It’s a good question, and I sense that it’s true.

I’m still deeply involved in the work of spiritual formation and therapeutic growth—but what motivated me to write Who You’re Becoming was a conviction that we needed a more substantial architecture for deep change.

When I was trained as both a pastor and a therapist in the mid 1990s, I might have rejoiced to see a day when the resources of therapy and spiritual practices were so readily available. And yet, given the state of the church and evangelicalism in the United States, in particular, I wonder if the resources which have grown in size and influence have led us to love, joy, peace, patience, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control (Gal. 5:22-23). At the very least, these fruits don’t seem to guide who we choose to be our leaders or how we interact with one another. Is it an exaggeration to say that we’ve only become more polarized, tribalized, and demonized?

Because I’m old enough now to assess decades of development in these areas, I’ve found myself troubled by how little transformation so much of this has produced.

Don’t get me wrong—I bear witness to stories of transformation every day. There are pastors I provide care for whose names you’ll never know, but who are deeply intentional about growing in integrity. There are folks who’ve been profoundly traumatized by the church and who’ve engaged their own work consistently over the years who are now reengaging with hope and humility.

Yet when I look at our politics, when I consider the challenging requests for help from churches that I’ve received consistently for 15 years, when I survey the assessments of leaders I’ve conducted, and when I see the rise of the so-called manosphere with its outsized cultural influence and baptism of bravado and bullying, I shudder. I see a spiritual abuse crisis that doesn’t seem to abate despite increased awareness and resources. I see how punch-drunk Christians seem to be on power. I see an evangelicalism that seems to bear more of the bloodlust of the Crusades than the hospitality and pastoral concern of the early church. I see the airbrushed authenticity that I call “fauxnerability” among Christian influencers. I see the destructive cost of choosing charisma, charm, celebrity, causes, and control over character. Do you shudder, too, when you see these things?

This is why I’ve returned to character.

A few years back, I found myself drawn again to the cruciform life of Jesus. I wondered: Why doesn’t Philippians 2 compel us anymore? I sat with the fruit of the Spirit. I thought: Are love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, and more not sexy enough? I dusted off my notes from when I preached and taught on the Beatitudes in the late 1990s. I asked myself: When did brokenness, meekness, mercy, wholeness, and peacemaking become so peripheral to the Christian life? I pulled the writings of the desert fathers and mothers off my bookshelf and began reading again. I considered: Do the ancient vices and virtues still matter, or have we become enslaved to pragmatism, power, and platform?

I’m not at all saying that spiritual formation and therapeutic growth don’t matter—I’m engaged in both. In Who You’re Becoming, I’m proposing a deeper architecture that can animate vital formation and therapeutic growth with both substance and a telos. I sense that, at worst, we manage sin and symptoms and prescribe practices but fail to attend to the deeper conditions that facilitate transformation.

In the book, I suggest three movements: the foundations of character change, the maturation of character, and the transformation of character. Perhaps the book’s most distinctive contribution is found in its foundational chapters, which offer an underlying autonomic and neuroscientific substructure to what so many wise thinkers—James K. A. Smith, Rowan Williams, N. T. Wright, and others—have written about character. They often talk about changing habits, but what are the conditions under which habits actually change? And how is this process too often undermined by personality hacks, microwaved approaches to change and restoration, and even good intentions sabotaged by wandering attention?

The next section engages the ripening process—what have been called seasons or stages of the spiritual journey. These aren’t merely modern inventions of developmental theorists. They were anticipated in the Psalms and pondered by ancient sages—not least St. Teresa of Ávila, whose Interior Castle offered a developmental path centuries ago. We need a map for the journey, and ancient maps are some of the best ones.

In this section, we also explore initiatory traditions, which offer four basic conditions for a journey through suffering into maturation: safety, an elder, a community, and a sacred story. We see how all of this contributes to deep wholeness—a life of integration, or integrity.

The final section traces faith, hope, and love as enduring pathways of transformation. I take each in turn, reflecting on how faith invites us into groundedness and humility, how hope invites us beyond naïve optimism into a new vision of flourishing, and how love radically shifts the way we show up and how people experience us, particularly within the larger systems in which we operate.

There are nine chapters, but consider this a book and workbook in one: the resources, reflection questions, and practices at the end of each chapter could constitute a separate resource themselves.

For some, this book might offer the window into deep change they’ve been looking for. Others may have been impacted or harmed by people whose character has been shaped toward narcissism, avoidance, control, chaos, perfectionism, or something else. They may be sobered by how a life is formed—and by how slow and uncertain change can be—while being invited to prioritize their own safety and transformative journey.

For other readers, this will be an exercise in the deep work of biblical, theological, and psychological integration, which is much needed in a day of cheap proof-texting. For still others, it will offer a window into the cultural reckoning that calls for a massive dismantling and rebuilding—not merely of individual character, but of our structures and institutions. There is something here for many different readers.

Would you check it out and preorder it? It arrives October 20 and will be available wherever you buy books. Next week, I’ll announce a launch team and I’d love it if you’d considering joining.

And—if you sense its importance and helpfulness, would you commend it to others?

I’d be grateful.

And I hope this goes at least a little way toward answering the question: Why a book like this?

This essay is free.

I’d be grateful if you could become a paid subscriber, as it helps me keep writing. And I occasionally offered paid subscriber content. You can do that below.

Do you need care yourself?

Consider joining me or one of my colleagues for a five-day soul care intensive, or pursue ongoing care from wise, seasoned souls. Learn more.

Want to read the new book?

These are my seven books, including the new one—and each, in its own way, emphasizes the themes from today.

And guess what—soon you’ll be able to join a launch team for the new one and get early access to the book—and to a film that tells the story of God’s loving pursuit through the eyes of an ancient sage.

Stay tuned.

Do you prefer watching videos?

I created a YouTube channel for that featuring videos on character, narcissism, healing from trauma, wholeness, soul care, and more.

Here’s to becoming a people of faith, hope, and love,

I did consider a few. Jean Vanier came to mind—most heartbreaking of them all for me—the man I revered as a living saint, the founder of L’Arche. His picture hung on my office wall. I taught a seminary class with his name in the title years ago. That one hit hard, although I suspect fewer readers might recognize his name.

As I thought a bit more about my answer, I shifted uneasily in my chair. Can I say this out loud? Is this the space to name this kind of scandal?

The scandal I named was this:

The slow, widespread collapse of the way of Jesus into a form of religiosity that chose the way of power, relevance, supremacy, control, and wealth. Within a corrupted ecosystem like this, human scandals are not only possible but predictable.

I often talk of the reckoning we’ve faced over these past two decades, a reckoning Mike Regele and Mark Schulz envisioned three decades ago in their prophetic The Death of the Church—a book I read back in the late ’90s. Phyllis Tickle situated this upheaval within a recurring historical pattern in her 2008 book The Great Emergence. And this reckoning has been hinted at or even heralded in various ways and at various times by Michael Frost, Alan Hirsch, Philip Jenkins, Soong-Chan Rah, Andrew Root, Diane Langberg, Brian Zahnd, Jemar Tisby, Kristin Kobes Du Mez, Randy Woodley, Raymond Chang, and many others.

As Tickle taught us, Christianity has undergone wholesale upheavals roughly every five hundred years. But this one feels different. Despite significant calls to spiritual, moral, ecclesial, and systemic reckoning and reform, we’ve witnessed an evangelical doubling-down—an overt rejection of critiques of racial injustice, spiritual and sexual abuse, ecclesial and political power with its entrenched and self-serving structures, and more.

It’s not that these calls to reform are somehow unbiblical, as some claim. Just page back through your Bible to Isaiah 1:10–17; Isaiah 10:1–4; Jeremiah 22:13–17; Jeremiah 23:1–4; Ezekiel 34:1–10; Amos 5:10–15; Micah 3:1–4; Malachi 3:5; Luke 1:46–55; Luke 13:31–32; Mark 11:15–18; Matthew 23:1–36; Luke 20:45–47. Again and again, the leaders of the day are called out.

It’s not that these calls to reform are somehow inconsistent with Christian tradition. Dust off your shelves or fire up your Kindle and read Augustine, Gregory the Great, Richard Baxter, Teresa of Ávila, John Chrysostom, Ambrose of Milan, Martin Luther, Catherine of Siena, Bernard of Clairvaux, John Wesley, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Martin Luther King Jr., and many more.

I’ve been helped by many who’ve spoken boldly to various aspects of Christianity’s dangerous affair with empire, an idolatrous entanglement lamented in Scripture (Daniel 7:1–28; Daniel 11:31–36; Matthew 4:8–10; Matthew 20:25–28; John 18:36; Revelation 13:1–18; Revelation 17:1–6; Revelation 18:1–24).

But why do we not lament and repent? Why isn’t the more beautiful way of Jesus compelling to us?

I’ve been reading St. Gregory the Great lately (c. 540–604), the monk turned pope who brought his commitments to solitude, discernment, and humility into a position of immense power and influence. Gregory is complicated for me. He seemed more comfortable with imperial power than I wish he had been, more willing to imagine that Christian faithfulness and the purposes of empire might coexist. I find myself increasingly skeptical, even though I was trained early on as a Kuyperian (some of you will know what that means).

Yet what I’ve come to admire is that, because of his proximity to the centers of power, Gregory understood its spiritual dangers and limits. Again and again, he counseled powerful leaders toward humility, self-examination, restraint, and service. Those entrusted with authority, he wrote, should “rejoice not to be over men, but to do them good” (Pastoral Rule, II.6).

Like Jesus.

The deepest scandal is not that a few prominent pastors, political leaders, or powerful people have failed. The scandal is that we’ve been largely formed by something other than the way of Jesus, something other than love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control (Galatians 5:22–23).

Perhaps our reckoning begins here: not with another political or ecclesial strategy for saving Christianity, but with the humble question of whether we are actually becoming like Jesus.

Before I go, if you’re curious to learn more, Who You’re Becoming releases two months from today—October 20! Here’s the back cover, featuring a quote from my dear friend and colleague and Eugene Peterson’s biographer, Winn Collier.

This essay is free.

I’d be grateful if you might consider becoming a paid subscriber, as it helps me keep writing. And I occasionally offered paid subscriber content.

Do you need care yourself? Consider joining me or one of my colleagues for a five-day intensive, or pursue ongoing care from wise, seasoned souls. Learn more.

Want to read more?

These are my seven books, including the new one—and each, in its own way, emphasizes the themes from today.

And guess what—soon you’ll be able to join a launch team for the new one and get early access to the book—and to a film that tells the story of God’s loving pursuit through the eyes of an ancient sage.

Stay tuned.

Do you prefer watching videos?

I created a YouTube channel for that featuring videos on character, narcissism, healing from trauma, wholeness, soul care, and more.

Pursue the more beautiful way of Jesus,

Years ago when I began training as a Christian therapist, I asked a question: What’s the goal?

I really wasn’t sure.

Was it catharsis—a good, healing cry?

Was it insight—an aha about your childhood wounds?

Was it a better boundary—meant to foster connection?

I was also finishing my Master of Divinity degree, and was considering the larger telos of it all—what is flourishing on this therapeutic journey?

It seemed to matter for the significant work of soul care we were engaged in. And yet, from supervisor to supervisor, the answers varied.

Years later, my first book—Leaving Egypt: Finding God in the Wilderness Places— was devoted to that question, as I anchored my own vision in the long journey home from slavery, through Sinai and sandy deserts, to a secure place—from neurosis to theosis, as I titled one chapter.

Since then, we’ve learned a lot more about nervous system physiology, and I sense new goals being offered beyond catharsis, insight, and boundaries. Today, we’re invited to the kind of work that produces “calm,” that fosters “regulation,” that invites “ventral anchoring,” and more—a new language of the nervous system, offering an invaluable contribution to human flourishing.

