I will be writing soon about what I call rebuilding the compass.

We all go through disorienting times and situations, and when we do it can feel like a part of our compass has disappeared. Where is True North when someone important dies? The gravitational pull feels weaker when the things that were steady and known in our lives disappear. And when this happens we have to find or create new ways to orient ourselves in this world.

A puppy can help with that, for certain, bringing new energy, needs that must be met, pleas to leave the gd screen and go out and play. All good stuff.

Rebuilding the compass is a skill we all need to work on. More soon.

In the meantime: little Buster, big world, early morning sun in Vermont.

This summer I learned, because I had forgotten, that many years ago I sold some of my photography equipment to my dear friend, Katie. I had been thinking deeply about returning to this great love of mine and when I heard some of my early equipment was in her loving care and she was no longer using it, I was really happy.

Most of you haven’t been in my life long enough to know that I spent a good chunk of time devoted to photography. In fact, for a very long time I was rarely without a camera.

I loved looking at the world through a lens. I especially loved portraiture. I think peoples’ faces are so beautiful.

I just happened to be driving past this gentleman shoveling snow one day. He was so captivating that I pulled over and asked if I could take his picture. It remains one of my all-time favorites. A perfect Vermont moment.

I am a great admirer of the work of Seneca Ray Stoddard, who grew up in upstate New York (born in 1844) and traveled the world as a photographer and writer, which is what I wanted to do when I was a girl, way before the internet made this everyone’s dream job.

In 1906 he created a publication called Stoddard’s Northern Monthly, a collection of stories and photographs from the Adirondack region.

In my lifetime I’ve watched print magazines and newspapers disappear, and I mourn that loss. Nothing on a screen will ever compare to the feeling of holding the thing in your hands, putting it down, picking it back up later. The worn feeling of the paper, over time. I love that Seneca Ray had that idea in the early 1900’s and I have always wanted to create some kind of monthly publication, but the cost of printing and shipping is crazy, so I concede in my own attempts to create something with words and pictures.

Though I write here at Substack to share my ideas and thoughts about the spiritual life, there are stories that are more personal, and those I’ve decided to share in a different way. I’m creating a short collection of stories and photographs on a regular basis and offering them for a small fee.

I realize that not all of you use Venmo, but that’s the easiest way to do this for now. To set up a payment system otherwise means fees for processing, and that drives me nuts. If you need an alternative and would like a copy of the collection, drop me a line and we’ll figure it out.

The collection is a pdf, which I will email or text to you. The cost is $7, payable HERE.

The photos in this small collection are from previous travels, but in the coming days I’ll include more of what I see now. I cannot wait to have my old Nikon back in my hands.

When I saw the inside that grocery store (above) in Kansas, I laughed because there were more trophies than health and beauty aids. The world is pretty entertaining if you pay attention.

Thank you for being a reader.
xo,mo

Having a puppy in my life has given me a renewed opportunity to be here now. Something I think most of us try and fail at an infinite number of times.

With a puppy, the moment is so intriguing.

Unlike a new baby, a puppy can romp through the fields and down the dirt road, exploring a little further each day. Everything is so new and exciting. The smells, sounds, the view from ankle-height. It must be fascinating to experience our world like Buster does right now. And being with him is opening my eyes and ears anew.

Before Buster arrived, it had been a long time since I took a 6am walk down our dirt road, I’m ashamed to say.

We are fortunate to live in Vermont, with lots of open fields, woods, brooks and and vegetation to explore right outside our doors. It’s safe, and abundant in opportunity. Raising a dog in this place is just pure joy and taking him for our morning walks has re-awoken for me the magic of here.

With a puppy you have the chance to sit still, to just be near him while he chews or explores or sleeps. Life has a different speed. While I’m doing just that, sitting here on the little porch outdoors, Buster with nose to the ground, walking around, a hummingbird swooped in and took a sip of nectar from the flowering Rosemary plant.

I have often thought (and said) that I don’t want to look back at my life after I die and feel regret for all I didn’t do or was afraid to do or the ways I chose to behave when I could have chosen differently. It’s pretty easy to know how to ward off that scenario: to live with wholeheartedness now. Or at least to try. I can’t pretend that any of this high-falutin talk is easy. It’s not.

It’s so hard to choose to live in the right now, and not full of tortured regret for past events and tortured fear about an unknown future. I think it actually kind of takes courage to choose now and not before or after. The mind is insanely good at whipping up a shitstorm of scenarios, it’s easy to become a prisoner of the infinite possibilities that might have played out and may come to pass.

What a colossal waste of time and energy. Give your poor self a rest.

I wonder if we do get the chance to have a life review after we die. I have read and heard that that is what happens. Can you imagine, watching your life in replay, seeing all the chances you had, the infinite opportunity life provided. Seeing how you kept yourself small and fearful when you could have chosen large and curious.

Imagine living now so that when Your Life Review is playing on the big screen you look at it and say, “Wow, that was a really good life! I was nice, I was good, I tried hard things, I helped little old ladies cross the road (I actually did do this once, in New York City in 1998), I saw the humor, I enjoyed the blueberry pancakes.

I remember hearing once that a friend of the actress Natasha Richardson, who died in a ski accident, contacted her through a medium and Natasha said, “I should have eaten more.”

The embodied experience is meant to be lived, explored. Pushing boundaries, turning around when (if) you’ve reached maturity and sharing what you know with others. Giving some away when you have enough. And just freaking showing up. In your own life and in the lives of the people you are fortunate to call friends and family—your teachers.

Happy Sunday, my friends. Thanks for reading.

xo,mo + sir buster mcfluster

Nice people, too. In fairness, I’ve seen plenty of nice people, sweet little old ladies, laughing their way into their ninth or tenth decade. I spent the other day with the 81-year-old mom of my brother’s good friend who was killed by a drunk driver when he was 27, back in 2006. She’s a spitfire, racing around her town, driving a stick shift. She has a vast network of friends and a house full of objects of beauty. Her only child and her husband have flown to the astral plane; she soldiers on with a twinkle in her eye.

I have known healthy, fit, kind, outdoorsy people to drop dead of cardiac arrest or develop terrible cancers. We shrug our shoulders and wonder how or why.

My ten year old nephew recently asked his mom why good people get cancer. It’s a good question, but there is no answer.

The only thing we can know for certain is that life is mysterious. And not always in the good way. Sure, it’s really nice to focus on all the lovely ways life is mysterious: the rising of the sun; the way you see red and I see pink; the chemistry of attraction; the draw to a particular hobby or vocation; the disappearing socks.

Many people hope to be reunited with their old friends and family members when they die; I want to find myself in a room full of all the things I have lost over the years.

The fact remains that life adamantly refuses to play by our rules. There is no direct line from behave well to live a long and healthy life.

You should enjoy your life. You should help people. I think it’s that simple: If you can, help someone. Figure out what makes you feel alive and do it more often.

If you think you have 85 years to play with and that when you’re old and tired you’ll go to sleep one night and not wake up, I applaud your delusion; in the decades I have been witnessing death I’ve seen that happen maybe once.

You’re probably not that special.

Take it easy, enjoy your life, spend time with people you care about, apologize frequently, own your mistakes, own your unique and wonderfully mysterious story. Don’t take anything too seriously, it always, always ends in a way you did not expect and much sooner than you want it to.

I don’t recommend that you pickle yourself with preservatives, nor do I suggest you follow anyone’s advice on any social media platform. Coco was telling me, on the drive home from Woods Hole yesterday, that there are people on, maybe Tic Tok, who are giving advice on how and what to eat. “You should never mix blueberries with bananas,” was one such piece of advice bullshit. Apparently with a well-known wellness influencer standing beside this nutrition expert idiot agreeing with every word.

People, if you believe you shouldn’t mix blueberries with bananas because something nutritionally catastrophic is going to happen, please check yourself into a quiet place for a month and do a tech detox. Things are not going well for you right now.

The goal is to listen for the truth inside your own life and follow it.

