Cara Gilger's Blog, page 14

Ralph Waldo Emerson [Free Download]

Hey friends, as you know if you follow me on Instagram or receive my newsletter, I have been doing #the100daysproject as a way to push my creativity and grow as a writer. Yes, I am painting and drawing, but yes, it is making me a better writer. I thought I would try something new and offer one of my doodles as a free download

Cara Gilger-Ralph Waldo Emerson Quote

Happy Wednesday, friends!

 

5 Ways to Slow Down This Summer (And Read More)

We relish the summer at our house. We lean into the rhythm of the heat which means early morning trips to the park, afternoons at the pool or the library and evenings walking the neighborhood. We read, we work in the garden, we meet up with friends, we move intensionally slow.

Don’t get me wrong, we are not a “work hard, play hard” kind of family. We maintain a balance year round that does not ask us to worship at the altar of “busy.” We decidedly try NOT to be busy. However, we live in the world and we have passions and interests that we individually and collectively pursue and we try to show up and support one another, so summer does provide a rhythm that leans itself towards rest.

In the Christian tradition (and others as well) the rhythm of rest is holy. That’s what sabbath mean, holy rest. It is a way of trusting in God, letting all creating things rest so that rejuvenation can happen. Here are a five practices we use to create an intensionally slow summer:

Stay at Home Days

We have designated days where we stay home all day. These are days where “I’m bored” is met with “what a wonderful opportunity to be creative.” Don’t worry, the second “I’m bored” earns you a chore which means we always opt for creativity! Art supplies and found items are up for grabs, you can hang the hammock between the trees and read. We don’t do screens on these days but we DO do 80’s pop dance mix on our music streaming stations. The point is to lounge, to read, to make, to play. We join our kids and don’t make these days for tackling to do lists or cleaning. We join them because our adult souls need play and because we teach by modeling.

Outdoor Adventure

Grab the sunscreen and the bug repellent and plenty of water! We love creating outdoor days. Often early in the morning we will pack the sandwiches and water and tennis shoes and find a trail to hike or a park to explore. In Texas the summer can be HOT so we plan these adventures for early Saturday morning. Is it hard to wake up? Yes! Is it totally worth it submerge yourself in God’s creation before it’s brain melting hot? YES!

One of the resources we utilize to plan our adventures in the All Trails App. It shows you trails near you, rates them based on challenge level, shares features and ratings. You can also save trails so you don’t forget what’s near you and plan out trips.

Weekly Worship

As any pastor will tell you, summer is a time when people travel and allow their worship attendance to shift to a less reliable pattern. But for our family part of our commitment to slow down is to make it to weekly worship together. To sit in the presence of God, to connect with our community, to pack lunches and invite church friends to the park after worship. It is all part of our spiritual discipline to be intensional with our time together. Also, some of the best sermon series your pastor preaches happen in the summer and they delight in seeing you and your family making worship a priority.

Public Library Trips

We love to read at our house, we sign up for all the summer reading challenges offered in our area. But if you buy books (even used) it can get pricey when the people in your house plow through books faster than a bag of chips! So we utilize our public library. During the school year we really take advantage of checking out audiobooks we can listen to while driving or at bedtime but in the summer we love grabbing a reusable tote and heading to the public library. We love to pick a section we normally wouldn’t choose and browse for books that are outside our comfort zone! Books about bats? Sure, why not! Normally obsessed with Pinkalicious? Instead we check out the Fancy Nancy books! We also use this time to ask our librarian questions like “We love the Dragon Masters series, what would you recommend if we read all of those books?” And our public library has some amazing summer programs–Critterman brings all sorts of animals for the kids to see, there are author visits, writing workshops for kids and themed family activity nights. And it’s all free!

The side affect of choosing to go to the library in the summer is that everyone in the house gets excited about reading!

Feeding Friendship

Summer is also a season where our friends lives slow down and we fully take advantage of building connection and making memories. We meet at the pool, invite people to grill out, meet up at the local burger place with a playground. We connect and we model friendship to our kids and make their friendships a priority. We let bedtimes slip by as the kids run around in the twilight and the grown ups laugh and swap stories of work and parenthood and life. It is delicious and precious and sacred.

What are some of the ways that you choose slow and intensional practices in the summer?

