This recording features the Sunday Talk portion of the service. For the full service watch here.
Self-Doubt As The Starting Block – Rev. Rainbow Weldon
DESCRIPTION
What doubts do I hide, and what do I fear revealing them would do? This week opens our conversation on Divine Doubt, exploring the relationship we have to our own self-doubts and what the ramifications might be of letting doubt be part of our normal experiences. Rather than hiding doubt away, might we benefit from using it as the anchor of curiosity?
SUMMARY
The talk explores doubt as a vital, often-taboo aspect of spiritual life, contrasting rigid “high vibration” certainty and perfectionism with a more nuanced, compassionate faith that embraces mystery, uncertainty, and human imperfection. Rev. Rainbow Weldon critiques “consciousness blaming,” comparison culture, and Instagram-ready spirituality, arguing that shame and unhealthy doubt arise when people feel they must manifest perfectly and maintain flawless lives. Drawing on Richard Rohr’s “Falling Upward,” she reframes doubt, failure, and midlife disruption as invitations to deeper faith, growth, and “falling upwards,” moving from black‑and‑white principles to a fluid, evolving practice that meets life as it is.
Weldon grounds this theology in her own recent experiences of compounded loss, divorce, selling a shared home, leaving a spiritual center, founding a new queer-focused ministry, and entering a liminal period without a clear next step, choosing rest, care, and community support over ego-driven independence and perfection. She uses the “rewilding” of the Knepp Estate—where an invasive thistle outbreak ultimately enabled a mass migration of painted lady butterflies that naturally resolved the problem—as a metaphor for trusting the hidden wisdom of life, allowing “messy” seasons and ego-disapproved conditions to become fuel for transformation rather than occasions for control or “toxic positivity.”
Throughout, she calls listeners to “rewild” their own lives by queering norms, loosening perfectionism, normalizing doubt, and embracing grief, change, and perceived failures as catalysts for personal and spiritual evolution. Emphasizing reciprocity, community resilience, and the natural law of mutual care, she encourages pausing in liminal spaces, asking how challenges might be “for” us, and trusting that even in apparent falling, something is secretly percolating in the “soil and soul” to raise us into a more authentic, grace-filled life.
TRANSCRIPTION
This transcription was auto-generated, please excuse typos, errors and omissions.
Rev. Rainbow Weldon:
Beautiful. Oh, so good. Cityside, Chicago, it’s good to be with you. The beginning of this book, he talks a little bit about the hero’s journey. And I was reflecting on our meditation before service how it always feels like a bit of that hero’s journey for me and returning home when I’m here. So definitely has that feeling here. So thank you for welcoming me home. So this month we’re exploring the idea of doubt. And let’s be honest, often in spiritual circles, new thought community, doubt can be a little bit of a taboo. Right? If we’re a little rigid around the science of mind principles, we could see it as, oh, well, we just have to focus on making sure our vibration is high and everything’s all good and be certain about what we want and we desire. Where’s there room for doubt in that, right? Or if we’re constantly affirming perfect life, perfect good.
Otherwise, are we not doing it right? And it can lead to this idea of some new thought, guilt, or shame. We’ve got it here too, not just the Catholics, y’all. That if we think we have to do life this certain way and be perfect, and everything always will turn out good because it is true that our experience is a reflection of our consciousness. It can get a little twisted though, and we can start to do a little consciousness blaming and shaming. Anyone relate? Perhaps, maybe. And I would say that what the world needs now, love, sweet love. More love, yes. And grace and kindness and acceptance of our own humanity and a willingness to see the divinity within our humanness, not just for each other, but for ourselves. It has to start here too, right? Because what this can lead to is that we just want to show the world the Instagram picture perfect version of who we are.
And we tend to see just those versions of other people’s life of what they choose to show or share. And we can start to make up the story that we’re somehow bad or wrong. Well, why am I not at this level or doing this thing or look this way? And all that comparison and judgment and shame can lead to a kind of unhealthy doubt. Yes. But what would it be to let go of this idea of, am I not science of mining good enough? Am I doing this good enough about anything, what we’re doing? Let go of this idea of perfection and open to the great mystery and uncertainty of life because life is going to happen. Things occur. We can’t always control those things that happen, but we are able to choose how we respond in reaction, not reaction, respond consciously on how we show up with what is occurring.
