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Spark of Light, a "specialty shop for the mind, body and spirit," is located at 202 Fourth St. in Irwin. Proprietor Deborah Spark, a Jeannette native who now lives in Irwin, provides various healing modalities, but specializes in reiki, an ancient form of healing based on the chakra system.

"Reiki was one of the first healing modalities I learned," Spark says. "Reiki is a very simple healing modality which you can use for yourself or others.

"Reiki means universal life force energy, which every living thing is made up of. It was rediscovered by Dr. Mikao Usui, a Japanese scholar," she noted.

Central to reiki theory is the chakra system.

"You have seven major chakras," Spark says. "They're energy centers. They start at the root, or base of your spine. The first three chakras are your physical chakras. The next four chakras, starting with the heart, are your spiritual chakras. So when you're doing healing work, you're dealing with the higher vibrations, and bringing the energy through them.

"The root chakra is at the base of your spine, the second chakra is in your abdomen, sometimes they call it the spleen or sacral chakra, and your solar plexus, is the third and last of the physical chakras. Your heart chakra comes next, then your throat, then your third eye, which is your intuitive center, then your crown, which is your higher self and your connection to the creator."

On Spark's Web site, www.deborahspark.com, she spells disease as "dis-ease," implying that someone who is sick is out of joint with themselves and their environment.

A former Catholic, Spark does not see any conflict between spirituality and traditional religion.

"I have a lot of friends who are Catholic and I respect their beliefs and believe they respect mine," she says. "Spirituality to me is my direct connection to a higher power, which is God, and I chose to eliminate a third party, or a mediator, and go directly to God with all my problems."

It's a sentiment she shares with other members of her current church, the Universal Life Healing Church and Spiritual Center, also located in Irwin.

Healing church

The Universal Life Healing Church and Spiritual Center that sits atop Sixth Street in Irwin looks like many other old churches -- a simple building of white-washed wood, unadorned except for a large central stained-glass window.

Inside, the church retains its simplicity. The carved wooden pews and other original fixtures remain from the days when Baptists worshipped here, but the altar is adorned and surrounded by candles, flowers and plants, and statues of angels, St. Francis and the Madonna and Child. Above the altar hangs a painting of Christ, and upon it sits a photograph of Mother Meera, a young Indian woman believed by some to be the incarnation of God in this age.

The Rev. Nancy M. Welsh, the Rev. Vera Russell and the Rev. Sandra Tyler are the church's three pastors. They preside over a congregation they define as "non-denominational Christian."

"We were all trained at Delphi University and ordained through the Church of Wisdom in McCaysville, Ga.," says Welsh, originally from Oil City.

How they came to the church in Irwin was seemingly unremarkable enough.

"The Rev. Sandra and I were looking for someplace to do healing work, and actually we were just looking for a storefront in this area," Welsh says. "Since I live in this area, I drove by this building several times and I noticed that it was for sale. ... We really liked the energy here. And that's what sold us on the place, the good feeling that was already here.

"And so we just evolved into a sort of non-denominational center and certainly we are open to people of all faiths and not just to Christians."

Since the church opened its doors in 1993, membership has been slow to build but loyal.

"We have a core of between 30 and 50 people," Russell says.

"They come from all over," Welsh says.

Still the composition of Universal Life Church's congregation might surprise some.

"We do have some younger members, but most of the people who come here are older people who have gone to regular mainline churches and then left," Welsh says. "And they're looking for something more. The younger people today don't seem much interested in religion or spirituality, that's been our experience. There are exceptions, of course."

Russell is an example of those who are attracted to the church.

"I came here after the church was here a while, maybe after a year. And I hadn't belonged to any church for a long time," she said. "I was raised Catholic, and actually my husband was the one who got me to come here. He came here first, and it took a while to get me to come, but I did come and from the very first minute I walked into this church I could just feel the love here. The first time I came here, the Rev. Sandra told me I would be a minister here. I just laughed, yet years later, here I am."

