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About ken winston caine
Spiritual orientation
I've studied, practiced and sought elements of holistic spirituality all my life.
So I've explored and experienced a great variety of religious and spiritual beliefs and systems.
My foundation in the principles of Quaker faith and practice--which was my earliest formal spiritual instruction as a child--remains intact.
I subscribe to the Quaker principle that the whole of our lives is ministry.
Everything each of us does ministers in some form or another. The good, the bad, the ugly. The beautiful, the hurt, the joy. The success, the failure and all the in-between.
It's all part of who we are; what we are experiencing; what we are doing; what we are communicating; and what we are being.
Who we are, what we are doing, what we are experiencing, what we are communicating, and what we are being is our spirituality.
We are all spiritual beings. Being is spiritual.
Sometimes our spirituality has something to do with religion. Sometimes it does not.
In this "holistic" spiritual view, all of life is a prayer, all of life is divine, all of life is service.
And as such, everything we do is equally ministry.
And spiritual formation and spiritual practice for each of us is unique.
And we are all seekers and ministers and children of God, with none of us truly more so than another.
I've known another Quaker or two who believed a lot of these same things. And I've known some who shared very little of this thinking.
That's one cool thing I like about Quakers. We respect one another's divinity.
Oats and motor oil
Some people, I find, have odd understandings about who or what Quakers are.
Quakers (Friends) are not Amish or Puritans, have nothing in particular to do with oats or motor oil, and do not wear plain, black 17th century garb or 17th century hats and bonnets--though many did in the 17th century when that was considered plain, basic, everyday wear in the Western world.
Quakers do tend to challenge the existing order ("speak truth to power"), seek the divine spark in everyone, and work for equality and justice for all. They were instrumental in helping blacks escape slavery and women achieve recognized equality and continue to work for social justice everywhere.
For more about who and what Quakers are, click here.
New Thought credentials
My spiritual path has led me to earn a ministerial doctorate in counseling from the New Thought College of Divine Metaphysics in Glendora, California. It's the oldest New Thought movement college in existence (since 1918).
"New Thought" refers to an Eastern-friendly, Christian-rooted universalist spiritual approach that grew from the teachings and writings of a lot of folks in the second half of the 19th century.
Among them: Phineas Parkhurst Quimby and Mary Baker Eddy and Emma Hopkins and Charles and Myrtle Fillmore and Ernest Holmes and William James and Thoreau and Emerson and others.
New Thought gave birth to the Divine Science and Unity and Christian Science and Religious Science denominations and the "Practical Christianity" of Emmett Fox and Norman Vincent Peale.
I maintain a personal Quaker ministry/outreach that I chartered with friends in 1968 (focused then, at the height of the Vietnam War, on peace ministry: anti-war activism and draft counseling).
The World Federation of Unity Churches recognized me as a "New Thought Quaker" and "chaplain at large."
I am a member of the Santa Fe Friends Meeting and have served a term as meeting clerk.
I was attracted to coaching, perhaps, because it draws so heavily on the processes of deep personal inquiry that Quakers teach. It's quite a comfortable fit for me--and a way to share my core spiritual approach without proselytizing.
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