All the action in the gymnasium stopped as the sound of the slammed door echoed throughout the space. An eleventh grade boy had stormed out in anger, having just been cut from the basketball team. The rest of us in the gym were dribbling and shooting together while we waited for our respective meetings with the coaches to find out our fates. In our small town high school, everyone knew each other. Though I was a year younger, I had played with the boy who had been cut on a youth AAU basketball team. I knew how much the sport meant to him and how badly he wanted to play. And when I heard him slam the door, I thought: It should have been me.

I am a runner now, having discovered the benefits of running for my mental and physical health while I was in college. But from fourth to tenth grades, I tried to play the sport my friends played: basketball. My talented friend Michael had taught me to play during recesses in fourth grade, and I spent years afterward attempting to fit in with him and the others who eventually made up our high school basketball team. Because I grew early, I could rebound well throughout middle school, though my shooting was never impressive. By high school, the other players had caught up to me in height and far exceeded me in skill. But I kept trying, and for some reason the coaches thought I had enough potential as a tenth grader that they chose me over my friend that day.

At that age, I lacked the courage to admit that I wasn’t really enjoying basketball. The fast-paced action on the court overwhelmed my brain. I felt like I couldn’t compute everything that was happening around me. Tracking the positions of each of the players and the location of the ball left me feeling dizzy. In a humiliating moment from one game later that year, I ran down the court with another player from my team who had stolen the ball and was on fast break. Only one player from the opposing team stood between us and the basket. I fully expected my teammate to continue his charge all the way for a layup, and I prepared to go for the rebound in case he missed. Instead, he chose to make a surprise behind-the-back pass to me. The ball smacked me in the face, catching me completing unprepared. The other team’s player laughed. My teammate cursed at me. I felt like a fool.

Such were my Friday nights during that basketball season. But Saturdays found me competing much more successfully in a different kind of contest: competitive speech and debate. At these meets, I would compete both in individual events and in one with a teammate. On my own, delivered humorous speeches and performances based on the text of books or plays I’d read. My acting partner and I competed in an event called Duo Interpretation, in which the two participants act out a scene from a play with no props and with specific limits on their range of motion. While I was not a natural at basketball, public speaking and dramatic performance came easily to me. For most of that season, it worked for me to play basketball on Friday night and then go to the speech meet on Saturday. But when the two conflicted, I chose speech and enjoyed it far more. At the end-of-the-year banquet for the basketball team, the coach took time to speak to the crowd and to publicly acknowledge the strengths of each player. When he came to me, instead of speaking positively, he told everyone there that I needed to get my priorities straight. That made the decision easy: I said goodbye to basketball and went all-in on speech and debate.

I think this experience from my youth contains some valuable lessons about vocational discernment. Sometimes we make choices based on the expectations of others, the inertia of our current trajectories, or a lack of self-awareness. Those factors would have kept me playing (and failing at, and feeling unsatisfied with) basketball for as long as the team would tolerate me. At that young age I didn’t have the language that I have now to analyze my situation. What I intuitively pursued, however, was the feeling of joy and vitality that came with using the talents I actually had. My gut knew all along what I was really made to do. By finally following that joy, I began developing skills that I now use as a pastor.

My colleague who is leading Thrive, the Rev. Amy Morgan, includes this quote from Howard Thurman in her email signature: “Don’t ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive and go do that, because what the world needs is more people who have come alive.” Some might dismiss this advice as naive and romantic, a sure way to an economically inviable career path. But it would be disastrous in other ways to ignore the clues to our vocations that God has hidden in the very things that give us joy. If you ever find yourself wishing you had been cut from the team, do yourself a favor and listen to your soul.

Lately my soul has been sensing a shift in the kind of writing I am called to produce. When I started this Substack, I named prayer, nature, and personal growth as its themes. These themes were also tied to the sabbatical I took in 2024, about which I wrote in various posts here and in a collection of essays available to paid subscribers. In doing that writing, I learned a valuable lesson: I am not a biologist or naturalist. Though I love reading voices like Barry Lopez or Robert McFarlane, I lack the scientific training to do true nature writing. (For an example of an emerging author who knows far more about these things than I do, check out my friend John Creasy's Substack.) So I’m giving myself permission to explore both new topics and new genres for my writing. I will keep posting regularly here, but you can expect the content to be more broad in coming months. In the meantime, consider this post to be a permission slip to trust your gut and to your joy. “What the world needs is more people who have come alive.”