And yet, it’s become an industry, with apps and techniques and vagus nerve stimulation devices and books.

Calm™ has been commodified.

What Is This “Calm” You’re Seeking?

When a group I was engaging was asking about resources and techniques and devices and media that could help them find this elusive state of calm, I pausing because I sensed the urgency.

After a moment, I asked:

What if what you’re seeking is already yours?

I saw a few blank stares.

But my point was this: we’ve turned nervous system regulation into another pursuit.

And it’s not surprising.

As I’ve written about in Healing What’s Within, it’s what we know in our bones, an ancient echo of a slithering serpent’s deceit in Genesis 3—the not-so-subtle hint that what you’re looking for is out there, waiting to be grasped, like Adam and Eve grasped for the tempting fruit.

Purchase this vagal toning device for $399!

Or, grab this yearlong subscription to the state-of-the-art breathwork app!

Or, enroll in this training for nervous system work not available anywhere else!

And—guess what?!—that buzzing anxiety will go away.

That nagging restlessness will disappear.

Indeed, the promised land is just over the horizon!

Do you feel the pull?

It’s just out there—yours to acquire—until it isn’t.

That’s not to say that particular practices aren’t valuable—they are, and I commend them regularly—as resources to support someone, not the guaranteed means to unlocking the elusive calm.

Yes, I’m deeply invested in engaging the best insights of today’s neuroscience, but when I sense its limits, I continually return to ancient wisdom.

Ancient Calm?

Recently, I pulled a dusty copy of Cyprian Smith’s The Way of Paradox: Spiritual Life as Taught by Meister Eckhart off my shelf. I set it alongside Jon Sweeney and Mark Burrow’s Meister Eckhart: Book of the Heart. And these two books accompanied me on a little birthday vacation week away.

Sitting back in my camp chair one morning with a few hours of spacious time ahead, I exhaled.

Echoing Jesus’s “the kingdom of heaven is within you” and his words to the elder son “everything I have is (already) yours,” the German Dominican philosopher and priest Meister Eckhart was eager to remind his listeners that what you’re seeking is already yours.

He once said:

“God is at home. It is we who’ve gone out for a walk.”

You hear this echoed in the quote at the top, too.

Eckhart knew his own restless heart, and he was interested in calm. In fact, he had a word for it:

Gelassenheit.

Now, I’m no German scholar, but I’ve done a little digging and Eckhart’s vision of calm is a bit different than ours. For Eckhart, this “calm” state he envisions is not one we grasp or acquire or achieve. The best of contemporary neuroscience would agree, but marketplace products offering calm don’t always heed the science.

For Eckhart, gelassenheit described a state of relinquishment, of letting go, of opening our hands, even releasement (as John O’Donohue names it).

Eckhart might’ve said that grasping is the problem.

We grasp after some image of God fashioned for pragmatic or power-seeking motives.

We grasp after some image of ourselves.

We grasp for success.

We grasp for healing, for certainty, and even for calm.

And I feel this.

I’ve spent a lot of my life chasing the thing.

It’s what we learned in school, in sports, in games, even in a church—there was always another achievement to unlock. We’re practically formed to grasp in our earliest years, and this grasping serves us in the first half of life until we hit a wall or realize our limits—often through significant disorientation, disruptions, and more. Most of us don’t know what to do when we arrive at this wall, and there are too-few guides around to help us navigate.

So, we grasp some more.

Scan your life: what did you learn to grasp for? What subtle formation oriented your life toward grasping? What did your school reward? What did your church prize? What would you need to achieve to be sanctified, smart, or successful? How were you formed to grasp?

Already Yours

I turned 56 last week and grabbed copies of those books before Sara and I took a short birthday trip.

Because I needed to be reminded.

Even after midlife’s pruning, I still grasp.

Even after experiencing the futility of grasping, I keep reaching.

Eckhart might say today that we’re all addicts looking for the next fix—even if that fix is what we call “calm.”

Perhaps the invitation—for you and for me—is to simply notice the grasping. Notice that subtle pull within to search for it, to reach for it, to purchase it.

And then, breathe.

Breathe in—and exhale.

Perhaps an old prayer might help:

And then consider: what if what I’m searching for is already available, in some mysterious way, to me, even within me?

What if I’m already the beloved?

What if Jesus’s words to the elder brother are true and it’s all already mine?

What if I’m one with God, even now?

What if “home” is a spacious place within?

What if a “hidden wholeness” is my spiritual birthright and eternal inheritance?

And, as I wrote about years ago in a Lenten devotional, what if all I need to do is to fall into the goodness that is already given?

This essay is free.

I’d be grateful if you might consider becoming a paid subscriber, as it helps me keep writing. And I occasionally offered paid subscriber content.

Do you need care yourself? Consider joining me or one of my colleagues for a five-day intensive, or pursue ongoing care from wise, seasoned souls. Learn more.

Want to read more?

These are my seven books, including the new one—and each, in its own way, emphasizes the themes from today.

And guess what—soon you’ll be able to join a launch team for the new one and get early access to the book—and to a film that tells the story of God’s loving pursuit through the eyes of an ancient sage.

Stay tuned.

Do you prefer watching videos?

I created a YouTube channel for that featuring videos on character, narcissism, healing from trauma, wholeness, soul care, and more.

Fall into the “calm” that is already yours,

I did what I’d typically do, fumbling over the DSM characteristics and adding some framing about a personality organized around defense. But she stopped me.

“I want you to talk about love,” she said.

All-at-once I felt the familiar surge of panic which (if you know me) can switch on and take over without notice.

I know I’ve talked about this, I thought to myself. (I just wrote about it again in Who You’re Becoming.) But I was tired, defaulting to some old, familiar framings that tell part of the story, but not all of it.

Noticing the panic, I manufactured a brief moment of pause, reaching for my water. I breathed deeply and exhaled. I chuckled to myself, because in that moment I was living what she was asking. In my body, I felt a shrinking feeling—shame’s takeover—but I also sensed her kind eyes—love’s presence.

Shame’s takeover. Love’s presence.

The pause to sip some water and catch my breath was no more than 5-10 seconds, but it felt like 5-10 minutes.

How will this story unfold? Will I shrink or will I show up?

I was living in the old tale, once again—the one that begins in Love, is interrupted by a slithering serpent, and erupts in shame.

The kind and attuned interviewer sensed me squirming—me, the guy who is supposed to know these things—and she tossed me a softball.

“I remember you talking about this in your narcissism book—how the story of Narcissus is not a story of excessive self-love, but love’s absence. He’s stuck, fixated on his own image, unable to give and receive love,” she said.

Her kindness and help softened me.

I did tell that story in the book, or better—I let Terrence Real tell it:

People often think of Narcissus as the symbol of excessive self-regard, but in fact, he exemplifies the opposite. As the Renaissance philosopher Marsilio Ficino observed in the 1500s, Narcissus did not suffer from an overabundance of self-love, but rather from its deficiency. The myth is a parable about paralysis. The youth, who first appears in restless motion, is suddenly rooted to one spot, unable to leave the elusive spirit. As Ficino remarked, if Narcissus had possessed real self-love, he would have been able to leave his fascination. The curse of Narcissus is immobilization, not out of love for himself, but out of dependency upon his image.

After the pause to sip and breathe, still flustered but settling, I blurted out something like, “Yes, it’s just a story about love. We’re all living in a story of love offered, love twisted, love graciously offered again.”

It’s just a story about love.

Now, I don’t think any serious teacher of human (psycho)pathology would replace textbook definitions with my short blurtation, but maybe something about it is important for us to remember, for me to remember.

In short, narcissism—and any disorder of the heart—is about a frantic, even desperate attempt to acquire something that is already yours—love (Luke 15:31).

Some attempts to acquire love look grandiose, entitled, and attention-seeking. Some look like soothing through substances. Some look tightly controlled and rigidly ordered. Some look like lavish spending and the accumulation of things. Some look isolating and self-protective. Some look cruel and malevolent. Some, tragically, even seek the relief that a life ended might provide. When love is wounded, twisted, absent, abused, anxious, and more, our strategies for coping and soothing range in texture and degree.

But each is a story that pivots around love.

At the core, it is really about love—how we live in a story of not-enoughness the slithering snake was selling, how shame shrinks us, how we lose touch with love—and with ourselves, God, and each other as a consequence.

And it’s a story of how Love keeps knocking at the door.

That’s the hope in it, too.

“I slept, but my heart remained awake,” the Shulamite woman says in Song of Songs, waiting on love (SOS 5:2). And this encourages me, because it reminds me that even when I’m asleep to love, even when I’m disconnected, even when I lose touch with it, my heart remains mysteriously awake to love.

Now, I know—there are technical definitions we need for psychological precision—nuanced by genetics and attachment, safety and threat, trust and betrayal—but from one important angle, disorders of the heart are ways we remain asleep to the lavish offering of love we’re created to receive, enjoy, and rest in. (More on this in the opening chapters of the next book.)

Years ago I wrote, “This is the wound of shame. One who is ashamed cannot connect and cannot become vulnerable. He is immovable, untouchable” (When Narcissism Comes to Church). I mentioned then that the Greek root of the word narcissism (even narcotics) means numbness or stupor. And there are many ways we’re prone to remain in a stupor east of Eden.

Yet, the hope that remains at the center of all my teaching, speaking, counseling, and writing—even when I’m asleep to it—is that Love never stops pursuing.

In many ways, I’m so used to life east of Eden that I’ve become habituated to my own patterns of numbing—and I work with folks every day in my therapy practice who are comfortably numb also. So maybe it might encourage you, as it encourages me, that Love keeps knocking at the door, longing for the reunion—and nothing can ultimately separate us from it.

It is—and it’s always been—just a story about love.

This essay is free.

I’d be grateful if you might consider becoming a paid subscriber, as it helps me keep writing.

Do you need care yourself? Consider joining me or one of my colleagues for a five-day intensive, or pursue ongoing care from wise, seasoned souls. Learn more.

Want to read more?

These are my seven books, including the new one—and each, in its own way, emphasizes the themes from today.

And guess what—soon you’ll be able to join a launch team for the new one and get early access to the book—and to a film that tells the story of God’s loving pursuit through the eyes of an ancient sage. Stay tuned.

Do you prefer watching videos?

I created a YouTube channel for that featuring videos on character, narcissism, healing from trauma, wholeness, soul care, and more.

Listen for love, my friends.

I’ve revisited that word in my next book Who You’re Becoming. Because now I’m seeing fauxnerability in places I never expected.

When I was a newly ordained minister and licensed therapist in the late 90’s, therapy itself was suspect in my ecclesial orbit. If I invited colleagues to consider counseling or encouraged them toward vulnerability, they looked at me strangely. It was lonely back then, and I longed for the day when we would and could talk more freely, more vulnerably - about ourselves, our stories, and more.

So when the thaw began, I was encouraged.

It was slow at first - a fellow pastor admitting that he was seeing a therapist, a church staff reading Allender’s The Healing Path, a Scazzero book sitting on a friend’s desk - someone I never would have imagined reading emotionally healthy anything.

And then, almost overnight it seemed as if everyone was talking Enneagram - and not about their shadow sides, or the ways in which it was revealing a hidden wound or an unseen impact. People were talking about their attachment styles like it explained everything about them. One friend told me about his therapist. I asked, “What are you digging into?” He said, “He’s more just a guy I run ideas by.”

Things had shifted, alright.

In recent years since the narcissism book was published, I’m hearing more and more stories and seeing more and more examples - of practitioners with lots of certificates and tools who lack presence and compassion, and sometimes harm. There’s a whole industry of personality typing gurus. There are spiritual abuse “experts” who’ve never looked at their own trauma. There are “coaches” who slap “trauma-informed” into a social media bio after reading some pop psychology book.

And now I see new ways of avoiding, references to personality or type or relational dynamics with little movement toward real self-awareness:

• “That’s just my 3-ness coming out…just my personality.”