Open your windows and breath fresh air, god if I enter one more building with the windows closed and the ac blasting.

You’ve probably noticed things are getting a little dicey this summer: earthquakes, heatwaves, torrential rains, killer ticks, soulless tyrants, charlatans trying to get you to separate your fruit.

This is a good time to find what makes all this worth it and pay more attention to that. You got kids, grandkids? Show up in their lives. You love pottery, make more bowls. You like to swim? Do it every day.

That and pray. Don’t wait to start praying when the chips are down in your life. The day will come when the chips are down, which, I have no idea what that refers to, but everybody’s chips bottom out eventually. Pray now, even if it’s just a sweet little song of gratitude. For the sun in the room this morning, the people who light up when they see you, the summer flowers. Pray for courage, pray for the path to be revealed, pray wherever and whenever you remember.

The greatest mystery of all may be that there is a benevolent force in this life that believes in you. In spite of your best efforts to prove your unworthiness, this Love cannot be deterred. And you should say thank you for that.

xo,mo

But, you know … life with a dog is a good thing and it’s been several years since Daisy flew off. It was time.

There are a bunch of things piled up in my thinking about folder, but the one on top has to do with something I read the other day, about health optimization extending to the toilet. Apparently now you can attach something to your commode which will analyze your, ahem, output, and let you know … how things are going?

I remember years ago, like a LOT of years ago, hearing that new moms were using an app to tell them when their newborn needed to nurse and I think I thought that was the harbinger of the downfall of civilization—outsourcing what we know instinctively.

All of the tracking of data about one’s self, getting digital feedback on all one’s systems, I’m assuming is in the hopes of extending one’s life. Be more informed, be healthier, live longer.

Let me just mention here that there appears to a missing piece: thinking about what one is going to do with all that … longevity.

It seems like the idea, live longer, is a good one. Why not? But if your hope is to live to be 100, you really ought to put some thought into what you plan to do with all those years. Traveling gets old after a while, your friends will start to die, no one will hire you, if you want a job. No matter what, your body will eventually age. It will get harder to stay in your home, and if you’re in a partnership someone will get sick and someone will die. Your kids, if you have them, will be busy raising their kids and you will probably worry about your money running out.

Don’t get me wrong, I said it already, wanting to be a healthy person and live as long as possible is not a bad thing. It’s good, but you really should add to your regime making some plans about how you’re going to spend those extra years, where and why.

I have watched people languish in memory ‘care’ units for years. I have listened to 100-yr-olds wonder why they’re still here. I have seen to endless march to the doctors’ appointments among those 75 and older. It’s a generation under siege from online scam artists and tired of trying to figure out new technology. They have hundreds of tabs open on their browser and think someone has invaded their iPad because it won’t do what they want it to do. They’re cute that way, but they’re also confused, and often sad and lonely. The world no longer sees them. No one cares that they have a life of accumulated stories. We do not live in a society that values elders. Think about that as you read the analysis of your poop.

Listen, I don’t want to discourage you from doing smart things. But your baby and your boobs know exactly when it’s feeding time and humans survived for, I don’t know, like hundreds of thousands, millions, depending on how you look at it, of years without an Apple watch telling them they didn’t sleep well last night. Jesus, how can you not know? You know the minute you wake up in the morning whether or not you got a good rest. Let your self tell yourself what happened.

So maybe settle down on the personal data collection. You’re doing great, seriously. Trust your intuition, let it do the heavy lifting. I remember when my kids were little and our pediatrician told us this: I always listen to the mom first, before I take any vitals. The mother always knows what’s going on.

That’s because the mother and the kid were intimately physically connected for nine months. But you’ve been connected with you for your whole life. I love what ultra runner Courtney Dauwalter, a powerhouse in extreme endurance racing, said once about training: I just pay attention to my body. I eat breakfast, go outside and see how I feel.

Amen, sister.

If longevity is your goal, that’s great. Just plan to spend some time planning what you’re going to do with all that time. If you retire or stop working, whatever you want to call it, at 65 and want to live to be 100, the math is easy: you’ve got THIRTY FIVE more years ahead of you to fill.

And super duper apologies to the person who wrote that thing about your one wild and precious life, I can’t stand that line because spiritual evidence points to us having many, many lifetimes to try to get it right. The goal is to use what you have and what you know to become the best version of you, now, here. To continue, throughout your entire life, to improve, spiritually, to keep trying to get better at being a person in relationship with yourself and other humans. And there is no app that can track your spiritual growth.

Although maybe it would be really funny to make one.

Maybe I should invent the Spiritual Fitness Tracker. It could track things like

Grudge Decay Half-Life: how many days it takes you to stop replaying an argument or being mad at someone for some past transgression.

Gratitude VO2 Max: your capacity to notice good things under stress, tested via a “cardio” mode where the app pings you during an annoying moment and asks you to name one thing you’re thankful for.

Ego HRV: heart rate variability, but for how reactive your sense of self is to criticism. High variability bad, meaning you swing wildly between defensiveness and collapse. The goal is a calm, steady line.

Silence Minutes: like sleep tracking, except it’s tracking whether you let anything be quiet today, including yourself and your phone.

Compassion steps: unlike actual steps, these can’t be gamed by shaking your wrist.

LMK if you want to get on the waiting list.

Cheers!
MO

Hi!

Just want to mention that the Soul Circle I had planned in August in Saratoga … I’ll say this a few times, has morphed into a Soul Supper in September. Cross one out, add the other. The suggested donation should not be a deterrent. Everyone is welcome at the table. There are five seats left.

I also want to mention for local friends that I will be at the Unitarian Church in Glens Falls this Sunday, August 9, at 10. Honored to be invited back to be their speaker this coming weekend.

And, if you do live in the area, I’d like to convince you to attend this super cool thing at Wiawaka on Lake George:

Katrina Trask was an incredible person. Rumara has been deeply committed to sharing her story. It will be a beautiful night.

I promise to write more soon, returning to my love of trying to figure out the spiritual life in the material world.

xo, mo

Thanks to the folks who have signed on for our first Soul Food Supper. Chef Ben and I are looking forward to sharing good food and conversation around meaningful spiritual ideas.

The event is Thursday, September 10 from 5:30-7 in the art gallery at 110 Spring in Saratoga Springs, donation of $30. Dinner will be a simple, soup and salad kind of thing.

If you’d like to join, email me here or venmo here. Or both!

I’m excited to be working with the Completed Life Initiative on their project called The Sanctuary, here in southern Vermont: The Sanctuary is part of a comprehensive ecosystem of end-of-life caregivers in Vermont, serving as a dedicated place for guests to stay while they access Medical Aid in Dying.

Vermont and Oregon are the only two states that allow a non-resident to utilize the medical aid in dying option when a person is faced with a terminal diagnosis. I will be helping people navigate that process.

I plan to host a small gathering this fall for the curious.

I read this yesterday and found myself really excited about what this pastor is doing. Apologies if you can’t access the NY Times.

I am so tired of the many ways that churches are failing society as they stay firmly entrenched in the past, unwilling to move the needle on innovation even as fewer people go into ministry, fewer people go to church, and churches diminish and die off. I love it when people are willing to try new things to see what works.

With good intention and an awareness of the role each of us has in creating a better reality, we can utilize what we have access to, what is being created all the time, for positive outcomes. Just because something is unfamiliar does not mean it’s bad.

Stay curious, fellow Earthlings.
lots of love,
Melissa

It’s been a while since I did any writing. Most of my writing thoughts and energy went into sermons these past months. My time as an interim in Saratoga has concluded and I have Sundays back! But I will miss the wonderful Unitarian congregation I was a part of this winter into summer. In my last sermon I was inspired to compare them to fireflies: individually they each have a sweet light, and when you gather them together in a jar, you really get a good glow.

These past few weeks have belonged to Buster, too. The aging fools that we are, Sverre and I decided to bring a Yellow Lab home, because of course we missed getting up in the middle of the night, having our ankles bitten and going outdoors for pee breaks every 30 minutes.

