Aldea Spiritual Community

Jim Burklo—pastor, author, and former Senior Associate Dean of Religious and Spiritual Life at USC—joins us to talk about his new book Water In The Desert. In this wide-ranging conversation, he offers new ways of seeing God, love, Jesus, the Bible, and church.
 
Learn more about Jim at https://www.jimburklo.com/

Relationships of every kind — from friends to family and everything in between — are essential to a healthy and whole spiritual life. Join us for a unique, podcast-style conversation between four friends as we explore the power of multi-generational relationships, vulnerability, freedom, and safety.
 
Quotes:
 
“It is only in relationship that the self can be revealed—not in isolation.” — Jiddu Krishnamurti
 
You must love in such a way that the person you love feels free.” —  Thich Nhat Hanh

On Sunday, April 12th, we connected with our new friend Victor Shamas, who drew from his background in research and psychology to explore the ways quantum physics resonate with a growing sense of connection, love, and oneness in our world. The morning culminated in the introduction of Great Big Love: a new collaborative initiative with Aldea centered around cultivating connection, presence, and shared experience.

For Part 3 of our Rebirth series, this Easter Sunday message explores the final movement of the journey: not a return to what was, but a transformation into something entirely new.
 
Across this series, we’ve traced a universal human pattern—Friday as loss, Saturday as the in-between, and Sunday as rebirth. But what we discover on “Sunday” isn’t a restoration of the old life. It’s something unfamiliar, expanded, and often unrecognizable.
 
Through the Easter story, we encounter a profound truth: even resurrection carries scars. Not erased, not hidden—but transformed. What if the hardest parts of your story aren’t obstacles to new life, but essential to it?
 
This message (which includes a heartfelt intro from Roger Pierce) invites us to reflect on our own cycles of death and renewal—personally and collectively—and to consider what it might look like to step into a future that doesn’t simply repeat the past, but transcends it.
 
Quotes:
“Jesus’ wounds were not erased by resurrection; they were transformed. That is the pattern.” — Richard Rohr 
“Resurrection is not a coming back to life as we knew it, but a going forward into a life we have never known.” — Cynthia Bourgeault 
“At the crack of dawn on Sunday, the women came to the tomb carrying the burial spices they had prepared. They found the entrance stone rolled back from the tomb, so they walked in. But once inside, they couldn’t find the body of the Master Jesus. They were puzzled, wondering what to make of this. Then, out of nowhere it seemed, two men, light cascading over them, stood there. The women were awestruck and bowed down in worship. The men said, ‘Why are you looking for the Living One in a cemetery? — Luke 24:1-8
“Faith is a bird that feels the light and sings while the dawn is still dark.” — Rabindranath Tagore
 

Part 2 of our Rebirth series explores something we rarely talk about… the in-between.
 
We know endings.
We celebrate new beginnings.
But what about the waiting?
 
In the Easter story, this is Holy Saturday: the space between death and resurrection. But it’s also something we all experience:
 
The job that hasn’t come yet.
The healing that hasn’t happened yet.
The clarity that hasn’t arrived yet.
 
What if this space isn’t empty?
What if something is forming beneath the surface?
 
This message invites us to see the waiting not as wasted time, but as sacred ground where transformation is already unfolding.
 
If you’re in a season of uncertainty or transition… this one is for you.
 
Quotes:
 
 
“The interval between the decay of the old and the formation of the new… is a time of waiting.” — Charles Handy 
“Faith is the willingness to live with uncertainty.” — Richard Rohr 
“The dark night… is not the absence of God, but the presence of transformation.” — St. John of the Cross 
“All human wisdom is summed up in two words; wait and hope.” — Alexandre Dumas 
 

This message wasn’t actually given on Good Friday—but it is about Good Friday.
 
Not just the one in the Christian calendar… but the ones we all face.
 
Because “Good Friday” isn’t just a day...it’s a pattern. A reality. A lived experience. It’s the moments where something ends, falls apart, or dies.
And in those moments, nothing feels “good” about it.
 
But what if… only in hindsight… we begin to see that those Fridays were not the end?
 
The new series "Rebirth" explores the universal rhythm of Friday (death), Saturday (the in-between), and Sunday (rebirth)—not as religious obligations, but as a deeply human pattern we all live through.
 
Quotes:
 
“In order for the new to emerge, the old must be allowed to die.” — Eckhart Tolle 
“Grief is not a disorder, a disease, or a sign of weakness. It is an emotional, physical, and spiritual necessity.” — Rabbi Earl Grollman 
“Every new beginning comes from some other beginning’s end.” — Seneca (popularized by Semisonic) 
“The disintegration of the old is the condition of the new.” — Joseph Schumpeter 
“Sometimes it takes a crisis to shake us out of complacency and force us to confront what is no longer working.” — Brené Brown 

What happens when a community reflects on the movies that changed their lives?
 