• “That’s just how I’m wired.”

• “People tell me I’m so vulnerable in my sermons…you’re obviously not listening.”

• “I’m direct because I’m an 8.”

• “My therapist told me I’m anxiously attached, so you’ll just have to put up with it.”

I’m often saddened by what I see.

The Commodification of Vulnerability

Fauxnerability is showing up in spaces I never expected.

Even in counseling, a vocation that at its best is rooted in humility, presence, and compassion, I see the pull toward branding, expertise, performance, drama, competition, and posturing - therapeutic language projected into the digital egosphere, where the sacred language of attunement and relationship is stripped, packaged, and monetized.

I see counselors a year or two out of school speaking with certainty, the kind of certainty which diminishes among those who’ve been doing it for decades and know disappointment, failure, fatigue, and the character formation that accompanies these things. I see coaches with little training advertising trauma-informed cohorts and expensive courses. I see the meteoric rise of practitioners who’ve mastered the art of the platform-building, but whose presence feels thin, performative, and prosaic.

Fauxnerability is what happens when we learn the language of healing but stop short of the surrender healing requires. Fauxnerability is what happens when we become experts in talking about suffering without having experienced the dark night. Fauxnerabilty is what happens when we disclose to soothe our nervous systems rather than to be truly known. Fauxnerability is what happens when honest words are performative rather than a manifestation of authentic presence.

And we live in a culture that rewards this. Perceived vulnerability builds (apparent) connection quickly. It signals to others, “I’m deep. I’m in tune. I can be trusted.” And in a hyper-therapeutic age, talking about self-awareness or your wounds can function as social capital.

I was invited on a podcast once where, in the minutes before we started, the podcaster said, “We figure you’ll be up for this, but we’re just all gonna go really deep and get really vulnerable in this.”

I’d already sensed a vibe by the aesthetics and set up of the podcast, and politely said, “Actually, I am vulnerable with just a few people in my life…but not on podcasts.”

They were a bit stunned. “But we’ve heard you - you go so deep!” one of them said.

“Sure, I’m open about some things,” I responded, “but vulnerability is sacred…reserved our closest companions.”

They were shocked. But then I realized what I’d signed up for when I said yes to this podcast - the branding of vulnerability for the sake of hits and likes.

I thought about John O’Donohue’s caution of a kind of “neon-consciousness” so prevalent today - everything exposed, too quickly aired. Henri Nouwen echoes this, writing: “There is a false form of honesty that suggests that nothing should remain hidden and that everything should be said, expressed and communicated. This honesty can be very harmful.”

But fauxnerability is also used as a preventive measure, too - as one leader admitted to me after many months of therapeutic work we were doing, “I thought that if I talked about my Enneagram and my therapist, I’d never be accused of being narcissistic and abusive.” But he was…and his harm was profound.

It all signals that we’re living in the era where the practice of presence is now performed and commodified.

What is the Fruit?

When conversations about emotional and spiritual health first began to open up in our churches, many of us hoped for maturity. We longed for leaders who were less defensive, more self-aware, more honest with others and themselves. We wanted depth, not just words. And in many ways, that shift has been monumentally helpful to so many. In particular, I think of the many folks who’ve been able to receive care because it is less stigmatized today.

But somewhere along the way, fluency in the vocabulary of vulnerability began to outpace the actual formation of souls.

So I ask a simpler question than I’ve often asked before: What is the fruit?

Not what is posted or proclaimed, listed in a bio or lauded from a platform.

But, what is the fruit over time?

Are we becoming more patient? More kind? More loving? More faithful? More gentle?

Is he growing more open to feedback, more capable of repairing, and less reactive under stress?

Do the people closest to her experience her as safe, responsive, and accountable?

Are we known across years and seasons of life as someone who exhibit the fruits of the Spirit?

Because while fauxnerability settles for the appearance of maturity, true character is revealed in an increasingly integrated life, consistent life, and faithful life.

And fruit, unlike fauxnerability, is enduring.

This is what I talk about in more depth in this book, coming soon. Please preorder and share with your friends!

Coming October 24, 2026.

My reflections are offered freely to everyone. But if my writing has been meaningful to you, a paid subscription makes a real difference. Your support helps create the space in my vocational life to continue this creative work—which is deeply life-giving to me, and I hope to you as well.

Paid subscribers can comment and ask questions, and I try to engage those conversations whenever I can. I also share occasional subscriber-only updates, reading recommendations, and notes from my writing life.

If this space has been helpful to you, I’d invite you to consider becoming a paid subscriber—not only here, but for any Substack writer whose work nurtures your growth.

I was sitting with a friend watching World Cup soccer as a player barely missed a goal, his hands coming up to his face in a posture of embarrassment and shame.

I said to my friend, “He just needs to say hello to his shame.” My friend laughed, a bit confused.

I told him that I wasn’t joking - it’s an actual practice I engage. I told him that I’d compassionately offered those words to myself the other day after an embarrassing miss in a relationship.

“Tell me more,” my friend said. (I was proud of him - this is a question therapists love!)

For me, as soon as I’d recognized my relational miss, an old, familiar feeling rose up through my chest and into my neck and settled in my face with a recognizable warmth. I’ve been here before, I thought. My body had been here before.

I told him that there are many times when I do almost anything to escape that feeling - explaining myself, defending myself, distracting myself, making a joke, getting productive, even disappearing.

He said, “Yes, I know that Chuck.”

But, as I shared with my friend, this time I said hello and simply noticed it.

Hello, shame. We’ve been here before. Let’s linger a bit.

I stayed with it for a while as I remained present to it, making sure it did not flood me or overwhelm me.

I breathed in a 4-7-8 pattern for about three minutes to communicate to my body that I was safe.

I put my hand on my chest to communicate compassion and connection…and to remind me of God’s presence.

I found some words that a good churchman wouldn’t consider much of a prayer - but it’s what I had.

And I let it move through until it felt just a bit lighter.

To be clear, for every one time I’ve been able to stay with shame in this way, there have been a hundred times that I’ve run from it. My friend knows. I’ve run from my shame, my anger, my disappointment, my looming sense of dread, my overwhelming fear.

And perhaps that’s the deeper reality to pay attention to.

What do you do with your pain?

Perfectionism, workaholism, people-pleasing, enemy-creating, endless productivity, compulsive helping, control, achievement, humor, image management, even forms of avoidance or management - these aren’t neutral. They are often brilliant survival strategies.

And they organize our lives around one central task. Don’t feel what feels unbearable.

Many of us learned long ago to spend enormous amounts of energy staying at a distance from our suffering.

We may distance ourselves by spiritualizing suffering, struggle, shame, and more.

“God orchestrated this,” one woman once said to me, after recounting her own experience of devastating childhood abuse. “God had a reason for it - I’m sure of it. Someday I’ll understand why this had to happen.”

I sat before her, heartbroken. I couldn't help wondering whether these words had become a rationalization for the unimaginable, the unbearable.

I’ve sat with folks long enough to understand why these words feel comforting. They offer some sense of coherence in the midst of chaos. They quiet the terror that sits just below the surface.

But might these explanations become another way of leaving ourselves?

If I rush to explain my suffering, I may never actually experience it.

If I hurry to declare that God has a plan, I may never allow myself to lament what has been lost.

If I spiritualize my pain too quickly, I may miss the opportunity to offer my heartbreak and my needs vulnerably before God, like the Psalmists, like so many honest saints.

In the end, avoidance and explanation ends up sabotaging formation. When I avoid or explain, I don’t have to say I’m scared, I’m needy, I’m alone. This is not the kind of “suffering that produces character.”

The question I’m asking myself these days is: How can I stay with the experience just a little bit longer? How might I linger with my sadness? Hold space for rising anger? Can I catch myself in my automatic habits of bypassing?

And can I say hello - and even allow God to say hello - to the parts of me that are hurting?

That’s what produces character. And - for better or worse - this is what I think about during soccer matches.

For more on this, preorder:

Coming October 2026.

My reflections are offered freely to everyone. But if my writing has been meaningful to you, a paid subscription makes a real difference. Your support helps create the space in my vocational life to continue this creative work—which is deeply life-giving to me, and I hope to you as well.

Paid subscribers can comment and ask questions, and I try to engage those conversations whenever I can. I also share occasional subscriber-only updates, reading recommendations, and notes from my writing life.

If this space has been helpful to you, I’d invite you to consider becoming a paid subscriber—not only here, but for any Substack writer whose work nurtures your growth.

I’m reflecting on this in a rather strange way as America’s 250th approaches—by exploring ancient roots, asking: “What would the wisest of our earliest church leaders say to us today?”

I’ve taught Christian spirituality and pastoral care in various places and ways over 25 years, but I’ve never spent extended time with the monk who became Pope—Gregory the Great (540-604). And so, as I prepare to teach again this fall…mindful of his wisdom on this subject not least through his essential read The Pastoral Rule…I’ve immersed myself in all-things-Gregory. And what I’ve found has surprised and delighted me, particularly in its extraordinary relevance for today.

Gregory lived in a world obsessed with power.

The Roman Empire was unraveling. Civil leaders (often trained by the church) grasped for authority. And church leaders were hardly immune to the same temptations. Ambition, prestige, rivalry, and public honor had found their way into the life of the Church just as surely as they had shaped the politics of Rome.

Gregory had little patience for any of it.

What makes his voice so compelling is that he never sought power himself. Before becoming Bishop of Rome, he’d embraced a quiet monastic life, where silence, prayer, self-examination, and humility were understood as foundational for life in and with God. He accepted leadership reluctantly, believing that authority was something to be carried with fear and trembling rather than unhinged ambition.

When he eventually became Pope, he refused titles that elevated him above others. Instead, he called himself servus servorum Dei—“the servant of the servants of God.”

This wasn’t pious or performative branding. It was the theological conviction of a monk who’d answer the call to lead, albeit reluctantly.

Gregory believed that the greatest danger facing leaders was pride. And he was hardly alone. The desert fathers and mothers had spent centuries naming what they called the passions—those habitual patterns that slowly misshape us. Pride stood at the center…he saw it as a source for many of the other vices. Pride took good strength and formed it into narcissistic grandiosity. Pride took holy ambition and distorted into reckless and self-serving ambition. Pride convinced leaders that their importance excused their lack of humility.

For Gregory, this was never merely a private spiritual problem. Pride could disorder families, churches, and nations. While humble leadership could contribute to the public good and foster flourishing, pride could gain the world but do it at the expense of soul.

So, as I’ve been sitting with Gregory, I’ve wondered what he’d say to us if he walked among us today.

I hear leaders speak about making nations great, making churches influential, and making movements successful. I see the growing cultural and ecclesial embrace of hypermasculinity, rigid certainty, narcissistic leadership. In fact, despite the growing calls to embrace another way, we’ve witnessed a doubling down manifesting in a collective narcissism—nationalism, ethnocentrism, tribalism, all sorts of exceptionalism (national, religious, political, racial).

Frankly, it’s a Christianity that would be utterly unfamiliar and even repugnant to Gregory, to the earliest church fathers and mothers, to Jesus.

Indeed, Gregory had learned another way, on his knees, kneeling before the crucified Christ, who did not consider equality with God as something to be grasped, but became a servant.

He let Jesus form him. The words of Jesus. The ways of Jesus.

The Beatitudes, which do not bless the triumphant or the grandiose or the powerful, but the poor in spirit, the meek, the merciful, and the peacemakers.

Paul’s fruits of the Spirit—which do not define maturity by influence, greatness or winning, but in love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.

John's Apocalypse—where the kingdoms of this world are unmasked as Babylon, and true victory belongs not to the Beast that devours, but to the Lamb who was slain.

His monk teachers—who did not regard pride as a leadership asset to produce wins for the right tribe, but regarded pride as the great enemy of the soul and a toxin to society.

