BY: Austin Maxwell

Reverend Barbara Schreiner-Trudel is the leading light for the congregation that calls the Centre for Spiritual Living home. “We’d been meeting at the Bloor Cinema for five years and needed a place where we could all be together, for greater lengths of time. So we began looking for a new location.” The congregation was virtually homeless, renting different spaces throughout the city for different purposes at different times. This made for — as “Rev. B” puts it — “a very scattered energy. We knew we needed a space where everything could be under one roof.”

“One day, I was walking down Queen Street and saw a sign that said, Ô2,600 square feet for rent.’ It was near Leslie and Queen; a fairly good location, and close to my home, which made it even more attractive. I just sort of let it go. But then my board president — who’d also been out looking for locations — called a few hours later and said, ÔI’ve just seen a listing for a place, it’s 2,600 square feet, at Queen and Leslie!’

“I thought, well that’s a bit serendipitous. So we planned to go there and discovered it had been a bar called The Place to Be. I thought that was an interesting name because, I think we’re a bit of a place to be, actually.” It was big enough to meet all their needs, but not without issues: “The walls were black, the ceiling was black, the carpets were blue and burned. Oh, there’d also been an after-hours club in the basement. The landlord was great, so we took a chance. He painted everything for us — the walls and ceiling — and gave us new carpets.

“We began holding services there four years ago. I think most people are quite pleased we’re bringing a little joy and lots of love to the neighborhood, instead of, maybe, people vomiting on their doorsteps and things like that.”

The Centre for Spiritual Living’s eclectic congregation is “a very inclusive spiritual community. We’re a ‘New Thought’ group, inclusive of all faiths — with people, as they say, of every stripe and persuasion.’ They come because we’re accepting of all people, supportive of the spiritual journey; we have fun, we’re interesting, joyous and we really believe in the power of the mind to create.

“We follow the teachings of Ernest Holmes, author of The Science of Mind, which says that if you change your thinking, you will change your life. We have Sunday morning celebration services, conduct ongoing classes and I host a couple of internet radio shows, so we’re still The Place to Be.”

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