But this kind of rigidness of faith is what Ror refers to in the first half of life. It’s important to learn the principles and to have the structure and to have the discipline of the spiritual practice to kind of get it into your nature. And I grew up in this teaching, so I had a very black and white kind of elementary understanding of how life gets to be the way it is and thought it was just fill in these boxes that all go great. And then starting to get to more midlife, the second part of life, there’s many challenges that occur. And so it could be easy to turn that on ourselves and say, “Why did I create this? ” And the invitation today is to look at leaning into the mystery and the uncertainty and the doubt as an opportunity to deepen our faith, to experience more love and grace, and to surrender into the letting go of this great mystery of life, moving beyond the black and white and into a little bit more nuanced understanding of our spirituality and our spiritual practice, which is what occurs as we grow and age and mature and begin to understand the complexity of life and how to embrace spiritual practice as a more fluid experience of showing up every day with what’s occurring and meeting that, as opposed to just in our morning practice or whatever it is, right?
And this has been something that’s been definitely evolving as my own understanding as I go deeper in my own spiritual practices and understanding based on various experiences that I have had in life and to begin to lean into embracing that doubt, perhaps as an opportunity for growth and our own personal evolution as God spirit life’s guidance and grace, not at a sign that we’ve lost our way, but to take us deeper and to pause and to reflect and reassess.
Does this still work for me in my life? Is this job, this relationship, this place, this belief still a fit for who I am now and who I am becoming? Questioning, doubt, opening up to curiosity allows us to pause and not just live in autopilot from our perhaps immature experiences and our upbringing, but to reflect. If we are always growing and expanding because that is the nature of life of the universe itself, and therefore that is the nature of who we are, is only reasonable to assume that we would experience some growing pains. And how about we give ourselves some grace for that? Yeah. It’s going to be bumpy as we learn something new, just like a kid learning to walk. We don’t judge them or make fun of them for falling over the first time they try something new, but there seems to be a way, or maybe it’s just me, but like we think all of a sudden we’re an adult and we’re supposed to have it all together.
And especially as a parent, that could be a trick. I can feel like, “Well, I’m the adult now. I’m supposed to … ” But oh Lord, y’all, those of you who have kids, you know that they teach you everything you still need to learn when you think you’re a grown adult and you realize all those inner child things that are coming up for healing. So the invitation is to lean into that doubt and uncertainty, just to give ourselves some grace and love and to realize even as adults, we’re still growing and we’re still learning and we don’t have to have it all together and have it all figured out and we don’t have to do it all by ourselves. We can lean into community for that support.
Richard Roar’s book, Falling Upwards, reading this book this past week has been such a healing bomb for me. It just feels like a warm hug. You picked the book? Yeah, it’s beautiful. And I’ve been navigating a number of changes and transitions in my life. I shared some last time I was here, but this most recent one is selling my house. So I think I’ve shared before, I’ve been experiencing grief from the loss and death of my mom and my aunt and my dog that all happened in a short amount of time and then divorce and now selling the house that was like our house that represented this idea of this dream of this family that we were. I also left my position at the spiritual center where I was at to start a new ministry, queer spirit. So that’s a lot of change in a short amount of time.
And this past week, the packing and the moving, and although I was like really ready to let go of this house, it’s still, it brings up a lot of energy and emotion. And being able to read this and remember like, it’s okay. It just gave me like permission to be with it all in a way and not have to feel like I’m supposed to do this a certain way or have it all together because I’m moving and I’m packing to sell my house, but I don’t know where I’m going yet. And that’s scary. That’s very scary and yet it also wasn’t clear. So I’m not going to make a decision and jump into something until I’m fully ready, but living in that place, that liminal space of in between, of knowing there’s change happening, but not quite sure what’s next yet, but knowing … I definitely have to let go of this part in order for the next part to occur and then having those judgments of, “But I’m a grown woman.
I have these responsibilities. I’m supposed to just buy the next house and do the next thing.” That’s what the world says. So all of these doubts have been coming up and this book has been such a blessing to me.
To repeat from the reading, he says, “We grow spiritually much more by doing it wrong than by doing it right.” Okay, that gave me a deep breath, right? Okay. So no matter what, if my goal, my commitment, my personal commitment is to growth, then I don’t have to do it right. And I might not make the right choice or make a mistake or do something, stumble along the way, but what I know is I’m always falling upwards. I’m always growing. That’s what my commitment is to, not to the perfection of the moment or to what other people think I should be doing.
