In his book, The Anxious Generation, Jonathan Haidt notes how our modern digital environment pulls us constantly away from quiet opportunities to reflect:

“Gen Z became the first generation in history to go through puberty with a portal in their pockets that called them away from the people nearby and into an alternate universe that was exciting, addictive, [yet] unstable…”

What are the impacts of growing up in a world like this? The World Health Organization reports that globally, depression and anxiety cost the economy an estimated $1 trillion annually while draining 12 billion lost workdays, with three out of four employees experiencing workplace burnout. What’s the problem? Our culture breeds anxiety and offers the answer of addiction. But our addictions will only get us so far, what’s a better answer? It’s the quiet.

The Opportunity Upon Us

We stand before an extraordinary opportunity: to take our restless longing for another portal (as Haidt put it) and channel it into a deep, unshakable health—for ourselves, and for those we lead. When we learn the discipline of solitude, we tap into the spiritual realities that truly govern our lives, and finding that clarity changes everything. Personally, it’s what makes getting up early feel less like discipline and more like a playground, where the quiet morning light meets my lingering dreams from the previous night.

Yes, we crave a portal to another world, but we mostly settle for a digital imitation that drains our souls. But what if our restlessness is an invitation from the depths of our inner lives? I don’t just think this is true, I know it. And in my many years working as a pastor, and as a corporate coach, I’ve seen that it doesn’t matter who you are or what your work is — the vast majority want it.

But before I carry on, let me tell you a story. Centuries before our pocket portals, a man named Saint Seraphim of Sarov (1750–1833) discovered a very different kind of portal in the deep wilderness.

Learning Solitude From a Hermit

Born Prokhor Moshnin in Kursk into a merchant family, his early career was in trade and commerce before an inner calling drew him away from worldly ambition to a monastery and eventually to a life as a solitary hermit deep in the Russian taiga.

In the quiet of the forest, Seraphim practiced profound solitude. His asceticism became legendary:

• He spent a thousand consecutive days and nights in unceasing prayer standing on a boulder and lived for years inside a hollow tree trunk

• Witnesses claimed he generated miraculous bodily heat to survive brutal winters

• He fed wild bears by hand

• And radiated an uncreated light during prayer.

His deep isolation unlocked extraordinary altered states of consciousness. He was said to have possessed profound clairvoyance, reading the private thoughts and struggles of visiting pilgrims before they spoke a word. Historical accounts also attribute to him instances of bilocation—appearing to comfort or guide people in distant cities while simultaneously locked in prayer in his forest hut.

For decades, Seraphim maintained strict silence, first living in the deep wilderness and later inside the walls of the Sarov Monastery. But when he sensed that his season of hiddenness was complete, he emerged from his confinement to minister to a broken world. Thousands of daily pilgrims flooded his forest clearing near Sarov, carrying heavy burdens of grief, confusion, and spiritual weariness. Seraphim greeted every single person with an overwhelming warmth, calling them “my joy” and welcoming them with the Easter greeting, “Christ is risen!”

He spent his final years actively mentoring, healing, and counseling these visitors, offering profound wisdom drawn directly from his decades of silence. His ministry was not about lecturing, but about awakening the soul. Offering his most enduring insight, “Acquire a peaceful spirit, and thousands around you will be saved,” Seraphim’s life stands as a testament to the inner discipline of solitude—and the extraordinary transformation and capacity to love others that emerge when we step away from the noise to listen.

*To learn more about Saint Seraphim, see the references at the end of this article.

Calming the Mental Noise

I learned of St. Seraphim only a few days ago while in a conversation with Dr. Vladimir Miskovic, Ph.D. where I was able to interview him for this season of the How People Grow Podcast (his episode will come this October). Vladimir shared how he learned of St. Seraphim as a young man and was inspired to explore the depths of the human psyche. This led him to become a neuroscientist and even led him for a short time to become a Novice Monk in the Eastern Orthodox Church.

Vlad told me that roughly 95% of our perception of the world is generated from within. “The other 5% is important too,” he said. “It’s what keeps us from walking out into traffic every day.” Then he shared how the primary task before all of us is how to harness that 95%.

For me, about three years back, I went through a very strong season of anxiety that led to unbearable chest pain that made me think I would die. After therapy, spiritual direction, a change in diet and practices, and more, do you know what I found? I had to find a way to rewire my brain and body. Up till that point, my solitude practices had mostly to do with feeding my mind and body—reading, journaling, exercise. But those practices ceased working. Something had to change.

What changed is too much to write — but I’ll give you a little preview. It may sound crazy, but I discovered the foods and medicines of my ethnicity. Adding those to my life somehow served to rewire my brain and body to help me sustain long sessions alone. I combined this with breathwork, and together, these items gave me the tools I needed to learn to navigate the quiet, understand my dreams, and most importantly, gain a calm that’s sustained me now for three years.

He Was With the Wild Animals

I now understand the text in Mark 1:13, when it says of Jesus during his temptation in the wilderness, “and he was with the wild animals…”

There’s enormous significance to this text, but the part that captivates me is this image—Jesus at peace in the wilderness with no one around, just animals.

These days, my mornings look kind of like that. I rise anytime between 4:30 and 5:30 AM and go to my porch, which sits right on the edge of the woods. While sitting in the quiet, I work myself through intentional breathing practices, sometimes holding my breath for long periods of time while I listen to the owl that lives up a tree to my right. Other mornings I’ll sit with a strong Peruvian tobacco called Ambil and listen to the sounds of the wind or rain.

My practices aren’t prescriptions. But they are the ways I’ve found an opening through a better portal at this phase in my life. The proof of the change is in my own inner calm and resolve. My family will tell you too - I’m a lot calmer these days :)

Call me crazy, but I believe it is possible today to get a taste of what St. Seraphim experienced, but it takes discipline.

A New Venture

For those who’ve known me a long time, you know that I gave many of my years to the Spiritual Life before I started my corporate business. I’m excited to share that I’m making a sort-of return to my roots by launching a Spiritual Direction practice alongside my work with The Rooted Way. This fall I have space for 10 directees who want to learn to navigate the quiet, the cave, the darkness. With intention, I want to help others learn to navigate their dreams, their breath, and the early morning hours before the sun comes up. If that’s you — you can sign up here.

I’ll keep with the business world, but I’m adding Spiritual Direction because leaders have souls too.

As I finish, I’ll return to the opening quote from St. Seraphim: “True joy comes from within, from a heart at peace with God. When the inner man is renewed, the outer world is transformed.”

Need I say more?

* To learn more about Saint Seraphim:

• Little Russian Philokalia, Vol. 1: St. Seraphim of Sarov (St. Herman of Alaska Brotherhood)

• St. Seraphim of Sarov: A Spiritual Biography by Archimandrite Lazarus Moore

• Sailor of the Spirit: The Life and Pastoral Vision of St. Seraphim of Sarov by Gregory Telepko

“I chose what I was tied to choose:

They told me gently who I was…

I wait, and wonder what to learn…

O here, twice blind at being born.”

-David Wagoner

The excerpts above are from the late poet David Wagoner’s work entitled “The Hero with One Face.” These lines beg us to consider if we’re living on autopilot, driven by the script given us when we were young, or whether we’ve been born a second time into a new life—a life that shows outwardly, who we are inwardly.

Recently I was talking with a friend in her early fifties and she was sharing how angry she was that it took her this long to realize how much of a script she was still following, one that her parents gave her at the expense of her own wishes and desires. This got me to thinking about my own scripts, and then even of the scripts I see others following around me that aren’t theirs.

How can you tell when you’re following someone else’s path? I can’t say for you, but what I see often is a stuffed anger, and even a condescending personality. When people stuff their anger it comes out in passive aggression, or disassociation. And when I encounter someone with a condescending attitude that manifests in judgment of others who are doing things “differently”—that’s a clue too. After all, why would I grant the grace to others to follow their own path if I was never granted the grace to follow mine?

Back to David Wagoner’s poem. What does it mean, “twice blind at being born?”

I read those lines and immediately think of Jesus words to Nicodemus in John chapter three. He tells Nicodemus, a religious leader, that people have to be born again of water and of Spirit in order to see God’s Kingdom. Being born of water harkens back to a child in it’s mothers womb floating an amniotic fluid (good job, we’ve all accomplished that!). Being born of Spirit is a second birth, when our awareness and desires change, and we suddenly see things differently.

Both Jesus and Wagoner seem to be saying the same thing — there’s a second “seeing” that must take place at some point in our lives if we are to become truly “born.”

Finding Meaning in the Second Half of Life

I came across Wagoner’s poem while reading the book Finding Meaning in the Second Half of Life by James Hollis, Ph.D. Hollis writes about how the first half of our lives are often informed, not by a true knowledge of ourselves and the world, but by a dependence on the instructions and models given to us by our parents and institutions. It’s confusing for some when their internal wiring isn’t in line with the instructions they were given.

Hollis writes that being “twice blind” (as Wagoner put it) is actually a good thing. It marks the transition from a “provisional personality” to living a life that’s unique to you. We need this second “blindness” to break free from the scripts we were given so that we can finally see ourselves and our work in this world as we are. Are you a little confused right now as you look at your life situation asking questions like “what do I really want to do,” or “who am I really deep down?” If so, you’re entering exciting times.

I believe I’ve written about this before, but Joseph Campbell wrote about the importance of finding your own path when he said:

“If you can see your path laid out in front of you step by step, you know it’s not your path. Your own path you make with every step you take. That’s why it’s your path.”

Once when someone asked Carl Jung how to find their own path, Jung wrote

“Believe me: It is no teaching and no instruction that I give you. On what basis should I presume to teach you? I give you news of the way of this man, but not of your own way. My path is not your path therefore I cannot teach you.”

I asked my uncle if I could get some time on the phone to get some advice. He responded, “i stopped giving advice a long time ago.”

I’m finally starting to realize this myself. For many years I’ve wanted to win others to my way of thinking, and I was pretty good at it. But I see now the problems with my former way. No one has my story, wiring, or life circumstances. We each have our own details, therefore, learning to listen to the deepest truest voice within is the most essential life skill.

Here’s an old story.

Listen to Your Ears

A young seeker had spent years traveling from village to village, learning from every guru, scholar, and priest who claimed to hold the truth. He memorized scriptures, adopted rigid practices, and carefully followed every piece of advice given to him.

Yet, deep inside, he felt an aching restlessness. He felt like a stranger within his own life.

Hearing of a wise Zen Master who lived high in the mountains, the seeker climbed the peak, determined to finally receive the ultimate instruction.

When he arrived, he found the Master sitting in silence beside a clear mountain stream. The seeker bowed in reverence.

“Master,” he said, “I have spent my whole life following the paths laid out by others, yet I remain lost. Please, tell me: What is my path? Give me the rule by which I should live.”

The Master said nothing. He simply reached down, picked up a smooth stone from the riverbed, and tossed it into the deep water, a splash sounding in the distance.

The Master closed his eyes and returned to his meditation.

Frustrated, the seeker cried out, “Why won’t you answer me? I came all this way for your guidance!”

The Master opened his eyes, looked gently at the young man, and said:

“When the stone fell, did you hear the sound of the water, or did you wait for me to tell you what it sounded like?”

The seeker’s face became serious.

“I heard the water,” he whispered.

The Master smiled and nodded. “Then why do you ask me how to live your life? You have ears, yet you ask another to listen for you. Go back down the mountain. Start listening to your own ears.”

Have you spent the first part of your life letting others tell you what water sounds like? Learn to listen to your ears, discern the sound of your own life. Enjoy the awakening.

“I think since I was a child I was driven to find my roots. I now believe that in order to understand why we are what we are, we must know about our roots.”

— Carolyn Achata, From the Prologue of The Family Tree of John and Margaret Gordon Dalrymple: From Wigtownshire, Scotland to Moore County, North Carolina 1775

Just a few weeks back, I stood on the shores of Stranraer, Scotland. The day was May 31, 2026 — exactly 251 years since my Scottish ancestor, John Dalrymple, left. The fact that we were in the region of his hometown on the exact day he left was a synchronicity, which Carl Jung defined as “the coming together of inner and outer events in a way that cannot be explained by cause and effect and that is meaningful to the observer.”

I admit, I’m not a detail guy. While this has saved me a lot of mental energy, it has also caused a few problems! In my personal life, I tend to go where I want and do what I think needs to be done without a lot of prep. Yet, as I look back on my life, I see how this approach looks remarkably like a plan. I’ve thought much on this recently in the area of consciousness — do we think a thought, or does a thought think us? The further I go, the more I’m prone to believe the latter. It’s as if a greater truth is gently carrying us along, and the older we get, we learn stop resisting and consent to be led (or we resist and suffer). We didn’t plan to be in Scotland on the exact day our ancestors left, but it seemed as if it had been pre-planned.