Sightings of Wonder

I remember the first clergy woman I saw in the pulpit. I was in middle school and my home church had hired a female Associate Minister. Until then I had been told women were welcome and included in leadership, they were called by God and affirmed by the church into the office of ordination, but I hadn’t seen it. Well maybe I had seen it with my eyes but this time I had seen it with my heart. What I saw was something of myself in the woman standing there in the pulpit proclaiming a word from God.

I have daughters and I have often wondered if they would ever experience the awe and wonder of seeing a woman powerfully take the pulpit and know, really know all of God’s fullness was available to them. After all, they have a mother that’s a minister, they were rocked to sleep in the womb to the gentle swaying of my belly as I stood in the pulpit preaching. And then there is my circle, as my oldest observed when she was only four “mom, are ALL your friends who are girls pastors?!” They are not, but close. I have a fierce circle of women who know the intimacies of my ministry and motherhood in all its glory and glorious blunders, who have prayed for my daughters as they have grown, faced challenges and blossomed. They see women in the pulpit all the time, when we visit friends at their churches and in our own church where we recently called an amazingly gifted women to serve as the senior pastor.

So I wondered “will they need what I need? Will they have a moment of self recognition or will they just take for granted their place and space in these sacred spaces?” I honestly had no idea what my daughters were absorbing as their inheritance and what they needed to illuminate their souls, not because I am unaware but because so much of parenting like any relationship is mystery and grace. I have wondered and watched, curiously waiting to see what God would show me.

This past Sunday was a special day in the life of our church. We install our new pastor and it was a day of celebration I had been joyfully anticipating with a guest preacher in every service and special music and celebration, so much celebration. And because this Sunday was so unique they invited the children to stay in worship rather than go on to their own worship space. So there I was one child in childcare and one sitting next to me doing quite well occupying herself stringing beads onto pipe cleaners when the preacher for the hour took the pulpit. The preacher, a long time colleague and recent friend of mine, immediately engaged the adults in the room and after several moments had passed I looked to see how my daughter was doing with her color sheets and pipe cleaners.

She was sitting on her knees, colors and pipe cleaners abandoned and scattered in the pew around her, with what I can only describe as a look of awe and delight on her face. And she sat there for 20 minutes, just like that–face turned towards the pulpit, wrapt in her attention, face aglow with recognition. By the time my colleague was finished preaching on God’s holy reign and God’s presence in our community as we affirmed our call to work alongside our new pastor most of the people around us were in tears over the beauty and goodness of what God is doing in our community. I was sitting in tears because of what God was doing in my heart as a mother and what God was showing my daughter about her own holy boldness.

When the sermon was finished and we had been blessed by the benediction she turned to me and said “So she, the preacher, is your friend?”

“Yes” I said as she went on “So if she comes to the all church lunch, she’ll sit by us, right?”

“Maybe, honey,” I said. And then she wiggled her her eyebrows and gave me the most knowing expression I have her seen her muster. If it weren’t such a serious and scared moment I would have giggled at her grave sincerity and at the fact that mom and her strange abundance of female minister friends finally made sense. There was finally a pay off and that pay off was that she would get to eat church barbeque next to the woman with purple hair and a big presence who had stood in the pulpit and talked about Jesus and that had just opened something up inside her soul.

Clergy parenthood, as with all parenthood, is tricky and full of questions. I wonder if my kids will grow to love a faith that has captured my heart and guided my life. I marvel at how communities can embrace and nurture them in ways I cannot. I worry if they will receive this weird community that myself and my partner have built for them as the blessing we pray for it to be. Will they grow to appreciate this quirky and beautiful community in a church that loves us and a pastoral team that supports our flourishing, with a circle of friends that is full of fierce and wildly talented women who mostly all bear the title reverend and a faith that asks us to shape our living and being in the world differently than their friends? And as with all parenting I wonder “am I doing this right? Are they going to be ok?”

This Sunday what I saw on my daughters face was a holy “yes” to those questions. My daughters will be ok. In fact they will be more than ok, because it is not only me that holds them in tender, loving care. This great cloud of witness that we have surrounded them with in church community, these women who preach boldly and the Spirit, the tender, loving Spirit that holds them in their growing and learning. In these communities God will reveal their inherent holiness and they will have moments of awe and wonder.

Training the Creative Beast

When my partner and I were in our mid-twenties and headed towards marriage we decided the best thing to do would be to adopt a dog. After all, a dog was a responsibility that proved your readiness for the fullness of adulthood. So we went down to the Nashville Humane Society month after month checking out dogs and waiting until “the one” appeared. Ranger was small and scrappy his white fur patched with brown spots that looked lovely with the red collar we purchased for him.  The adoption paperwork said he had been found wild, living on the streets of Nashville and that he was part Italian greyhound. It only took us a few months and a little plumping to realize that our beloved dog was not Italian greyhound but a feisty and still wild pup.