And so, I’ve wondered: what makes a nation great? What kind of leadership leads to flourishing?

Gregory might tell us that there is always time to re-examine, to listen afresh, to remember. He might tell us that the flourishing of the Gospel has never been dependent on some grandiose leader—to the contrary. He might tell us to find our way back to the words and ways of the suffering servant—who became a servant to all. Start there. Start simply.

That’s what he told himself as he reluctantly stepped into leadership: servus servorum—become a servant even to the servants of God. Assume the way of humility and become a servant to all.

That’s the way of flourishing.

My reflections are offered freely to everyone. But if my writing has been meaningful to you, a paid subscription makes a real difference. Your support helps create the space in my vocational life to continue this creative work—which is deeply life-giving to me, and I hope to you as well.

Paid subscribers can comment and ask questions, and I try to engage those conversations whenever I can. I also share occasional subscriber-only updates, reading recommendations, and notes from my writing life.

If this space has been helpful to you, I’d invite you to consider becoming a paid subscriber—not only here, but for any Substack writer whose work nurtures your growth.

Coming October 2026. Preorders available.

But let’s start here: If I asked you how deep change happens, how would you respond?

I’ve asked this at retreats, in churches, in seminary classes, with clients, and more. And what I hear are words like effort, discipline, accountability, suffering, or better spiritual practices. In other words, I just need to try a little harder.

I’m not denying the importance of some of these things, but I’ve become convinced that something else comes first.

Safety.

Why safety, though?

Years ago during my doctoral research, I spent time studying ancient rites of passage and journeys of transformation. Going into the project, I assumed that suffering would emerge as the primary catalyst for growth, not least because I’d read the gut-wrenching stories in Scripture: wilderness journeys and whale bellies, infertility and abandonment, exile and estrangement. Transformation through seasons of disruption, disorientation, loss, and longing.

To be sure, suffering certainly plays an important role—I spend quite a bit of time exploring it in my next book Who You’re Becoming because Christians, in particular, have all kinds of wild, unhelpful, and even dangerous takes on it. But what surprised me was that before pain, before risk, even before initiatory journeys, there was almost always a foundation of safety, belonging, and connection.

Think about Frodo and Sam in the Shire.

Before Mordor, before sacrifice, before heartbreak, there was home. There was friendship. There was belonging. Tolkein thought it important to orient them in an Edenic place where they knew themselves to be loved and connected. They experienced a sense of their ‘original goodness.’ And in many ways, it was the memory of that home that sustained them throughout the harrowing yet character-stretching journey. In other words, transformation requires an orienting point—a secure base from which we can venture into the unknown.

This early insight was affirmed over sixty years ago by attachment psychologist John Bowlby. He and his colleagues observed that children are most capable of exploration when they first experience a secure attachment—a reliable presence who communicates, “You are safe. You are loved. You belong.” From that secure base, children venture out into a world of inevitable suffering and heartbreak, returning when frightened, overwhelmed, or uncertain. The goal is never dependency but confident exploration. In many ways, healthy transformation works the same way. We grow not primarily through pressure or performance, but from the experience of secure connection. We become courageous enough to face the unknown because we know we are not facing it alone.

Today we understand something similar through the lens of the nervous system. When our bodies are organized around fear, threat, shame, or self-protection, most of our energy is devoted to survival. A nervous system consumed with survival has little capacity for transformation. In states of self-protection and defense, we may modify behavior or learn new information or make temporary adjustments. But deep change is difficult because the body remains braced, guarded, and defensive.

I think of a CEO I once worked with. By almost every external measure, he was successful. He was respected in his community, generous in his church, and accomplished in his profession. Yet he came to my office because his life was leaving a trail of pain behind it. His family and employees felt pressured. His relationships were strained to the point of breaking. As we explored his story, we discovered that he had grown up in a family organized around performance, achievement, and demand. He was proud of his family story, but it was not a story rooted in love. His young nervous system learned early that value came through performance.

What he experienced growing up became the atmosphere he created around him, one of demand and pressure and relentless exertion. This life felt normal…and who could argue? He was a “success,” after all.

One of the lessons he taught me is that success and character are not the same thing. Philanthropy is not an automatic sign of character. Achievement is not a revelation of maturity. Influence is not a measure of love. You can be admired and influential, and still be profoundly disconnected from your own heart. You can gain the whole world, and live soulless within it.

As the façade of his life began to crack, we discovered something deeper beneath all the striving. We discovered a primal longing for connection, belonging, and love—a longing I believe every human being carries. He sensed it in the room, in our connection, in the deep exhale that allowed him to shed tears, that allowed his inner performer to soften, that created space within and between for real connection. You might even say he experienced grace—the gift that allowed him to finally relax, the kindness that finally led to real repentance and change.

You see, we are image bearers of a relational God, created for communion, connection, safety, and love. This is our foundation, our orienting point, our Shire. As Henri Nouwen wrote, “Being the Beloved constitutes the core truth of our existence.”

This is why character change is not primarily about trying harder. It is not about exerting more effort, doing more quiet times, or taking a brief sabbatical, as helpful as effort and practices can be. They must first be anchored in safety.

The deeper invitation is to find your way to the still waters and green pastures. To become rooted and grounded in love. To discover a place of safety that can sustain you when life becomes disorienting. From there, you can begin to shape a life of character and manifest the fruits of the Spirit.

Reflection Questions

1. How is your body postured toward life right now? Do you find yourself braced, guarded, striving, and self-protective—or grounded, receptive, and connected?

2. What story did your family, church, or culture teach you about what makes a person valuable, lovable, or worthy? How does that story continue to shape the way you live today?

3. If transformation begins not with trying harder but with becoming rooted and grounded in love, what might God be inviting you to receive rather than achieve in this season of your life?

Want to hear this reflection on video or share a video with friends not on Substack? I’ll be sharing these musings at my YouTube page, as well. ⬇

My reflections are offered freely to everyone. But if my writing has been meaningful to you, a paid subscription makes a real difference. Your support helps create the space in my vocational life to continue this creative work—which is deeply life-giving to me, and I hope to you as well.

Paid subscribers can comment and ask questions, and I try to engage those conversations whenever I can. I also share occasional subscriber-only updates, reading recommendations, and notes from my writing life.

If this space has been helpful to you, I’d invite you to consider becoming a paid subscriber—not only here, but for any Substack writer whose work nurtures your growth.

Coming October 2026. Preorders available.

I didn’t realize, when I was hospitalized in Mexico in April 2012, that my body was screaming at me to stop.

Intuitively, I knew something was wrong. That’s when I really began to listen, at least as best I could. And I chose to pivot, personally and vocationally.

With a major shift in lifestyle and geography, I settled into a slower routine and began engaging new practices with regularity. I was proud of myself for slowing down, even for making a courageous vocational move, one I characterized using Nouwen’s language of “downward mobility.” I sometimes wonder if I was more interested in the performance of downward mobility than the experience of it.

Nevertheless, with this massive pivot, I created more space to intentionally enter into new practices. Contemplative prayer. Yoga. Regular exercise. More intentional time with my kids. But within a year, I still felt restless. It still felt like the old me was driving the fast-moving bus.

What I didn’t realize then, but can see now, was that I was merely adding practices on top of a neglected and dysregulated nervous system.

My body had been living in a chronic, small-t trauma state for years. And I was the classic minimizer, the helper who regularly dismissed his own needs.

My nightstand included works by Rothschild, Siegel, and Badenoch, but I was reading for other people’s bodies and nervous systems, not mine. Even with a significant move from San Francisco to Michigan, even with an earnest effort to simplify and slow down, I was still living chronically outside my window of tolerance. What I couldn’t see then was that I was using silence and solitude to foster a bit of calm and connection to God without addressing the deeper, dysregulated undercurrents below.

Don’t get me wrong. The practices did create some calm, some joy, even some connection to God. My kids loved that I was around more. Life’s slower pace offered some gifts. But it was a little like cleaning and decluttering the house while ignoring the electrical wiring sparking behind the walls.

Here’s the thing.

We may sincerely desire deeper communion with God while our body remains braced, scanning constantly for danger.

We may acknowledge the shadow side of our Enneagram type without attending to the lingering survival energy that animates our reactions.

We may leave an abusive community or relationship and become champions of justice or reform without realizing how much oppositional energy still lives in us.

We may practice contemplation or meditation or yoga or self-help vagal exercises without honoring the surging flight energy within, the very energy that can turn healing into another form of spiritual perfectionism.

We may be told by a therapist to grieve our mother’s past absence while never attending to our present inner disconnection.

And it’s frustrating, isn’t it?

I would find myself perpetually restless and dissatisfied, always scanning for the next thing that might finally help. Another book. Another practice. Another retreat. Another insight. All of it driven by an unseen survival energy within.

And I’ve learned, through my own work and thousands of hours with others, that many of us live here without knowing it. You may be sincere, eager, wanting to grow. You may be doing the practices, reading the books, naming your patterns, pursuing justice, engaging therapy, seeking God.

But beneath it all, your body may still be braced.

And a braced body will turn almost anything into a strategy for survival, even the most beautiful spiritual practices. This does not mean the practices are bad. It means they need to meet us where we actually are.

Because addressing our deeper dysregulation is different from engaging vagal exercises that foster calm.

Because identifying how and why we live in perpetual vigilance is different from naming our Enneagram type.

Because acknowledging the chronic functional freeze that leaves us numb and going through the motions is different from committing to a morning quiet time.

For me, the invitation was not to abandon silence and solitude, but to stop using them to bypass the truth my body was telling. I had to learn to listen beneath my thoughts, beneath a typology, beneath my helper identity, beneath my well-practiced spiritual language, beneath the breathing exercises, beneath the yoga, even beneath my more faithful presence to my family. These were all good, but they did not help me see and name the hidden, dysregulating cycle.

I had been trying to calm my body before I had learned to listen to it.

Reflect

• Where have I been using good and beautiful practices to create calm, or even connection with God, without attending to the deeper survival energy still moving within me?

• What might my body be trying to tell me beneath my thoughts, my spiritual language, my personality type, my productivity, or my role?

• What would it look like to stop managing my body and begin listening to it as a place where truth, ache, longing, and God’s invitation may be revealed?

Explore This More in Healing What’s Within

My reflections are offered freely to everyone. But if my writing has been meaningful to you, a paid subscription makes a real difference. Your support helps create the space in my vocational life to continue this creative work—which is deeply life-giving to me, and I hope to you as well.

Paid subscribers can comment and ask questions, and I try to engage those conversations whenever I can. I also share occasional subscriber-only updates, reading recommendations, and notes from my writing life.

If this space has been helpful to you, I’d invite you to consider becoming a paid subscriber—not only here, but for any Substack writer whose work nurtures your growth.

—Frederick Buechner in Telling Secrets

You and I were born with two core and even holy needs—the need for attachment and the need for authenticity.

Attachment is our need to loved, to be held, to belong, to be seen, to be safe in the presence of another. As newborns, we arrive into this world utterly dependent. And yet, we do not survive by being impressive, independent, or productive. We survive because someone sees our face, hears our cries, responds to our body, and says in a thousand enfleshed ways: You are not alone.

Authenticity is our need to be ourselves. It is to know our what we feel, want, love, fear, need, and hope. It is the capacity to live from the inside out rather than the outside in. Authenticity is not merely self-expression, as popular caricatures would have it. It is the deep congruence of a life that can say: This is what is truest in me. Here, we discover not only who we uniquely are, but what we uniquely have to offer the world.

The hope for each precious newborn is that these two needs grow together, that we are loved in such a way that we become more ourselves.

But we know this isn’t a given.

The ancient story reminds us that the serpent’s whisper in the garden lives on in our stories. Maybe I’m not loved. Maybe I’m not enough just as God created me. Maybe I don’t have anything unique to offer the world.