Amy and I wanted to do a big trip for our 25th wedding anniversary, and we also thought it would be cool to do something for my son’s high school graduation. As we planned, I combed through my mother’s book on Dalrymple family history (quoted above) to find relatives to visit and places to see. With our limited time, we decided to focus on the Stranraer area for two days near the end of our trip.

We saw as much of the country as we could over the course of ten days, and at every stop, my mother was right there with us. At each town or city, I’d stop to search her emails from her years of traveling in Scotland. Though she’s been gone now for over ten years, having her emails was sweet. Without planning it, we’d often find ourselves in the same restaurants, cafes, and landmarks she visited over the course of many years of research. Combing through those emails as we traveled, I felt the same feelings she felt, and it gave me insights into what she might have been thinking. But more so, it seemed as if she was guiding me.

How My Mother Reconnected Our Scottish Family

The story of our Scottish family is too big to write here. But I’ll do my best to give an overview, beginning with the writings of my mother from her book referenced in the opening quote:

“I remember as a child, sometime in the 1950s, that my mother produced a page of Dalrymple family history (researched by J. Allen Dunn, attorney in Salisbury, NC), which contained a list of names of our Dalrymple ancestors who emigrated from Scotland in 1775.

Often I would look at where they came from and wonder where those places, Stranraer and New Luce, were and what they were like. I wondered how they managed to get all their important possessions on that ship, who else came and why they really left Scotland.

I knew that my grandfather, Myrtle M. Dalrymple, was born on a ship in September of 1886 while his parents were returning from a visit to Scotland. Why did they go at such a delicate time for his mother?

What contacts had they had with those in Scotland; so many unanswered questions. When would I know the answers?”

In June of 1999, my mother went to Scotland to put the puzzle pieces back together. After a long flight and drive, she arrived at the small town of New Luce, about two hours outside Glasgow, and entered the local post office. “I was overcome with emotion,” she wrote in her book. “It was a couple of minutes until I collected myself enough to say, ‘I’ve come a very long way to find this place.’” The woman in the post office smiled and waited. My mother told her who she was and asked if there were still Dalrymples living around there. The woman said, “Yes, John Dalrymple.”

That was the clue she needed to begin piecing the puzzle back together. It took work to find John, but it was through that relationship that my mom figured out the story. John and Margaret left Scotland in 1775 to escape the high rents. They farmed sheep and cows. In fact, our Dalrymple family farmed the Kilfeddar farm for 250 years, up until 2002. Evidently, when John and Margaret left, other Dalrymples kept the farm going.

From my mom’s research, she discovered that our branch that left Scotland were called the “Jackie Cousins” because they left Scotland on a boat called The Jackie (watch the video below to hear my cousin Douglas tell the story).

From what I gather, the family in the United States remained in contact with the Scottish side up until the late 1800s (over a hundred years after they departed). From that point onward, they lost contact for reasons I do not know. But I’m proud to say that in 1999, my mother did her part to rejoin the Dalrymples of the United States with the Dalrymples in Scotland.

On May 30th, we spent the day shopping in Wigtown, not far from Stranraer. Up on the second floor in an antique shop with my son Isaac, the owner asked who we were and what had brought us to the area. When I told her who I was and whom I’d come to visit, she said, “There’s someone downstairs you ought to meet.” On the first floor were Susan and her husband. Turns out Susan was a Dalrymple cousin. Susan and I talked and swapped stories. She couldn’t believe who I was and how I could trace the line of our ancestors to Scotland. We took a picture together and exchanged emails.

Walking out of the shop, I asked Isaac, “What’s it like to know you can come to a small town in Scotland and know you’re surrounded by cousins?” He remarked how it was pretty neat to be on the ground from which our relatives came. It makes sense that we would run into relatives in that area — remember, these Dalrymples never left. There are many of them there.

Walking With the Cloud of Witnesses

The next day, May 31st, we met with our cousin Douglas and went to the Kilfeddar farm where John Dalrymple had lived. The original house was still there, though it is now used as a shelter for animals. We spent time walking its grounds, trying to imagine a life there in the 1700s. It’s a remote place. And though we had good weather, I can imagine how hard of a life it would have been. Before we left, I walked the house, placed my hands on the walls, and thanked John for his life. Had he never taken the risk to leave Scotland with his wife and eight children, I would never have been here. Also, how could he have known that his choice to leave Scotland would have landed him in North Carolina in June of 1775, in “very exciting times,” as my cousin Douglas said?

In the months following their arrival, they would have experienced a colony sliding into a violent civil war. They would have watched British rule collapse as Patriot militias burned the Royal Governor’s fort, sending him fleeing to a warship. Navigating their first American winter meant facing severe resource shortages, terrifying rumors of bloody insurrections, and intense pressure from radical local committees to choose a side in the conflict just to protect their eight children.

As much as I’m tempted to digress into my political thoughts at this point - I’ll save that for another day.

Yet, back in Scotland, standing on the soil they left behind, I couldn’t help but feel my ancestors presence. Often in the last few years a text from the bible has come to mind — “Since we’re surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, throw off everything that hinders and let us run the race marked out for us…” are the words of the writer of Hebrews 12:1.

Spiritually speaking, we don’t think much in our context in the United States about ancestors, or the greats of faith that came before us. But the older I get, the more I’m seeing the wisdom of my mother’s words: “I now believe that in order to understand why we are what we are, we must know about our roots.”

So why am I what I am? My roots have the answer. Why are you what you are? Your roots have the answer.

In my case, I’m the product of hardworking Scottish ancestors on my mother’s side who farmed sheep and cows. Even up until the early 1900’s they farmed in North and South Carolina. But they knew how to read the signs of the times to know when it was time to start over and try something new. And because of that risk, I’m here.

On my father’s side, I’m descended from indigenous Quechua/Aymara ancestors from the high Andes in Peru. They assimilated into Puno society to get educated, and they became teachers and administrators who made a difference in the government and in the faith-based sphere.

I often look back on my story and wonder: how does this mix of lives inform how I ought to live? This question requires me to zoom out and see the magic of my DNA. The amount of artists, spiritual leaders, and scholars in my family is breathtaking.

Looking at the themes of my ancestry to discern my path is still a journey I’m on. But standing on that Scottish shoreline on the exact day my relatives left, I realized something. Whether climbing the steep slopes of the Andes or crossing an ocean toward an uncertain revolution, my ancestors shared a common thread: they knew how to listen to the times, step out in faith, and consent to be led.

Many of us feel stuck. For sure I’ve felt it. Yet, at this juncture, I’ve come to believe the answers we look for aren’t just buried in our psyche. No, the answer we seek are in our lineage like a living map, showing us how to move forward.

It’s 6:25 AM as I write this morning. In just a few hours, I leave to go on a trip I’ve wanted to take for 27 years—Scotland.

Back in the 1990s, my mother began researching her Scottish roots. By 1999, she was ready to take another trip there, and I was excited to go. But for various reasons, it was canceled. When she died ten years ago, I knew I would go one day because, during her years of research, she learned that our branch of the family left Scotland in 1775. She found her Scottish cousins, found the land her family lived on, and even located the port they left from. I’m excited; today is the day I get to go see what she saw.

The Ground On Which We Stand

For various reasons, many in the United States don’t know their origins. Knowing my Scottish history on my mother’s side, and the Peruvian history on my father’s, has grounded me. But as I cherish this, I am keenly aware that for millions of African Americans, the ability to trace their lineage to a specific port, cousin, or piece of land was violently stripped away by the machinery of chattel slavery.

It’s a privilege to know these things, and I want to be faithful to pass down what I know to my kids. I want to pass down not only our family history, but the complete history of our nation. Truth-telling is the way we find our place, and I want my kids to know the story of the ground on which they stand.

Last weekend, I reflected on this privilege during a trip to Montgomery, Alabama. My friend Lisa Sharon Harper invited me to join her for “All Roads Lead to the South,” an event brought together thousands of civil rights activists to protest restrictive redistricting and Supreme Court rulings that threaten to eliminate up to a third of Black political representation in Congress.

To begin my trip, I spent Friday at the Legacy Museum, which outlines the history of racial injustice in the United States. I saw slave pen replicas, and heard first-person narratives connecting enslavement directly to modern mass incarceration. Nationally, African Americans are 5 to 6 times more likely to be incarcerated than White Americans, and Native Americans are 4 times more likely. Any curious person must step back and ask, why?

The answer isn’t a mystery; it’s something we’ve inherited as a country. The modern disparities we see in our justice and voting systems are the direct descendants of a history designed to keep Black Americans from holding power. For those who doubt that, I invite you to go to the Justice Museum in Montgomery. There, you can see replicas of 1960s-era poll tax stations where African Americans had to “pass a test” by guessing how many seeds were in a watermelon, or how many jellybeans were in a jar. I never knew this. Yes. They were required to guess how many jellybeans were in a jar to vote.

To see where people put their bodies on the line to change systems like this, you have to come to Selma. So that’s what I did.

Thin Places and Heavy Silence

On May 16, I traveled with Lisa and Diana Oestreich (Waging Peace) forty-five miles west for the Selma portion of the National Day of Action. Clergy and faith leaders from across the country gathered at the historic Tabernacle Baptist Church. Sitting inside the sanctuary felt like being on holy ground; it was the exact site of the very first mass meeting of the Selma voting rights movement back in 1963. To pray and worship in a room that echoed with black cries for the ballot felt like tapping into a deep and powerful current of American faith. We sang. We prayed. We listened. It’s been a long time since I’ve felt the presence of God like that.

One pastor prayed:

Ancient of Days, be with us on this day

Move this nation to confess its original sins

and enable us to say with the man who once said

“what you meant for evil, God meant for good”

Following the meeting, I joined about 500 other faith leaders for a silent march toward the iconic Edmund Pettus Bridge. To remember those who came before, we were instructed to walk across the bridge in absolute silence.

In 1965, peaceful marchers were brutally beaten on this concrete for demanding the right to vote. Sixty-one years later, we were walking the exact same path to protest recent Supreme Court rulings on redistricting that threaten to strip away that very same political representation. The silence of the march was heavy with the realization that the battle lines haven’t moved nearly as much as we’d like to think.

As we walked, Lisa whispered to me, “This was the spot Dr. King knelt to pray the first time they began their march.”

What Lisa was referring to is now called “Turnaround Tuesday.” Two days after the violence of Bloody Sunday (where John Lewis and many other marchers were beaten), Dr. King led hundreds of faith leaders back onto the bridge, only to be met by another wall of armed state troopers. To avoid a second bloodbath and protect the movement’s legal standing under a federal injunction, King halted the line, led the crowd in a powerful moment of prayer on the asphalt, and strategically turned them back. It was an agonizing test of leadership, but that restraint ultimately secured the federal protection they needed to successfully march all the way to Montgomery two weeks later.

Walking the bridge where John Lewis was beaten, where MLK Jr. knelt to pray, felt like a “thin place.” In Celtic spirituality, a thin place is a physical or spiritual location where the distance between the earthly realm and the divine collapses. Last weekend, I walked through a thin place.

As we walked, I imagined what it would have been like to know that State Troopers were waiting on the other side with tear gas and batons atop horses—not to protect, but to harm. I thought of the sacrifices our African American brothers and sisters made to gain equal rights. As we reached the other side and gathered for prayer, I listened with a heavy heart as the crowd sang:

Wade in the water

Wade in the water, children

Wade in the water

God’s gonna trouble the water

This song was secretly used as a coded guide on the Underground Railroad to help enslaved people throw tracking dogs off their scent by walking through water. When we finished singing, I was able to meet a few of the original “foot soldiers” who marched from Selma to Montgomery in 1965.

“We didn’t think we’d have to do this again… but here we are,” I overheard them saying.

Stepping Into the River

Hearing those words from elders who have given so much left me wondering: What can one person actually do? It’s easy to feel paralyzed by the sheer scale of a system that continuously retrofits its old ways, and to feel entirely powerless to change it. But my trip to Alabama taught me that maybe we are asking the wrong question.

As I sit here in my PJs about to shower and grab my suitcase for Scotland, I am struck by the contrast of my two journeys. Today, I go to find the roots that comfort and ground me. But last weekend reminded me that to be a whole human being, I can’t look solely at my personal history. I have to look at the roots of our collective history—especially the parts that expose my privilege and lay bare our nation’s deepest wounds.