After finishing school in Nashville, we moved to Indiana where we enrolled our dog in training classes at a place that was known as a last ditch effort for misbehaved dogs. The staff there was kind and compassionate to our wild mess of a dog, but they were also firm with me that I was the one that needed training in order to train my dog.

Over the course of three years, Ranger grew to know over 30 commands although still remained at heart, wild. During that same time I began to see animal training as a window in to my own leadership and ministry. As I learned to read animals and sense their mood in the group setting of training class, I began to read people better in around a conference room table. As I coaxed my own dog out of his wild ways, I slowly learned how to coax the gifts and talents of others out of them.

I have been thinking lately about that season of training, as I have worked on creating strength in my creative muscle. This spring marks the my second year participating in #the100daychallenge and has given me a time marker to reflect on the ways my creativity and work have grown. It has also been a time to think long and hard about how to grow that creative muscle in some different ways, try new ideas, techniques or finish projects that have drawn on too long.

So many writers and creatives talk about training the creativity by way of habit to show up on command. Often it is explained in simple terms, show up at your desk and write or paint or draw or make every day whether you want to or not, until the creativity is trained like a dog at a food bowl to show up at the same time everyday. This is helpful but in my experience I have found the process of drawing out creativity or drawing out new layers or tapping into new wells of creativity to be much like training wild things.

Coaxing the Wild Beast

Creativity like many wild things can start fleetingly and feel fragile. I have found that the best thing to do it to treat my creativity like a small, scared, skittish animal. I speak softly and kindly to my creativity. I hold out my hand gently and let it sniff around, if can get close enough I gently engage it.

I find that the spiritual practice of silence, while vital at every step of creativity, is especially important at this phase. This is the phase of creativity that is best coaxed through long hikes in the woods, quiet strolls by a pond, time at home with no television or radio. Silence has a quality that feeds the spirit, creative and otherwise.

Taming the Wild Beast

Once a wild thing is no longer skittish and unpredictable, you can begin to train it. Training I have learned is about predictability and consistency. This is where the writing manuals pick up–it is one thing to coax a wild thing into the open and trust to take a morsel of food from you. It’s another entirely to gain its trust my showing up and moving predictably so trust can be gained.

Setting aside a consist time to write or paint or create teaches your creativity that you are trustworthy. Over time it can be trained to show up at the same time day after day, week after week.  This was the one piece of advice that I used to balk at as a younger creative. When I read Anne Lamott or Stephen King they would say that your creativity can be trained to show up on schedule, but it wasn’t until committed to a schedule that I understood how attainable this practice can be.

Letting it Lay by Your Feet

Ranger passed many years ago and a year or so ago we adopted a 9 year old chocolate lab. Her favorite thing to do is lay on my feet at my desk while I write. Her presence is neither obtrusive nor lacking. She is just there, the sound of her steady breath as she naps beneath me its own soundtrack that accompanies my keys.

This is the bliss of the creative life, that once you train your creativity to show up it sits like a low hum while you work. Does that mean you won’t get stuck? Not at all, getting stuck is part of the creative process and mean you are getting somewhere. Does it mean you won’t have dry spells? Nope, dry spells come but it does mean that you have the structure, discipline and ability to work your way through them.

Keeping the Beasts Interest

I used to find it selfish to spend a day when I could be working or writing at the art museum or strolling through the woods, but now I find that this work in necessary to keeping the creative beast interested and fed. Creativity like any living thing can get listless, I try to make a discipline of exposing my creativity to other mediums, experiences and writings. I try to read across multiple genres of books, I go to arts festivals as much to people watch as to eat corn dogs and look at art and I will indulge in sitting in the yard to sketch even if I am not very good at it. Because being good isn’t the point. Looking, noticing and exploring is the point.

Prepare: An Advent Devotional

Even though it is the start of the Lenten season I’ve been over here with the Christmas tunes blaring with a sense of gratitude that it’s still cold and dreary here in Texas to set the tone while I write and edit.  I am so excited to announce that I am editing an Advent devotional for winter of 2019 for Chalice Press as part of their partnership with the Bethany Fellowship.

