Interested in going deeper with your personal, communal, and societal shadow work? Check out my free 5-day email series on how to get off autopilot and become more intentional and more present to our lives. We don’t talk about Bruno. As I was watching Encanto (again), this line lodged itself in my brain – and not just because of the song. It exposes a reality that many of us are currently experiencing in our own communities: our families, work places,... Read more
We have turned love into a commodity. This is why we discuss it as something to be given and taken away, offered and held onto. Fully committed into an economy of goods and services, we have situated our understanding of love firmly within this framework. But this hides the reality of what love really is. Love isn’t something within a transaction, but rather the foundation for all purpose, relationships, and meaning-making. It is the basis, the lifeblood, of all that... Read more
Brian McLaren calls Unmasking the Inner Critic: Lessons for Living an Unconstricted Life “a beautiful and accessible guidebook to help you do the inner work central to the act of being human.” The Seattle Book Review says it’s “an excellent read for people of the Christian faith who seek effective strategies for self-love in order to heal from past emotional, mental, and physical trauma.” Sarah Southern writes that Unmasking the Inner Critic invites us “to release binding footholds and begin believing in the goodness that... Read more
When you sit for a meditation, are you settling for a “high-class sedative?” That’s what Thomas Keating called it when we engage in practices that numb us out with temporary feelings of bliss and contentment without challenging us. To engage in spiritual practices that are truly change-making, we have to set aside our desire for comfort and instead lean into the discomfort of the unknown. Because that’s how we deepen and grow. Here are 7 ways you can build a... Read more
In order to create beautiful and vulnerable small group space, a healthy container first has to be co-constructed. This container might be created by and filled with life-long friends, trusted family members, or complete strangers. It might have a formal leader or be more egalitarian with shared facilitation. It might have rigid structures or flexible guidelines. But in order for folks to settle in, for their nervous systems to regulate, for their fight/flight/freeze mechanism to calm, there needs to be... Read more
Running on autopilot is a choice – kind of. There are two types of autopilot: scatter autopilot, which I’ve previously written about, and constricted autopilot. Whereas scatter autopilot is infused within our societal systems and explicitly taught to us from a young age, constricted autopilot is a constant and consistent personal choice. Whether or not we opt-in for it has everything to do with what’s going on inside of us. Constricted autopilot emerges when we choose to listen to our... Read more
I get it – I don’t go to church either. For so many of us who have found pain in the confines of traditional church structures, there’s just no way we’re going back. It’s not happening. And yet, we feel this deep to-our-core desire for an embodied and meaning-filled spiritual life. Without the structures we were handed and seemingly no “great” options around us, it can be difficult to find a way forward. It can be really, really difficult. Harder... Read more
When I was younger, I had several teachers and adults in my life who served as mentors for me – perhaps you did too. But when I moved into adulthood, I learned something terrifying: adults aren’t generally given a list of teachers to guide us year-to-year! We no longer have a class schedule filled with people dedicated to our growth. We have to find them ourselves. (Or be found by them.) And this can be super hard – it’s sometimes... Read more
You don’t need to keep trying. When we commit ourselves to sunk costs, this commitment often keeps us from living into the future as our full and whole selves. Even though we know we shouldn’t keep pouring our time and energy into something (and often it’s our body that tells us to move on), we keep doing it because it feels like “making things work,” and “maybe this time will be different,” and “just a little more and the tide... Read more
About a month ago, I was invited by my friend Keith Kristich to share my response to this question: What is your best advice for someone who is starting or deepening a centering prayer practice? And here is what I said: “I struggled with Centering Prayer when I first started because it didn’t feel as though my mind and body were fully connected. A simple shift I made, that I highly recommend to anyone starting off, is to take 3 minutes at the beginning... Read more
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