We might not be able to dismantle a massive, centuries-old system with a single march. But we can choose where we stand. We can choose to step away from the comfort of the dominant culture and simply show up—to sit with, and listen to, those on the receiving end of decisions that have major implications for their communities, and utimately, are entire country.

On the other side of the bridge, as the group sang Wade in the Water, it felt like an invitation to step off the safe, dry riverbank of neutrality and get into the water. I might not change an entire current immediately, but by wading into the struggle of others, I allow myself to be changed.

I am going to Scotland to see what my mother saw, and I will cherish it. But I am flying across the Atlantic with a humble heart. I don’t show up because I have all the answers to fix a broken system; I show up because it’s how I remain in touch with my humanity, and it’s how I find the truth of the ground on which I stand.

Thank you for the invite.

Last night I had a dream. It was 2016, and I was fresh back in San Clemente, California only days after my mother died. During that time my body was showing early signs of unraveling. I was forgetting things, getting lost, and chest pains appeared for the first time. But in the dream, I was myself as I am today.

I was driving a road to our house and a pile of logs fell on the road in front of me. Calmly, I drove right over them. Then I woke.

Dreams are so interesting, aren’t they? They invite us to reflect on our lives, and our wounds from each day’s vantage point. What could this dream mean?

To me, it’s simple. There’s still pain from the years in California. What’s interesting is how that time was, perhaps, the most productive of my life. I was helping start a new church, working in the corporate world, and amidst it all, I stepped away to take care of my dying mother. But that’s when my body began to break down.

When I think back to that time, it marked the beginning of midlife for me. I’d spent all the years leading up to that point learning to achieve. But what I didn’t yet know how to do was “root-in.”

We live in a culture that rewards productivity while quietly eroding rootedness. Most of us don’t become unrooted all at once, it happens gradually. Here’s how it unfolds—we begin adapting ourselves to systems built on performance, speed, image, and productivity until we no longer hear the deeper messages from our souls. It’s a first half of life thing for most of us—but many never grow out of this mode. It’s hard to deepen and mature amidst a culture that’s so committed to hustle.

Hustle Culture vs. Praying Behind the Bushes

Thomas Jefferson was attributed to have said, “I find that the harder I work, the more luck I seem to have.” A more recent quote — Author Gary Vaynerchuk said, “Without hustle, talent will only carry you so far.” Motivational speaker George Koufalis said, “The dream is free, the hustle is sold separately.”

There’s a lot of truth to these quotes, so I’ll comment briefly. First off, hard work is important (and I’m not against that). But what I’m against is hard work that kills you. If that’s you, and you feel like you’re dying inside, it could simply be that you’re either doing the wrong work, or you’re doing the right work from shallow roots. The solution to both problems is digging deeper vs. living from the outside-in.

We can’t hustle all the time, or we won’t last. I know, I’ve lived it. I talk with my clients regularly about this too. There are so many high-performing people I encounter who I’ve had to tell the same thing, “the problem with being a high performer is that you never stop seeing things to do. You’ve got to learn to turn it off. And no one can do that for you. You’ve got to learn the discipline.” An important follow-up is that my clients, and others I encounter often find that when they turn it off, there’s not much there to fill the void. That’s where the deeper roots come in.

My mind goes to Jesus. In Mark 1, a whole town had just been healed and everyone was looking for him. They found him praying in the dark behind the bushes (Mark 1:35). When they found him, I’ll tell you what he didn’t say—“guys, I have to fuel up so I can hustle more.” No. He said the most counterintuitive thing — “let’s go somewhere else.” Those are the words from someone clear on who he was and what he wanted to do.

Finding Deeper Roots

Before I worked in the corporate world, I was a pastor. So my programming often harkens back to these ancient stories. And when I had my first major burnout, I couldn’t help but think back to the idea that there was a still small voice that wanted to corner me.

Leaving California in the summer of 2016 and moving to Tennessee, I took about a year to slow down to listen to that voice. It was a good choice. But seven years later, I was neck deep in more hustling. I was writing books, traveling, working in companies, and had helped start another church. When my chest pain returned worse than before, I thought it was over for me and I wouldn’t see 45. That’s when everything began to change for me.

As I began to slow down I learned how beneath my burnout, anxiety, overwork, and even success itself, there was a deeper issue: I had become disconnected from the deeper roots that sustain a meaningful life. Those deeper roots had to do with embracing my:

• spirituality over appearance

• ethnicity over acceptability

• my body’s natural pace over the speed I thought I should move

• what I really wanted over what my ego said I should have

• healing over hustle

• wholeness over fragmentation

I learned during that time that the faster we go, the more the crash hurts. Or to put it another way, the quicker we hustle, the more mistakes we make. I made a lot. And it took time to learn from the scars.

Back in 2011 when I started working as an executive coach, I genuinely wanted to help people. But what I wasn’t prepared for was how fast the corporate space operated. For a long time I thought I should show up fast and mirror the pace of the organizations I worked with. That worked okay - but it only added to my breakdown. Here I am, fifteen years later and the biggest lesson I’ve learned is that what most of us need is a de-escalation of pace. We don’t need more intensity, God knows we have enough of that. We need to learn to calm and quiet our souls.

The Rooted Way

This is why I’ve pivoted my work to become “The Rooted Way.” Often I’ve felt like Samson in Judges chapter sixteen who had a wild disposition, fell in love with the wrong woman, was taken prisoner, had his eyes gouged out and was chained to a mill. My work has felt like that for a long time, a steady trudge through the muck of what people and organizations have to deal with. But unlike Samson, I’ve not used those 15 years to plot my revenge (Samson did that in the story), but I’ve used these last 15 years to ponder my motivation. Notice I didn’t say “vision”— that’s external. But motivation is internal.

The motivation I have for my work is that people and organizations will prioritize their humanity, and commit to a slow and steady path of development and growth—one that honors the whole person. This means leadership, and normal life. This means output, and the spiritual aspects that brew under the surface of our lives. It means gathering every part of who we are. This is why I’ve added to my organizational development work, personal development, retreats, and eventually later this year, spiritual direction (join the waitlist here).

To be a rooted person means pulling nutrients from a deeper ground. This means being integrated, aligned and connected. And like the leaves of a tree need energy from the Sun, being rooted also means knowing where your source of life comes from (your mission, your “why” etc…)

What My Dream Meant

Thinking back to my dream last night, I realized something as I sat in the dark of the morning. Those logs in the road— I drove over them effortlessly.

Ten years ago, obstacles like that would have made big problems for me. Today, they feel more like bumps in the road. Not because life became easier, but because I changed. I slowed down. I listened. I learned how to root into something deeper than achievement, image, speed, or hustle.

You don’t become rooted by pushing harder. You become rooted by learning to draw life from a deeper place.

Perhaps the invitation beneath our exhaustion is not to achieve more, but to return to our roots.

—

Learn more at https://JoinTheRootedWay.com/

“There are more tears shed over answered prayers than over unanswered ones.”

— Teresa of Avila

The Paradox of Answered Prayer

Lately, I’ve been thinking about what I want. You know, my life trajectory, my plans etc… Yet, as I look back on my life, I notice how often the things I’ve wanted have led to more struggle, which has made me face my ego, which has led to pain. Thankfully, things don’t always end there. That pain, it often leads to peace.

When my first child was born in June of 2004, I was ecstatic. I wanted to be the best dad ever, yet was faced with the constrains of time. Back then I was a high school teacher and we didn’t have a lot of money. The school I worked at was ten miles away, and we only had one car. So, I rode my bike to work every day, leaving at 5:30 AM, and often getting home late in the evening.

It was a boarding school, so we often had late evenings because of events. As I rode my bike home at night through the streets of Orlando, I remember thinking if only I had more time so I could be with my daughter, Ana. Well, I got my wish. In August of 2004, Hurricane Charley hit. A tree fell on our house and we lost power for a week. Everything was canceled. At last, I thought — I have more time! We sat at home for a week sweating with our sweet little newborn. Things were inconvenient, and hot. But I got what I hoped for.

At first it was nice when we lost power. Things were slow. I read by candlelight at night. Amy and I had a great time enjoying our little bundle of joy. But after a week of no showers, and living in less-than-ideal circumstances, I confess, I missed my bike rides.

It’s funny (and unfunny) how most of us probably have stories like this.

The “Bemis Twist” and the Parking Lot of Ease

It reminds me of this old Twilight Zone episode called “Time Enough at Last.” Henry Bemis, a man desperate for quiet time to read storms through life annoyed by the presence of others. He wishes for quiet and the absence of other people. One day, a nuclear bomb goes off and Henry survives the blast by hiding in a bank vault. Finding himself the last soul on Earth amidst the ruins of a library, he exclaims that he finally has “time enough at last.” But as he reaches for a book, his glasses fall and shatter, leaving him in total solitude with no way to see the pages.

I bet Henry missed those inconvenient people in that moment — especially the optometrists.

We see this same irony playing out on the world stage every day. We want radical change in our politics or our culture, convinced that “if only” a certain law were passed or a certain leader were put in place or removed, we would finally have peace. But history is a master of the “(Henry) Bemis Twist.” We push for a world of total safety, only to realize we’ve traded away our freedom. I could keep going. So, one more.

I was flying this past week coming home from a trip and bad storms in Chicago meant circling the storm in hopes it would pass. After an hour of circling, the man in the seat two rows back shouted out loud, “this is a violation of human rights!” as he demanded they land the plane. Well, when we ran out of fuel and had to land in Milwaukee, all flights were canceled. He got his wish, just in the wrong city.

I bet that man on the plane missed the wait that would have landed him in his hometown.

There’s an old Joni Mitchell Song called Big Yellow Taxi where she writes about how they paved paradise and put up a parking lot.

Don’t it always seem to go

That you don’t know what you’ve got ‘til it’s gone

They paved paradise, put up a parking lot

What if I told you that your real life is closer to paradise than you think? Yet, when we wish for more convenience, and get that parking lot, we somehow realize we should have left things the way they were. We want the parking lot of ease, only to realize we’ve lost the paradise of the very thing we were trying to enjoy.

In the Bible, in the book of Isaiah - I’m sure Isaiah wanted to have an encounter with God. Yet, when he got it, his response was — “Woe is me, for I am undone!” (Isaiah 6:5) The same thing happened to the prophet Jeremiah (45:3) and the prophet Ezekiel just fell on his face (Ezekiel 1:28). Point: we just don’t know what we’re asking for.

“Woe is me” has happened in the business world too.

After successfully scaling the Twitter platform into a global powerhouse, Jack Dorsey tweeted, “The biggest regret I have is that it became a company,” wishing instead that his creation remained a decentralized tool. Tony Hayward of BP, overwhelmed by the aftermath of his company’s aggressive expansion, infamously complained to reporters, “There’s no one who wants this over more than I do. I’d like my life back.” Similarly, Werner Baumann of Bayer fought for years to acquire Monsanto, but after the deal led to financial ruin, he was forced to admit to shareholders that the move was “a major burden for our company” and that the negative impact on their reputation was “deeply regrettable.”

I’ll say it again — we often don’t know what we are asking for.

Sometimes I see this with the folks I coach. We push for a “parking lot” of total efficiency, success, and “the package” at the end of the line. We want a professional life where everything is paved and predictable. But life and leadership is an ecosystem. It’s relationships, personal sustaining practices, and outside forces we can’t control. It’s not possible, but we try to remove all friction from our lives, and our work—but when we do that, we accidentally kill the spark of creativity and growth. We push for a promotion or some other kind of life “upgrade” only to find the “answered prayer” has isolated us.

True growth though isn’t about paving over the struggle; it’s about the organic, messy process of becoming who we always were—the one we are trying to change or run away from. Grounded wisdom requires us to stop wishing for a frictionless life and start appreciating the real one we actually have.

Finding Home in the Inconvenience

Richard Rohr has written in his book, Immortal Diamond:

“Humans…are preoccupied with stability, efficiency, and control, even if it means boredom and death. Once you know there is an implanted and positive direction to creation, you can go with the primary flow (faith); eventually you will learn to rest there (hope), and finally you will actually live there most of the day (love). You are home at last in an inherently sacred universe.” (p. 90)

Or to put it like I once heard a grandma say, “Everything will be okay in the end. If things aren’t okay, it’s not the end.”

Perhaps the “answer” to our prayers isn’t the arrival of a perfect, paved-over life. Perhaps the answer is the bike ride, the sweat, and the inconvenient people who force us to grow.

The next time you find yourself pleading for a “parking lot” of ease, ask yourself: what paradise are you about to pave over to get it? Maybe you’re already standing in it.