I was able to coordinate the gifts and writing of seven young clergy to create Prepare: An Advent Devotional, a 28 day journey exploring what it might mean if we shift our focus from the hustle and bustle of the Christmas season and instead opened ourselves up to the transformation of preparing for the life and ministry of Jesus. There is also bonus content of four candle lighting.

The Temptation of Mess

There are quite a few misconceptions out there around what it looks like to be an entrepreneur. Thanks in part to social media, its often portrayed as strings of meetings in hip coffee shops and lounging in palatial, well lit and stylish home offices. I work at a desk in a four foot by four foot alcove sandwiched between the garage door and the laundry room. It is not lost on me that I sit editing books sandwhiched between the room with the vehicle that takes you places and the room where you clean up the messes.

Given the small and precarious nature of my work space, my desk is also rather small. There’s room for me, my laptop and a stack of books to reference for whatever my newest project may be, plus my light. Every Sunday night I clean it off to get ready for the week because somehow my desk is where everything that is broken, needs repaired or needs attention falls. Notes from school about upcoming field trips and testing, the stuffed dog split at the seams and in need of a few stitches, the magic wand that needs super glued back together, the bills that have been paid but need to be filed for tax purposes, the small stack of hand-me-downs to be passed onto friends all end up being piled on my desk. Sometimes the Sunday night stack can feel daunting as I figure out what to do or how to solve all the things that have landed on my desk.

In some ways this is not much different than ministering a church. Much of ministry is visioning for the future, planning preaching and teaching series, but there is also the part where all the broken, ill fitting and untended things land on your desk as a pastor. The program that has lost energy but not the die-hard commitment to keep doing it the way it’s always been done. The staff person that’s struggling to buy into the new phase of organizational transformation. The board meeting process that was inherited from another time and place that doesn’t work and needs to be reimagined. The metaphorical and literal desk of ministry can rapidly pile up high. And as leaders if we don’t have a way to examine those items and figure out what to do with them, they can clutter the rest of the work we have to do.

The greatest temptation as leaders is to think that we must hold all mess and all the solutions to the mess ourselves. But this season of Lent, particularly Ash Wednesday, reminds us that we are both limited and limitless, flawed and holy. We don’t have to hold it all ourselves, because we are held by God and God holds all of our messy, untended and brokenness in loving care. If we are held by God, then the solution is not held by us, but by God.

February Reads 2019

This month was short, but I was able to tuck into some really great reads. In total I read 7 books. This month was a little sporadic not just in my reading time but also in what I selected. I have been trying to use the library more (hello, book budget!) but that sometimes means that a book come available when you are in the middle of or in the mood for something else. This month multiple books came up so it sort of messed up my flow a little. Here are a few of my favorites from the month of February.

Still Life (Chief Inspector Armand Gamache, #1) by Louise Penny

Several years ago a friend of mine recommended the Robert Galbraith mystery series penned by J.K. Rowling. Until then I don’t think I had read a mystery novel since The Westing Game in middle school or Agatha Christie in high school. I don’t really enjoy psychological thrillers or unreliable narrators but I do really love a good murder mystery. I usually prefer female protagonist or detectives (thank you Tana French) but several people recommended Louise Penny’s series featuring Inspector Armand Gamache so I decided to give the first book in the series Still Life a try. I enjoyed the small town setting of Three Pines and the care in which Penny takes in building this world and it’s many, quirky inhabitants. At times I felt it moved too slow, but it more than paid off in the end. I look forward to reading others in this series.

Everything Happens for a Reason: And Other Lies I’ve Loved by Kate Bowler

I mentioned Kate Bowler’s Everything Happens for a Reason in my monthly newsletter but I think it’s so good it’s worth sharing here as well. Bowler was diagnosed with cancer at 35 years old, just two year after she and her husband welcomed their long awaited son into the world. In addition to being a mother and wife, Bowler is an American Religious History professor at Duke Divinity School where she specializes in prosperity theology–they popular American theology that says if you pray hard enough and do all the right things and avoid sin God will bless you abundantly. Of course, the converse of this theology is that if something happens to you it must be because you have done something to bring it on, some act of faithlessness or unbelief or sin. It is at the intersection of this theological background and Bowler’s own story that this book lies. Bowler through her own life-threatening illness deconstructs all the less than helpful ways we try to support one another, examines what we really need in crisis and does so with grace and wit.