"Our main focus here is on healing," Welsh notes. "The first and third Wednesdays of every month we have what we call the healing sanctuary, which is open to the public, where we offer one-on-one healing to anybody who choses to come, on a donation basis."

One of the main precepts of the Universal Life Church is one shared with the other practitioners of alternative spirituality.

"You don't need an intermediary to get to God," Russell says. "I think that's the one thing that is stressed here."

Point of Light

Upstairs from the Spark of Light are the publishing offices of the Point of Light magazine, published seasonally and available free at many outlets, including a box on Fourth Street right beside the door that leads up to their offices.

Founded in 1994, Point of Light has been published in Irwin since 1995 by Sven Hosford and Kathy Briar.

If Irwin seems an unlikely location for a magazine that bills itself as "Western Pennsylvania's Journal of Meaningful Living," consider how Hosford first became acquainted with the area.

"I was a Navy recruiter and my first recruiting station was in the Norwin Shopping Center in 1983," Hosford explains. "After I got out of the Navy I ended up living in Irwin, actually just up the street from the Universal Life Church, when I met Kathy. I was raised in Monroeville. Kathy's from Uniontown and Cleveland.

"It's not just Irwin," he continues, "but the entire Southwestern Pennsylvania region has a very strong spiritual sense, a very strong desire to live in a spiritual way."

Briar's emergence into the spiritual path was gradual.

"I was raised a Catholic in the Catholic faith, and I actually found that to be wonderful for me. It gave me a good solid base, but as I started exploring and delving into things, it fulfilled less for me," Briar says. "I started exploring other things like meditation and reiki. When I started studying meditation and spirituality, I was going through a divorce. So it's been an evolution."

For Hosford, the transition was more dramatic.

"My path was a little different. I was born and raised as a Methodist. My father had passed on when I was 12, and he had been a Methodist minister," Hosford says. "Around age 15 or so, I was kind of rebellious, and I said, 'This just doesn't work for me anymore.' When I was around 17, I started to have psychic experiences, no other words to describe it. Through my 20s, I just found more and more things that worked for me. They tended to be of the Eastern religions, Hinduism and Buddhism in particular, and then we discovered energy healing and that's where Kathy and I met, at a reiki class."

It was to communicate those experiences and ideas, and reach a like-minded community that they began Point of Light.

"Something I want to say about our magazine," says Briar, "is that it's not just about spirituality. It's much broader. We don't consider ourselves just a spiritual magazine at all."

They see Point of Light as part of a national, if not global, community.

Green Bough Center

Global family is more than a metaphor for Fernando and Susan Cardoza, proprietors of the Green Bough Center for Creative Living, located upstairs at 202 Fourth St., Irwin.

Fernando, a native of Lima, Peru, and a "recovering" former corporate executive, and wife, Susan, who studied fine arts in Paris and New York, opened the Green Bough as a center for creativity, the arts, learning and healthy activities in February.

"The Green Bough is really a combination of a lot of things that we have availed ourselves of as consumers for 12 or 13 years," says Fernando Cardoza. "We live in Monroeville and found we were traveling all over Pittsburgh to participate in wellness programs, but they were not happening in this area. Late last year we made the decision that it was time for us to make a difference in the area.

"It was a little bit of serendipity or synchronicity that we came to Irwin," he said. "We didn't know too much about the town, but our friends at the Point of Light magazine moved in upstairs and mentioned that there was room available here."

The Cardozas see the recent upsurge in interest in holistic living and spirituality as something that is here to stay, and not just a trend.

"It's something that is now very mainstream," notes Fernando Cardoza. "It's just a lifestyle of health and sustainability."

"Balance," adds Susan Cardoza, summing it up in one word.

"It's all about managing stress and complementing your diet, your nutrition, looking at ways of exercise that don't end up in a rut," says Fernando Cardoza, noting that the Green Bough offers classes in yoga, tai chi, and, among its most popular offerings, drumming.

"This is about helping individuals find and maintain a lot of joy and satisfaction in everything they do throughout the day," he added. "In many ways, it's helping them understand the importance of the journey and not necessarily the destination."

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