I once heard Cheryl Strayed say, “Don’t let your dreams ruin your life.”

It’s such a strange sentence and I’ve walked around thinking about it for years. It sounds almost irresponsible at first — like she’s telling us to give up on what our hearts truly desire. But what she’s really pointing at is the way our idealized lives can keep us from living the real one in front of us.

Here’s the story. Strayed wanted to write a Great American Novel. But the weight of her ideal kept her paralyzed. Until she let go of that dream and wrote the story she actually had — the one that became Wild.

Sometimes the dream is too pure. Too meaningful. Too “aligned.” And it keeps us from doing anything at all. I hear the old saying in the back of my mind “Don’t be so heavenly minded that you’re no earthly good” (I hate that saying).

The Weight of Idealism

I was talking with a friend in midlife the other day. She’s thoughtful, values-driven, the kind of person who wants her work to matter. And she was wrestling with whether taking a sales job would be a betrayal of her values. Would it pull her away from the deeper calling she feels?

It’s an important question at any time of life, but it carries a particular weight in the middle. It’s the shift from asking “What do I want?”—which is about our own desires—to asking “What’s faithful?”—which is about our responsibilities to the world around us. It’s the move from “What pays?” to “What’s true?” One is about satisfying the ego; the other is about honoring the soul. Sometimes being “true” means taking the job that simply pays the bills so that your deeper calling has the room it needs to breathe, without the crushing pressure of having to provide a paycheck.

I found myself thinking of Parker J. Palmer, who I interviewed a few months back (you can watch the video here). He shared that vocation is not about striving toward some ideal self, but about asking your life what it wants to do with you. It takes some time to get clear answers to this question. In the meantime, sometimes one needs to do the normal work that leads to a tiny paycheck so you can pay your bills. Sometimes have to muddle through so we can get the space to get curious and explore the more idealistic questions. And there, in the obscure, you’ll find yourself learning and growing. It’s quiet. It’s unimpressive. you know, mustard seed stuff. Not every step in a faithful life looks spiritually impressive.

Transformation doesn’t happen by escaping life but by entering more deeply into it. The job that feels misaligned might actually be the place where your ego softens, your compassion grows, or your assumptions get dismantled. We don’t always know which experiences are forming us.

A few days back I was talking with another friend who’s nearing 70. He said something that resonated. “The older you get, the faster time goes, and you begin to question yourself less. You just do what you think you need to do. And then before you know it… it’s done.” There was no anxiety in his voice. Just clarity. Almost relief.

At some point you realize that over-analyzing doesn’t make the decision more faithful. It just makes you late. You’ve got to move forward.

The Soil of Resurrection

But we often hesitate because moving forward feels less like a victory march and more like a series of small, necessary surrenders. We worry that by choosing the “ordinary” path, we are killing off our higher potential. But death is rarely the end of the story.

The Guatemalan poet Julia Esquivel, who wrote during a time of violence and fear, captured this beautifully when she said: “What keeps us from sleeping is that they have threatened us with Resurrection!”

It’s a startling line. We usually think of death as the threat. But Esquivel suggests we are actually terrified of resurrection—because resurrection only comes after a loss. It requires us to go through the “small deaths” of surrendering our ego, our rigid plans, and our need to look spiritually impressive. We resist moving forward because we aren’t ready to let the old version of our dream die, even though that death is the only thing that allows a new, more resilient life to begin.

Normal life is full of these. You take the job you’re not sure about. You choose provision over passion. You let go of the timeline you imagined. You step into responsibility without certainty.

Each one feels like a small death. But Esquivel’s insight is that these deaths are not the end of the story. They are the soil of resurrection. Something grows precisely because something else was surrendered. This is how we actually get where we are going—not by avoiding the mundane, but by walking straight through it.

I see this all the time in my work as a leadership coach. I spend my days helping leaders and organizations navigate these very tensions—moving from the paralysis of the “ideal” team into the messy, beautiful work of leading the real people right in front of them. Leaders want healthy culture. They want trust. They want teams aligned around a meaningful mission. But they get stuck because of the many small tasks required to get there — the difficult conversation, the clear expectation, the follow-up, the accountability, the slowing down to listen, the naming of tension.

None of these feel inspiring. They feel like small deaths.

You give up being liked. You give up avoiding conflict. You give up the illusion that vision alone changes culture. You give up the dream of effortless leadership.

But those small deaths are exactly what create resurrection in teams. Trust grows. Clarity emerges. People feel seen. Accountability becomes normal. And suddenly the mission that once felt stuck starts moving again. Not because of a grand strategy, but because of a hundred small surrenders.

Living into the Answer

And if I’m honest, I feel this in my own life right now.

At this stage, as I’m mulling over what I want to give my energy to in the second half, my days don’t feel grand. I’m traveling. Coaching leaders. Writing blogs like this one. Making videos for Instagram. Small things. Ordinary things.

And I find myself wondering, what does this all add up to?

That’s where Rainer Maria Rilke has been sitting with me: “Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer.”

His point holds. We don’t build a life all at once. We build it by choosing to stay in motion, even when the path looks ordinary. We move forward because the only way to find the destination is to be willing to take the next, small, unglamorous step.

We don’t build a life all at once. We live our way into it.

——

If you’re feeling the weight of an ideal life keeping you from the real one, I’d love to help you find the grace to move forward. Whether you are leading a team through transition or navigating your own “meantime,” reach out and let’s explore how we can work together to find what’s true.

“…as I lay there thinking of my vision, I could see it all again and feel the meaning with a part of me like a strange power glowing in my body; but when the part of me that talks would try to make words for the meaning, it would be like fog and get away from me” — Nicholas Black Elk

We live in an era of external voices — algorithms telling us what to watch and buy, non-stop notifications calling us to focus on incoming information, and the voices of our culture signaling what’s supposed to matter. But clarity and direction aren’t found in the noise outside; they come from a deeper place.

This hunger for direction — for meaning, purpose, a “vision” — is real. In my recent interview with Dr. Damian Costello on the How People Grow Podcast, we discussed the life of Nicholas Black Elk, a Lakota Medicine Man. His insights provided one of the most interesting interviews I’ve ever done (please check it out), and Dr. Costello pointed out how our problem isn’t the absence of direction — it’s that we’ve tuned ourselves to every other voice except our own.

Even Jesus pointed to this when he said, “My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me.” His teaching points to a way of listening that’s about recognition — hearing what is true and faithful within the deepest spaces of our life.

The Liminal Spaces Where Inner Knowing Emerges

In the interview, Dr. Costello spoke about how we outsource our visions — expecting clarity to come from outside ourselves — rather than the inner compass we were born with.

The real work, he suggests, is in what he calls liminal spaces — those transitional or threshold moments where we are between worlds, not yet formed by the demands of the day, not yet shaped by the rational mind or external noise. These are the moments when our inner voice isn’t drowned out but is given room to breathe.

For me, one of those liminal spaces has been the early morning darkness before dawn. Long before my rational mind has fully woken, I sit quietly, sometimes moving slowly through breathing exercises, sometimes simply sitting still. I’ll sit in the dark for 30 minutes, an hour, or longer — and out of that quiet comes an awareness that isn’t a always clear or rational but a deep inner knowing. What comes to me is more like lyric or art, and these deep inner metaphors often create a palette for me to explore not what others want from me, but what I know to be true about my own path. Most everyone is hungry for this—even my daughter’s college friends.

Recently, my daughter came home from College with four of her classmates. We were talking about what they should do on their visit to Tennessee. “Well, you could go hiking, or see the city… but if you want to go into the mystic, you’d have to meet me at 6 AM.” Well, all four of them showed up at 6 AM the next morning. And the most beautiful and simple thing happened. I taught them how to harness their breath, listen in the quiet, and notice the difference in “liminal space” time.

To me, the fact that four college students would meet me in the dark, long before they have to shows something—these quiet, not‑yet‑shaped moments that strip away the noise and let what’s alive inside us speak—these are the moments that make us rich, if we’ll embrace them—and most are starving for this.

Ancient Wisdom and Thin Places

This practice is rooted in ancient spiritual traditions. Recently, I’ve been researching my mother’s side of the family from Scotland recently (The Dalrymples) and came upon the story of Saint Columba, a sixth‑century monk who founded the monastery on the rugged island of Iona — believed to be an ancient threshold, a true “thin space,” a concept from Celtic Christianity.

Life on Iona was marked by a basic simplicity: long hours of prayer, wind‑blown shores, stone cells, and silence. Our main source for this period is The Life of Columba (Vita Columbae), written in Latin around 697 by Adomnán, the ninth Abbot of Iona and Columba’s successor. According to Adomnán, Columba experienced visions and insights during long periods of prayer and in dreams. One story tells that, while he was still alive, Columba appeared in a dream to King Oswald of Northumbria before the battle of Heavenfield in 634, offering words of encouragement and guidance. He urged Oswald to be strong and face his enemies that night, promising that victory would follow. Wait, you mean Columba appeared to Oswald while he was alive through prayer? Evidenly so. I share this story to show the embrace of these “thin spaces” enabled Columba to enter a space where he could encourage others, even from a distance.

Columba lived in liminal space — between day and night, sea and sky, self and the divine — and it was in that threshold that his inner knowing emerged. These stories show that vision can arise from patience, and immersion in the quiet. The guidance which often comes through these practices results in a deeply cultivated awareness that only comes from repeated discipline and practice.

From Vision to Inner Knowing

When I talked with my monthly Substack subscriber group this past week, we began to notice something: maybe the word vision itself is a barrier. It conjures images of grand plans, strategies, and external revelation. But what we were really describing — in our stories of clarity, direction, and conviction — was something quieter, more intimate, more real: deep inner knowing.

In our busy lives, so dominated by screens and noise, our inner voice gets pushed into the background. But when we enter liminal spaces — whether in early morning darkness, long walks without distraction, or moments of vulnerability and need — that voice begins to reemerge. A voice that isn’t loud or dramatic but deeply truthful.

The hunger for direction is a sign that we are ready to stop outsourcing our wisdom and start listening from within. How hungry are you?

So if you find yourself crying out for a vision, maybe the invitation isn’t to find something new — but to remember what has always been there. Sit in the quiet. Enter the “thin spaces” of your life. Pay attention to what rises when the noise fades. The direction you crave isn’t out there — it is already within you, waiting to be heard.

“Your visions will become clear only when you can look into your own heart. Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakes.” — Carl Jung

In my time as a pastor and my fifteen years as a consultant, I’ve seen more and more how the human soul is a noisy mystery. We carry the imprints of every room we have ever entered—and reaching the bottom of that depth is the work of a lifetime. When was the last time you descended into deep silence? When did you last leave the surface chatter behind to find the bedrock of your being?

It was Blaise Pascal who said, “All of humanity’s problems stem from man’s inability to sit quietly in a room alone.” We see it in our neighborhoods, in our churches, in our businesses, and in our politics. We are a people driven by linear thinking, outside-in approaches, and an increasing sense of urgency. The problem is, as Thomas Merton wrote, “People may spend their whole lives climbing the ladder of success only to find, once they reach the top, that the ladder is leaning against the wrong wall.”

Climbing the Wrong Wall

I don’t want to climb the wrong wall, and I’m sure you don’t either. It feels like death to slow down when the world seems to be speeding by and our peers seem to be finding success. But what if we defined success differently than the accomplishing of our goals? What if success had more to do with being aware of what we really wanted at our core and organizing our lives around that?

I recently had to put this philosophy to the test. The last few months have been incredibly busy, driven largely by the intense process of applying for a PhD program. It required pulling together old transcripts, drafting a research proposal, creating a solid writing sample, and securing recommendations. It also meant deep conversations with my wife and a cross-country flight to meet the faculty and tour the school to see if it was truly the right fit. I went for it, and I’m proud of the work I put in—but in the end, I wasn’t accepted.

Naturally, I found myself wondering: what now? Amidst my usual pace of traveling and working with clients, I decided to do something I’m getting much better at: “de-noisifying” my soul. It’s become a kind of dashboard for me; when I have too many things on my mind, I know it’s time to retreat. So, I went on a two-day silent retreat, a requirement for a training I’ve been immersed in for the last two years.

That retreat paved the way for an exciting 2026. Significant changes are coming to my work, including a rebrand, sunsetting certain projects, and adding new experiences for my clients. One of these involves reaching back to my pastoral roots to integrate “Soul Work” into my practice. To prepare, I’ve spent the last two years training with the Franciscan Spiritual Center near Portland, Oregon, and I can’t wait to bring that depth to the people I serve.