And I remember that life isn’t about doing it all just right or perfect, but as a kid, yeah, I can hear some of these messages and think that, right? Like just do your treatment and know what you want and be clear and manifest it. I’m like, “I don’t even know what I want right now.” Well, actually I do. And what I want is exactly what I’ve created for myself, which is just to rest, to pause, to breathe and to be cared for. And yet there was a part of me that had the narrative of, “You can’t do that. You’re the adult. You’re caring.” I’ve been caring, I’ve been leading, I’ve been teaching. So there’s this world that my ego has created of who I am. And this past year, it has been crumbling and that is a hard and scary thing, but I also have awareness in the process that it is the most necessary thing, that ego, death, that hero’s journey of seeing everything fall away, to then be able to embrace a new from a clearer place of who I am today, attracting the people in my life that love and care for me the way that I want to be loved and cared for, these new opportunities.
So to discover that life is always going to be changing. Octavia Butler, one of my favorite quotes is, “God is change.” And whatever we touch, we change and whatever we change changes us. I didn’t do that right. I didn’t have that down, that just came out. But something about what we touch, we change and everything we touch changes us, right? So we’re always in this relationship with change and that’s how God is working through us. So what if we normalize this idea of embracing the uncertainty of life and trusting the great mystery underneath it all, even when we can’t see the next steps, when we really want to see the next steps like now, but to know something within is occurring, that energy of the seed that springtime brings to life for us.
What if the parts of our journey that we often try to avoid, the pain, the grief, any kind of change, sorrow, what if those are the very things that the universe is providing as fuel for our personal evolution and a deeper spiritual experience, to know really who we are outside of our roles and relationships and all of these labels and things that the ego mind might tell us we are. Who are we really? So this week I sold my house and I moved in with a friend, a friend who was a practitioner, who was a friend of my mom, who really has become that energy for me, that mom kind of presence. I haven’t really told her that. And I don’t know how she would feel about that, but we definitely are close friends and to allow myself to be cared for and just breathe and then be guided to take the next step.
I also have a minor surgery coming up, but I’m also thinking like, “Why am I going to rush into the next thing to kind of be living by myself and then taking care of my cats and my animals with … What if I open to support and care because I’m going to need it? ” “Oh yeah, I’m starting to see how this is all playing out even though in the moment I’m like, ” I don’t know what I’m doing. “So literally I moved out on Wednesday, closed the house on Thursday, drove up here Friday. This is like two days. This is fresh news, y’all. But as I was settling in that first night at Patty’s house and she invited me to watch this documentary she just started called Wilding on PBS. And again, life God is always speaking to us if we’re willing to see it and those messages all around.
So this documentary is about the nep estate in England, 3,500 acres of land. And the couple that inherited it, it had been farmland for decades, centuries, over a hundred years, I believe, and they decided to stop farming because really the soil was so depleted and devoid of all life, like they weren’t able to get much from that. And so they came up with this experiment to rewire the land, to introduce animals back that hadn’t been there in years, and to see what happens as nature takes course without them trying to farm and control the paths of the water and what is going to occur. And one of the most impactful moments in this story was when they were about eight years, this is a long project to do, it takes time for this. They were eight years into this experiment and they experienced a big stumbling block and they really began to question, is this the right choice?
Do we do this right? Because a massive growth of creeping thistle began to take over like thousands of like acres of this spot. And there’s even like laws and stuff there about in the farmland because it can be so invasive that like, so they were afraid they were going to be given something like, ” You got to stop this, you got to get rid of this. “And they’re almost at the point of, ” Do we need to get out the pesticides? Like what are we doing? “And oh, there it is. Isn’t it beautiful? I think this looks beautiful y’all, but apparently it’s a weed. Who’s to judge? Anyway, the neighbor farmers, people were furious and they thought it was messy and ugly and what are you doing? And they wanted to keep in control of the way things have been. And this is pretty and this is what England looks like.
This is what the countryside should look like. You’re going to mess everything up. Doesn’t that sound like our ego mind, right? That if our life starts to look a little different and not as proper or productive or ways that it should be, then those neighbor voices in our heads start shouting, “What are you doing? This is a mess. This is chaotic. You should have better control over your landscape.” So they started to worry and they were at this breaking point and they started to doubt. And then nature did something that they couldn’t have planned. All of a sudden, millions of painted lady butterflies began to migrate from North Africa, and then thousands of which descended upon their estate because it turns out that those invasive thistles were the exact habitat that the butterflies needed to lay their eggs and how they knew they were there, I can’t tell you that’s the great mystery of life.
