Greetings, friends. The message I want to bring today — the one I’m sitting with — is that it’s good to appreciate where we’ve been and all of the people and energy that has sustained us thus far. I’m out in one of my favorite little patches of woods near my house, and I’m appreciating the efforts of others that have created these pathways. Right behind me is a little stone bridge that somebody put together that helped me cross the little creek. All of these little paths that exist are because of the efforts of other beings like myself, and I’m grateful for that. Otherwise it would be hard to find my way into the woods. I had an experience a few weeks ago. My husband and I were walking out here and I encouraged us to go on one of the less traveled paths, and we ended up off the path and finding our way through some briar bushes. I ended up contracting some poison ivy and having a bit of an existential meltdown as we were making our way out, saying to him, “You know, this is why you don’t leave the beaten path — because you end up in the briar bushes.” And that’s often true. As someone forging a new kind of ministry in the world, I can relate. Forging the path is often very challenging. And really — I’d be curious about other people’s insights — I don’t know that any of us ever forge entirely our own path, right? We make our way along the paths others have created, and then we move in a slightly new direction, and that’s how the system of pathways expands and grows. Of course, this metaphor works in all kinds of areas of life, and especially, I think, in the way we form church and community. This last weekend I got to spend time with people in the Bryn Athyn community who are part of different pathways — different branches of this Swedenborgian New Church movement — that have been walking together in different ways. It was so enlivening to connect and to learn from them, from the pathways that they had created, and to come to this new intersection of community and life. There’s just so much to be grateful for in all of the ways that they have walked their paths and the ways that I’ve walked mine. I’m coming to see and sense how important it is to give thanks for that walking. This effort of mine to create a new kind of ministry — this “be love, be honest, be useful” effort — has been motivated by some dissatisfaction, by a need to tell the truth about challenges and hard, painful things that have occurred along these paths we’ve trod. There was a feeling that there wasn’t space within the form or the path that I was on to really name these things and tell the truth. And the further I walk this path, the more free I feel to name the challenges, name the hard things, name the limitations of the path I had been on. What’s really interesting is that the more I do that, the more appreciation actually starts to arise. In some ways, I have a sense that it’s hard to appreciate what we’ve experienced in our lives when there isn’t space to tell the whole truth about it — to also tell the things that were hard or painful, that we grieve. Once there’s space to really be honest, to flesh it out fully, then there’s space to also be in appreciation. I see that playing out in my experience of church and how I’ve been formed in church — that as I can name the things that haven’t gone well, I’m also coming into awareness of all of the beautiful things that have gone swimmingly well, things that empower me to be the person I am today. I also see that playing out in my understanding of my family. As I come to understand some of the ways that my early family experiences conditioned me to be codependent and hyper-vigilant of the emotions in my family, and a caretaker of others — as I’m able to tell the truth about that — I’m also remembering and appreciating all of the beautiful things I was formed in as a young child. Just the other day I was listening to some great music and dancing in my kitchen, and just having so much appreciation for all of the ways my parents showed me how to dance and how to have fun and how to take pleasure in life. Some of that had been suppressed for a little while when I wasn’t able to also share and feel and sense the difficult things. Because they’re all connected. They’re all one. It’s all our experience. There’s something so profound that can happen when we can just be honest about it. When we can be honest about it, we can appreciate the paths that have made our life possible. We can search out where maybe those paths have limited us, or given us a sense that there’s only one way to be. But we can also appreciate that they gave us the possibility to get to where we are. We’re not all starting from scratch. We carry the wisdom of our ancestors — in our familial lines, in our cultural lines, in our religious communities. There’s pain there, and there are gifts, and there’s wisdom, and all of it is rich terrain. If we block out one side of that equation, it just stifles life. It stifles and dampens and numbs possibilities. This last weekend down at the Lord’s New Church was a rich, creative time in community, and I could feel the energy moving in our midst in a palpable way — and I think others could feel it too. There’s a lot of aliveness in this human condition of ours. There’s aliveness that wants to be free. It wants to live, it wants to create, it wants to love, it wants to be in relationship. And it needs to be held — beheld. It needs us to be present to it. I think honesty is that path — to be present to that aliveness. What is that aliveness bringing? Because it’s probably bringing both creative new possibilities and healing. Healing that will potentially uncover pain that will be hard to see, but that will bring about the possibilities that are longing to emerge next. So let’s appreciate where we’ve been. Let’s appreciate all the paths that have been trod before us, and the path we find ourselves on. Maybe it’s the merging of many different paths. One of the themes of our retreat was the labyrinth. Maybe we’re walking a path that is taking us to our center, and yet it gets confusing and it wanders. Maybe we’re invited to walk off the path a little bit and even risk getting a little poison ivy, because God is calling us in a direction that will be good. The communities of people I was interacting with this weekend were from two other branches of the Swedenborgian church. We’re like the smallest church movement on the planet, and yet we have three different branches, three different denominational bodies, with different legal entities and processes and liturgies. And I didn’t show up in Bryn Athyn suggesting we should create a fourth. It feels to me like this moment in our history isn’t really calling for another break. We don’t have to walk off the path and reject the path we’ve come from — say, “You’re no longer in relationship to me, I’m going to go over this way and do everything I can to separate myself from you.” That’s an old way of thinking. We can go on different paths and still be in community. That would be really useful, because our paths might intersect again in the future, and we’re all walking the same earth. While we gathered together this weekend with these different paths and these different denominational bodies, I don’t even know that it was in any way divisive. Perhaps others had that experience, but I felt a deep unity with all the people that we connected to, and something moving in our midst that was very alive. I get the sense that there may be a new way to do this church thing — one that doesn’t require rejection, that doesn’t require us to abandon our history or the past. It just requires us to be a little softer, a little more open: to appreciate the paths that have brought us to where we are, to be honest about the ways we’ve been formed that we may be ready to release and let go of, and then from this place, from this point we’ve been brought to, take those next steps that feel right and feel good and feel alive and growing. So it’s a good moment, friends. I appreciate every single person who has stepped into this enterprise of being loving and being honest and seeing how we may be called to be useful. I’m very excited. Today begins a series of incubation sessions that Alex and I are going to do from 11 to 1 on Fridays, now through June 19th — New Church Day — to just sit with each other and with anyone who wants to come and show up. To appreciate what new things have emerged in this effort of the Helen Keller Spiritual Life Collaborative, to appreciate what we’ve done together, to feel into that appreciation, and to name what we’ve experienced — both the good, and maybe the ways that we weren’t so good, or that we want to do differently — and to till the soil to see what may be longing to emerge next in our work. So if you’re listening to this video, if you’re on this journey with us, if you have a window on a Friday to join us, I welcome you to pop in. I’ll put the link in the description for this video. And if you can’t come on a Friday but you have some thoughts or appreciations to share, I encourage you to comment or email. You know how to find us. And in your own life, in your own walk, I invite you to be honest with the good and the bad — with where you are in life, what has brought you there, and what is calling you next. Many blessings, friends. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit worshipislife.substack.com