My Rainy Two-Day Silent Retreat

But that’s for later. What I want to share more about now is my retreat.

I went to a tiny house in Turtletown, Tennessee. Turtletown is quiet, and it mostly rained while I was there. But I’d prepped and brought my rain gear, spending two days wandering through the woods, hiking to waterfalls and grassy balds. I had 4 AM mornings and 9 PM bedtimes. It was nice.

I’ve come to believe that the noisy soul isn’t a problem to be fixed; it’s a clue to be followed. The noisy soul is a symptom of over-connectedness to the wrong stuff. The problem of our time isn’t the noise itself, but our lack of connectedness to ourselves. We are tuned to listen to what’s outside of us, not what’s inside. So how do we solve the problem? It’s easy in theory, but hard in practice: Quiet the noise and release the energy our souls carry through a lot of walking.

By the end of the first day, I found myself walking a rainy mountain trail testing an idea we modern-westernized folk don’t usually ascribe to: the idea that we aren’t alone, but that our ancestors are with us. Even the Bible, in Hebrews 12, says that we are surrounded by a “great cloud of witnesses.”

As I walked, I felt the weight of that cloud of witnesses—the reality that our identity isn’t just a solo climb, but a shared inheritance. I began to understand what Chief Plenty Coups of the Crow Nation meant when he said, “The ground on which we stand is sacred ground. It is the dust and blood of our ancestors.” In the Western worldview, we are taught to “get on top” of our lives, but this deeper kinship invites us to realize we are actually standing on the shoulders of those who came before us. My time in silence wasn’t just about escaping the noise; it was about becoming quiet enough to hear the voices that have been trying to guide me all along. So I did it: I called on my ancestors for help and waited to see what would come next.

Returning to my house that night and going to sleep, my Peruvian grandfather came to me in a dream. He was standing at the edge of a jungle speaking words I couldn’t understand. Waking, I sat in the dark for two hours thinking about that scene, and the words “It is important” kept reverberating in me.

Now, you should know that although I have a very practical side to me (the Leadership Development work), I am also a mystic at heart. I believe dreams have significance, and so do our ideas about the themes of those dreams.

The Map to the Bottom

The second day of my retreat, I walked more, thinking about those three words: “It—Is—Important.” And do you know what I came away with? It’s actually quite simple: what I want at my core is important. What you want at your core is important, too.

As my retreat neared a close, I sat with the words of St. Bonaventure (1221–1274), a scholar of St. Francis of Assisi. Bonaventure wrote how “lack of self-knowledge and failure to appreciate one’s own worth make for faulty judgment in all other matters; if you are not able to understand (and accept) your own self, you will not be able to understand (or accept) what is beyond you.”

St. Bonaventure’s guidance was the final piece of the map I needed from my retreat. Perhaps his words can be helpful to you too: without self-knowledge, every other judgment we make is skewed. We cannot lead others, build businesses, or navigate our lives with clarity if we remain strangers to our own souls. My two days in the rain at Turtletown didn’t provide a new “to-do” list; instead, they offered a “to-be” reality. They reminded me that the quiet is the essential meeting place where we finally encounter our worth and the “it-is-important” truths we’ve been outrunning.

I invite you to stop climbing for a moment. Lower the ladder, quiet the noise, and listen. What you find at the bottom might be the only thing that actually matters.

Friends and Followers—Happy New Year!

A few weeks back as we closed out Season 5 of How People Grow with our finale, “Living a Deep Life,” I had the honor of interviewing one of my writing heroes, . After this interview, it’s a good guess to say that at 86 years old, Parker probably isn’t interested in the typical New Year’s discourse of “optimization” or “productivity.” Instead, he offered a challenge that flipped our cultural understanding of success upside-down: We must stop aiming for effectiveness and start aiming for faithfulness.

Why Effectiveness Shrinks Our Lives

Parker noted that when “effectiveness” is our primary metric, we instinctively begin to take on smaller and smaller tasks. Why? Because we only want to commit to things we know we can finish—things where we can see a clear, measurable “win.”

But the “greats”—people like Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and John Lewis—didn’t live by the rule of effectiveness. They took on tasks that were far too big to be accomplished in a single lifetime. They were planting forests they knew they would never sit under. Their lives weren’t about clearing a to-do list; they were about faithfulness to a vision of justice and wholeness.

Identity and Integrity: The Bedrock of Vocation

So, how do we build a foundation to take on these “too-big” tasks? Parker suggests it comes from living out of Identity and Integrity.

• Identity is the “moving intersection” of the inner and outer forces that make us who we are. It’s about listening to your life tell you who you actually are, rather than who you think you ought to be. I have a friend, Dr. that says identity is “an address we currently live at.”

• Integrity is the act of relating to those forces in a way that brings wholeness. It is the refusal to live a “divided life” where our outward actions contradict our inner truths.

As we enter 2026, the world will tell you to be “more effective.” Parker Palmer invites you to be more “integral.” When we align our soul and our role, we stop worrying about whether we can finish the job and start worrying about whether we are standing in the right place—or the right “address.” So, are you where you want to be standing as you start this new year? As I look ahead to 2026, these ideas fuel me. If I want to accomplish something bigger than myself, I need to be standing in the right place.

Watch the Interview

I’ve included the video of our full conversation below. I hope it serves as a companion for you as you navigate the invitations of this new year. It’s unedited in its full form, complete with my dog barking mid-interview. :) Enjoy.

A Few Reflection Questions

1. If you stopped worrying about being “effective” this month, what “too-big” task or dream would you finally have the courage to start?

2. In what area of your life does your “outward role” feel most divided from your “inward soul,” and what is one small step you can take toward integrity?

Find out more about The Center for Courage & Renewal at https://couragerenewal.org/

Enjoy the this interview.

Happy Holidays. In light of the timeframe upon us, I took the time to repurpose a Christmas message I gave in 2018 at a church I helped start. The original title was “Jesus On the Margins.” I wrote it because I sensed at that time a different version of Christianity was taking hold in our region of the country. I reflected on it today, and it seems appropriate to re-share. But this time, in blog form.

I hope you’ll enjoy this short read and reflect on the question: Do I follow the religion about Jesus, or the religion of Jesus?

…..

How a story begins often tells us something essential about the character of the entire narrative. The Gospels are no different. The authors were selective, and every interesting detail included is there on purpose to show the reader something important about Jesus.

Matthew’s introduction to the events after the birth—the arrival of the Magi in Matthew 2:1-12—is a strategic, stunning reveal of what this Child King is all about.

The Best and Brightest from the Margins

These Magi were not just ‘wise men’ in the modern sense; in the Greek language, the word Magi means that they were magicians, sorcerers, or astrologers—think of them as the intellectual elite of the day, they were the court advisors of the Persian Empire (modern-day Iran). They were, quite simply, the best and brightest of the world’s wisdom tradition at that time.

Their journey was epic. Traveling from the edge of Persia to Jerusalem could have been as much as an estimated 1,600-mile trek. To put that into perspective, that’s like traveling from Chattanooga, Tennessee (where I live), to Phoenix, Arizona—a journey that would have taken a group of people about 48 days of straight walking, assuming twelve-hour days. Or, for our European readers, that’s like walking from the tip of Spain to Copenhagen, Denmark. Matthew introduces Jesus with this backdrop because he wants us to understand that God’s way operates on a completely different plane than the wisdom of the world.

The Limits of Wisdom

The Magi arrived in Jerusalem, the urban center of power, asking, “Where is the one who has been born king of the Jews?” This made historical and astrological sense. Rumors of a great king coming from Judea were widespread. The Magi, observing a notable celestial event (likely a rare conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn in 7 BC), understood this to be a sign of a new king’s birth. Remember, they possessed the highest form of secular wisdom available in their day. If anyone could put together the significance of the movements in the heavens, it was them.

Yet, that wisdom reached a wall. The stars could tell them what was happening—a king was to be born—but the stars couldn’t tell them specifically where to find him.

We see this pattern consistently in scripture. Pharaoh’s wise men and Nebuchadnezzar’s magi could sense the significance of their rulers’ dreams but couldn’t interpret them. In each case, the most educated, powerful, and respected men were able to be helpful, to a limit. But in each of these stories, an outsider, a person on the margins—Joseph for Pharaoh, Daniel for Nebuchadnezzar had to be brought in to reveal the true meaning. It’s no different here. What do the Magi find to help make sense of the stars they followed? A poor child, likely placed in a feeding trough in a cave.

This is the first great truth of Christmas in this narrative: the Magi represent the apex of human achievement and knowledge, yet their journey stops short of the true destination. Their questions can only be correctly understood, not in a palace of gold, but in a place of quiet obscurity.

The Shallowness of the Strategic

Only the Scriptures could provide the specifics for the Magi. Finding the educated priests and scribes, the Magi were pointed to the prophet Micah 5:2: the Messiah would be born in Bethlehem, a town of no significant consequence, away from the capital city of Jerusalem.

The Magi’s instinct—to go to Herod in the big city—reflects the dominant culture’s shallow obsession with influence and scale. Worldly wisdom asks, “How is this move strategic?” It prizes political power, money, and ever-increasing numbers. This way of thinking impacts the church too.

I once met with a church planting specialist who had the financial capacity to help us once when we were starting a new church in Southern California. He asked me, “How is your move to this town strategic?” I chuckled and asked him in return, “Was Nazareth strategic?” To his credit, he smiled and said, “you got me.”

The world’s way is one-dimensional, obsessed with linear thinking. Step One will take us to Steps Two and Three until we hit our goals. And while this is helpful sometimes, God’s way is the opposite. The way up is to go down; the way to riches is to give everything away; the way to life is death to self. The Magi, the brightest of their time, went to find a Child King. But they ended up, not in the center of power, but in a small town on the periphery with a baby born in poverty. To me, Christmas is about how God has exposed the superficiality of what the world deems important. Christmas is a reminder that God has made foolish the wisdom of this world.

The Religion of Jesus vs. The Religion About Jesus

This counter-cultural way of God is precisely why I am becoming more and more a fan of the religion of Jesus—the radical teachings of the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5-7)—and increasingly less a follower of the religion about Jesus, which is often what we see in popular “Christianity.”

When the religion about Jesus prioritizes worldly strategy and rationale, it begins to mirror Herod—who was so desperate to protect his authority that he slaughtered every child who might have been the King the Magi described (Matthew 2:16-18). For us, this begs the question of whom have we discarded and pushed out because they threatened our prosperity?

Our popular wisdom chases political supremacy, financial dominance, and social approval. But there is a cost: in seeking power, this version of faith pushes out the powerless. The hungry, the poor, and the immigrant are discarded because they are deemed “unstrategic” to our stability. It is a tragic irony—violating the core ethic of the One it claims to follow.

But the religion of Jesus? It is the pure, revolutionary blueprint that began in Bethlehem. It says, “I was the strongest of all, but I made myself weak. I was rich, but I made myself poor and gave everything away.” Is it any surprise that Jesus taught us in Matthew 5-7 that the kingdom of heaven belongs not to the powerful and self-sufficient, but to the poor in spirit, the hungry, the merciful, and those who seek peace from the bottom up?

Worship is Born at the Edge of Our Limits

When the Magi’s worldly wisdom reached its limits, the Holy Spirit took the reins, guiding them the rest of the way. When they finally saw him, they “rejoiced exceedingly with great joy” (Matthew 2:10). At the limits of their wisdom, they found the wisdom of God, and their response was immediate worship, offering their most valuable gifts: gold (for a king), incense (for a priest), and myrrh (for healing and embalming).

Here’s the encouraging news of this season: when our efforts are exhausted, we must let a Wisdom outside ourselves guide. The miracle of Christmas is that the strongest of all made himself weak so that we, through him, might find what true authority and strength looks like.

This season, what would it look like for you to stop playing by the dominant culture’s shallow rules? The path to true riches and meaning is found not in seeking the center of power and safety, but in humble surrender to the one who redefined what it means to be a King.

The cave you fear holds the treasure you seek.

— Carl Jung

A few days ago, I received perhaps one of the best bits of feedback I’ve ever heard.

Speaking with one of my clients—we’ll call him John—I was listening to updates on his life, movement toward his goals, and more. Then he said it:

John came to me a few months back in full burnout mode. He didn’t want to go to work, he was tired, and drifting into reactive mode. John, a counselor in his early 50s, knew something needed to change. As we began working together, I encouraged him not to try to escape the darkness he was feeling, but to go further into it.

We talked about setting your intentions before bed, learning to listen to your dreams, and then making space in the morning to listen for what may have come up during the night. After a few months of practice, John is getting good at it. And the answers he’s getting are proving to be a guide for the next phase of his life.

