Faith Squared is the joyously inspired collaboration of Michele Morgan (left) and Alizabeth Rasmussen (right). Best friends, sisters of the heart, co-conspirators in the pursuit of Awesomely Pretentious Words, irreverent humor, and everyday proof that not only does God exist, He pays attention.

A single impassioned (and divinely timed) conversation about their respective love affairs with language and writing led to other conversations, and the discovery of a mutual, even more impassioned hunger for intimate relationship with God. Crazy-powerful friendship ensued.

Faith Squared is the heart-child of that friendship, a divine fusion of shared devotions, fueled by a desire to inspire others to find God every day in real life.

One of the most magical things about our friendship is having someone to bear witness to the real life miracles and struggles of the spiritual process…a kindred spirit who’s hiking the same trail, so to speak. Faith grows exponentially when it’s recognized and shared by a sympathetic soul.

-Michele

We want more than anything to give others a chance to have that same recognition and support on their journey. And since building a monastery is still a few years out , we figured there’s no better use for modern technology than creating a showplace for God.

-Liz

Faith shared is Faith Squared. And this website is a unique place for sharing stories about God. Blog posts, photographs, interviews, videos, music, anecdotes, resources, comics, ways to connect with and engage in the divine… a kind of cyber sanctuary, where you can stop, take a break from the everyday wackiness of life, come back to the heart, and find hope and inspiration and humor to take out with you into the world again.

God of friendship
we come to know you
through the grace of one another.
Weave us together with kindred spirits,
knit us more closely with friends of the soul,
gather us into your great wide heart,
so we might discover the One in many,
and the many in One. 

–Christine Valters Paintner

One blog, two voices. Tales of joy and failure, loss and triumph, the universality of love and fear and friendship and possibility—told through the everyday perspective of a couple of seriously cool chicks who believe in the power of words and the infallibility of angels. 

Through their stories, Michele and Liz will give you new insight into your own…and the ability to reframe your experiences in a way that makes room for God and everyday miracles.

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More About Michele…That’s With One “L”

Michele’s Website | Find Michele on Facebook | Follow Michele on Twitter

I’ve been writing since I was very small. I love words, the feel and the taste of them, the movement and the patterns of language. I remember wanting to be a published author from the time I was about seven years old. I used to sit at the fireplace mantle in the living room of the house where I grew up, legs tucked under the rough-hewn marble of the hearth, mind going a hundred miles an hour a thousand miles away, writing and illustrating “books” on wide-lined notebook paper. I recall one time asking my mom who wrote the biographies of the writers on the back cover of novels, because I was more than ready to write mine.

My first two books, A Magical Course in Tarot: Reading the Cards in a Whole New Way (Conari Press, 2002) and the best-selling Simple Wicca (Conari Press, 2000) were simultaneously a dream realized and a Molotov cocktail on my personal creative flame. I’ve been a professional psychic, NLP practitioner and spiritual counselor for twenty years. Before that, my careers (yes, plural…I’m a Sagittarian after all) included musician (rock bands and a twelve-year solo act), mixed media artist, personal trainer and aerobics instructor. But my first love was, and always will be, writing.

God has been at the heart of everything I’ve had to say since I first put pen to paper, even when I didn’t consciously know it was Him I was talking about. The feeling I used to get as a girl, holed up in my room feverishly crafting poems about gypsies and broken hearts and castles overlooking the sea, is the same breathless rush I feel today when I lose myself in a candle-lit ritual or a simple prayer.

It is passion, in its truest form; the soul-fire born of instinctual and personal collaboration with God.

 

I am blessed to have that fire burning in myriad other ways, as well, in my profoundly magical, sweetly mundane life. My daughter Kaeleigh’s completely addicting, amazing laugh; playing laser tag at midnight with my step kids Bernie and Clint at the high school across the street; the mountain views from every sidewalked street in my peaceful little northwest neighborhood; the fact that our backyard vegetable garden gets uninterrupted sunlight at least nine hours a day and a second generation of frogs is hatching out in our hand-dug pond; the intensity with which my clients engage in their sessions with me, and the courage and willingness they bring for real change; the strength of my conviction that right polarity endures, true heroes exist, and chivalry is not dead; the intense pride, gratitude and comfort I feel in being married to my extraordinary husband Mark, the love of my life, a man who proves my convictions, daily.

And the miracle-inducing, heart-expanding connection I share with my best friend Alizabeth. Faith Squared is a delightfully organic expression of that connection and the soul-fire that inspired it; it is my sincere wish that our presence here inspires more than a little fire in everyone who finds their way onto these virtual pages.

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To find out more about me, the CSI program, and to explore the archives of Living On A Prayer, click here.

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More About Alizabeth…Wait, Is That Spelled Right?

Find Alizabeth on Facebook | Follow Alizabeth on Twitter

Like most writers, I really can’t say I like to write.  Occasionally I can agree with Dorothy Parker’s sentiment and say I love to have written, but then comes the editing.  And editing is even harder than writing.

I can say that I love writing.  Letters, words, sentences, and paragraphs that become essays, articles, blog posts and books. Fiction, non-fiction, half truths, poetry.  E-mail, status updates, tweets, texts.

If it’s well-written, I am smitten.

I think in words and always have, making sense of the world in my mind by organizing it into sentences…most of which never make it onto a page, all of which inspire the ones that do.

Common ground is where it’s at for me.  As far back as I can remember I’ve questioned why there’s so much emphasis on the differences between people – individuals and groups doing their best to distinguish themselves from “the others.”  Disconnection and isolation may be inherently part of the human condition, but aren’t the real stories in our samenesses?  I think so.  In recognizing the common threads that hold us together we make room for each other in new ways, make room for ourselves, and for God.

I believe in the power of words.  I believe that words represent possibility and potential, and carry within them a spark than can reignite hope, fuel inspiration, clarify desire, and reveal truth.  I believe that words can open a window into some aspect of our lives that was previously closed, allowing for a new perspective and a more expansive vision.

I believe that nobody needs to feel alone in their story, and that as different as our stories may be, they are in equal measure exactly the same.

My hope for Faith Squared is that we – all of us (and that means you, too) – can honestly and openly explore what it means to make room for God in our everyday experience.  That we can inspire in one another a desire and curiosity to deepen our relationship with God in ways that honor the entire spectrum of truth about what it means to be perfectly, imperfectly human.  Embracing that truth makes it possible, I believe, for God to show up in real life, and for Him to inform our understanding of the challenges we face in a way that bolsters both our faith in Him and our connections to one another.

*****

I write in the margins of a real life that includes a full-time paralegal job; a 12-(closer-to-13)-year-old who generally has me either on my toes or on some bleachers watching him play baseball; and a very sweet, very neurotic dog who goes everywhere with me (including to the aforementioned full-time job).

To all my family, friends, co-workers, acquaintances, and perfect strangers who cross my path: thank you for inspiring my life and my writing in oh-so-many ways.  I suppose now might be a good time to let you know that anything you say or do can and likely will end up the subject of a blog post…if it hasn’t already.

*****

And as for the question about the spelling of my name, the answer is “yes.”  And “no.”  My birth certificate says “Elizabeth,” and my friend Sandra gets all the credit for the idea of replacing the “E” with an “A.”  When we were in high school, her mom got pregnant.  This was a big deal.  I think Sandra must have been put in charge of coming up with names, and Alizabeth was on the list.  Her mom ended up having a boy and I adopted the “A” for myself.  I never changed it legally, but somehow I was able to open a bank account with my name spelled wrong, and then I marched myself into the Social Security office, showed them a check and asked them to send me a new card with my name spelled right.  I really didn’t expect it to work, but it did!

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