He’s a good boy. And we’re all delighted to have more of the family nearby, helping with the endless playtimes.
Buster and his brothers:

My dearest friend and culinary wizard, Ben Niese, and I have literally cooked up a new idea, although of course it’s the oldest idea around: a spiritual gathering that includes breaking bread. A conversational salon, a different kind of church. We hope you’ll join us in September as we host the first one. Dinner will be a simple autumn soup, bread, drink and dessert. Conversation will be intentional, around the existential subjects that keep us curious. If you do not use Venmo, just send me an email HERE and we’ll work out the details.

Hope you can make it. Vermont friends, we will most likely host one in Vt in the fall, too. Let me know if you might be interested. Also, shameless plug for the extraordinary Molly Gray for Lieutenant Governor. We love her! Vote for her!

Happy full-on summer days, everyone. I

How would you describe your religion? I think what I was being asked was what’s your religious affiliation?

I kind of fumbled with that one, which I imagine caused some confusion, given I’ve been a pastor for the past eleven years.

I’m not a fan of labels. I don’t use them. I’m never wanted to be called Pastor Melissa, which made for a fun inside joke between me and the late, wonderful Allen Cheng. Just plain Melissa, please, was my response when he asked me what he should call me (as the new pastor of his church). So I became JPM, which I loved.

If I label myself this, that means I’m not that. And maybe I’m some of this and some of that, and not one particular anything. I think humans really love to adapt labels, but then comes the defending. Boxes. And, of course, if I am this and you are that, then we can’t get along. With our chosen words we’ve already decided we don’t agree, and isn’t that the foundational thinking of war?

I just think it does more harm than good.

I’d like to live in a world where all the denominations disappear, all the walls come down and every Sunday we all get together and dance for an hour. Full body joy at being alive, which, I can almost guarantee is what we’re supposed to be feeling.

What’s my religion? Help the weak if you are strong. Bob Marley was one of the most beautiful preachers ever to grace this planet.

It’s really that simple. You have enough? Money, time, food, clothes, love. More than enough? Sheesh, share it! Doesn’t have to be complicated, no committee meetings necessary. Show up and take care of each other.

What I said was this: my hope is that my whole life becomes a prayer of gratitude for being alive.

That’s my religion.

I’ve been asked several times lately, what do you think God is? And also what is the soul? Love the deep thinking.

I think God is an underlying source of loving energy which animates every living thing.

I think the soul is our connectivity to that energy. I think the soul is the part of us which is always seeking a deeper, stronger connection with God energy. It’s what compels us to seek meaning in life and to love people and things. When we are in awe, when we are in a state of wonder, we feel this energy activated.

I don’t like to define things by what they’re not, but I don’t think that God is any kind of being which cares about denomination, skin color, place of origin, or lousy or good behavior. God is love, unearned.

God is within. Soul is the activation toward goodness; body is the vessel that allows us to live in this world, hopefully in a state of wonder, helping others and evolving; mind mostly screws it all up.

Ha. Just kidding. Mind gives us our miraculous free will to decide how it will all play out while we’re here.

My time at the Unitarian church in Saratoga winds down soon. I’m working with Sam on SAM, gathering a tribe of people willing to play around with it for a while, planting flowers and riding my bike, looking forward to the arrival of wonderpup, Buster, the Yellow Lab, super psyched that Coco is coming home soon. Wondering what the Universe has in store for me next, while I’m here, while I can. I’m game!

Have a good one. xo, mo

The purpose of SAM is to use the modern technology tools we have to solve the crisis humans face of aging without access to spiritual companionship. We are using technology to create a hybrid platform to build healthier relationships, and to ensure that every person can live a meaningful life, until their last breath. It’s pretty simple.

I’ve created a separate Substack for this work so it can have its own dedicated space.

My personal newsletter will continue as it always has. The SAM publication will focus specifically on aging, companionship, spiritual care, community, and the larger vision behind the project.

We have other ideas brewing: connecting high school students with seniors to cross-pollinate stories, youthful energy, and elder wisdom, and building new models of organizations devoted to spiritual exploration in community. As young Sam, the tech whiz behind the project said recently, “Mom, everyone in my generation needs spiritual care, too.” The world might go bonkers right before our eyes, but humans will never stop seeking meaning, connection, belonging and purpose.

We are just getting warmed up.

We care deeply about spiritual accompaniment, presence, exploration, existential care and literacy, and reverence for the beauty that lives in our lives and world. I am pouring my whole heart into this project, but there is no way we would be where we are today if not for the many, many generous and loving people who have helped (and continue to help) along the way.

If you’d like to follow The SAM Project as it evolves, you can subscribe right here!

The SAM Project

The source for SAM: Spiritual and Meaningful updates and input.

By Melissa O'Brien

The two mailing lists are separate, so subscribing to one does not automatically subscribe you to the other.

To note: the SAM Substack is free, and I have turned off subscription pricing for this one, too.

Thank you for reading what I write, and for being part of this community. We’ve got this. We are going to make better days, and we’re going to do it together.

xo,mo

I would argue that our entire life is a spiritual classroom, but I’m not sure most of us are ready to go there yet, question mark?

In its inception Mother’s Day was actually a great idea. It began as a peace movement. Julia Ward Howe wrote the “Mother’s Day Proclamation” in 1870 after the devastation of the American Civil War and the Franco-Prussian War. She had had enough of seeing boys and men returning broken from war, or not returning at all. She envisioned Mother’s Day as a time for mothers to unite across nations, to resist sending sons into war, and to perpetuate that idea there be moral leadership rooted in caregiving rather than violence. Terrific ideas. How it devolved into a day to take your mom out to brunch is beyond me, but here we are.

I remember clearly watching my son, Sam, walk away, huge duffle bag over his shoulder, into his freshman dorm at Sierra Nevada College in Lake Tahoe. After working odd jobs for two years after high school he was ready for the college experience.

I wasn’t, though. I don’t think I’ve ever been ready to watch my kids leave.

I texted him later to see if he wanted to come back to our rental for a bbq, and he responded “I’m on a catamaran.”

His new life had already begun.

I remember the exact moment Nate pulled out of the driveway and drove away, alone. I can still see his freshman dorm room at Montana State University. Coco and I cried all the way back to Vermont after leaving him there.

Was it good or bad that my boys had chosen colleges thousands of miles from home? At the time I wasn’t sure, but when I went to visit them and they picked me up at the airport and showed me around their town and introduced me to their friends I knew their choices had been chef’s kiss. They knew how to build the infrastructure of a good life, without parental oversight. That’s huge.

Still, seven years after leaving Nate in Montana, after I deposited Coco in Lake Tahoe to live with her brother and work as a nanny for a year, I flew back east, landed in Albany and burst into tears. I didn’t expect to feel what I felt: unsure of who I was without kids in my life. I hadn’t realized just how much of their teenage energy filled my days. Who the hell would I be without them, and for what? I had been raising kids in Vermont for thirty years. What now?

Ugh. That’s the agonizing thing about parenting. You love a person literally to death, you are certain you’d step in front of them to protect them from anything, but you have to release them to the wild at some point. Fully release. Let them fall, let them figure out how to hang a shower curtain, let them feel hungry and lonely. Let them feel the satisfaction of success without you standing on the sidelines clapping.

What mothering, parenting asks of us is the willingness to love someone into their full freedom. It’s kind of a lousy bargain … I will give you everything I have, everything I can, knowing that if this turns out well, you will, indeed should, leave.

It goes against all of our natural impulses to want to cling to love, cling to familiarity, cling to certainty. It runs against every instinct of possession. It requires a generosity that most of us have to practice, consciously, against the grain of our own selfish desires.

It is among the most sacred things we can do.

It’s a lot like gardening. You might have a garden, but you don’t grow anything. You set the conditions. If you over-water or under-water the plant won’t thrive. If you don’t pay attention to bugs, soil, light, failure to thrive. If you hover too much, same problems.

None of it comes naturally, it takes a lot of practice. A mom who loves without grasping is practicing one of the most advanced forms of spiritual attention available to human beings: non-attachment.