Hitting “The Wall”

In her book, The Critical Journey, Janet Hagberg writes about “The Wall”—a time and a place life brings us where we must confront our own barriers to growth and change:

My client, John, came to me knowing he needed to do the work, but he didn’t know how. For many of us, too, we know we need to do the work, but the way is unclear. So, we go back to earlier phases of life and work because they make sense. But in the end, they come up short for us. Have you ever wondered why you (or others) tend to repeat the same patterns over and over again? I can’t say for sure, but maybe it’s an avoidance of The Wall.

The frustrating thing about repeating old patterns is how we guilt ourselves. I should be past this by now, we think. But for some reason, we keep encountering the same stuff. This is partly due to our worldview. The Western way of thinking looks at time as a linear path going from birth to death. One thing comes after another. Our strategies have tactical points, and little bullet-pointed to-do lists that come along too. We are masters at accomplishing our things. But when something goes wrong, we think, here we are again. It may help to think of time differently. What if, instead of viewing time as a linear path, we viewed it as a spiral?

Living in the Spiral

In her new book, Flourishing Kin, Indigenous Wisdom for Collective Well-Being, Dr. Yuria Celidwen touches on how Native Peoples have viewed time differently.

Dr. Celidwen shares how the spiral path contrasts with the Western view of “linearity.” With the spiral view of time, I like to think about re-encountering issues, ideas, or patterns as I make my way around a spiral that starts at my birth and will eventually end at my death. For instance, in my work, I’ve had a history of partnering with a certain kind of person, and that pattern hasn’t always been helpful to me. But when I re-encounter this kind of person, now I realize: Oh, I’ve been here before. I need to try this differently. I don’t guilt myself for repeating the pattern; rather, I look at the encounter as the revisitation of an issue I still need to learn from. But this time, I’ve grown wiser, deeper, and more willing to engage with, or avoid, this kind of person.

Perhaps you have your patterns as well. Maybe it’s a type of romantic partner you tend to be drawn to, or a particular kind of faith community. Maybe it’s a certain kind of work that keeps finding you. This is the spiral path. We can learn from it if we’ll change our view of time.

Conclusion

The journey into the unknown is not a linear sprint, but a spiraling ascent. When you hit “The Wall,” feeling the familiar sting of repeating an old pattern, remember John’s discovery: you are simply re-encountering the issue at a wiser, deeper altitude in your life’s coil. Stop the guilt. The Indigenous wisdom of the spiral path teaches us that you are not stuck; a slight shift in turn will change your perspective and lead to transformation. Take heart: the cave doesn’t hold only fear; it holds the written guidance—the treasure—for the next phase of your life.

I’d be honored if you’d subscribe to my writing. My next book on midlife comes in 2026. Subscribe and you’ll get the first updates when it’s available.

I’m trying something new this week: I’m sharing a video from the most recent How People Grow Podcast interview (Season 5). Our focus this season has been on learning to live a rooted life.

Instead of writing about the interview, I’m delighted to share this video featuring my long-time friend, Jeff Vanderstelt. Jeff is a co-founder of The Soma Family of Churches and serves as the Executive Director of Saturate, a non-profit I’ve worked with for years.

Many years ago, I had left my job as a pastor and was starting my corporate business. Our family originally intended to move to Portland, but our plans changed when we met Jeff. So, we re-located to Tacoma, Washington.

In this interview, Jeff gets very personal as he shares his story of learning to face the hard parts of his story, deal with his issues, and truly come home. In other words, he learned how to simply be himself.

Dear Reader, you are more than what you can do. It’s a gift to learn that and be at peace with being yourself. Jeff tells us more about this in this interview.

Watch the Interview Now

I’m honored to share this conversation with you. Jeff lives near Seattle, Washington with his family and is a man passionate about seeing people care for their souls. Enjoy!

Ten years.

Last week marked ten years since my mother died. I can’t believe how fast time goes. November 5th came and went. I could only write down a few thoughts in reflection (it was a busy day), mostly around how much has changed.

What catalyst pushes us into this interesting place of mid-life? For some, it’s the loss of a job. For others, a health issue, or a marriage that ended. The broader category that applies to most of us is that we have an encounter with suffering.

For me, it was the months of caregiving that came during my mom’s last months of life. I’ve written about this in my book, In the Caverns: The Darkness of Grief and the Dawn of Life Change.

At the time, we lived in California where I was helping start a church and working with a microchip company. Following her death, I tried to get back into the swing of “normal life,” but my body wasn’t having it. After six months of getting lost and losing my ability to focus, we decided we needed a change.

In the closing chapter of In the Caverns I wrote about it:

Making the decision to move away from California was hard. So much work had gone into the life we had there. And as I said earlier, this was why we invited our friends to help us make that hard choice. It felt liberating and safe to make this decision in community. To have outside perspectives helped us believe that we weren’t crazy. They’d seen the signs of our unhealth and had the courage to love us more than the things we could produce. For the first time ever, we considered how our needs did matter. This new world felt like a second phase of life, or a second journey.”

Brennan Manning, the former alcoholic priest turned writer and spiritual guide, wrote about this second-journey experience. “It is a wisdom that gives some things up, lets some things die, and accepts human limitations,” he says. “It is a wisdom that realizes I cannot expect anyone to understand me fully. It is a wisdom that admits the inevitability of old age and death.”

“The second call is a summons to a deeper, more mature commitment of faith where the naïveté, first fervor, and untested idealism of the morning and the first commitment have been seasoned with pain, rejection, failure, loneliness, and self-knowledge.” We’d worked many years toward our dreams, but our road trip ended with the car flipped on its roof skidding toward the shoulder. Does this hurt? Somewhat. Honestly, as the car skidded toward a stop, it felt like a relief.

A Relief?

I’ve thought back to these words I wrote many years ago. Why was it a relief? I think it was because it was the first time in my life I spoke up for what I wanted.

I was raised in a co-dependent household where people didn’t communicate directly. Things were implied and everyone had to adjust around what they thought would keep the other one peaceful. Though I didn’t know this when I was young, this made me amazing at reading a room. This meant I did well as a pastor, and even today as a corporate consultant. Reading a room and rising to the task will get you affirmation in western culture. It might even get you a good paycheck. Problem is, it’ll lead you to full-on burnout—which my mother’s death surely did.

But in these ten years that have passed since my mom died, what have I learned? How have I grown?

The Quiet Courage of Being Me

Mostly, I’ve learned to be me. I’ve learned to not lose myself in my marriage, or my church, or my friendships.

• I’ve learned that David has real thoughts, emotions and feelings. And to learn to speak those is what gives me a voice.

• I’ve learned the difference from being used and being loved. One leaves me exhausted, the other leaves me feeling full.

• And most of all, I’ve learned what I really like. And that what I like and am interested in doesn’t have to be big and impressive.

What Does Your Second Journey Look Like?

So, ten years on, the profound shift isn’t just about what I lost, but what I found: my own voice, my own wants, my own peace with a private (and often quiet) inner life. I learned that showing up as myself—not as the person everyone else needs—is the only way to feel truly full, not endlessly exhausted. And, it’s something I’m still working on.

This process—this forced entry into the “Second Journey”—isn’t unique to me. It’s the painful inheritance of mid-life suffering, whether it’s a death, a divorce, or the sudden loss of your direction.

If you find yourself in the wreckage, if your own “morning program” has ended with a major or minor disaster, maybe it’s time to stop putting your efforts in on cleaning things up and allow the mess. Use the breakdown to start meditating on a few principles for your next chapter:

• Where is your relief? What would make you feel really good? My relief came in realizing I finally got to speak up. Where are you still performing for the room instead of being honest with yourself?

• What are you confusing? I spent a long time willingly offering myself to be used. I thought “being used” by God sounded great. But a good friend said to me, “God doesn’t use us, he loves us”—a profound insight still with me. The “using” wasn’t intentional on the part of others, but it was my issue. Truthfully, I didn’t know how to receive being loved. I confused being busy helping others for the feeling of love. Are the relationships or roles that leave you exhausted actually helping you be steady and healthy? Or are they perpetually wearing you out?

• What matters to you in your inner-most being? I had to learn that my interests don’t have to be big or impressive. What are the small, authentic things you genuinely like, but keep silencing because they don’t fit the ‘old’ impressive version of you? Here’s a hint - do you know what I really love? Rocks, trails, moss and music. Not too impressive. But something about these things has always drawn me. What draws you? It doesn’t have to be big.

The second journey isn’t a race for a new dream. It’s the slow, steady wisdom of giving some things up, letting some things die, and finally, simply, being you.

My next book on midlife comes out in 2026, sign up to receive updates. Thanks for reading.

For the past few weeks, I’ve been exploring the question of how to make the shift into the second half of your life. My guide for this journey has been the Amazonian framework of the medicine wheel, teachings Alberto Villoldo learned from ancient Peruvian wisdom.

A Note on the Framework: I’m taking liberties with Villoldo’s original structure and applying it to the shift into the second half of life. I’ve found its wisdom incredibly helpful and widely applicable.

The Westward Journey: Facing Death

Following the medicine wheel: To the north, we learn the wisdom of our ancestors. To the south, we shed our past, like a snake sheds its skin. To the east, we gain a vision for our lives. Today, we take the westward journey: to face death so we are no longer afraid of it.

Are you afraid of death? Or is it something else?

A 2025 survey from Chapman University found that Americans’ top three fears were corrupt government officials, the fear of a loved one becoming seriously ill, and the fear of economic or financial collapse. Though these fears seem far-ranging, they are all connected to our collective fear of death. When we worry about bad leaders, sick family, or running out of money, we are really worried about losing control, losing what is important to us, and facing the unknown that comes with the end of our lives.

The fear of death is as old as time. Historically, this anxiety has been viewed or managed in varied ways. In the Bible, the reason for God’s Covenants were to ease the fear of death (see Gen. 6:17, 12:1, 15:1, Ex. 14:11-14, Heb. 2:14-15). The ancient Egyptians were preoccupied with preparing for the afterlife, constructing elaborate tombs and utilizing mummification to ensure a successful transition. For those influenced by Buddhism and Hinduism, the cycle of samsara (birth, death, and rebirth) reframes death as merely one stage in a long journey toward enlightenment, mitigating the sharp terror of a singular, final ending.

A contrasting perspective from Indigenous traditions has proven incredibly helpful to me. Alberto Villoldo, who detailed his immersion with Amazonian Shamans in his book The Four Winds, documented their view that regards death not as an end, but as a transformation and an ally—a process that, when understood correctly, teaches one to savor every moment of the present life. This shift leads to a fascinating thought experiment: How could it change things if we viewed fear itself as an ally, a helper to remind us to savor every moment?

Using Fear as an Internal Ally (IFS)

The backdrop of my next book relates to the fears that arose after years of intensifying chest pain, caused by my main culprit: over-responsibility. For a long time, I held a superman mentality, believing my purpose was to help solve everyone else’s issues—an impossible burden.

One Christmas, the increasing pain had me convinced I wouldn’t make it to New Year’s Day. So I had an idea: what if, instead of pushing this fear away, I spent intentional time with it? I woke early on New Year’s Day and decided to write farewell letters to my loved ones and outline instructions on what to do if I actually did die. This exercise was incredibly therapeutic and facilitated a strangely peaceful day. I didn’t realize it then, but I was using death as an ally. The result was a day of special moments with my family that I’ll savor forever.

The Letters: What I Actually Wrote (and What Broke Open)

6 a.m. New Year’s morning. House silent. Chest still aching, sharp pains.

I opened my laptop and started typing:

> To my wife: If this is it… I’ve treasured our days together. You are my greatest love…

> To my daughter: I have no regrets, only that I won’t see you continue to grow…

> To my son: You carry more wisdom in your body than you know… listen to it.

I wrote instructions:

- Where the will is

- Updated passwords and other info on bank accounts and other needed resources

- Friends I wanted to carry my casket… and more.

Then — something began to shift.

The pain in my chest didn’t vanish, but it changed tone.

I closed the laptop.

For the first time in years, I wasn’t bracing for collapse.

That day, I played games with my kids, and watched movies, like a man with borrowed time.

I savored the time with my wife.

Death didn’t take me. It sat down beside me — and became my coach.

This experience illustrates a powerful psychological concept: your mind is a community, not a single unit. In the Internal Family Systems (IFS) model, we view our mind as composed of various ‘parts’—like a scared inner child or a protector carrying heavy burdens (my ‘over-responsibility’ part). My chest pain and the fear driving it was a desperate message from a Fear Part screaming for attention to protect me from burnout and potential death.