The ancient whisper is echoed early in life. We learn, early on, that certain feelings are too much, that certain questions are unwelcome, that certain needs are inconvenient, that certain desires are dangerous. And we adapt, becoming agreeable or impressive or needless or funny or helpful or successful or smart or invisible.

As I wrote about many years ago in Wholeheartedness, this is where so much of our inner fragmentation begins. Little kids who aren’t sure if they’re secure in love will do everything they can to hold on to that fragile love, exiling parts of themselves unwittingly—their needs, their anger, their intuition, their strength, their tenderness. And in some religious circles, this is called “obedience.”

This is why the first question God asks in the garden is so powerful: “Where are you?” It is a question of location, presence, and return. Where did you go? What happened to your heart? Where are you hiding? How are you self-protecting? What shame story now keeps you from being seen and known?

And when we do return to love, knowing we’re seen and held, authenticity becomes truly possible. When I no longer have to curate myself to stay connected, I can offer my real presence. I can love from a less defended place. I can repent without gaslighting. I can name harm without attacking. I can receive care without suspicion. I can become curious about my protective strategies rather than condemned by them.

Here we discover that the our exiled anger may bear dignity, that our grief may reveal a hidden tenderness, that our disowned desires may carry a deeper vocation. There is so much to discover. We may even learn how to love again.

The 19th c poet and priest Gerard Manley Hopkins names it as the discovery of our inscape—our unique, God-created selves, that cry out:

Whát I dó is me: for that I came. (Click to read the whole poem)

Attachment and authenticity: two core needs of every human being.

And even in my mid-fifties, I’m still working this out, ever so slowly, recognizing the reality of a love that will never let me go, recognizing an authenticity that doesn’t need to prove or perform, but simply invite, offer, even show up.

Invitations:

• How are you being invited to recognize possible wounds or internal stories around attachment and authenticity? How would you name them?

• How are you being invited to name possible strategies you’ve employed to secure love or prove yourself?

• How are you being invited to a new kind of freedom to fall into the goodness of a love that both sees you and champions your deepest you?

To learn more, click, watch, and subscribe—and tell your friends about this new YouTube offering. Thank you!

Chuck’s Next Book

Coming October 2026 - Preorder NOW!

A publisher told me I needed to create Reels. I said no.

And a friend said I might enjoy sharing some short teachings on a YouTube channel. I said maybe.

It wasn’t a no this time.

But I’m so allergic to influencer culture and self-promotion and *all the things* that I was hesitant. I’m nearly 56. I was raised on VCRs, cassettes, and CDs, and adapted to AOL, Juno, MySpace, and WordPress—where I first began blogging. I’m good enough with words, but I’m not cut out for what’s practically demanded of authors today.

And yet, YouTube seems simple enough. What’s more, my clients started asking for short videos.

“It’d be helpful to hear you talk about the nervous system dashboard check-in for a few minutes, Chuck,” or “I’d love to hear a short teaching on the spectrum and faces of narcissism.”

That’s not so hard.

I talk about these things regularly in the classroom, with clients, even on other people’s podcasts. And, it didn’t seem too hard to record myself in my office, add some extras on iMovie, and upload a video to YouTube. Lord knows, it’s a lot easier than the cassette mix tapes I used to make.

So, here it is.

Welcome to my YouTube channel which, as you’ll see, is really just a part of my wider work of the Soul Care Collaborative (where you can find practitioners like me and others who provide five-day intensives, spiritual direction, coaching, consulting, and soul care). I’m an amateur, though—so pardon my rookie mistakes.

It’s new, of course, so I only have a handful of videos. But *subscribe* right there on YouTube to see more as I add them…and share your favorites with friends or on social media as you’d like.

Paid subscribers to my Substack—good news—you’re welcome to share comments with topics and themes you’d like to hear me talk about, and I’ll do my best to integrate your suggestions!

Thanks everyone.

I don’t recall the speaker’s name, but I do recall my dismay, even disgust.

I’ve sat with families navigating cancer diagnoses for their children and with spouses hearing early dementia diagnoses and with women and men sharing stories of unspeakable abuse. And I’d never, ever consider it good news that God somehow orchestrated these things.

I’ve long believed the Christian good news (aka “Gospel”) is not that God stands at a distance arranging our suffering for some secret purpose, but that God meets us in solidarity with our suffering in Jesus Christ, entering in to what feels cruel and pointless in order to heal, redeem, and ultimately undo all that fractures humanity and creation itself.

Even still, I have dozens of phrases from sermons and talks stretching back into my childhood that make their way from the recesses of my psyche every now-and-then…phrases like:

• “God won’t give you more than you can handle.”

• “Everything happens for a reason.”

• “God is using this to teach you something.”

• “This is part of God’s plan.”

• “God must be preparing you for something greater.”

• “God is more concerned with your holiness than your happiness.”

• “Maybe God allowed this to draw you closer to him.”

• “Trials are blessings in disguise.”

• “If God brought you to it, he’ll bring you through it.”

I think back to my seminary days where it seems we spent more time trying to discern the mind of God than we did learning what it means to sit in suffering-solidarity with others in the name of Jesus. And nearly 30 years of pastoral care and clinical therapy have convinced me that we’ve too often lost the real goodness of the good news.

Can suffering mature us? Can our painful stories manifest in transformation? Of course.

I’ve written about this, and most of us—religious or not—know this intuitively.

Those I’ve cared for over the years have taught me this. A woman who I accompanied through years of processing the trauma of her father’s abuse later told me, “Because of what I’ve experienced, I can sit with others with fewer answers and more compassion.” She is now someone who cares for others navigating abuse.

Suffering can deepen compassion, humility, courage, surrender, and love. But suffering does not automatically mature us. Sometimes, it fragments us. Unaccompanied, it may overwhelm the nervous system, leaving us vigilant, shut down, or despairing. Trauma research has helped us see what many therapists, pastors, and wise elders have long known: suffering that is witnessed, held, and accompanied is far more likely to become transformative than suffering borne alone.

I thought about how this happens recently while talking with my friend Jim Herrington on his podcast. We were discussing the tension between safety and suffering, and how easy it is to drift toward one of two extremes. On one side, we can valorize suffering in ways that make God seem cruel, calculating, even sadistic. On the other, we can valorize safety in ways that leave us unwilling to risk discomfort, grief, change, conflict, or vulnerability.

We don’t need to pit safety and suffering against each other. In fact, when safety and suffering walk hand-in-hand, maturity follows. I was reflecting on this again recently as my youngest got married last weekend, rendering Sara and I true empty-nesters. I was thinking about our shared story as a family, with two difficult cross-country moves—something not uncommon to those in ministry, but also profoundly painful.

When our girls were young, we prioritized safety, connection, and attachment. But that did not mean protecting them from every hard thing. We made those difficult decisions to move, and we suffered, leaving family and friends, even homes and geographies we loved. There was grief in it, and Sara and I struggled to make those decisions knowing the cost to us, to our girls. But we were together in it. The suffering was accompanied—Emma and Maggie were safe with us, held in their pain. And that makes the difference.

Maybe this is one of the reasons the Gospels spend so little time trying to explain suffering philosophically. Yes, there is a place for that—I don’t deny that. But, the Gospel writers were far more concerned with presence, solidarity, renewed communion—Jesus, God-in-the-flesh, announcing an end to exile and the kingdom come.

Friends, we don’t need to exhaust ourselves trying to decipher the hidden intentions of God behind every painful event. We don’t need to live in a story of a God who stands at a distance scripting tragedy for our growth.

God became flesh and joined us in the struggle.

That God knows the hell you’ve been through. He’s been there.

And while there are no easy answers, there is companionship in the pain.

Chuck’s Next Book

Coming October 2026 - Preorder NOW!

Let’s start here: Beneath the headlines of all that’s bad in the church and in the world, there are a great many folks engaging their personal, vocational and spiritual lives with sincerity, asking genuine questions like this one.

We hear about the drama, but we don’t often hear about the daily engagement with simple prayer practices, Scripture reading, sabbath-keeping, and more. Many are aided by a growing number of books and resources on practicing the way of Jesus and being formed in the life of Christ. They’re doing it in spite of the crises unfolding within our political and ecclesial institutions. They’re doing it amidst the regular roundup of once-respected leaders who’ve fallen. They’re doing it even as they navigate their own dark nights and doubts, perhaps even as they’re deconstructing some things.

I’m often filled with hope in my regular work with students, with clients, and with folks I meet at conferences and on retreats who don’t fit the extreme caricatures we often see of hardened fundamentalists or woke deconstructionists, but who are seeking a sincere faith.

They’re more resourced than ever, though, and they’re still struggling.

Why?

The Problem of Presence

I’m going to make an assumption you may not agree with, so I risk this not being helpful to you. But it’s one shared by the Apostle Paul, St. Augustine, and St. Teresa of Avila, among many others. My assumption is that God is already fully present to us all the time. My assumption is that nothing can separate us from God’s love for us. Distraction for God is impossible, and loving presence—best embodied in the life of Jesus—is his heart.

That shifts how we name the problem then.

The former Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams writes, “The real problem in prayer is not the absence of God but the absence of us. It’s not that God isn’t there; it’s (nine times out of ten) that we’re not. We are all over the place, entertaining memories, fantasies, anxieties. God is simply there in unending patience, saying to us, 'So when are you actually going to arrive? When are you going to sit and listen, to stop roaming about, and be present?'” (Being Disciples: Essentials of the Christian Life, 2016).

Can you hear the problem?

I show up, but I’m half there.

I give myself to a time of contemplative prayer in silence, but my inner critic is yelling at me for not being as attuned to Sara as I should’ve been the previous evening.

I step away from my daily work activities to experience a Sabbath, but I’m distracted by the drama of my favorite sports team.

I read a Psalm, but I’m concerned with the translator’s choice of words.

In Into the Silent Land, Martin Laird calls this internal clutter “the cocktail party of the mind.” But we know, too, that it’s a whole-bodied affair.

The problem is this: I’m not as present because there is something else afoot within, some disruption at a subterranean layer of body and soul that might frustrate all of my practices if it goes unaddressed.

And amidst so many of the good books and resources on the spiritual life, this dynamic is hardly ever addressed.

Depth Work

How can we talk about what’s happening within?

Spiritual writers have long named dynamics of the soul. The earliest soul-psychologists who lived in the Egyptian desert spoke of a space within where our best and deepest desires are thwarted by forces of self-protection and disconnection called “the passions.” In his book on the subject, Williams calls this a “whole realm of instinct, reaction, (and) coping mechanisms” that drive our behaviors, and a “compound of anxiety, defensiveness and acquisitiveness,” all driving us into inner turmoil, and robbing us of what God designed us for—connection and communion. They might say that if we’re hoping to experience more goodness in prayer, we’d do well to pay attention to these forces lurking within.

Contemporary spiritual writers like Thomas Merton, Thomas Keating, James Finley and David Benner draw on both theology and depth psychology, describing the problem in similar ways but naming it as the “false self.” The false self is the constructed identity we build to meet core needs for security and survival, affection and esteem, and power and control, designed to keep what lurks in the shadows at bay (our shame, anger, grief, confusion, and more). The true self, in this tradition, is our deepest self—hidden with Christ in God, grounded in belovedness rather than performance. And yet, the problem might be described like this: In prayer, it’s our false self trying too hard to secure our needs rather than our true self open and receptive to whatever comes.

From another contemporary lens, this is also deeply tied to the autonomic nervous system. Our capacity for presence with God is not just a spiritual or cognitive issue, but a physiological one. If our system is in a state of hyperarousal (what I call storm) marked by anxiety, urgency, or self-protection, it will be difficult to settle into stillness or enjoy silence. If we are in a state of hypoarousal (what I call fog) marked by numbness, fatigue, or disconnection, we may struggle to feel anything at all.