She is doing something monks sit in silence for years trying to learn and she is doing it in the middle of ordinary life, in the midst of the daily grind. Go moms!

Our lives are ground zero training ground for spiritual growth. It would be helpful to see it this way rather than as a series of crappy challenges and bad breaks. We’re not victims inside of our own lives, though I’ve seen plenty of people who waste years, a whole lifetime, thinking this way.

You didn’t come here to accumulate stuff, get famous or be rich. Those things are fine, you should do them if you want to, but the real job of being a human is to let life teach you whatever lessons you came here to learn. Your soul wants to evolve, your life is giving you endless opportunities for that to happen.

The wonderful thing about parenthood is that it keeps changing. Just when you thought you lost everything you get to watch your kids become adults. You get to witness their evolution.

There’s a great scene in the movie Lost in Translation where Bill Murray as Bob Harris is describing becoming a parent. It’s the best description I’ve ever heard:

“The most terrifying day of your life is the day the first one is born. Your life, as you know it... is gone. Never to return.
But they learn how to walk, and they learn how to talk... and you want to be with them. And they turn out to be the most delightful people you will ever meet in your life.”

Absolute truth.

xo,mo

I want to clarify that I speak from eleven years inside church staff and twenty sitting in the pews. If you don’t live inside a system and see how it’s run, you’re not qualified to make an assessment of the situation.

I know from experience that many pastors agonize over the sermon part of the job. I once listened to a recently ordained newbie say that “the hardest part of the job is figuring out a title for the sermon!” To which I responded, “don’t name them,” and wondered silently what the f is going on in pastoral prep programs these days.

I mean think about it, who else has a job that involves writing a paper every week, one that’s inspirational, linked to ancient stories, and requires a measure of enthusiastic delivery to an audience in order to be successful?

It’s ridiculous, it’s an absurd idea, and it doesn’t make sense.

And the poor people sitting in the pews, having to listen to the same person, week after week. Oy.

In the days before Google I’m sure ministers sat surrounded by books, agonizing over what to say, what resources to use. If writing doesn’t come naturally, it would be a never-ending tooth-pulling hell. You deliver a sermon on Sunday and the whole shebang starts up again on Monday. I’ll bet the people who were pastors when books went online and we suddenly had a search mechanism were like, “Hoo ha I can go to parties on Saturday nights again!”

When I first started preaching, pastors who had been at it for many years told me, “just pull out an old one from time to time,” which felt like cheating. What is the point of this job if we’re not delivering something fresh and relevant?

I purposely delete my sermons when I’m done giving them. If I become a person who doesn’t have something interesting and timely to say to an audience each week, many of whom are struggling to deal with life, then it’s quittin’ time.

Today we have ai, which is essentially Google on a hundred tablets of speed. And more. You can train ai to write the way you want it to write. It can give helpful word or phrasing suggestions, and it does a great job editing.

I used to be writing my sermons all the way up to Sunday morning, now I can get the bulk of the writing done in one sitting, then refine the piece over the course of the week. The result is a much better piece of writing and a more confident delivery.

That’s the inside scoop on the pastoral process of sermon writing in 2026.

Here’s what I mean by In a time of ever-improving artificial intelligence writing tools, no one needs to listen to a minister deliver a sermon week after week …

With the tools we have today anyone can become a good writer and sermon-giver. And they should. In any congregation anywhere, everyone should participate in the sharing of insights and wisdom.

That’s what a sermon is … taking ancient (or modern texts) and ideas and weaving them into our lives today.

We are all living interesting lives, we all have different experiences. That’s our gold: what we do, what we’ve done. What we know, as a result. Sharing those stories with a group on a Sunday morning would bring us closer together. And we need that. We need closer human connection, one good hour without a screen, telling stories, sharing experiences and bonding over our lived lives.

We would all be much better off if the work of a pastor became the work of the whole group. If we all took better care of each other, made visits and phone calls. And shared in our accumulated wisdom.

A really good church would be just that: sit in a circle, looking at each other; share the stories of our lives, dig into the questions; pray and sing together.

Hey! Let’s build it! We can. We can do anything we want ‘cuz we’re grown ups!

xo, mo

That is kind of a hefty statement coming from a person who has paid her bills for the past eleven years with a paycheck from a church.

Then again, it’s not.

I see now, reflecting on the past forty years or so of work that what I’ve done is essentially infiltrate organizations in order to find out what they do, how they do it, and to consider how it can be done better.

It's not on purpose, I haven’t sought out jobs or experiences specifically to do these things, it just kind of happened.

So after several years of being a pastor I looked around and thought, this is ridiculous. These poor people have to listen to me week after week, as if I have that much depth or wisdom. It’s a terrible model, the church thing.

To be clear, I’m not advocating for ai to write sermons for pastors, but the process of generating a service and writing a sermon has been greatly improved and condensed. AI is great as a writing companion. It’s great for generating ideas, editing, and improving flow. It’s like having a writing partner or an editor in the house. The years of any minister needing to agonize over what to write or how to write or what to say are over. Anyone can choose a subject or theme, then work with the tools at hand to generate a good piece of writing in a fraction of the time it once took, which is great, because it leaves more time to do the more important work: tending to the spiritual wellness of the group.

I think that most people who care about church don’t ever want it to change. They like the familiarity, they like the routine, predicability. They like to show up and sit in the same seat every week.

I have moved pieces of furniture and decorative objects in churches, only to be met with a torrent of backlash. I’ve changed elements in a service, people hate it. Humans seem to be absolutely wedded to the familiar and they do not want it to be disturbed.

Predictability doesn’t well prepare the soul for actual life, which is ever-changing and highly unpredictable. So most people are going to church and being trained in how not to be able to manage everyday life.

That’s actually not cool.

I find that when I make critical statements about churches, the people who defend the church use some kind of ‘those are my friends,’ ‘the community is important,’ counter-argument.

I have rarely, if ever, heard someone say, ‘without church I would not have the spiritual sustenance I need in order to grow as a person.’

Shouldn’t churches be the very places we turn for soul food?

I was looking at the annual budget for a nearby church recently — the kind of thing I do in my leisure time! — and was just, I don’t know, driven to either tears or laughter, by the sheer number of things a church pays for and the cost. Small town, diminishing and aging congregation, operating budget in the hundreds of thousands.

I also read about a little church that was kicked off the Yale campus and decided to reform as a dinner club, no pastor, no overhead, just a bunch of folks meeting on Sunday in the evening, volunteer speakers, sit in a circle and talk, then have a meal together. They gave away most of their money.

Groundbreaking!

Churches should be the one place on earth where people are constantly trying new things, trying to figure out how to meet the needs of a population that is consistently changing, aging, diversifying, and living in an ever-changing landscape.

What we have is old institutions and old leaders doing things the same old way. Training humans sitting in their pews to preserve, at all cost, the worldview they have created together.

Ugh. It is such a disservice to the soul which is fluid and alive and always seeking to make sense of life as it is in this moment. It wants the old stories, old mythologies, it wants beautiful rituals, and it wants new language, new ideas, new strategies.

The old questions matter: why am I here? How do I live a life of meaning and purpose? What the heck is God, anyway? The questions are alive, dynamic, fascinating. But a lot of the people running churches are stagnant, dusty and old.

The processes we have to prepare pastors: school, licensure, ordination, do not actually guarantee a great spiritual leader. I have met some of the worst humans with M.Divs and PhDs and credentials until tomorrow, people as flat as a board when it comes to caring for people, and so dull at the pulpit.

My favorite thing is when a church gets to the point where it doesn’t have a choice anymore, nothing is working, and they’re willing to try anything. That’s when the magic starts to happen.

Make the pews moveable, get rid of the hymnals, quit with the super glue allegiance to denomination and start to cross-pollinate. Share resources. Be a moveable feast of a congregation. Change the leadership model and have an array of speakers. Disband every committee and use all that meeting time to work in the community.

