I am s-l-o-w-l-y working my way through an Annual Examen. Not one that is guided, but one that is based on question prompts that I started at an online retreat on the 30th of December. 

​Thankfully, one of the recommendations was to move through these questions with an intentional slow pace, so they have time to sit in your head and your heart. Allowing us to notice what questions sit well with us and which ones poke at us. 

Well, one of the questions that poked at me was around what moments and events had significant meaning for you over the past year. 

A relatively harmless question that the Spirit used to reveal that I didn't see significant meaning in moment. In events, certainly! I had a whole list of them - but not so much moments. 

Which leads me into an invitation in this new year to find meaning not just in big events, but in the everyday. To embrace how and when the Spirit shows up - even if I don't notice it at first. 

What is the Spirit revealing to you in this new year?

"Radical Hospitality" has become a phrase in churches, inviting congregations to go beyond what they consider to be hospitality, but may really just be friendliness, to something deeper. Something more challenging and transformative.

​While churches may have recently picked up this phrase, spiritual direction has always been a place of radical hospitality. I was sharing with one of my students recently that my first spiritual director would meet me at the door, take my coat and ask if I wanted a cup of tea. As the tea brewed, we settled in with one another to do the holy work before us.

Holy work that focuses on the directee and their experience of the Divine. 

And perhaps that is what makes spiritual direction such a place of radical hospitality. It isn't about the director - their thoughts or preferences. Rather it's about the directee and their noticings of the Spirit.

There are so few places in our world today where we show up and something is about us. Is for us. And exists to help draw us closer to God. Where are places that you have discovered radical hospitality in your life?

 If you aren't familiar with nesting dolls they are a series of usually five or six figurines that fit inside of each other in a related way. Some are the same design with smaller and smaller features. Others tell an ongoing story - like a fairytale. Still others are related characters from a narrative, like my nativity nesting dolls. 

But more than the story the dolls themselves tell, whenever I see nesting dolls it reminds me of calling. Sometimes we think that we only have one calling, but I have described my life as a call within a call within in a call - working down the truest essence of who I am. 

For example, I think my truest call is listening passionately, which effects everything that I do, in my relationships and in my vocation.

​What is your truest calling and who is helping you to discover and live into it?

This past week I had the opportunity to talk to college students about what leadership means - specifically leading from the heart. I was struck by some of the words that they first used to describe leadership - chiefly authority. 
The truth is that authority doesn't come from a title but from your character. Are you trust worthy? Do you show compassion and care? Do you model integrity, honesty, and loyalty?
Sometimes folks get confused about the phrase "spiritual direction" thinking that it is someone who is going to tell them what to do in their spiritual life - having authority over them. But it's about accompanying another person meeting them where they are. 
Who is coming alongside you on your spiritual journey?

For Trick-or-Treat, the church I serve had a table in our driveway. We stuffed 400 bags for the kids coming through that evening and had more pounds of candy than I could count. 

We ran out of everything in an hour and twenty minutes. 

Of course, there were still more trick-or-treaters coming, even as we were breaking down the tables and turning off the light. When I told one little boy that we didn't have any more candy, he sat right down on the pavement and started to cry. 

Was that little boy sad? Of course. But he was also overstimulated by all that night had entailed. 

There are times I sit down and cry as well. Perhaps not physically, but certainly in my spirit, when I become overstimulated and overwhelmed. And that is something that I bring to Spiritual Direction. Those moments that I can't sort through on my own because I'm in the thick of it. I want someone to help me see with more grace and clarity what I can't in the moment. 

​What do you do when your spirit becomes overstimulated? 

This past week I had the opportunity to talk to college students about what leadership means - specifically leading from the heart. I was struck by some of the words that they first used to describe leadership - chiefly authority. 

The truth is that authority doesn't come from a title but from your character. Are you trust worthy? Do you show compassion and care? Do you model integrity, honesty, and loyalty?

Sometimes folks get confused about the phrase "spiritual direction" thinking that it is someone who is going to tell them what to do in their spiritual life - having authority over them. But it's about accompanying another person meeting them where they are. 

​Who is coming alongside you on your spiritual journey?

How many times during the week do you think that you spoke but were not heard? Depending on who you interact with - the number could be quite a lot!

​And out of the number that heard you - how many actually listened to you and valued you what you said?

I recently had to go to a large chain store to pick up something for an upcoming worship service. I looked high and low and could not find the items I needed. So I asked a clerk - only to have her sigh and roll her eyes at me - until she realized they were all sold out of what I needed. 

Beyond just being listened to and valued, there is another layer to listening called active listening. Where you know that person isn't just valuing you and your words but paying close attention. Not waiting for. a turn to jump in with their words, but treasuring yours. 

Who is your life actively listens to you?

I recently had to travel a few days for work - putting hundreds of miles on the car. If I'm honest, I'm not a big fan of driving long distances - I do it because I have to, not because it is my favorite thing to do. 

But, over those days, I spent hours listening to podcasts. Some which were new. Others that had been in my feed for months. 

And so many of those podcasts sounded like they were having a conversation with me. Speaking right to my soul. Could I have listened to them sooner? Sure. But this - this was the right time. 

​What has been your experience of encountering something at just the right time and how did it speak to you?

 I was recently in a scripture discussion group that opened up the Psalms to me in a whole new way. We were talking about how the poetry found within the book of Psalms may have been written by individuals but were communally expressed. That means that the Psalmist very well could have heard other people speaking, or singing their words back to them. 

It was like something within me broke open. 

I started to think of Hortiao Spafford, who penned the now famous hymn “It is Well with My Soul.” As the story goes, Spafford was to go on a trip with his family, but got delayed due to business dealings. He, however, did send his family on the trip ahead of him. Only the ship they were traveling on sank when it collided with another vessel, resulting in the death of all four of his daughters. While traveling to meet his grieving wife, the only member of his family surviving from the accident, he wrote the words that would become the hymn we know today. 

While that story may be familiar to us, in light of our discussion about the Psalms, all I could think of was Spafford hearing the words of his hymn, penned in grief and faith, sung back over him, again and again and again. 

And that broke me even further open. 

For a long time, Western culture has tried to contain and privatize grief. You get a few days to plan and hold a funeral and then are expected to return back - to work, to business as usual, to all of your hustle and bustle. But that’s not how the human heart works. We need places to express our grief and have people sing it back over us. To hear our words expressed with compassion and held as true. We need to publicly proclaim our grief, while being tenderly held in community. 

​My guess is that idea makes many of us uncomfortable. We don’t like the idea of people knowing about our grief, let alone joining us in publicly proclaiming it. Yet, what gift could that offer to us, both as grievers and the wider community? What shame could be diminished and understanding expanded by joining together in breaking open the constraints we have culturally placed on grief? What is just waiting to be sung?

One of the things I was able to do on vacation was go on a nature hike sponsored by the Aquarium. We walked down the boardwalk that we have been visiting for over a decade every year and learned that the area where we were staying was one of only four eco-systems of its nature in the United States at this time. My mom aptly pointed out that in all of our walking and exploring over the years, we never even knew that little piece of beautiful forest existed. 

Something similar happened as new animals were pointed out to us in the water as well as explanations for what animals could best be found where. All of a sudden, we went from seeing one or two animals over the week to more than we can count. 

It reminds me of the spiritual journey. We can be doing well on our own - but when someone else comes alongside us and starts to point out different things in a new way, all of a sudden it can be like an awakening of sorts. We can see things from a different perspective that were present with us all along. 

​Who walks with you on your spiritual journey and how have they impacted the way you see your life in the Spirit?