Similarly to how all of a sudden these different worms and fungi and all this stuff started to regenerate the soil. How did they know? Where did they come from? The great mystery of life, but we have to trust in that wisdom of nature. So these caterpillars began to hatch. Aren’t they cute? And then next slide, they began to eat the thistle, all of it down to its whatever, so much so that the following year, the infestation was gone because it wasn’t needed anymore. It served its purpose. They never had to spray harmful chemicals or bring in the tractors. They were able to stay committed to their experiment and their plan, but there was that moment of doubt that they could have chosen to control, but instead they chose to let go, to breathe. And isn’t it just right at that point where you’re like, “Okay, I just got to do something.” If that’s the moment I invite you in your life to look at, when you get right to the edge of, “Okay, I got to do something now.” What is that?
What if you were to pause and just breathe into that uncomfortable place for just a moment and see what butterflies are landing in your life?
They served a purpose as food for these butterflies to thrive. And we as humans, we can’t see the bigger picture from our limited awareness or human understanding of the experience, but this is what Roar calls the clever place for God to hide its holiness. We think holiness or goodness as a manicured lawn or these things that we’ve been told are the ideal or the perfect way of being, but often the holiness and the opportunity comes in the prickly thistle that brings the butterfly. Richard Roar says, “The demand for the perfect is the greatest enemy of good.” Just as if they would have listened to the voices of their neighbor, of what they were told, “This is the perfect English countryside, how dare you bring in these things?” They would not have received the blessing and the gift to nature of all this life coming back and the rewilding.
So when we’re obsessed with being seen as good or perfect, having the perfect career, the perfect house, the perfect kid, the perfect car, the perfect spiritual practice, whatever it may be, are we perhaps blocking some greater good that we don’t even know about? What is the opportunity? What is the grace? What is the invitation to lean into the doubt and the curiosity? When we deny our pain, we avoid the necessary falling. And I get it. It’s human nature. It doesn’t feel good to be on our knees and to have to just surrender in that place of, “I don’t even know what anything is for. ” Okay, God, show the way. I don’t know.
And in doing so, trying to avoid that by keeping it all together, we often keep ourselves from those spiritual deaths and that invitation of a deeper, more meaningful life and connection with one another by living this kind of superficial life. So as much as we would like to know and understand everything and have it all figured out and to be able to control all of the conditions in our life so everything always looks all good and everyone would say, “Wow, you’re awesome. You’re all good.” Right? The truth is as humans, we are discovering things still about ourselves and about the nature of the universe. God, as war puts it, has to work in the soul and the soil, soil, soul, in secret and in darkness because if we fully knew all that was happening, that’s when we would probably go in and stop it. And what the mystery and the transformation and the grace and the God will eventually ask us to do in order to experience the gift, if we knew that in foresight beforehand, right?
Our ego would probably … I can’t do that. I don’t know way, right? And we would stop ourselves. So that’s why often surrendering, as hard as it may be, is the greatest gift because word says we would either try to take charge and then we would stop the whole process. So again, what are you committed to? Are you committed to a deep evolution of your spiritual growth and a spiritual understanding of who you are or are you committed to the perfect life based on the ego mind or what you hear in the world or others’ ideas? Most of us don’t allow the thistles to grow so thick before we try to read them out, but if we trusted life to provide this natural solution just like it does in nature and without trying to control everything and avoid anything that’s negative and embrace curiosity, what could the situation be here to teach me instead, right?
What if we start asking questions like, “How could this be for me?
” And to just breathe, take one more moment, breath, pause, to sit in the discomfort of that liminal space, just to beat longer without trying to control the outcome, but trusting in the universe and allowing grace to lead the way, even when we can’t see it. My life this past little bit has just been step by step, and now I’ve found a soft place to land for a moment and leaning into that support of friends and community. And again, there was times, like I said, my mind judged it. “You’re a grown woman. You should be independent, “right? There’s that narrative of like, ” You should have your own place. You did this, this, and this. “That whole pick yourself up from the bootstraps mentality of individuality, but when I’m also like, ” What do I really believe and value and teach is community and care and community resilience, not just individual resilience, leaning into each other.