I sat in a gorgeous church yesterday, big church, lots of money there, but the windows were covered with curtains and some kind of coating that made them opaque. The one chance I get to sit in a pew and be quiet and I can’t even look out at the sky. Why?

I don’t bemoan the loss of churches because I think any time something dies it makes space for something new to happen, and I think we desperately need new things to happen right now. I like it when old institutions fail.

What matters? If we toss out some old stuff what should we keep?

Beauty. There is something to be said for sitting in a beautiful space, simple and elegant. Not dark or musty, but spacious enough to allow the spirit to flow. In a building or outdoors, sacred spaces should feel good.

Ritual. Honoring the past. Tend to the passage of time, the seasons, the various stages of human development. Sensory practices that become embedded in your bones.

Purpose. A good church should ask something of you, beyond sitting for an hour a week. Contemplation and action.

Preaching as an art form. Few do it well. Schools don’t make good preachers, life does.

Engagement with the big questions. Prioritizing spiritual growth over institutional survival.

Let’s find new ways to do old things. Let’s leave the old model of parish ministry with its relentless demands of administration, pastoral care, conflict management, and institutional maintenance, and try to find the new, better way to engage with the life of the soul.

xomo

The reason is because accountability is lacking in many of the spiritual ‘brands’ you find out there.

“Out there” being, well, kind of everywhere now. Books, podcasts, talk shows (actually, I’m not sure if they still exist, apologies). I haven’t brought my measuring tape to the bookstore, but I suspect the yardage of self-help books has grown faster than any other section during the past decade.

The bar for what makes someone an expert or even knowledgeable about the life of the soul appears to be down around our ankles. I think it’s because people are literally starving for some kind of help. A lot of the time you don’t even know what it is you’re needing or wanting, and there are many opportunists ready to take your money in exchange for their ill-advised plans and ideas for you.

So I’ll take a moment from time to time to give you evidence that supports what I have come to understand about the life of the soul. Here goes.

THE MYSTICAL

You may have heard or perhaps even had a mystical experience. Most people shrug them off as coincidence, unequipped as we are with the language to make sense of what’s going on.

I would describe a mystical experience as a moment when one feels a deep sense of wonder and awe and a clear connection to the Greater Good. I’ve heard the phrase the veil is thinner, but it doesn’t resonate with me. I tend to think of the experience as something with greater depth and gooeyness, not any kind of thinning. And I don’t believe in the idea of a veil between us and higher energy. During a mystical experience there’s stronger connectivity, but the connectivity is always there.

The experience changes the way a person sees life, as if the aperture is open wider, the awareness is more attuned.

I can describe four mystical experiences I’ve had thus far. I promise to be brief.

Mystical Experience Number One
The first happened when I was 21, I’ve talked about this ad nauseam. I was riding my bike when a speeding car appeared out of nowhere. The car hit me broadside, throwing me through the air, though I have never heard an eyewitness account of the incident.

I went from happily riding my new bike home from my first night on the job at the vegetarian restaurant, just after college graduation, to floating through a space with no beginning or end. Wondering rather gently if I had died. Like this:

Hm. I wonder if this is death.

I was at peace, pain free and floating.

I didn’t have the experience of seeing people who were already dead, but in truth I didn’t know many dead people at 21, and the ones I did (all four of my grandparents) I couldn’t have picked out of a line-up because they died when I was very young.

Mostly that mystical experience was about peace. I had the feeling of being held by something very benevolent and that something very, very good was happening.

Mystical Experience Number Two

occurred on the auspicious date, 12.21.12. I’ve written quite a bit about this one, too. It was a very strange day, weather-wise and cultish people had predicted it would be the end of the world. My son and I drove through snow, rain, wind moving things sideways and knocking down trees, and when we arrived at our destination there as a rainbow stretched across the sky and landing in the field directly in front of us.

I grabbed my camera and ran to where the rainbow seemed to be touching down and when I got there I simply fell to my knees in wonder, overcome by … I don’t really know. My life had been … disorderly for quite some time, so I was ripe for a change. Pressing my will against things wasn’t working, so I simply gave over to whatever forces allowed me to experience that gorgeous refracted light that day.

In truth, I still don’t know what happened. But it was the start of new things.

Numbers Three and Four

happened in my time working as a chaplain. They’re more low-key, but they did point to something else in the situation.

The first happened in my early days as a hospital chaplain. I was visiting a woman who was actively dying. I had never met her. While I was standing beside her bed I noticed a blob of light, kind of pulsating, on the wall. Without thinking, I leaned over and whispered in her ear, I don’t know who that is, but he’s waiting for you. You can go now, it’s safe.”

Later, when I told this story to the other chaplains they shrugged and went back to their computers, just another day on the job for them. One explained that she had a son who committed suicide as a teen, and that it was probably him.

The other time, I was a chaplain in a senior living community and I was called to the room of a woman actively dying. When I walked in a man’s name exploded in my head, then repeated several times. I didn’t want to alarm the family members, so I found a way to slide it into conversation …

Does she have a … partner/husband?
Yes, our dad, but he died a few years ago.
What’s his name?
Name that was exploding in my head.

Why does it matter?

The common thread in these events is the phrase without thinking. I wasn’t willing my way toward something mystical, I was receiving something. I had enough of an openness so that I could have the experience. You might say there was resonance.

Having a mystical experience doesn’t make me better or wiser than anyone else. That’s not the point. It’s made me aware that deeper, wiser, larger forces exist around us and in us all the time. A mystical experience generates an understanding about life that wasn’t there previously and that allows one to talk about the spiritual life with a small measure of confidence. And it opens the door to a new way of being.

Once I had these experiences I wanted to understand what had happened and I wanted to create conditions in my life so that I could live closer to the mystical. I was set on a pathway of learning and exploration. I lived differently.

That’s how the spiritual aspects of life unfold. I think that something wise and benevolent is always trying to get our attention, and when it does, in the moments when our overthinking mind is quiet or turned off, we get a glance at the Infinite, and it can be a game changer.

How do I know what I know about spiritual things and the life of the soul? For one, I have lived the experience of spiritual, mystical encounters, so I can report back what happens.

xo,mo

The funny thing was that none of them came. Most of them were already half-hearted, occasional church-goers, I knew, but I thought for sure that with me at the pulpit they’d probably show up.

They didn’t.

It turns out that even if your friend is the pastor, it’s not enough of a motivational force for most people to go to church.

The thing is, I get it. In the nine months I had last year, between church gigs, I did not go to church once. There wasn’t a church anywhere that I wanted to sit in on a Sunday morning. There was no minister compelling enough to make me want to drive somewhere to listen to them speak.

It made me a little sad, but I didn’t have any trouble filling my Sunday mornings.

It’s clear that our delivery systems for spiritual care are falling apart and fading away. Rather than spend a lot of time hand-wringing over this, I’ve become curious about what will fill the void. I want to be part of the creation of new ways.

For ever and ever sacred spaces have been physical locations. But people in churches have to spend a ton of time and energy fundraising for and tending to the infrastructure. There’s something fundamentally wrong about that. Are we good stewards of limited resources if most of the money we raise goes to paying heating bills and replacing the roof? At a time when it’s possible to create online communities for free, in some cases.

If you’re freaking out about the idea of something as sacred as spiritual sustenance being delivered via a website or app, I have to say calm down. That’s definitely part of the exploration that’s taking place these days, but not all.

And besides, we’ve been there already.

Remember back in Covid times when everyone did everything online for a while? I was a church pastor then and our online audience was worldwide. It was one of the most exciting times in all of my years of church ministry. Not to mention how much people loved “doing church” at home in their jammies.

Oh but wait, community! I want real human community! I can hear people crying. To which I would respond … there are people everywhere desperate for belonging, desperate for friendship and community right now, and they are not going to church to find those things. The opportunities exist; they are not being utilized.

Which means that we need new ways.

What is spirituality and why does it matter?

The spiritual dimension exists in all of us. It is the inner experience of the fullness of life. It transcends current reality to a fuller, deeper, more meaningful way of being. There are many ways to nurture this aspect of self.