When we push a fearful part away, it only screams louder. Instead, I chose to listen. By writing the letters, I was telling that protective part, “I hear you. I see the danger, and I am taking concrete steps to prepare. You can relax now.” This act of acknowledging the fear as a legitimate internal communication system—an ally—is the key to deep integration and peace.

Stepping Out of Isolation: Kin Relationality

But why does this fearful need for singular control even exist?

Indigenous scholar Yuria Celidwen introduces “Kin Relationality”, a profound critique of the isolated Western self. Kin Relationality asserts that we are not autonomous, separate entities; instead, our lives are intrinsically woven into the fabric of the cosmos—interconnected with the land, our ancestors, our communities, and the future generations.

When we attempt to view ourselves in isolation—as a single, self-governing unit responsible for all outcomes—we are essentially breaking from the natural fabric of how the world works. This fracture creates the overwhelming sense of burden, lack of control, and ultimately, the intense fear of death. To truly use fear as an ally, then, is not just about listening to an internal part; it’s about acknowledging that the burden of isolation is too heavy. It’s about choosing instead to step back into the flow of Kin Relationality, recognizing that we are held and supported by the whole.

For you, maybe you’re not afraid of death. But you’re likely afraid of something. What would it look like for you to use that fear as an ally?

As I continue to write about some of the shifts needed to morph from the first to second half of life, I want to touch more on things we need to shed. But for today, I’ll leave it at this: Look at your fear not as an obstacle, but as an ally to the integrated, savored life you crave.

Thanks for reading. Please share with others who may relate.

In my last few articles, I’ve been touching on the question of how to make the shift into the second half of your life. As a guide, I’ve been using the framework of Alberto Villoldo, a teaching he learned in the Amazon from ancient Peruvian wisdom.

To the north, we learn the wisdom of our ancestors. To the south, we shed our past, like a snake sheds its skin. Today, we’ll talk a bit about the eastward journey—to gain a vision for our lives.

I’m reluctant to make this a “how-to” article because this journey isn’t linear. For some, finding a career and purpose within it seems to “work” as far as finding a life vision. For others, raising a family and living a life of meaning also seems to work. Still, for others, articulating an important cause to give oneself to gets them on a path to living a meaningful vision. These are all good. But for me, though the vision for my life has contained elements of these areas, the vision I’ve sought had evaded me—until recent years.

How I Thought I’d Find Life’s Deepest Answers

For years, I hoped an angel would appear to me in a holy vision, call my name, and give me my mission. Similar to the old funny song by David Wilcox, where an angel shows up by his bedside and gives him his mission to go down to East Asheville Hardware before he goes to Lowe’s. You ought to listen to the song—it’s great.

East Asheville Hardware - LISTEN

But as much as I sought this path through religious training, fasting, prayer, and faithfulness to my convictions, the vision eluded me. It’s not that all the pursuits I gave myself to didn’t bring satisfaction or a sense of meaning; it’s just that I knew something was missing, but I couldn’t articulate what. All the things I did were mostly built around the competencies I possessed, yet lacked the soul of who David was.

How Things Actually Worked

The reality is, the way a vision for my life framed up had to do with my own willingness to accept pain, suffering, loss, and tragedy. There’s not time for me to go through all my losses here, but I share this only to say that these unwelcome visitors in my life brought me to confront my own darkness.

This darkness, Saint John of the Cross called “The Dark Night of the Soul.” This Dark Night isn’t the same as depression, though some elements might cross over. It has to do with more of a blankness that is God-designed. It’s when all the tools and tricks we used before just stop working, and all we have is “not knowing” in our spiritual lives. We come to the end of our resources and have to learn quiet, and waiting.

My most recent dark night happened three years ago with the incredible chest pain I’ve been writing about. This caused me to eventually step away from a church I’d helped start and lighten up on myself with the fast-paced schedule I’d kept most of my life. I was exhausted; I took three naps a day and stopped all the fast activity (running, mountain biking, back-to-back meetings, and too many clients). I needed to allow myself to be exhausted. And in the rest… something magical happened.

After gaining ten pounds and getting rested up, I changed my diet and started exercising again. From there, I started getting curious, and through that curiosity, I found my way.

How to Use Curiosity to Get Clear on Your Vision

When I speak of “finding my way,” what I mean is that when I began to apply my curiosity to my own life, some things started to come together. Here are some things I wondered:

• Why have I had a certain set of recurring dreams my entire life? What themes have they always had?

• How is it that I’ve always maintained a broad network of friends from very interesting and opposite backgrounds?

• What were the things I was interested in when I was young? How does that point to parts of me that I suppressed in the name of “being responsible?”

• What kinds of people have I always been naturally attracted to? What does that say about who I really am?

It might serve you well to ask similar questions of yourself, though other questions might be appropriate in your situation. But for me, here are some of the answers I discovered:

• My recurring dreams much of the time had to do with flying through a certain way of breathing.

• My maintaining of a broad network had to do with my thirst for learning truth “at the margins.”

• When I was young, I was mostly interested in moss, trails, ants, and Native American art and beliefs. Reason being, I am Native American. And though I wasn’t raised to embrace this part of myself, Native North Americans and South Americans look quite similar, so no one else around looked like me.

• I’ve always been attracted to older, wiser men. This hinted at a trajectory of life for me—the hunger to be that kind of man when I am old.

So what happens when you stir all the answers to your curiosities together? You find your vocation. And your vocation is something that will transcend any job you’ll ever have. I discovered that no matter the job, I’ve always brought the same David—the curious one, the healer, the artist, the lover of the mystical, and the lover of people.

I didn’t realize this by thinking really hard; I realized this by embracing the art of my life. I’ve come to believe that some of us make sense of our lives less in a linear fashion, and more like art. You know, a good song has a lyric that doesn’t quite make sense, so you think deeply on it. Or a good painting draws you in and ignites your imagination. It’s only in pondering for a really long time that we “get it.”

How My Dreams Helped Me

Perhaps the biggest helper in gaining the clarity I’m describing has been my dreams. In this episode of my podcast, I interviewed a woman named Ashi—a yoga and breath work teacher. The way I met Ashi was through a dream. Yes, I said that. It really does happen.

In one particular dream, I was being stalked by three lionesses through an empty neighborhood. I escaped them by ducking into an empty house and flinging myself out a window. On the other side of that window was another dimension (similar to the picture at the top of this article) in which I could fly—through breathing. Though I don’t have time to tell you the rest of the dream, what I will tell you is that in the following days, I met three women who all told me the exact same sentence. And though I don’t have time to tell you that sentence, what I will tell you is this—the third woman I encountered was Ashi.

The following day as I was talking with my wife Amy, I realized that I’d been dreaming of flying through breathing my entire life. A ping of emotion hit me, and I realized I’d just met a breath work teacher. I called up Ashi again and asked her to mentor me.

Through my relationship with her, I’ve discovered a way of encountering the quiet I’ve never known. It’s a way of prayer and meditation that’s enabled me to call back my dreams from the night before and examine them, like a good work of art. And through those dreams, a new life seems to be shaping up before me.

Takeaways — How to Get a Vision For Your Life

Finding your way isn’t a straight line to a mission statement; it’s a slow, artful unfolding. Based on my journey through the dark night and into a life guided by curiosity, here are a few things you can put into practice right now:

1. Give Yourself Permission to Stop

If you’re feeling burnt out or that your usual methods aren’t working, it’s not a sign of failure—it might be the God-designed blankness of the Dark Night of the Soul.

• Cancel Something Big: I had to step away from the church I helped start. What is one major commitment or fast activity (running, back-to-back meetings) you can stop completely for a month or two?

• Embrace the Exhaustion: Stop trying to power through. Give yourself an entire day of rest and naps with zero guilt. You need to allow your body and soul to catch up. The magic only happens in the rest.

• Lighten Up on the Schedule: Reduce your pace until you feel bored. That boredom is the fertile ground where true self-discovery begins.

2. Begin Your Personal Curiosity Audit

Your answers aren’t hidden in a holy vision; they are woven into the art of your life and the things you’ve always loved. You realize your vocation not by thinking harder, but by pondering longer.

• Journal Your Old Themes: Ask yourself those hard, honest questions I explored:

• What kinds of people have I always been drawn to? What does that say about the person I truly am?

• What were my obsessions when I was young (moss, trails, art)? How did I suppress that part of me for the sake of being “responsible”?

• What are the recurring dreams you’ve had over the years? Write them down and look for a common theme.

• Look for Truth at the Margins: Notice your broad network of friends. What opposite backgrounds or marginalized viewpoints are you naturally drawn to? Your thirst for that “truth at the margins” is a key part of your vocation.

• Stir the Answers Together: Don’t try to make the answers logical. When you stir your answers about dreams, childhood interests, and networks together, you’ll start to see a pattern—that curious healer, artist, and lover of the mysteries you’ve always been.

3. Engage with Your Dream Life

Your dreams are often a truer guide than your conscious mind. They are a work of art meant to be examined.

• Ask Before You Sleep: Before bed, ask God to speak to you in your dreams. Simply state the intent to be open to finding answers your dreams. Keep a notebook and pen right beside your bed.

• Ponder the Art: Don’t rush to interpret the symbols. In the morning, write the dream down and then just ponder it. Don’t think; feel its impact, like a good painting or a good lyric.

• Look for the “Ping”: Like my encounter with the breath work teacher, the dream will often connect to real life in an unexpected way. Watch for a ping of emotion or a curious coincidence (like meeting three people who say the same thing) that tells you a dream detail is relevant to your next step.

I’d love to hear how this process serves you.

In my next blog I’m writing on the last of the four directions — facing your fears. Check back soon.

Over the last few weeks, I’ve been sharing a few ideas based on Alberto Villoldo’s findings in the jungles of Peru—the belief that people need to take four journeys in life:

• To the north, to learn the wisdom of your ancestors (last week’s article)

• To the south, to shed your past like a snake sheds its skin (today’s subject)

• To the east, to gain a vision for your life

• To the west, to face death so you are no longer afraid of it

In today’s article, I’d like to answer a few questions about shedding the past. First, how do you know when you need to shed the past? Second, how do you do it? Third, why it matters.

How You Know You Need to Shed the Past

In his book Waking the Tiger, Peter Levine talks about what causes suffering in people. He writes that suffering happens when “we are unable to discharge the energy that is locked in by the freezing response. … Those who are able to discharge that energy will be restored.”

I had a friend explain it to me once using the example of animals in the wild. When a gazelle gets attacked by a lion and survives, it goes through a kind of ritualistic shaking. It’s nature’s way of releasing the trauma. For us humans, we often don’t have rituals like this. So the trauma becomes lodged in the body. The result—there are trauma “loops” that play consistently in our heads. We play and replay the story of the harm. It’s the mind’s attempt to resolve it. The problem is, you don’t release trauma in the mind; you have to release it in the body.

Do you find yourself consistently playing and replaying the stories of what happened to you? That’s a possible sign you may need to shed the past. I’d like to share some of the process I walked through over the last few years, though what works for you may differ.

How To Shed The Past

Talking with my wife recently (who is a counselor), I asked her, “What guidance would you give someone who wants to shed their past?” She laughed a little and reminded me of an old and popular children’s story—We’re Going on a Bear Hunt.

In the story, a family sets out on an adventure, only to face one obstacle after another—tall grass, a cold river, thick mud, a dark forest, even a snowstorm. Each time they remind themselves, “We can’t go over it, we can’t go under it… we’ve got to go through it.” The lesson is simple: the only way forward is through. And this is exactly what my wife told me—you’ve got to go through it.

This reminds me of a story Parker Palmer wrote about many years back. He was rappelling down a cliff on an Outward Bound expedition. Working down the stone of the mountain cliff, he encountered a cave inlet in the rock and began to swing, having lost his footing. From up high, someone shouted that it was time for him to learn the motto of Outward Bound—“If you can’t get out of it, get into it!” In the same way, if you can’t get out of your story, you’ve got to get into it.

There were many things that happened during my years of intense therapy that helped me get into my story, and I can’t list them all. But some of the most important practices I adopted involved moving my body—kind of like the gazelle shakes after it’s been attacked. I first learned this during one such retreat, where a facilitator led us through something called Gestalt therapy.

In short, Gestalt Therapy is an approach that helps you stop circling the past in your head and instead enter into it with your whole self—mind, body, and emotion. It works because, rather than just talking about what happened, you’re invited to embody it and move through it. For me, this meant sitting in a chair and then working through the “empty chair” exercise.