What we are aiming for is an experience of homecoming within, a grounded, regulated presence where connection becomes possible. But many of us live out chronic patterns of storm and fog we’re not even aware of. So the problem is this: When we come to prayer, we are not starting from neutral ground. We are bringing a whole nervous system shaped by years of learning how to survive. If we’re not apprenticed in this work of inner attunement and regulation, we’ll likely experience chronic frustration in our prayer practices.

And perhaps that’s where you are.

Say Hello

In my last book Healing What’s Within, I wrote a chapter called “Say Hello.”

“Say Hello” is a simple but deeply counterintuitive invitation. Rather than pushing past distraction, judging it, or trying to get to a more “spiritual” state, we begin by turning toward what is actually present to us—the anxious thought, the inner critic, the numbness, the restlessness. Instead of treating these as obstacles to prayer, we receive them as entry points. We greet them with curiosity and compassion.

Hello, anxiety.

Hello, pressure.

Hello, sleepiness.

Hello, judgment.

And here’s why it is significant.

These parts of us expect to be avoided, judged, suppressed, and more. But our kind “hello” softens them. Sometimes, I even add a compassionate “ssshhhh,” as I’d do for a crying child. Slowly, resistance becomes presence.

This is not something we do alone. As we begin to say hello to what is within, we might also begin to notice that God is already there, gently joining us in that same posture of compassionate attention. The first question God asks in Scripture is not “What have you done?” but “Where are you?” It is a question of presence, not performance. And so, as we turn inward with curiosity, we might imagine God turning toward us as well, not with judgment, but with a steady, patient gaze.

Where are you?

Not to expose or shame us, but to meet us. In this way, prayer becomes less about trying to get somewhere with God and more about allowing God to meet us right here, in the very places we are just beginning to acknowledge ourselves.

That’s a start, not an end or an arrival. It’s a shift that often opens something meaningful within.

Listen…silence, solitude, and Sabbath are almost impossible when an inner critic is screaming at you, when an anxious part is already on to the next task, or when numbness takes the wheel. Sometimes, those parts of us simply need some connection, perhaps even a hug. And maybe we’ll discover that God isn’t somewhere beyond the distraction or resistance, but right there in it.

My reflections are offered freely to everyone. But if my writing has been meaningful to you, a paid subscription makes a real difference. Your support helps create the space in my vocational life to continue this creative work—which is deeply life-giving to me, and I hope to you as well.

Paid subscribers can comment and ask questions, and I try to engage those conversations whenever I can. I also share occasional subscriber-only updates, reading recommendations, and notes from my writing life.

If this space has been helpful to you, I’d invite you to consider becoming a paid subscriber—not only here, but for any Substack writer whose work nurtures your growth.

Coming October 2026 - Preorder NOW!

It’s usually asked with a sense of urgency, often after a leadership crisis. I’m asked: Is there a test? A screening tool? A set of interview questions? A book that can help us spot the problem before it’s too late?

I understand the desire. Many who ask this question have been hurt. They’ve seen the damage and they want to protect their communities from harm.

But this is more complicated than a test or a checklist.

Let’s begin with a few assumptions.

First, we tend to assume the problem lives inside one person. If we can identify that person, or remove that person, then the system will be safe. But in my experience, narcissism rarely flourishes in isolation. It is sustained by systems that reward it, excuse it, or depend on it.

Second, we assume that churches operate as closed systems. We talk as if a congregation is somehow separate from the culture around it. But churches are deeply shaped by the same forces that shape everything else. Power, celebrity, platform, branding, consumerism, competition, performance, charisma. These are not neutral. They form us. And, even more, it’s been fascinating to see that some of the same churches that ask for help on this appear, from a simple internet search, to support or promote definitely nationalistic, authoritarian, and narcissistic political systems and leaders. That lack of awareness is hard to ignore, and even harder to reconcile.

Third, we assume we can detect narcissism with enough precision to prevent it. While assessments can be helpful, narcissistic patterns are often adaptive, relational, and context-dependent. Many leaders present as compelling, confident, curious, and humble in early stages, even when testing shows low to mid-level narcissistic traits. However, as power grows and leadership pressures mount, those very same traits can become amplified and hardened, shifting from adaptive strengths into defensive patterns that seek control, resist feedback, and protect the leader’s image at all costs.

Fourth, we tend to assume that the toxic narcissist is the problem, but a successful narcissist is tolerable. This is the leader who produces, who draws a crowd, and who builds a brand that excites a church, whether that looks like theological fidelity or activistic fervor or seemingly Spirit-filled emotionality. I’ve found that as long as the outcomes look good and match what the church thinks it wants, the costs of a narcissistic leader are minimized or rationalized (even in the same churches that asked me the question in the first place!). Of course, the costs are minimized and rationalized…until they can’t be any more. And by the time the harm is undeniable, the system has often been shaped around protecting the very dynamics that caused the harm in the first place.

So what can be done?

First, assessments have their place. Psychological testing, structured interviews, actual and thorough reference checks—I’ve done hundreds if not thousands of assessments over the years, and these can surface patterns and raise important questions. But they are not definitive. No tool can fully predict how a leader will function under pressure, power, threat, admiration, and more. And no assessor is beyond being fooled by a fauxnerable candidate, especially one who has enough therapeutic savvy to convince the assessor that he is self-aware.

Second, healthy systems matter. They distribute power instead of concentrating it in one person. They cultivate shared leadership, meaningful accountability, and clear boundaries. They resist the instinct to protect the leader at all costs. They create environments where concerns can be raised without fear of retaliation. And they cultivate emotional intelligence (self-awareness, self-regulation, empathy, social awareness, and clarity of values).

Third, there is also important work in looking back, and in developing the kind of cultural intelligence that allows a community to see itself clearly. Healthy churches take time to engage their own history, not as a matter of nostalgia but as honest reflection. They ask where they have been, what decisions have shaped them, and what values have subtly guided those decisions over time. This includes interrogating their own formation and naming patterns that have centralized harmful power, whether through racism, sexism, or unchallenged hierarchies that elevate certain voices while silencing others. Patterns do not emerge overnight. They are formed through years of reinforcement. This is slow, hard work. But a congregation willing to pause and assess its past with clarity and humility is far better positioned to recognize the forces still at work in the present. This kind of reflection can help a community discern what needs to be carried forward and what must be named, grieved, and changed.

And perhaps most importantly, we can ask better questions as a community.

For instance, not simply, “Are we sure this leader isn’t a narcissist?” but “Are we the kind of people who can remain grounded, aware, honest, mature, differentiated, and connected?”

Friends, there is no way to narcissist-proof a church.

But there is a way to become a community where narcissism has less room to take root and far less space to grow unchecked.

This is the slow work I often describe (and delineate in the book below—Who You’re Becoming). It requires immense courage all of us. Indeed, it asks us to grow and mature, personally and collectively.

Do I mind hearing the question as often as I do? No, I don’t. But what I long for are churches, committees, boards and more who are willing to deeply and sincerely engage, even when the process reflects ways they need to change.

In the end, the bigger question is always: Are we willing to do the work?

My reflections are offered freely to everyone. But if my writing has been meaningful to you, a paid subscription makes a real difference. Your support helps create the space in my vocational life to continue this creative work—which is deeply life-giving to me, and I hope to you as well.

Paid subscribers can comment and ask questions, and I try to engage those conversations whenever I can. I also share occasional subscriber-only updates, reading recommendations, and notes from my writing life.

If this space has been helpful to you, I’d invite you to consider becoming a paid subscriber—not only here, but for any Substack writer whose work nurtures your growth.

Coming October 2026 - Preorder NOW!

It was written around cultural and political currents, but you can hear the personal, psychological resonances. He names heart longings, for safety, for stability, for protection, for some sense that the ground beneath our feet will hold. But Goudzwaard and his co-authors suggest that something subtle happens over time. The very strategies we adopt to secure our lives can, in time, become ultimate. What begins as a means becomes an end. Eventually, what we trust to protect us can begin to control us.

I discovered the book again tucked away on my bookshelf as I was looking for another, and almost immediately I recalled how powerful it was for me so many years ago. I read his security strategies not merely as commentary on culture but echoes of my own heart.

He and his co-authors name several different strategies for security.

There is a strategy of control. This is the belief that if we can just manage things well enough—our environment, our relationships, our future—we will be okay. It often shows up as planning, organizing, and keeping a vigilant watch over all things, and it can look responsible, even virtuous (though, I can’t relate to this at all 😉). But beneath it is often an imperceptible fear, that if I don’t stay in control, everything might fall apart. This strategy might even be extended to what we project onto leaders—pastors, politicians, and more—entrusting our fearful hearts to dominant, certain, or controlling leaders hoping that we’ll rest a bit easier and feel a bit safer. Over time, this strategy can make us rigid, anxious, and unable to rest.

Then there is the strategy of growth. This is the conviction that more will finally be enough—more success, more influence, more security, more certainty. It’s not hard to see how this plays out in our church life and larger culture, but it also finds its way into our personal lives. We keep grasping, chasing, expanding, achieving, hoping that the next step will bring the sense of security we’re missing. And yet, the goalposts keeps moving. It’s never enough. We become restless, driven, and eventually exhausted. (Even now as I’m writing, I wish I would have retrieved this book off of my shelf about 8 years ago when I was writing When Narcissism Comes to Church).

Another strategy they mention is a fortress strategy. This one is also illuminative for our time. Safety is sought by building walls—protecting what is ours, keeping out what feels foreign or threatening. This can happen at the level of nations, churches, and communities, but it can also happen in our own inner lives. We might withdraw or distance ourselves from something or someone that we perceive as different. In the name of “boundaries,” we may actually be engaging in cut-off. And while this may offer a temporary sense of safety, it often comes at a cost, they argue. Our world becomes smaller. Our hearts become less open. The very walls we build to protect us can begin to isolate us.

None of these strategies are entirely wrong, they tell us. Each contains a kernel of wisdom, even a palpable good. Of course, we need to manage our lives well. And pursuing various forms of growth is important. And yes, boundaries matter—particularly when harm is present and safety is at stake. But Goudzwaard’s insight is that when these strategies become ultimate, they begin to distort us. They promise security, but they may actually shrink us as human beings.

And so, we’re left to wrestle with:

These are not questions meant to accuse or shame, but to invite awareness. Because often, these strategies operate beneath the surface. They feel normal. They feel necessary. They can even feel right. Yet, over time, they can leave us more anxious, more constricted, less able to love. And at a collective level, they can result in elevating leaders and enabling systems that feed on our psychological projections.

I’m glad I found this one hiding on my bookshelf. It poked at my heart in all the right ways…and perhaps there is something here for you, too.

My reflections are offered freely to everyone. But if my writing has been meaningful to you, a paid subscription makes a real difference. Your support helps create the space in my vocational life to continue this creative work—which is deeply life-giving to me, and I hope to you as well.

Paid subscribers can comment and ask questions, and I try to engage those conversations whenever I can. I also share occasional subscriber-only updates, reading recommendations, and notes from my writing life.

If this space has been helpful to you, I’d invite you to consider becoming a paid subscriber—not only here, but for any Substack writer whose work nurtures your growth.

Coming October 2026 - Preorder NOW!

Last year Sara and I purchased a Class C RV, a smaller, Sprinter-based camper-on-wheels that we hoped might inject some adventure into our empty-nesting, later-middle-aged years.

I’m not particularly handy. I’m decent with words, competent in the counseling room, able to string together sentences on stage. But when it comes to cars, I’m fairly useless. So the flashing lights sent a chill down my spine.

When I pulled over and looked, I saw a dangling power cord attached to the side of the RV—the cord I had apparently forgotten to unplug from our 30V outlet while fumbling in the dark that morning. The cord ends looked bruised and battered, and I wasn’t sure I’d be able to use it again.