A life lacking in spiritual awareness will feel hollow. Fill your bank account with as many dollars as you can and your closet with as many pairs of shoes as it will hold, but you will still feel an ache inside for something deeper. Humans are hardwired to seek meaning and to live a life of purpose. I know this to be true, I have been doing the research now for over a decade, watching, listening, learning firsthand what it looks like to be a human whose life is bereft of meaning.

Churches, synagogues, yoga studios, meditation workshops, these are all places where we can go to learn more about the spiritual life (hopefully), but what if those are unappealing? And why would we limit ourselves to just a few options? And what if we don’t have transportation?

We have to get creative.

Here’s a cute story to illustrate how simple this can be.

I have a friend who lives in a senior community. She can no longer drive; she misses the life she had in her own home, in the town where she was known. Her partner has died, she’s lonely. She has been struggling trying to figure out what to do. This is a classic spiritual crisis. It presents as anxiety, and no doubt there’s a prescription that could alleviate those symptoms, but the issue is deeper, the issue is about meaning and purpose. The issue is a spiritual one.

What to do?
Begin with what we have. Use the materials at hand.

Every other week now I buy a bunch of flowers, nothing fancy, just pick some up at the grocery store. I go to her apartment and we make a few small bouquets together, chatting and laughing as we create. Then we leave them in the doorways of some of the apartments in her building. My friend, who loved gardening when she lived in her own home, now has a purpose that’s connected to what once brought her joy. She has to keep track of where we’ve left bouquets; she’s keeping an eye on what’s blooming outside. She is brightening the lives of others with our stealth deliveries. We think we’re pretty clever; we giggle a lot.

Purpose, meaning, intention, generosity, creativity, connection. This small project is checking all the boxes.

My hope is that we will all start to know what a crisis of the soul looks and feels like. It’s not a pathological condition. It doesn’t require medication. I hope we get to the point where we know what it means to be spiritually healthy and we have many, lots, tons of options to manifest and nurture this critical aspect of human wellness.

In order to get there we need mavericks, spiritual innovators. We all need to be willing to try new things in new ways.

xo,mo

I thought of all the other wonderful things whose fullness is released when it’s broken down: onions, basil, pine needles, cardamom pods, black pepper.

I thought of humans, whose potential for greatness most certainly lives in our darkest hours. And how we run from pain, anesthetize ourselves and generally do all manner of things to avoid discomfort.

I’m here today to talk about the role of suffering in a fully realized spiritual life.

The other morning, shortly after I woke up, I thought about all the things bothering me. Small things (the weather), big things (war, the scary economics of this moment), medium things (an ankle that has been swollen for three weeks and an upcoming meeting of consequence). Layered between: the recent death of my partner’s dad and the question of how to help my aging parents. All added up to a foul mood before I even got out of bed. What I wanted was someone to just take this suffering away, please! I didn’t want to deal with any of it.

But I also knew that embedded in this heap o’ woes were lessons I need to learn.

I thought about it long enough to nail it: I want to learn how to handle my struggles with a modicum of grace. Quit with the meltdown, woe is me, wah wah. Be present, don’t waste time complaining, strategize a way forward, ask for help.

What I’m dealing with is small suffering, more like discomfort. There are so many different kinds, but no matter how suffering shows up, you can bet it’s giving you work to do.

This circles back around to what I said earlier about skimming across the surface of life. You can do that, it’s fine, but you’re never going to grow. And chances are some new situation carrying the very same lessons will present further down the road. Life is very clever that way.

I’m going to illustrate how this played out for me the other day.

One of the things I know about myself is that I get emotional when I’m dealing with things I don’t want to deal with. I’ve always explained it as I’m a sensitive person, I cry easily, that’s the way it is.

But I know that when I’m trying to work through something hard, crying isn’t helpful, it’s distracting. When what I need is a strategy, not sympathy, crying is getting in the way.

I realized that this is probably something leftover from when I was a kid. Crying can be a softening technique — we literally come here hardwired to cry to get our needs met. I don’t think I’m doing it now purposely as a way to illicit tenderness, but I do think it’s rooted in earlier stages of my life.

It happens every single time I need to have a difficult conversation. Tears flow before I can get a word out.

I’m sixty, I no longer want to behave like a needy kid who doesn’t want to face her adult things.

I sat down with my partner and said that I wanted to tell him what’s going on with me right now, the things weighing heavy on my mind and putting me in a funk.

Immediately I started to cry, even though none of the issues are sad (except Johnny’s death.)

I told him (he was a coach for forty years, so he knows how to help someone reach a goal) that I want to learn how to have a hard conversation without crying. I asked him to stop me immediately when I begin to cry so I can practice having a straightforward, adult conversation about hard things without tears.

He’s an excellent strategist, a clear-headed, helpful person, so I always appreciate what he brings to the table of confusion and fear. He has a gift for breaking things down and taking the emotion out of a situation. I feel grateful to have him as a teacher.

By the time we were done talking I felt like a different person.

So, what happened here?

1. Life is a little gunked up right now with stuff I wish I didn’t have to deal with. I wouldn’t call it suffering, although the ankle does hurt and I miss Johnny and weather this time of year in Vermont stinks. All of it piled together was enough to make me want to pull up the covers and stay there until May. Instead, I decided to explore the wreckage and see what I might learn about myself.

2. I looked carefully at my behaviors in this moment and identified what I want to change. Something that is not serving me in any way, something that persists, something I have historically written off as that’s just who I am.

3. I asked someone close to me to help me change. I articulated why I want to make this change and I asked someone I trust to help me.

4. I established awareness, ownership, and intention. Moving forward: the work.

   ---

The stuff isn’t going away, but I feel stronger with a clearer sense of how to cope in a more mature way.

Obviously not all struggles are packaged this way, but everything that’s difficult brings with it a lesson our soul wants to work on. Are you aging and troubled by what your body can no longer do? Maybe life is asking you to develop your interior world. Is a family member driving you nuts? It’s either forgiveness or boundaries, maybe both. Personality conflict at work? Probably a chance to remember that everyone evolves at their own pace.

Only you can know and the only way to figure it out is by taking an honest look at yourself and your life.

Suffering is part of the fabric of life. It’s a given. Survival and growth depend on your ability to derive meaning from the challenges.

I know that my suffering is nothing compared to other people in other places. I wish I could understand why this life, this world is so full of people harming other people, of loss, pain, hunger, homelessness, endless wars. How could anyone harm a child? How is it possible that humans think of other humans as less than themselves? If we all have a heart beating in our chest, why is there evil?

The question isn’t why. The question is what do I do? How do I respond to this truth of existence? Suffering is a big pile of crap sitting in my yard. Will I use it to fertilize the garden, or will I hold my nose and walk away?

xo, mo

How did I figure this out?

I mentioned what my son, Sam, said about the life of the soul and I want to revisit that because the first part is critical: The majority of people skim across the surface of life.

Being introspective and reflective are the two critical pieces when it comes to forming your ideas around the spiritual life.

At some point, the skimming will have to stop.

Often life will do this for us, either through some sort of accident, medical event, or loss. Or, as was the case with me, you just get tired of living the way you’re living. It’s not working.

FIRST, THE TURNING POINT

There came a turning point, in my early 40’s, when two things happened: I acknowledged that things weren’t going well in my life. And I started to look carefully at my life for clues as to why.

Humility and curiosity came into play.

I began to investigate my life for clues, to help me understand why I was making the choices I was making, and ultimately to figure out what I’m supposed to do while I’m here, which is another big existential question. I was really hungry for something and I didn’t know what.

I tried different things: traditional therapy, wellness treatments. I read and listened to a ton of books. All the things.

None of that did much good, I understand now, because I was handing over agency to an outside source. The work of the soul is always an inside job.

There was nowhere else to turn but to a Greater Knowing. I didn’t even really know what I was doing, and I wish it hadn’t taken so long to get there, but I finally threw in the towel and said to Thin Air, my life is yours, I have no idea what the hell I’m doing, put me where I’m needed. I probably said please, I’m perennially polite.