“And I love the opportunity to care for someone else if I have a way and I’m in a place that I can give or care. It feels good to be in that reciprocal relationship with those that I love and care for, knowing then that when I’m in need, that will be provided. That’s the reciprocity. That is, again, a natural law of the universe, that reciprocal nature of life.
That is the gift of this thing called life, that we get to choose. We are always at choice, and we can decide for ourselves how we want to … I’ve been using the word queer as a verb, right? How we want to queer our lives, to move beyond the status quo. What are we queering in our own experience to kind of get out of the boxed and narrative of what the world would tell us to be, and to open up to that wisdom within of who we really are and what we really desire. And that is the journey of the evolution of who we are becoming and the falling upwards on this evolutionary path. So I’ve decided to rewild my life and I invite you to consider where you might rewild, opening up to that space and the grace and the discomfort of the unknown.
Maybe your thistle right now is a health concern, a career change, a sense of loneliness. Maybe something is occurring that your ego wants to call a failure, wants to weed out as quickly as possible, to ease your anxious mind. But what if we were to stop rushing always towards resolution, to pause, to look at the doubt, embrace the mess, the disorder? I don’t know what is showing up yet, but I trust. So when we break this taboo of doubt, we create a space where vulnerability and honesty are valued and growth are valued more than perfection, and we create a space of compassion and love and community for each other.
The caterpillars didn’t just visit the thistles, they consumed them. They used the problem to fuel their transformation. And if we trust in the nature of life that all is in order and have the patience to sit through the discomfort, we can see how everything is showing up for us and discover perhaps even a new symbiotic relationship with our doubts and fears, embracing it all, not just the good. So this week, I invite you to look at your own doubts and to not go right to spraying those weeds with the chemicals of toxic positivity. It’s so easy just to affirm our way out of it, right? And there are times, obviously, you don’t want to get set in a mood where using our affirmations and affirmative prayer can help lift us up to that energy and vibration to see and to know the next step. But I just invite us as roar does to sit with it all and try not to look at things so binary and so black and white as this is good and this is bad.
And even the idea of, I was noticing myself like, “Okay, I’m going to get through this time. It’s challenged, but I’m going to get through it. ” But there was still a way of resisting the being in it by even saying, “I’m going to get through it. ” And I’m like, “Someday I’m going to look back at this time.” But it’s like, just be in the moment, be in the moment. Roar says, “Nature is much more disorder than order, more multiplicity than uniformity, and life is inherently tragic, and that is the truth that only faith, not our seeming logic can accept.” So I invite you to honor the uncertainty to lean into the doubt as a growing edge because the universe isn’t interested in your perfection, it is interested Good in your evolution. And it often works in secret. Right now, something may be percolating in the depths of your soul and consciousness to turn your messy, chaotic, whatever you may be judging it into a beautiful expression of grace.
Trust in the nature of things that you are always provided for, and that even in the falling, you are actually rising. Yes? Yes. So let’s take that into prayer.
Deep breath. Just settling into this moment of whatever may have come up to you, perhaps a feeling or a thought or a memory or a place in your life where this doubt feels really hard and heavy. And you’re hearing what I’m saying, but you’re like, “Oh, I don’t want to do that. ” So just starting with that place of acknowledging and loving yourself right where you are, wherever that may be in the hesitation, in the doubt, in the fear of the doubt, in the anxiety, in the love or the grace or the joy or in the celebration of everything’s going amazing right now. Wherever you are, that is your good.
For I know and recognize there is one life, one presence, one expression that is wholeness, that is love, that is moving in as and through all life, this divine wisdom and intelligence that is the very essence of our being. It is the essence in nature and truth of all of life. And therefore, I know it must absolutely be the truth of who I am. And I speak this word now from this place of oneness on behalf of all those who are hearing the sound of my voice right now, all those who are in need of this word, of this prayer, to be lifted up into this vibration of deep self-love, of that divine grace, letting everything else fall away, the fear, the doubt, the judgment, letting it fall away, letting go and opening to this now moment and the pure possibility that lives in this field, a pure potentiality when we drop in and accept right where we are, right here, right now.
Letting go, trusting, all is well. And I’m so grateful, so grateful to speak this word, so grateful to know this truth. As I release this word now into the action of the law that always says, “Yes, my beloved, it is done and it is so. And together we affirm and so it is. ” Thank you.