The next day, I fumbled again. The diesel gas cap had come loose from its tether, and my attempts to secure it failed more than once. So I set it on the step of the vehicle so I wouldn’t forget it after pumping gas. But I forgot it. About a hundred miles down the road, the water-in-fuel sensor came on. It didn’t take much research to realize what had happened: I’d left the gas cap off, and a light rain had likely found its way into the tank.

The next few days, meant to be restful and carefree, were filled instead with YouTube videos on Sprinter fuel filters and water separation, calls to local mobile mechanics, a repair attempt that led to a fuel leak, and multiple moments with me lying on my back on a yoga mat underneath the vehicle, asking AI what to do next.

It’s not surprising, then, that tears came when I read these words in a book I had tossed into my bag at the last minute before leaving home: It is exhausting trying to be good, kind, loving, selfless, faultless, perfect, the best, highly evolved, the most spiritual. It is such a relief when you start to allow yourself to be imperfect and human again, when you begin to bless the mess that you’re vulnerable, ever-changing, and unpredictable mortal self (Jeff Foster, You Are Not Broken).

I didn’t quite think I’d been trying so hard, but sometimes the tears reveal the truth. Even the RV adventure had been a quiet chase after something transcendent, an attempt to slip past my humanity for a week or so.

I know I’ve hoped for it—that at some point I might transcend my humanity. I thought it might happen at 40, then 50. Now, as I round the corner into the second half of my fifties, I’m beginning to see more clearly that there is no reprieve from my limitations, no escape from my mortality.

I made a list of things to ensure the trip would be flawless, and I failed at the basics. I’ve practiced all the practices, and I’m still anxious. I’ve grown in financial security, and yet I still operate from scarcity. I’ve achieved tenure in the academic world, and I still believe I’m an imposter. I’ve written books, and a quiet voice still whispers, “You can’t write like so-and-so.”

I am, slowly and reluctantly, learning the hard lesson—one I’ve taught and offered in a thousand ways in sermons, classrooms, and books: that the life I keep trying to transcend is the very life I am meant to receive.

My reflections are offered freely to everyone. But if my writing has been meaningful to you, a paid subscription makes a real difference. Your support helps create the space in my vocational life to continue this creative work—which is deeply life-giving to me, and I hope to you as well.

Paid subscribers can comment and ask questions, and I try to engage those conversations whenever I can. I also share occasional subscriber-only updates, reading recommendations, and notes from my writing life.

If this space has been helpful to you, I’d invite you to consider becoming a paid subscriber—not only here, but for any Substack writer whose work nurtures your growth.

Coming October 2026 - Preorder NOW!

and then another,

not all at once,

but slowly,

as heart and body consent.

Not chasing after the light,

as I’ve long done,

but letting it find me.

Christ within me

not arriving with spectacle or strategy,

but in gentleness now—and safety—

breathing new creation breath where I’ve long held mine,

thawing what has remained frozen.

I turn, gently now,

to the parts of me

who have stood guard at this tomb—

the vigilant ones,

the protectors of what I feared to feel,

the guardians of all I’ve exiled within.

And this time

I do not banish them.

I thank them.

You stayed when I could not stay with myself.

You guarded what felt too fragile to trust to the world.

And I welcome the ones long

condemned to the dark—

so anxious, so alone, so afraid—

You are no longer alone.

You are held.

Beloved.

And I begin to trust

that resurrection is not my escape

from being human,

but the healing of it—

that the parts of me that grasped

for the forbidden fruit of control,

that believed I could perfect

or perform away the shame,

can be held

in a Love strong enough

to breathe new creation into them.

Christ in me—

the still point beneath my striving,

the ground beneath my grasping,

steady even as my hands shake—

is not rushing me out of the tomb,

and he won’t rush you either.

He meets us here,

all of us,

until even our shadows

begin to trust the light.

Even the first sliver of new light

is enough

to warm what has too long

remained frozen and alone.

My reflections are offered freely to everyone. But if my writing has been meaningful to you, a paid subscription makes a real difference. Your support helps create the space in my vocational life to continue this creative work—which is deeply life-giving to me, and I hope to you as well.

Paid subscribers can comment and ask questions, and I try to engage those conversations whenever I can. I also share occasional subscriber-only updates, reading recommendations, and notes from my writing life.

If this space has been helpful to you, I’d invite you to consider becoming a paid subscriber—not only here, but for any Substack writer whose work nurtures your growth.

Coming October 2026

It’s something I’ve been pondering on this Holy Week, a week that unmasks the illusion of self-exalting power.

Invisibility is perhaps the most beautiful thing about the craft of therapeutic work. In my dual identity over many years as pastor and therapist, I’d preach from a platform or lead a retreat or even write a piece on spiritual growth. But when the door of the counseling room would close and we’d get to work together, I’d exhale into the unseen work.

I’ve told counseling students for years that it’s both terrifying and deeply gratifying, this invisibility. In a profession some critique as self-focused, the therapist is anything but. Indeed, while good therapy is predicated on the compassionate presence of the therapist, it’s not about the therapist.

Or is it?

I wonder these days.

I was speaking at an event recently amidst a room full of therapists and someone asked me, “What question do you wish people asked?”

Days later, I found the answer.

“How have you grown your craft as a therapist?” A question asked by no one, ever.

The Seduction of the Visible

“The care of souls is the art of arts,” said St. Gregory the Great in the sixth century, writing the first extended reflection on care and counsel.

And the slow, quiet work of soul care has always been, by its very nature, invisible.

Therapeutic work happens behind closed doors, often in the fifty-minute hour, in the long silences and amidst curious questions, in the unglamorous accumulation of trust over months and years.

Its fruits are rarely dramatic. Mostly, they look like a person gradually becoming more themselves—a little less defended, a little more present, slowly growing into the kind of character that holds up under pressure.

This invisibility was once considered a feature, not a bug. The therapeutic frame included a careful container of confidentiality and professional distance, and was designed precisely to protect the work from the contamination of the therapist’s own ego. The client’s growth was the point. The therapist’s recognition was beside it.

Before the clock turned to a new millennium, I graduated with a class of counseling students whose names you don’t know. Today, many are veteran clinicians—doing the quiet work, without applause.

Psychologist K. Anders Ericsson’s research determined that 10,000 hours makes one proficient, popularized by Malcolm Gladwell in Outliers. It’d take a therapist ten years, seeing twenty clients per week, with four weeks off a year, to reach that standard. My peers have circled round that number more than a couple of times, and yet you still don’t know their names.

Something shifted, though.

The slow, invisible work succumbed to a larger cultural movement, becoming more egoized, digitized, “byte”-sized, optimized, and commodified—the practice of presence now in service of platform and performance.

The language of healing has become extraordinarily marketable. And where there is a market, there is inevitably ego, competition, envy, and the slow corruption that follows.

I want to be careful here. There is nothing wrong with a therapist writing a book, hosting a podcast, or educating the public. I have done some of these things, and many dear friends and wise, grounded colleagues have too. The question is not whether we speak publicly but from where we speak—whether our public presence flows from a grounded private practice or whether the cultivation of wisdom over many years has given way to the cultivation of followers.

The contemplative tradition has a word for this temptation. The desert sages called it vainglory—the desire to be seen as holy rather than to be holy, to be known as wise rather than to be wise. Evagrius Ponticus, writing in the fourth century about the afflictions of the soul, placed vainglory among the most insidious of the passions precisely because it mimics virtue so convincingly. It dresses itself in the language of service while feeding on the rewards of recognition.

Vainglory, we might say, is the narcissism of the helping professions—indeed, clergy, but therapists too.

The Four Contemporary Anxieties of the Therapist

When I was being trained, we weren’t scrolling. Indeed, we hoped for a day when the life-giving resources we were being exposed to might be more universally available. I now pine for those days when preparation for the work, at least for me, might’ve included a well-worn Nouwen book and some hand-written notes.

A counselor confessed to me the other day that she Chat-GPT’d right before a session. She later understood that her body wasn’t prepared for presence but stuck in paralysis. Why?

She’d been scrolling earlier, she confessed, and shame and insecurity consumed her as she saw post after post of all the latest and greatest techniques. She asked AI how she could apply one to her next client. She told me, quite honestly, that it took her about 15 minutes sitting with her client before she finally exhaled and found her way back to herself—and to her presence—perhaps her most essential offering to her client.

Another therapist told me that how he struggled seeing a colleague with very little actual experience doing the clinical work blow up on Instagram largely because he’d mastered not the art of soul care but of reels and Canva.

I told you—I don’t hear people ask, “How have you grown your craft as a therapist?” Today, I hear anxiety-fueled questions about mastering all the modalities in order to keep up, managing a compelling enough presence to be attractive to potential clients, building a brand or a platform, becoming an author (another vocation, by the way, that matures in invisibility).

As I’ve listened, I hear at least four core anxieties:

Modalities & Credentialing

• The anxiety of keeping up with the latest modalities and their superstar founders, now with massive platforms themselves

• The anxiety of not being certified in whatever approach is currently ascendant—with new and better courses and credentials popping up each week

• The anxiety of wondering whether your presence is enough without another credential behind your name

Visibility & Platform

• The anxiety of building a brand and distinguishing yourself in a crowded market

• The anxiety of watching colleagues so fluent in the art of follower accumulation while you sit quietly with clients

• The anxiety of feeling invisible…even when that’s so core to mature work

Comparison & Competition

• The anxiety of watching a colleague’s platform, blog, or book sell better than yours

• The anxiety of the peer who seems to have figured out how to do it all — clinical work, speaking, writing, online courses

• The anxiety of professional envy you’re not supposed to feel but do

Legitimacy & Worth

• The anxiety of imposter syndrome in a profession built on helping others with theirs

• The anxiety of not feeling like what you charge is worth as much as someone with a following

• The anxiety of never, ever being good enough or smart enough or polished enough as the therapy stars of Instagram

Sadly, underneath all of it might just be the anxiety of wondering whether the work itself—the slow, hidden, unglamorous work—is enough. And whether we’re enough for it.

Back to the Simple Art

St. Gregory the Great, who gave us that first textbook on pastoral care, ascended to his post as Pope not because he’d accumulated power but because he learned presence, having been apprenticed in the art of soul care in the desert—in invisibility and obscurity.

We are in danger of forgetting that the most essential instrument in the care of souls is not a modality. It is not a certification, a credential, or a content strategy. It is a self—a regulated, rooted, reflective self, slowly seasoned by years of honest encounter with one’s own interior life. You cannot give what you do not have. And you cannot have what you have never sat still long enough to receive.

The question I wish someone would’ve asked me—how have you grown your craft as a therapist?—is really a question about formation, not performance. It asks: what has this work done to you? What has sitting with suffering, year after year, asked of your own soul? What have you had to face in yourself in order to stay honest in the room? How has obscurity ripened you? How has the work of holding sacred stories expanded your heart?

These are not questions that resolve in a reel or a certification. They resolve slowly, in supervision and therapy and prayer and long walks and honest friendships—in all the hidden places where character actually forms.

So here is my simple invitation, to myself as much as to you:

Close a few tabs. Turn off the notifications. Step back from the scroll. Let the door close.

And exhale into the unseen work.

Because the person sitting across from you does not need your platform. They do not need your credentials, your following, or your Canva aesthetic. They need your presence—your honest, humble, hard-won, still-being-formed presence.

That has always been the art. It still is.

My reflections are offered freely to everyone. But if my writing has been meaningful to you, a paid subscription makes a real difference. Your support helps create the space in my vocational life to continue this creative work—which is deeply life-giving to me, and I hope to you as well.

Paid subscribers can comment and ask questions, and I try to engage those conversations whenever I can. I also share occasional subscriber-only updates, reading recommendations, and notes from my writing life.

If this space has been helpful to you, I’d invite you to consider becoming a paid subscriber—not only here, but for any Substack writer whose work nurtures your growth.