THEN, THE WORK

Nothing changed overnight. Becoming a better human is the work of a lifetime, but at least I was finally headed in the right direction. I formed a kind of partnership with the Divine, and became willing to say yes to new ideas, like becoming a chaplain. I started to spend a lot more time helping others, getting outside myself.

I did and do a lot of mapping my life. It helps me see repeating patterns so I can 1) try to break the bad ones and 2) recognize the spiritual teachings embedded in my life. The visual aspect of it is helpful for me.

I look carefully at the decisions I’ve made, and the outcomes. I map the kinds of people I have chosen to spend time with, the places I’ve gone, the dreams I’ve chased, the jobs I’ve had.

I looked carefully and honestly, without blame, at my childhood, to find the roots of my adult behaviors.

All of us build a narrative around who we are, as a survival mechanism. We’re afraid that if we walked around telling the truth about everything that happened, no one would love us. It takes a lot of work to go back and shake hands with what really happened. To forgive yourself and others is hard work. But it’s liberating. It frees up a lot of space in a life to do other important things.

Once you get there, to the place of being honest, reflective, and introspective, you’re on your way, from the slippery surface of life to a place of deeper inquiry and meaning.

I mean, certainly you can keep skimming. Life is fun and beautiful and filled with shiny things. The food is good here, the beaches nice. You can live from cocktail party to pickle ball game your whole life. Eventually, somewhere down the line, maybe several lifetimes from now, your soul will have had enough of that and the journey to the interior life will begin.

There was a time when all the pretty things mattered a lot to me. I can show you pictures of my kids playing football with Tommy Hilfiger at his estate on Mustique. I drove my kids around in a BMW SUV. Don’t get me wrong, those things are nice, but they are very surface-level living. I’m not saying you have to give up a nice life to be a person of depth, you can have it both ways, but you have to be very careful, very aware, and I don’t see that in our world very often.

The spiritual life doesn’t happen by spending an hour in a church on Sunday morning, it’s a commitment, daily, to deep inquiry and a willingness to call one’s self out on one’s nonsense, and to change. And that’s the key: change. Evolution is an ever-changing thing. I’m not there yet … I’m not there yet.

I have stated, for myself, that my goal is to leave here the best version of myself. I’m not even sure what that means, but I’m committed to trying to get there.

IT’S ABOUT LESS, NOT MORE

I know for certain that I’m not alone my this desire to evolve. I am supported and guided by loving forces that know a helluva lot more than anyone with a podcast or a book or a church or an ashram or a product. The older I get, the more I know that none of what I’m seeking is for sale. It’s about quiet, truth, sitting still, asking for guidance, listening. Resting, temperance, joy.

There is nothing more satisfying than combing through all the things you thought were true in life and discovering Truth for yourself. The Infinite Source I love is not the God of the Catholic church I was introduced to as a kid. The things worth having are not the things we were conditioned to believe mattered when we were young. The search for truth, according to your own soul, is a big part of the reason why you’re here.

Many blessings on your way.

xo, mo

The answer came to me, without any hesitation, almost as if from an outside source: I am a child of God.

I know that makes me sound like I’m a member of the Jesus Christ Superstar cast, which, I wish I had the talent!

I want to spend some time today defining God. I know a lot of us get really tripped up on the word and I know it comes loaded with all kinds of feelings, visuals, and baggage. Shame, that, but real.

I use the word God in a lazy way. It’s short and easy to say and write. The word isn’t important; it’s interchangeable with a lot of other words which mean the same thing: Infinity, Good, Source, Divine. It doesn’t matter which you choose. What matters is what it means, what it is.

God is a field of higher intelligence that exists everywhere; an energy that supports and sustains life. It’s the creative force behind all things.

I think there is some confusion around where God is situated, and this is something I think about a lot. It has taken quite a bit of undoing in order for me to get to where I am today with this.

There was never a time in all of my years of church-going when anyone suggested that God lived in me. It seemed like God was out there, usually angry, definitely judgy. Like Santa Claus, an omniscient old guy keeping tabs on my behavior. The older I got the less this made sense. I didn’t think it could possibly be true that God would love some more than others, that God would reject anyone, for that matter. Or that God would be angry, or care whether or not you are part of any church or temple.

I studied life and death, I went to seminary, became a chaplain, then a pastor, so I feel I can confidently report back to you that God is love, period.

There are no doctrines, no judgement, no conditions upon which the energy of Source depends, it just is.

God is within. We each hold part of that same energy that sustains life.

I think this is a good definition of the soul: the part of us which is linked to Infinity.

Creative impulses and ideas arise from this Source. It’s up to us to choose whether or not to act on the ideas that find us.

Conditions of attention, stillness and openness create connectivity between Source and self. I know that when I am driving, alone, when I am riding my bike, when I am sleeping, ideas come and clarity arises.

I also know that things like eating poorly, addictive behavior, not getting enough sleep, excess clutter, all make connectivity with Source more difficult.

This loving energy lives at the deepest level of who we are and remains steady through every part of our lives. We are not abandoned by God when times are hard.

The more you work to create conditions of connectivity in your life, the more peaceful, steady, grounded and aware you will be. When you are clear about who you are and what this Moving and Motivating Force is, you are living in a kind of harmony that allows you to thrive. It doesn’t mean you will avoid hard times or challenging circumstances, but you will be able to weather them with more ease and fortitude, and you will come to understand that the hard times have purpose and meaning.

There is an Intelligent Energy, and I belong to it and it defines, guides and informs everything I do. I do not rely on it to give me answers, I cultivate within my life conditions of openness and connectivity so I can better receive guidance and grace, and so I can achieve clarity on what my soul has come here to accomplish.

xo, mo

My focus until the days when my focus dissipates or shatters or dissolves, whatever is going to happen to me, will be on the cultivation of the life of the soul. I understand this to be urgent.

I have spent the last three months vigorously chopping everything extraneous, noisy and unnecessary from my life. I applied this effort to every aspect of my existence: eating, contacts, projects, work, study, social events. I finished dust-covered tasks and dealt with stuff I was avoiding. I stopped starting my day with a screen and now go outside with my coffee and begin by practicing better breathing and chatting with the clouds and birds (thank you, Nate for this good book).

I am well aware of the monstrous troubles of this world, E-stein, etc. conspiracy theories being my rabbit hole of choice. I believe we can all agree that humans have a very long way to go on their pathway to evolution, if we will, in fact, evolve.

In the meantime, during my brief and getting briefer moment on the scene, I am devoting my finite energy to a very few very meaningful things. I write, love my circle of people, show up most Sunday mornings here, and continue to create the SAM project with Sam.

The SAM project is a small idea with a big mission: get as much spiritual care as possible to as many people as possible. Churches aren’t cutting it for most people, chaplains are disappearing with budget chops and both of those things were always sort of esoteric enterprises anyway.

Spiritual care is the thing you need that you probably don’t know you need. The SC deficiency in your life is most likely manifesting as a kind of malaise, maybe as chronic anxiety, possibly as a lack of clarity about what you are supposed to do.

WHAT’S THE PROBLEM HERE?

In cultures where spiritual care is a natural part of life people grow up with shared rituals and habits that give meaning to things like birth, moving from childhood to adulthood, becoming a man or woman, suffering, death. Communities are tight and meaning is woven into daily life.

In American culture that framework is basically nonexistent. We’re disconnected from each other. We have no rituals that mark our way through life, and people deal with big life things like serious illness or end of life without a shared way to speak about meaning. We have nothing baked-in that can help us accompany one another with any kind of consistency or composure. Spiritual care gets tossed in during a hospital stay or in hospice.

I used to think that being a hospice chaplain was such important and meaningful work, but now I think it’s disappointing that most people wait until the eleventh hour, until they’re one foot out the door to eternity to finally say what needs to be said. In truth it feels cowardly to wait to say all the important things until you’re about to die, or to decide then that you want to explore what death might be. You’ve had a lifetime to tell your kids you’re sorry, to thank everyone for loving your difficult self. You’ve had a lifetime to be curious about death.