Selected Poems of Edna St Vincent Millay: An Annotated Edition edited by Timothy F Jackson

It’s been a while since I have found a collection of poetry that has really inspired me to dig in and read poem after poem. I first spotted this collection at a book store but decided to wait and totally regretted it. Several months later I found a copy of Selected Poems of Edna St Vincent Millay in the rather slim selection of poetry at my local used bookstore and snatched it up for half the price of the new copy I regretted not purchasing. So obviously this is a total bibliophile win. I love it when a collection has a nice balance of classic, well known poems and lesser known works.

My to be read pile for March is too high but I am looking forward to the end of the month when spring shows its fickle self in warm afternoons reading outdoors.

What is Money For?

I was sitting across the table from a church leader as he outlined why the congregation I was consulting with couldn’t continue it’s brief path towards transformation. “You see,” he said “I am a fiscal conservative and as our expenses stay the same but our income drops, it’s not sustainable to draw on our reserves.”

I nodded and then said “I understand…I am personally a fiscal conservative.” I watch across the table as his shoulder unplugged from his ears and dropped six inches and he sat back in his chair, visibly more relaxed to be in the presence of a kindred spirit, another person who shared the same values and view of the world.

“Oh, so you get it” he said as he continued on to explain some of the challenges up ahead for the congregation, outline the contours of the questions looming and the stack of answers that were yet to emerge from the process. They were to typical fears that all congregations with varying degrees of intensity face–how will we transform? Will we be able to make this change quickly enough to change our course? What if the risks become our reality and not our dream?

But as the conversation continued I realized we were indeed, not at all on the same page. When a natural pause came in the conversation I pressed “what is your fiscal conservativism FOR?” He shook his head and so I explained, “My family and I practice fiscal conservativism because God has given us resources we need to honor and use to the fullest. But we practice it FOR something. We aren’t conservative for conservatives sake–we have three values that ground that practice. We want to pay for our children’s college, we want to be a faith informed, counter cultural witness in the midst of the excess of the suburbs and we want to give away as much as we can to the non-profits that we care deeply about. Without those driving values my fiscal conservativism is nothing.” I continued “So, what is it that the church is being fiscally conservative FOR?”

Fiscal conservativism alone is not strong enough a virtue to be a guiding principle in an organization or person’s decision making. The mistake that many people and institutions make is thinking that fiscal conservativism is enough of a principle to sustain decision making. It is not.

Often in church and in our own personal finances we confuse the tools we use with the reason for using them or perhaps we use those tools for so long without questioning them that the tools slowly become sufficient enough that we don’t think we need a reason. Over time we end up committing to practices that have no values to undergird them and therefore have no real value to our ministries.

If a church wants to manage their financial resources conservatively so that there is resources to start a community food pantry or become sustaining partners with the women’s shelter, there are missional values that guide those financial practices. Churches and people do their best work when they let who God is calling them to be in the world dictate how they manage what they have, instead of letting what they have dictate the kind of ministry they do.

Resources for a Thoughtful Black History Month

For several years I have been on my own journey of growth when it comes to race, racism and thinking through the systems of power that we are born into that privilege some while placing at disadvantage others. I started with a year-long commitment to read only authors of color that was so enriching that I expanded it to two years. That was five years ago, the majority of what I read now being written by women or authors of color. This practice in mindfulness has expanded my perspective and enriched me beyond measure. Instead of using my own voice, I would like to amplify some really amazing resources I have utilized over the past several years as I have grown.

Here Wee Read

Here Wee Read is a resource for parents looking to be mindful that the library that’s feeding their children’s imagination is diverse and includes stories from people of all backgrounds. This is my go to to find excellent resources for my own kid’s library as well as for the children’s lessons at church.

White Fragility by Robin DiAngelo

One of my colleagues invited me and several others to join a virtual reading group on DiAngelo’s White Fragility. to say it was a powerful read would be an understatement. DiAngelo’s work was incredibly helpful in understanding racism not as prejudice but as systems that privilege certain ways of thinking, doing and being in the world, primarily whiteness. While the internal work from this book is far from easy, DiAngelo’s work is written in a digestible way. Several times while reading I found myself thinking “that’s a really good way to put that the next time I am in a conversation on race with some who sees this topic differently.”

I’m Still Here by Austin Channing Brown

One of the reasons I love reading memoir is the entry point it gives you into a whole other experience or perspective. You can ever really know what its like to be another person or live their story but memoir cracks open the door for you to get a peek inside and imagine what another’s life may be like. For me this has helped strengthen my empathy muscles and broadened my understanding of different experiences and cultures. I mean, isn’t that what reading in general is all about? Brown’s I’m Still Here chronicles her experience with being a black woman navigating primarily white institutions, including the church, with insight and honesty.