Coming October 2026

The modern information ecosystem has radically altered that environment. I open my iPhone to see a notification:

My body tenses. At the same time, I’m navigating an alternative route to the seminary because of a big snow storm. And I’m discerning a response to someone who has reached out amidst crisis.

My nervous system begins juggling signals—alertness, concern, problem-solving, anticipation. My mind moves quickly from one thread to another while my body stays slightly braced, as if ready to respond to something not yet fully clear.

Our nervous systems were built to track what is close and immediate. Now they’re asked to absorb signals from across the globe, carrying burdens that lie far outside our circles of influence. Through television, smartphones, and social media, we are now exposed to a constant stream of suffering, violence, and crisis occurring thousands of miles away. Tragedies that once would have remained unknown to us now arrive instantly, often accompanied by images that activate both the body’s threat and empathy systems. It can feel overwhelming. Am I capable of caring well amidst the many things that I’m holding?

The problem is not that our nervous systems are incapable of compassion, it is that they were never designed to metabolize global suffering at this scale and frequency.

I’m regularly hearing this dilemma in my clients. “I used to cry when I saw things like this. Now I scroll past them. Part of me wonders if something is wrong with me,” one says. “I don’t even know what to do with everything going on. I can barely handle the anxiety in our home,” another tells me.

It’s psychic numbing. And it’s not that you’re failing or callous, but that you have cognitive and physiological limits.

Think about it this way. Your brain struggles to process the scope and scale of threat, so it unconsciously dampens your emotional response. It’s similar to what happens when you experience compassion fatigue. Repeated exposure to others’ suffering can overwhelm the nervous system, leading to numbness, disengagement, or avoidance.

I’m privy to the voices of the loud inner critics inside the folks I work with, and they’re prone to say harsh things: you're so apathetic, you can't handle anything, you don't care.

But what if it isn’t apathy as much as nervous system overload. True, some are calloused and apathetic, I don’t deny that. But what if your body is just trying to deal with receiving signals of threat and grief from around the globe while still managing the immediate stresses of family, work, and community?

In these moments, it’s important to find ways to stay connected to our hearts, to compassion, without being flooded or overwhelmed. And that requires practices that return us to the scale of life our bodies can hold—local relationships, concrete acts of care, and rhythms that allow the nervous system to settle and integrate what it encounters. I don't have a definitive answer for you because each of us is different, but here are some helpful possibilities to consider:

• Watch and listen to real human stories.
  Long-form storytelling—through documentaries, interviews, or firsthand accounts—allows us to see faces, hear voices, and enter the texture of another person’s life. When suffering becomes personal rather than statistical, the heart often reawakens to compassion. (A friend recently watched a documentary about Iran, and it softened her. She also told me that she decided not to have her phone near her so that she could stay focused.)

• Attend to one human story.
  Our nervous systems connect most readily with a single face, a single life. Focusing on one person’s story allows compassion to remain embodied rather than lost in overwhelming numbers. It might be enough right now to simply attend to the pain of a dear friend or family member, recognizing that you’re limited and you can’t help everyone.

• Slow down long enough to feel.
  Instead of immediately scrolling to the next headline, pause. Notice what arises in your body—sadness, anger, grief, shame, rage. A moment of reflection helps the nervous system integrate rather than shut down.

• Return to the scale of your immediate world.
  Compassion grows strongest in the places where we can see and touch human need: a neighbor, a congregant, a struggling friend. Global awareness must be grounded in local love.

• Limit the flood of exposure.
  Our nervous systems cannot metabolize endless images of suffering. Creating boundaries around media consumption protects the capacity to keep caring. Turn off notifications on your phone. Limit your social media scrolling to a certain time period each day.

• Practice prayer and lament.

  In the swirl of commentary online, you’ll sometimes hear that thoughts and prayers aren’t enough, even that lament isn’t enough. For some, the inner critic is immediately activated - “I’m bad.” Of course, compassion that never moves toward justice or care can become thin. But prayer and lament are not nothing. They are ancient ways the human heart stays open in the face of suffering—ways we resist the quiet drift toward numbness or indifference while we discern how to respond faithfully.

• Honor your limits.
  Each nervous system has its own capacities and limits. What one person can metabolize emotionally or relationally may overwhelm another. These limits are not failures, they are part of the sacred design of being human. Honoring them allows us to remain compassionate without collapsing into exhaustion or shame. Instead of comparing our responses to others, we can learn to care faithfully within the particular limits of our own nervous systems.

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“All this talk of coping sounds as if we need to have empathy for abusers,” a reader asked, after a recent article.

Indeed, after When Narcissism Comes to Church was released, I heard some critiques that I didn’t use the particular word sin enough. The common hesitation—when we begin to use psychological words, it seems as if we’re veering away from theological ones, and when we veer away from robust words like sin, we’re prone to minimize it.

What’s lost in this, however, is that much of what I and others have written on narcissism, abuse, and trauma describe contexts where strong doctrines of sin were present. And yet, in these very places, there is too often 1) a real minimization of actual sin—hurt, harm, and abuse and 2) a denial of systemic sin, most often impacting women, the socially/racially/economically marginalized, and more, often hidden behind proclamations of a Gospel of grace and freedom.

As I’ve often said about my own writing—sin isn’t a word count. You reveal your actual doctrine of sin through the ways in which you courageously engage not just one-off misdeeds but actual and embedded patterns of harm. And psychology serves us by deepening our understanding of how our patterns develop, how our character forms, even about how the power of sin—in people, in family systems, in communities—can be undone, not through what I’ve called “bandaid theology” (quick fixes) but through the deep work of disentangling a heart from whatever binds it.

Sin and Styles of Coping

“When you talk about the nervous system,” someone says, “it sounds as if you’re just saying we learn to cope and adapt, not that we might actually be engaging sinfully.”

Those of us who are engaged in asking how God-designed physiological and neurobiological processes are involved in human action are profoundly interested in what’s bubbling beneath the surface of our behaviors. And we’ve tapped the well of psychology to affirm and deepen what wise theologians have long taught about what’s happening within.

Like the desert fathers and mothers of the third and fourth centuries, as former archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams notes, cartographers of the soul who were not just interested in bad behaviors but in the internal dynamics motivating sin—what they called the “passions.” Williams says that they named a “whole realm of instinct, reaction, coping mechanisms” that drive our outward behaviors, and a “compound of anxiety, defensiveness and acquisitiveness,” all driving us into inner and outer turmoil, robbing us of what God designed us for—connection and communion.

That’s nervous system language. And that’s theological language!

In other words, they sensed that the story of our patterns and habits is inextricably tied to a churning anxiety within—evidence of the kind of self-protection and survival we experience east of Eden, not the safety and security of Eden.

But here’s a physiological fact: the nervous system does not operate according to a moral code. It does not pause to ask, Is this right or wrong? It asks something much more immediate: Am I safe? And it reflexively responds by adapting and coping in a way that facilitates safety, at all costs.

That’s important.

Here, we lean in with wonder, asking what might actually be going on beneath the surface. Here, our hearts are widened beyond moral judgment and into compassion.

Our hearts grow in compassion for the child raised by a volatile parent who eventually learned to scan every room for subtle shifts in mood. Or the girl who became fiercely self-reliant because no one else was reliable. Or the boy who endured violence only to develop a powerful fight response that now keeps him from being crushed.

All bodies habituated to terror, adapting to survive.

And from the vantage point of survival, these responses make perfect sense. They worked. They helped us endure what might otherwise have been unbearable.

But hear this: survival strategies do not automatically become healthy ways of living. Survival strategies are not merely nervous systems in search of safety—they also become morally consequential.

The fight response that once protected a child may show up decades later as anger or intimidation toward a spouse or colleague. A flight response may turn into anxious perfectionism that keeps an entire household walking on eggshells—everyone bracing for the next sigh of disappointment or the quiet pressure of impossible standards. A fawn response may lead someone to chronically abandon their own voice while quietly resenting the people they work so hard to please. A freeze response may become emotional withdrawal that leaves loved ones feeling shut out.

What once helped us survive can eventually wound us—and the people around us.

Trauma therapist Diane Langberg has spent decades sitting with the aftermath of human harm, and she puts it starkly: “Abuse does terrible damage to the soul. It distorts how we see ourselves, how we see others, and how we see God.” When the soul is distorted in this way, our strategies for survival begin to shape the way we move through the world.

And the cycle can continue. As Langberg observes elsewhere, “The misuse of power devastates people, and those who have been devastated by power are often tempted to wield it in the same destructive ways.”

In other words, wounded people sometimes wound others—not because they intend to, but because survival patterns become ways of living.

“How do we hold people accountable for wrongdoing and yet at the same time remain in touch with their humanity enough to believe in their capacity to be transformed?” wrote Bell Hooks.

This is where the conversation between psychology and theology becomes especially important.

Psychology has helped us see the wisdom of our coping. But theology reminds us that human life is not merely about survival.

It is about love.

Our Stories, Our Sins

Rowan Williams writes that “sin is what happens when we refuse the reality of God’s love and try to construct a life for ourselves on other foundations.”

Seen this way, sin is not merely rule-breaking. It is a life lived in disconnection, east of Eden, and organized around substitutes for love.

And this is where trauma and sin intersect in a deeply human way.

Consider life in these 1,185 chapters between Genesis 3 and Revelation 20. Born into a broken world and wounded by imperfect human beings, we begin constructing lives around strategies that promise safety—control, perfection, power, withdrawal, approval. But the strategies that once protected us can, over time, become the very foundations on which we build our lives.

What began as adaptation slowly becomes orientation.

Centuries before trauma theory, Augustine described this dynamic as disordered love—loving something in the wrong way or giving ultimate weight to things that cannot sustain us.

Modern neuroscience might describe the same process as the nervous system organizing around survival rather than connection.

Different language. Same human story.

For me, what brings it all together is this: trauma is a story about disconnection—disconnection from ourselves, from others, and from God.

And sin is life lived in the tragic reality of disconnection—the trauma of everyday life in these 1,185 chapters filled with heartache as we eagerly await One who will wipe away every tear.

The reality of life lived in disconnection is seen, too often, among those of us who purport to use the right words and do the right things for God.

It’s the pastor who talks of grace and kingdom and sin, but isn’t aware of his own lifelong fight response. His own disordered love hurts and harms those he pastors, a confusing dynamic for the ones harmed because he is supposed to be their shepherd, their pastor. Empathy stretches to his early story of pain and the little boy who still resides fearfully within him, while accountability requires that he face his sin—and its relational devastation.

It’s the activist who burns with a righteous passion for justice, who can name the sins of systems with clarity and courage, but who has never slowed long enough to tend to the unhealed wounds that fuel the fire. The cause becomes the place where pain finds expression, and opponents become enemies rather than neighbors. The fight for justice is good and necessary, but when fight is the only gear available, relationships fracture and the very community the work requires begins to thin and fray.

It’s the professor who speaks eloquently about love, formation, and the life of the mind, whose lectures on virtue and humility draw nods from attentive students, but whose interior life is quietly governed by flight—anxious productivity, relentless achievement, the pressure to always prove her worth. Students feel the subtle tension in the room, the sense that nothing less than excellence will do. The very wisdom she teaches about rest, grace, and belonging struggles to find a home within her.

So, while it’s tempting to get entangled in abstract debates about sin and styles of coping, the real work for each of us is to look courageously at ourselves, at the both/and that includes our stories and our self-centered patterns. In the end, psychology—as I see it—doesn’t minimize or evade sin, it deepens and widens the scope. It asks how we’re coping this side of Eden.

And, as I’ve written in Healing What’s Within, the remedy—psychologically and theologically—is introduced right there in Genesis 3, smack dab in a moment of fear and fig leaves, an invitation to reconnection amidst the disconnection, as God’s kind hand extends to us and his words soften our self-protected hearts: “Where are you?”

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