I called in friends, family, religious figures, and even a bank that once took advantage of me. In each instance, I spoke directly to the people and parts of my story that still had a grip on me. It also meant pounding a mat with a baseball bat, letting my body release the anger and grief I had carried for years. As Fritz Perls, the founder of Gestalt Therapy, once said, “Lose your mind and come to your senses.” What this means is that healing doesn’t usually come by thinking your way out of trauma, but by allowing your body to feel, move, and finally let go.

Other practices I explored alongside Gestalt therapy included other therapeutic retreats, spiritual direction, mentoring, and changes to my diet. Each of these contributed in different ways to helping me shed the old stories I had been carrying. There’s more, but I’ll save that for the book.

But after you’ve gotten into your story, how do you know when you’re done? Again, this isn’t a definitive answer, and I’m only answering for myself. You know you’re ready to shed the past when you wake one day and it’s no longer the predominant story in your mind. You’re ready to let go when you’re ready. Sometimes this takes a long time, and that’s okay.

Why This Matters

The reason it matters that we shed our past is this—if unhealed, it will drive everything we do, and probably in a direction no one will like. An unhealed past is a recipe for disastrous living. To quote Richard Rohr, “If we do not transform our pain, we will most assuredly transmit it.”

A perfect example of pain transmitted outward is Walter White from Breaking Bad. He carried all his fear, frustration, and feelings of failure inside, and instead of facing them, he let them drive his choices. The result? He became controlling, manipulative, and destructive—hurting everyone around him. That’s exactly what Rohr means: unhealed pain doesn’t stay inside; it gets passed on.

On the flip side, we can look at someone like Maya Angelou. She carried incredible pain from a traumatic childhood, but instead of letting it control her, she faced her story and transformed it. Through her writing, teaching, and speaking, she turned her suffering into something that healed and inspired millions. Her pain became a source of empathy, wisdom, and hope—showing that when we step into our story and release it, we can become a force for good in the world.

Have you ever noticed that superheroes and villains often have the same story? The only difference is what they choose to do with their pain.

We see untransformed stories transmitting themselves everywhere—it’s happening in our faith institutions, in our politics, and in our own homes. Don’t you want to stop the cycle? I know I did. And one of the ways I did it was by acquiring a better vision for my life, which I’ll write about next week. But for you, are you ready to step into your story, feel it in your body, and finally let it go? Because until you do, it will keep running the show—quietly shaping the lives of everyone around you.

The American Bargain

When I was a little boy, my Peruvian Grandfather would visit. He was a gifted painter and passed the time during the summer months painting pictures of things I’d never seen— scenes from the Amazon, the floating reed islands of Lake Titicaca and more. Looking into the landscapes of his imagination I wondered what he’d seen, and what his life was like. As I watched his thick dark hands with the brush, I knew his life was very different from the one I lived in East Tennessee.

Though I was often exposed to my Peruvian side through my dad’s love of Peruvian flute music, and the occasional visits from my aunts (his sisters), it wasn’t till I was much older that I’d come to appreciate my heritage. I wasn’t taught directly to disown this part of my story, but the messages were indirect. And over a long period of time, this would create a kind of damage that’s taken years to clean up.

My mother was a “white” woman, more specifically, she was of Scottish decent. Her family came in 1775 to Boston but got caught up in the Revolutionary War, so they headed south and found a home in North Carolina.

In 1775, Scottish people in the American colonies were considered white, a designation that placed them above enslaved Africans and Native Americans. At the time, they were still often seen as a distinct ethnic group, but they were also part of a larger social hierarchy that would unite them with other European ethnicities under the umbrella of “whiteness."

This concept of “whiteness” has a long history in the United States, and I do not intend to elaborate on it here except to name it. But briefly, to help, professor of law at Georgetown University, Sheryll Cashin explains in her book Loving: Interracial Intimacy in America and the Threat to White Supremacy that "In a social world in which whiteness is central, where white people have the luxury of thinking of themselves as individuals and never in racial terms, seeing or talking about race is unnecessary and often forbidden, except for intertribal talk about the problems of others” (p. 127). I mention this not to pick on anyone, but just to note that it’s a position of privilege to not have to think about race. If you disagree with this statement, take it up with Cashin, or talk with your friends of color and see if it resonates.

The problem with that luxury, as my mother probably knew, is that it doesn’t extend to everyone. When I had to check a box for which race I belonged to in grade school, her instructions were simple, “just check ‘white.’” So that’s what I did. The problem was, I wasn’t. As a child I had to listen to people ask my mom if I was adopted because my skin was considerably darker than hers. I was called names too— “Indian” (in derogatory tones), spic, wetback, beaner, half-breed, and even once I was called a Chinaman and told to go back to where I came from. These were overt reminders; I was not “white.”

I share all this background to paint a picture as to why I disowned my “brownness.” Who would want all those insults? Indeed, there was a social contract in place, one that allowed those with fairer skin tones to pass undetected. The problem is, unless Native American, all our ancestors came from somewhere else. The issue those with tan skin face is just that it’s just more apparent.

What People Lost to Become American

Why does this matter? It matters because in order for us to become American, we all had to lose something. What we lost is what we were, what we are. And though I can’t speak for what that means for you, I can speak to what that means for me. In the West we tend to identify ourselves with things we can lose — our jobs, our children, our hobbies. But we are more than what we do. We are “who we are.” Similar to Moses in the Old Testament who asked God what his name was. The answer: “I Am that I Am.” If indeed we are made in the image of God, we can answer the same, “I am who I am.” But do you know who you are?

In ancient cultures, one’s identity was connected to lineage. Individual identity was inseparable from the collective. I wonder if the issues we face today in the United States where we regularly appeal to the constitution and our founders is that we’ve lost our lineage. Perhaps our appeal to the constitution and the founding fathers is our attempt to be from somewhere? Nevertheless, here’s what I’m getting at: When we disown valuable parts of ourselves, our lineage and our story, we will appeal to aspects of ourselves to form an identity that innately aren’t able to bear that weight.

Reclaiming My Story

In my last substack article I shared how I battled chest pain for about ten years. There were many reasons for this, but the biggest one was that I’d disowned a major part of who I am. In order to reclaim that, I’ve been busy. I’ve read a lot, consulted with relatives and here’s what I’ve come out with — to know your ancestry is to know your identity. And your identity is anything you have that can’t be taken.

I found that my story held a beautiful duality. When I began digging into my Peruvian side, I found a people who built an empire that, at its height, was the largest in the Americas, stretching for over 2,500 miles. The Inca Empire, which reached its peak around 1527, was a marvel of organization that spanned modern-day Peru, Bolivia, Ecuador, and parts of Argentina, Chile, and Colombia. In 2013 when I visited Machu Picchu, I sat atop those massive stone ruins thinking, “my people built this.”

But it’s not only about my Peruvian story—my Scottish side has taught me much too. We are a people who left together, nearly the whole clan, to search for a better life with opportunities. We valued family, so much so that my great-grandfather on my mother’s side was born on a ship in September of 1886 while his parents were returning from a visit to Scotland. My mother wrote a book on our Scottish ancestry fueled by the curisoity of why he was born on that ship. The answer is relatively simple - we are a people that values connection, even when it meant traveling at a delicate time.

This is the gift of knowing your story. It’s not about finding a place to belong, but about understanding that you already belong—you are a culmination of all the people who came before you. The wisdom they carry is now yours, if you’ll learn it. Their wisdom and their stories can serve as a guide for how you navigate your life today and tomorrow. Because note: the most important part of our story is not the history we've been given, but the future we build with the history that lives in our bones.

In embracing the fullness of our lineage, we begin to heal. In doing so, we can help craft a world that honors our shared humanity and builds a beautiful and just society rooted in the stories of our diversity.

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I’ve been thinking a lot about the role religion plays in our lives as well as the ceremonies we participate in that help our bodies get along with what our minds are thinking. We are always in transition and putting these things in place are essential.

This month on t…

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In my last post, I shared about a trip I took to Puerto Rico with some friends where I discovered a better framework for life-stage development. Today, I'd like to share more about that framework. To sum up my last post:

… the Western framework for change looks something like this: deal with your past, get healthy, live a good and peaceful life, retire, and enjoy more peace. The problem for me was that I had done all of those things and still felt like I was having a heart attack. I could sit with a therapist all day and tell them the reasons why things were the way they were, but it wasn't changing the pain my body sent me.

The Backstory: A Therapeutic Intensive

A few years before my Puerto Rico trip, I went to a therapeutic intensive. One exercise we did was to map out our life story in 5-10 year increments with pictures. As I worked on it the night before, I could feel my body heating up—a sign of trauma. The next day, I poured my heart out while sharing it with the group. While I go into more detail in my upcoming book, I'll share one of the main themes I discussed that day: prejudice and racism.

The Difference Between Prejudice & Racism

We all have prejudices. We see people who look different from us and make assumptions. But prejudice isn't just about appearance; it’s an attitude we take about others, judging them by the way they talk or live. Racism, however, is about the systematic power plays supported by laws against certain people groups.

Here are two examples:

• From the 1870s through the 1960s, Jim Crow laws legally enforced segregation and disenfranchisement, denying Black Americans basic rights and freedoms.

• From the 1930s to 1968, redlining policies systematically denied African Americans (as well as Hispanic, Jewish, and Asian Americans) homeownership in certain areas and prevented them from taking certain loans.

My point in sharing this is to highlight that while we can work through our personal prejudices with a little self-reflection, racism needs more. It requires a full-on dismantling of the unjust legalities and power dynamics that keep it in place.

My Story

Growing up as one of the few mixed-race kids in my small East Tennessee town brought plenty of prejudice in the form of micro-aggressions. During the therapeutic intensive, I shared some of those experiences: I’ve been called plenty of names and told to go back where I came from. But my eyes were truly opened to the systematic racism at play in some of our institutions when I discovered, many years after the fact, that I had been given an unfair mortgage because I had checked the Hispanic box when applying for a loan for my first house.

After I shared this part of my story, one of the facilitators took me aside and said, "David, I get it. I grew up half-Iranian in a small rural town in Mississippi. For a long time, I disowned this part of my story in order to survive. For you, I wonder what it would look like for you to dig into the Peruvian side of your story?”

This question changed my life, though not right away. Eventually, his words sent me on a reading spree about Peru. This is important because before that trip to Puerto Rico, I had grabbed a book at random from Amazon called The Dance of the Four Winds by Alberto Villoldo.

An Ancient Framework for Life-Stage Development

I'm not a detail-oriented person. I usually just read the titles and judge a book by its cover. All it took for me to grab Villoldo’s book was to see someone write in a review that he was the "Indiana Jones of Psychology" in the 1980s. At the time, Villoldo was a psychiatry student traveling to learn from Indigenous people in the jungles of Peru.

Sitting on the beach in Puerto Rico, what caught my attention was the ancient Inca belief that people needed to take four journeys in life, a kind of "medicine wheel" or a directional way of lived prayer.

• To the north, to learn the wisdom of your ancestors

• To the south, to shed your past like a snake sheds its skin

• To the east, to gain a vision for your life

• To the west, to face death so you are no longer afraid of it

Upon reading this, I put the book down and stared at the ocean waves. This is my problem, I thought. I’ve been so focused on pain that I’ve neglected these other key aspects of life.

Walking Out The Four Journeys

What would it look like for any of us to dig into our genealogy to learn the wisdom of those who bore our names? To learn their stories, their customs, and the beliefs of their people from another time and place?

As Americans, many of us had to lose who we were to become Americans. That's why so many of us just call ourselves "white," but we aren't. We’re German, Irish, English, Scandinavian, and more. For those of us with more melanin in our skin, we downplay the unique beauty we brought from South America, Africa, Asia, and other parts of the world in order to fit into the dominant culture. What damage is that causing all of us? For me it was chest pain, what is it for you?

In our context, we understand getting free from our past, so I won't touch on that one too much. But what about gaining a vision for your life? What would it look like to invest in yourself and in relationships in such a way that you were crystal clear on why you are here on this earth and how you were meant to serve?

And what are you afraid of? How could you face those things so you aren’t ruled by them?

For the next few weeks, I’ll be writing about these four areas.

Conclusion

We often try to fix our problems by focusing on the past, but a greater healing might require more than just mending what's broken. What if it also means seeking a future vision, embracing ancestral wisdom, and facing our fears? The ancient framework of the Inca challenges us to move beyond just healing our pain. It invites us to reclaim lost parts of ourselves, honor our stories, and live with purpose. Consider your own life: where have you been focusing? What would it look like to shift from just healing the past to embracing your present purpose and future vision?