Everyone needs more spiritual care all the time, not just in a crisis.

WHAT’S HAPPENING NOW

The language of the soul is emerging, erupting, as it usually does when times are hard.

Unfortunately there are many quick fixes and charlatans in the wellnesphere. You can have a sound bath, buy a jade roller, get all the biofeedback, take your tonics and your gummies. The growth of the self-improvement/spiritually-adjacent media ecosystem clearly reflects an unquenchable need humans have to feel better.

The work of the soul isn’t meant to be bought, tracked or optimized. All that stuff might create a sense of control and probably gives a little short-term lift, but the deeper need for meaning and connection, the yearning we all hold to live a purposeful life will never be touched by an aura ring, a cold plunge, or the podcasting of a guy who once spent a month in India.

My son, Sam, who is thirty, said this recently on the subject of our increasingly empty souls: The majority of people skim across the surface of life. Living in fight or flight mode, stressed, getting shots of short-lived artificial dopamine from social media, gambling, etc. On drugs to deal with depression and attention issues. People feel it more and more everyday, that this is wrong. Our souls are damaged and people desire deeper connections and meaning.

It’s the astutest thing I’ve ever heard that astute guy say.

I watched the Jessie Diggins documentary the other day. It’s good. It dives deep into her eating issues. At one point she says something like, “I think I wanted my outward self to look as dark as my soul felt … “ I’m paraphrasing, but you get the gist.

THE (LONELY) SOUL

Here’s the thing. I don’t think we have damaged souls or darkened souls. I think our soul is always sitting there waiting for our attention. It doesn’t shrivel up like a rotted piece of fruit or turn black from lousy behavior. It’s more like an old friend who loves you and is waiting quietly and patiently for you to show up. And when you do, no matter how long you’ve been gone or how lousy you’ve behaved, unconditional love will great you upon arrival.

The soul is the best part of you and needs your loving attention. Like a beautiful flower garden, it needs to be watered and weeded and tended. The soul does the heavy lifting of a good life, and yet we seem to have no idea how to take care of it. What to do with it, why it matters.

It’s a hard thing to define, and this is most likely the reason for much of the confusion. What is the soul? Where is it? Is it a thing? Is it an idea? Does it take up space inside my body?

I would describe the soul as the essential core of a person. The part that remains when the body gives out. It’s the light, the spark, the essence of Infinity housed in your body.

In my last writing I challenged you to consider who you are when stripped of all defining words having to do with other people, places, or physical characteristics.

I’ll answer. If I sit alone in a room and begin to strip away all the things I have chosen to define myself: mom, sister, partner, friend, daughter, Vermonter, Saratogian, pastor, writer, skier … gone, gone, gone.

Who am I?

I am a child of God. I say it without hesitation.
To me this is not about religion. I’m not really even sure where the language comes from as I don’t think of God in any kind of human form, except as alive in each one of us. I think I say child because I acknowledge that I have a lot of growing to do.

Here is what it means:

• I am grounded in a loving energy much larger than myself.

• I am held in a larger reality than the one which exists before me today.

• My life is neither accident nor coincidence—I am meant to be here now.

• I possess an inherent worth that is not dependent on achievement or approval.

Alone in a room, I am deeply secure and grounded in this understanding.

The soul is my connection to the Divine, alive and humming, housed temporarily in this body for this moment in time.

Hopefully some of this gives you fodder with which to begin your own exploration into the nature of your soul and what it means in regards to living a meaningful life.

xo,mo

I’ve noticed fewer people go to church (except the more black and white denominations, which makes sense), fewer people turn to any kind of religious construct, which I think is a good thing, and more and more people are suffering.

I think the suffering comes from a place of dis-ease and that most people aren’t aware of what it’s about. It’s happening and they feel uneasy, agitated, tired. Life is not bringing them the happiness they thought they were guaranteed. Most people aren’t even aware of what’s happening, because no one ever talks about the spiritual life.

Not religious, spiritual.

You are remiss if you believe that life is only physical and mental/emotional. You are missing the third part of what composes your existence: the soul.

I get that the language is off-putting and mysterious and that some people feel it’s the domain of church or the wellnessphere. Which is true. Both of those worlds saw money to be made and have created narratives and channels to get that money out of your pocket and into their vault. Truly a shame, because everyone needs to spend time tending to the soul.

It’s very difficult to know who is speaking any truth and I will tell you why …

Because.

Listen carefully.

Because the truly great teachers don’t care about an audience.

The truly great teachers are out there walking the talk, and they do not care about likes or dollars or filling an auditorium or a book tour.

The truly good teachers among us are very quiet and hard to find.

Listen. If your guru, whoever you have chosen to listen to is proud of the number of followers they have on YouTube or is yelling into a mic in some studio every day, if they have a glossy persona, if they have ever gone within 50 yards of Oprah, turn and walk the other way.

They are in it to make money, they do not care about the condition of your soul.

Ego, money, power.
Most humans who gain an audience eventually become lost in the world of ego, money and power. I wish I had enough time or desire to study this, I’m so curious about it as a driving force in humans. Why it’s so hard to stay grounded.

I do, of course, have my own theory. I’ll name it right now. I talk about it a lot.

My theory is that most people are not grounded in life because they have no idea who they are.

Let’s call it the Alone In a Room theory. AIR.

Imagine yourself alone in a room.

You are stripped of all the things with which you define yourself: mother, sister, daughter, friend, partner, teacher, Vermonter, skier, Taurus …

Chances are you define yourself by a couple of places you’ve lived and by all the roles you hold and maybe by some physical characteristics.

Imagine you strip away every one of those defining words.

Who are you?

Can you come up with anything?

Who are you, separate from everyone you are connected to and everything you do and everywhere you’ve lived that has mattered to you?

Who. Are. You.

This is where the work of the soul begins.

Because one day all of those defining things will be gone.
You will move. Someone will die. You will not have that job anymore. A relationship will end. You will eventually find yourself at the end of your days with few, if any of those defining roles.

Who are you?

If you can’t answer it, that’s where the work begins. The work is yours, not a church’s, not a best-selling author’s, not anyone anywhere else.

There is good news: You are not alone in this earthly project. You are connected to something vast and good. You can choose to call the Other whatever you want to call it. Infinity, Good, it doesn’t matter. Call it something and begin a conversation with that energy.

Oh, hahhaha, I know, right? Sure I’ll start talking to thin air. I have a master’s degree, I’m no dope, you’re not gonna catch me believing in ghosts!

Oh humans. All of you your own worst enemy, all the time.

In the end, when you don’t live in the community that defined you, when your freedoms are diminished, your friends are gone, your kids don’t need you much, you and that That Thing will be alone together in the room.

And the sooner you become acquainted, the better off you’ll be. You will not feel abandoned, scared, confused, duped, anxious. You will feel safe and loved. You will feel known. You will understand your place in the scheme of things.

You may have noticed that nothing of this world is guaranteed. Which is why I hope that you can understand that the work of the soul is the most important work you will do and that everything else flows from there.

The work isn’t hard, but it takes time. Find a quiet place outside and sit there alone for a while, every day. Every single day. If you can’t spare 15 minutes to sit near a tree and be quiet, that’s probably part of the problem. Sit alone in the natural world and be quiet. Notice what’s going on. Notice the sounds of the wind, the birds, watch the clouds do their thing. Eventually you’ll get that you hold a small but important place in the scheme of things. You will begin to feel in your blood and bones that you are supposed to be here.

Start asking questions of Infinity. Show me what I’m supposed to do. Put me where I’m needed.

Then pay attention for the answers.

This is the conversation you want to have every day of your life. Where am I needed? You will learn, in time, to stop pushing your own agenda, to listen for signs and look for clues. You will trust your gut.

There is a Higher Love. And you belong to it.

Alone in a room, who are you? Work on it.

xo,mo