By Lisa Bortner

It is obvious that God has moved in Rev. Dorothy Gremillion’s life in many ways. Ordained a priest in the Episcopal Church in 2000, she has served churches across four dioceses. She believes that God has created each human being—in this case, each woman—to be not only totally unique, but to have a unique path to holiness according to the gifts and circumstances of each person’s life. In her blog at SpiritualityClassroom.com, she calls that unique path to holiness your “Ultimate Creative Potential in Christ.” Your Ultimate Creative Potential in Christ comes alive when you have discovered and are living into your unique path to holiness.

Spirituality Classroom empowering women who have been spiritually abused by someone in their church to discover their path through healing toward unleashing their Ultimate Creative Potential in Christ.”

Rev. Gremillion has personally experienced spiritual abuse, defined as “an event(s) when a person in authority uses that authority to maltreat a member of the church.” Rev. Gremillion is a spiritual abuse survivor. Through much struggle, trial and error, counseling, spiritual direction, and heart-felt prayer, she has found healing. She has begun to catch glimpses of what it would be like to live life from within her Ultimate Creative Potential in Christ. She’s now passionate about helping other women find their healing, women who have suffered the same fate by someone in their church. That’s why she created a free blog at spiritualityclassroom.com. But Rev. Gremillion has a bigger vision than only a blog to further help spiritually abused women.

Her vision now includes Wilderness Quest, which will be a paid, private, and secure online membership area inside her Spirituality Classroom. Once you join the Wilderness Quest, you will be launched into discovering and deepening your spiritual healing and to finding your most life-giving story in Christ, by building community with each other, participating together in online courses, and receiving spiritual direction from Rev. Gremillion.

The areas of the wilderness include

  • Headwaters Epicenter
  • Spirit Spa
  • A Prayer Sampler
  • Inner Intrigue Cavern
  • Soul Crunch
  • Launch Your Well-being
  • Joy Point
  • Stepping Stone Falls

This “wilderness” is a metaphor for wending your way through life, with its ups and downs, desires, successes, challenges, and roadblocks. Current plans are for the Wilderness Quest to contain seven courses in which members can learn specific spiritual growth tools gleaned from Classical Christian Spirituality, Holy Scripture, hymnody, and research.

Each of these areas of the Wilderness Quest will have its own content that is different from that of any of the others. Spiritual growth tools are gleaned from the original content, from research, from Scripture, and from different eras of Classical Christian Spirituality.

For example, the course A Prayer Sampler has Desert Spirituality interwoven throughout, even though it is not the main topic of the 6 Modules. Prayer is. This course includes written introductory videos to each lesson, the lesson content, 13 ways to pray, audio meditations on hymn texts, journaling exercises, and a private Facebook Page—all geared to engender healing from spiritual abuse and to give prayer tools to help along the way.

The other areas of the Wilderness Quest will include spiritual tools from Benedictine Spirituality, Celtic Spirituality, Ignatian Spirituality, Carmelite Spirituality, and Franciscan Spirituality, while creatively weaving insights from psychology, Holy Scripture, research, and personal experience.

Visit spiritualityclassroom.com to subscribe to the free blog, which will enable you to receive weekly blogs, as well as news as to when the Wilderness Quest becomes available.

 The National ECW is pleased to announce that they have awarded a Universal Grant to Rev. Gremillion to see her Wilderness Quest project through to fruition. Rev. Gremillion hopes to have the first of the online classes available starting in March 2021. The National ECW board was eager to approve the grant as it met all of the criteria that the board endorses. The Universal Grant is a broad-spectrum grant that enables organizations to foster Christ’s message throughout the world. Each application is reviewed to ensure that it empowers the women of The Episcopal Church and provides support services the ECW finds important.

The National ECW has two grant programs, the Universal Grant and the Women to Women Grant. More information on both grants can be found on our webpage at: ecwnational.org/resources/donations-grants/

We wish Rev. Gremillion much success with her Spirituality Classroom and Wilderness Quest, and we ask God to bless her endeavors to help others.