Pod Save the People hosted by DeRay McKesson

McKesson and his highly talented co-hosts discuss the week’s news, often highlighting studies, policies and stories that don’t get as much coverage in the news. Listening to Pod Save the People I often find I learn something new or consider a topic or policy from the point of view of those most affected in marginalized communities. Plus McKesson opens each week with a small reflection about doing justice work that’s always good for my soul.

These are all resources I have found personally enriching not just in the month of February but all year round as I aim to be a better neighbor and person of faith. What resources have you found helpful as you have grown in this area?

A Book of Uncommon Prayer

I first shared these reflections as a guest editor over on Stuff You’ll Probably Like but thought you might like to read them here…

Psalm 138:1-8 I give you thanks, O LORD, with my whole heart; before the gods I sing your praise I bow down toward your holy temple and give thanks to your name for your steadfast love and your faithfulness; for you have exalted your name and your word above everything. On the day I called, you answered me, you increased my strength of soul. All the kings of the earth shall praise you, O LORD, for they have heard the words of your mouth. They shall sing of the ways of the LORD, for great is the glory of the LORD. For though the LORD is high, he regards the lowly; but the haughty he perceives from far away. Though I walk in the midst of trouble, you preserve me against the wrath of my enemies; you stretch out your hand, and your right hand delivers me. The LORD will fulfill his purpose for me; your steadfast love, O LORD, endures forever. Do not forsake the work of your hands.

Across the kitchen table came tiny sobs from my youngest, “I can’t calm down! I’m just too upset! I can’t…I can’t…I can’t eat my broccoli and I’m just too upset!” While I tried to gain my bearings and process that the sudden outburst was due to my cooking and serving vegetables, my oldest said “it’s ok! Just calm down–just breathe with me!” as she started taking pronounced deep, slow breaths.

“I caaaaan’t” came the loud wail from the small person with fat tears trailing down her cheeks.

I turned to my older daughter and said “You are being so sweet to your sister, but when people are upset they won’t calm down with you unless you match the rhythm of their breath for three breaths before you change tempo.” I showed her what I had been taught to do in crisis hotline training. I made three quick breaths that matched the howling broccoli resister across the table then slowed my breathing down. The broccoli protest grew quieter.

My oldest skeptically turned to me still mulling over what I had said “Well, that’s silly, why can’t people just calm down with you?”

“Well honey,” I said, “People only change if you breathe with them first….where they are at.”

At the heart of prayer is this sentiment.

As leaders, friends and compassionate people we match the breath of the people we lead so that we might be agents of faithful change, but first we must match our breath to the breath of God, engage our holy imagination. For Christian leaders prayer is the first breath. It is the breath of the Spirit in our midst. It is the breath that grounds us in the one that created, redeems and called us. It is the breath that opens up what might be possible, that breathes a word of hope in challenging times and word of hallelujah in moments of celebration. It is also at the heart of many of the Psalms including this weeks from the lectionary.

Prayer is the way in which we invite God to be present in the midst of our most challenging and celebratory moments. Often it is our first opportunity and best lense to explore what faithful leadership in crisis might look like.  Before we call the insurance company, begin hard conversations and shift into problem solving mode as community leaders and faithful disciples of Jesus Christ we first seek out the One in whom all our work is centered. As a congregational pastor of a decade I’ve open tense meetings and beautifully holy moments in prayer. I have used prayer to set the tone of hard conversations gently and creatively. I have gone to prayer when the first or last word needs to be a word of the Spirit to settle a room and the hearts weary within.

As Abraham Joshua Heschel reminds us in his anthology I Asked for Wonder “we do not step out of the world when we pray; we merely see the world in a different setting…prayer takes the mind out of the narrowness of self-interest and enables us to see the world in the mirror of the holy.” When we pray in times of uncertainty we invite God into that uncertainty but we also invite ourselves, our leaders and our community to view the unplanned circumstances with a holy imagination. Engaging the holy imagination requires a set of tools that are different from the practical knowledge of to do lists, management skills or  “adulting”, it requires looking on the situation as if God could open up more possibility than we could imagine on our own. When we engage the holy imagination the dichotomy of either/or living gives way to a spectrum of possibilities that reveal the goodness and faithfulness of God in any and all situations. Prayer is an invitation to Spirit guided leadership, to wonder at what is possible and to be brave enough to lead onward.