Our Work
From Insight to Practice
Love Beyond Belief turns Rev. Dr. Thandeka’s theological framework, informed by affective neuroscience, together with her educational and civic work, into practices people can experience, programs that can be taught and evaluated, and structures that can be sustained. Spiritual practice becomes, in this work, a way of building the relationships democracy needs.
Universal Connections creates small-group spaces where people can be fully themselves while deepening their connection with others. It is a developed offering with online and in-person formats, a course syllabus, documentation, and facilitator resources.
Rev. Dr. Thandeka and Jennifer Jennings have designed and delivered this work with participating groups. A central method is PDR&S: Pause, Discern, Reflect, Share. Participants practice attentive listening, honest expression, and belonging without pressure to conform.
This new initiative asks how communities can strengthen the emotional and relational capacities democratic life requires: listening across difference, remaining present through disagreement, taking responsibility, and acting together.
LBB is seeking organizations to help design possible pilots, define participant-care arrangements, and develop appropriate learning and evaluation approaches. Experiences from Universal Connections may inform the initiative, but its curriculum, delivery format, and relationship to existing programs are still being developed.
The Untrolling Project is a public-education initiative that examines how distress can become attached to people or groups who are inaccurately blamed for its causes.
Through open, engaged reflection and discussion, the project invites personal insight and more thoughtful public engagement and offers tools for reflection, transformation, and compassionate understanding.
Its multimedia work, Untrolling America, was written and produced by Rev. Dr. Thandeka and Jennifer Jennings. The first episode/pilot has been released.
Spiritual practice and congregational work
Love Beyond Belief is also the name of a spiritual practice and body of congregational work centered on insight, reflection, and compassionate action. It explores how experiences of connection can deepen self-understanding, care, and responsibility for the life we share. This work provides an important foundation for LBB’s wider portfolio.
LBB is developing a facilitator-preparation pathway so that this work can be carried forward responsibly. Existing Universal Connections course materials and facilitator resources provide a foundation, but a broader training, support, and authorization system remains to be developed.
Emotional understanding does not excuse harmful conduct or replace attention to history, institutions, material conditions, and political power. LBB’s work seeks to connect personal awareness with responsibility for how we live together. Find your way into the work through participation, hosting, partnership, or support.
