Will We Stay Silent?

I don’t know who you are, but I read your blog post and felt a connection. “What happens when we stay silent?”, you contemplated. That is the tippy top of a huge iceberg my friend. While this iceberg is too complex and rutty for me to fully understand, one thing I do know is that when we stay silent we build a community of isolation instead of freedom.

I know this, my friend (can I call you friend though I don’t know you? I feel like it might be ok to be myself with you and I think I’d like having a friend like you) because I have lived it. AM living it.

I have a confession — I haven’t been to church for 9 months. Gasp now. No, my friend, not you. I have a feeling you won’t be shocked. I meant everyone else. Everyone else can gasp now.

Navigating COVID-19 at the Soul Care Institute

Engaging in face to face retreats has been foundational to the Soul Care Institute and every student who has graduated or is currently attending a cohort. In light of this pandemic, that gift has been taken from us, and we wanted to share our response: 

We love:
-To listen to one another 
-To serve each other 
-Getting away to take time out to be with God in a place of hospitality.

We lament:
-That with Covid comes the reality that we could place each other at risk, sometimes grave risk. 
-Having to cancel getting together with our Cohorts these past few months. 
-Not seeing you face-to-face and eating together at the table while sharing stories. 

We feel called:
-To notice God in the midst of this pandemic
-To embrace the opportunities that come our way in spite of the challenges.

We are preparing, with God’s help, to get ready for whatever comes  for the future of SCI. 
-The learning will continue
-The formation goes on 
-Our spiritual practices become even more important in this time to sustain the abundant life.

If a Cohort needs to meet virtually for a retreat in this next season, we plan to make price adjustments by eliminating the lodging and food costs. We will encourage students to find a retreat-like space near them to be in during the retreat days, if they feel safe and comfortable to do so.

Thank you for your encouragement and support.
Please stay tuned for new ways to learn in the Soul Care Institute!

Beginnings

About a year ago a mentor friend of mine encouraged me to spend time with John O’Donohue’s blessing For a New Beginning.

Little did I know the power of this blessing would mirror the actual course of my life since then. I spent a good deal of time sitting at the start of the blessing poem. There I was being exposed. It was true. In all of the out-of-the-way places in my heart I was feeling an increasing emptiness. Not the kind of emptiness that we think of when a person is living without purpose. It was more like, the purpose for which I was created had outgrown my situation.

The Problem Behind the Problem

A message from Joe Walters about the creation of the Soul Care Institute.

Russell Moore in his Sept. 21, 2016 article in the Washington Post, powerfully describes what is happening with leaders today:

"Perhaps this is one reason why — one after the other — young pastors in the fastest-growing segments of evangelical Christianity seem to be falling apart at midlife. Pastors and leaders who soared through their twenties and thirties are hitting their forties, and spiraling often into burnout, depression and even the self-sabotage of addiction. Some of this, of course, is the sort of human weakness that is always with us. But some of it, no doubt, is the sort of entrepreneurial vision of Christian ministry that causes leaders to “justify” their existence by ceaseless activity. We have learned to find our identity in our velocity, and that’s not just physically dangerous, but spiritually devastating.”

Moore has pulled the curtain back on the problem behind the problem. We have found our worth in what we do rather than in who we are (and whose we are.) We are justifying our existence by ceaseless activity and a ramped-up velocity to all of what we do in life.