely inclusive organization. Our tagline for InSpire has always been, All of you is welcome here. But it’s not just all of you. It’s all of you. Everyone. Religious or irreligious, red or blue, young or old, rich or poor, straight or gay, sober or not, you are welcome through our doors, and our services and the practices we offer are for you.

We’re not here to judge. Mindfulness, to me, is noticing with curiosity and without judgment. So we meet you mindfully: we don’t decide whether you’re right or wrong, good or bad, we simply open our arms and welcome you in, with curiosity and without judgment.

We are fiercely inclusive, and that includes you. Welcome to InStill.