In this special gathering at Aldea, members of our community shared the films that shaped them. Stories that helped them process grief, discover hope, feel seen, and understand the human experience  
 
In this message, we explore how cinema becomes spiritual—not necessarily because a film is labeled “spiritual,” but because of the meaning we discover in it. Whether through themes of redemption, friendship, identity, courage, or hope against impossible odds, these stories remind us of something deeply human: the power of storytelling to shape our lives.
 
Quotes:
 
“Movies are empathy machines…the great movies expand our hearts.” — Roger Ebert
 
“Film is a window into the soul of humanity.” — Werner Herzog
 
Films Mentioned:
 
Casablanca
Stand by Me
The Shawshank Redemption
Soul
Lady in the Water
Mindwalk
Dead Man Walking
Gran Torino
Schindler’s List
Life Is Beautiful
The Nightmare Before Christmas
Harry Potter
The Rocky Horror Picture Show
Rent
Charly
Forrest Gump
Whale Rider
The Matrix
The Last Unicorn
Hamnet
Concert for George
The Great Ecstasy of Woodcarver Steiner
The Way
The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers
 

In the finale of our series The Good, the True, and the Beautiful, we turn our attention to the final transcendental: Beauty.
 
Over the past few weeks, we’ve explored how goodness, truth, and beauty have long been understood as three ways reality reveals itself. If goodness points to how we live and truth points to what is real, beauty points to something deeper still — that which makes life worth living.
 
Beauty has a way of bypassing the intellect. A sunset, a piece of music, a shared meal, a child’s laughter — moments that stop us in our tracks and remind us that life is more than survival. In a world where our minds filter out almost everything we experience, learning to notice beauty may be one of the most spiritual practices available to us.
 
Even in difficult times, beauty remains a quiet form of resistance — and a reminder of what life is ultimately about.
 
Quotes:
 
“Beauty is truth, truth beauty — that is all ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.” — John Keats
 
“Music expresses that which cannot be put into words and that which cannot remain silent.” — Victor Hugo
 
“To see a world in a grain of sand, and a heaven in a wild flower…” — William Blake
 
“We write to taste life twice, in the moment and in retrospect.” — Anaïs Nin
 
“The essence of the universe is its aim toward the production of beauty.” — Alfred North Whitehead
 
“The world will be saved by beauty.” — Fyodor Dostoevsky
 
“The true, the good, and the beautiful are not separate domains; they are the radiant expressions of a single underlying reality.” — Ken Wilber
 
“Instructions for living a life:
Pay attention.
Be astonished.
Tell about it.” — Mary Oliver

In Part 2 of The Good, The True, and The Beautiful, we step into the most challenging and transformative dimension of this series: Truth. In a world that's been called "post-truth", and certainly has it's fair share of chaos, we explore what it means to actually discern truth for ourselves — not just inherit it — and how discomfort, questioning, and even uncertainty can become sacred guides.
 
Truth isn’t always neat, literal, or easy to stomach. Sometimes it arrives as an uncovering, an expansion, or a disruption — inviting us to align our inner world with our outer lives. When we have the courage to trust experience, embrace paradox, and live authentically, goodness begins to flow and the most beautiful version of our lives emerges.
 
Quotes:
 
Niels Bohr
“The opposite of a correct statement is a false statement. But the opposite of a profound truth may well be another profound truth.”
 
Flannery O’Connor
“The truth does not change according to our ability to stomach it.”
 
David Bohm
“Truth is what stands the test of experience.”
 
Bronnie Ware (The Top Five Regrets of the Dying)
“I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me.”

For thousands of years, philosophers and mystics have described reality through three transcendentals: the Good, the True, and the Beautiful. What if these are not abstract ideals, but living movements unfolding through evolution itself?
 
Through the frame of "evolutionary spirituality", we ask the question: could goodness, truth, and beauty be the spiritual trajectory of the universe?
 
For the first part of our new series, we reflect on "The Good", and how goodness is the invitation toward deeper compassion & love, showing up in a myriad of ways. May we celebrate the movement towards goodness however and whenever it shows up.
 
Quotes: 
“The Good is the cause of all that is right and beautiful… and the source of truth and reason.” — Plato
“Everyone who has felt the power of truth, the kindness of goodness, or the loveliness of beauty has had an experience of spirit.” — Steve McIntosh
“The Good is that which increases depth and span—greater interior awareness joined with greater compassion.” — Ken Wilber
“The good is not a fixed standard but a movement toward greater truth, light, and harmony.” — Sri Aurobindo
“Love is the most universal, the most tremendous and the most mysterious of the cosmic forces.” — Teilhard de Chardin
Luke 6:27–34:
27 “But to you who are listening I say: Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, 28 bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you. 29 If someone slaps you on one cheek, turn to them the other also. If someone takes your coat, do not withhold your shirt from them. 30 Give to everyone who asks you, and if anyone takes what belongs to you, do not demand it back. 31 Do to others as you would have them do to you. 32 If you do good to those who are good to you, what credit is that to you?