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It started with some field trips into the mountains near us to dream and discern together. A handful of my colleagues in our Presbytery were sensing the the call to form a new kind of ministry, one that would form people for deeper discipleship. One in which following Jesus meant more than sitting in pews for an hour each week. One that makes nature the primary sanctuary for worship and considers our relationship with creation essential to faith.

As our conversations and prayers continued, our thoughts turned to young people who have to navigate an increasingly complex and rapidly changing world. What if this new ministry could provide them with space to really discern who God created them to be and what direction they want to take in life? What if they could take several months or even a year for such formation before they choose a career? Why not add some practical work experience to this season so they can gain useful skills? And what if participation in the program wasn’t only free, but it provided a stipend?

That’s a lot to ask, and it may sound like a dream, but after months of planning and praying, my colleagues and I are excited to announce the launch of Thrive. Thanks to the generous support of the Presbytery of Plains and Peaks, Thrive will gather young adults to live in community at the beautiful Highlands Camp in Allenspark, CO. With the support of the program’s director, other participants, spiritual directors, and a therapist, they will prepare for the next stage of their lives. As they follow rhythm of life oriented around Christian spiritual practices, they’ll learn to listen deeply to God, themselves, and one another. Through practical work at the camp, they will both gain experience and refine their vocational discernment. It’s like a gap year, but we’re using the word threshold to describe it because it’s not just about filling space. It’s about making room for intentional growth and preparation for the next stage of life.

We’ve applied for a grant to fund the program starting in 2027, but support from Highlands, our Presbytery, and local churches is making it possible for a pilot cohort to start this fall. Applications are being accepted now through July 17 for an 18-week version of the program that will begin August 17. We believe so much in this program that one of my colleagues is stepping away from her previous ministry to direct the program. I will be part of the Presbytery team supporting the project and may serve as one of their spiritual directors. And I’ve volunteered to teach the participants about Dietrich Bonhoeffer.

In the winter months when we started envisioning what has become Thrive, I was teaching a class at our church on Bonhoeffer and his book Discipleship. Bonhoeffer’s Finkenwalde community thus became one of the inspirations for Thrive. From 1935 to 1937, Finkenwalde was a covert seminary for students from the Confessing Church, the branch of the German Protestant Church that resisted Hitler’s exploitation of German Christian nationalism. After the Gestapo shut down Finkenwalde in 1937, Bonhoeffer wrote and published Life Together, relating the way Christian community was practiced at Finkenwalde and the wisdom he gained from that experience.

One lesson from Bonhoeffer that shapes our vision for Thrive is the truth that discipleship doesn’t happen in isolation. In Bonhoeffer’s words, “God has willed that we should seek and find God’s living Word in the testimony of other Christians, in the mouths of human beings. Therefore, Christians need other Christians who speak God’s Word to them.”1 Though it is tempting to pursue our individualistic spiritual paths, comfortably free from any claims others would place upon us, the truth is that we grow through the accountability, support, and inspiration that companions on the journey provide.

This is true for those who are deconstructing or reconstructing their faith just as much as it is true for those who are new to faith or comfortable lifelong believers. Bonhoeffer experienced justifiable disillusionment with the institutional church. The German Christian movement’s pastors swore allegiance to Hitler, a step Bonhoeffer believed was an abandonment of the true faith. Yet the nationalist wing of the church held the power, and Bonhoeffer’s alternative Christian community was persecuted for their refusal to capitulate. It was in this context that Bonhoeffer still wrote, "It is grace, nothing but grace, that we are still permitted to live in the community of Christians today.”2 In other words, when the integrity of the Church is in question, it we need companions in the search for a faithful response.

That’s not to say that Bonhoeffer’s time living in community with his students was easy. One of the wisest insights in Life Together is Bonhoeffer’s warning about the “wishful image” or “wish-dream” that can undermine life together. Many people enter relationships (whether marriage, friendships, church membership, or any other kind of community) with unrealistic expectations. Inevitably, those expectations are met with disappointment and annoyance as we realize that those with whom we relate are, alas, mere humans. Bonhoeffers sees this disappointment of expectations as a blessing: “God’s grace quickly frustrates all such dreams. A great disillusionment with others, with Christians in general, and, if we are fortunate, with ourselves, is bound to overwhelm us as surely as God desires to lead us to an understanding of genuine Christian community. By sheer grace God will not permit us to live in a dream world even for a few weeks.”3 Once we’ve sobered up from our expectations, God uses the hard parts of life in community to sand down our rough edges. Our conflict with others, whether over serious or trivial matters, becomes fuel for our sanctification as we learn to practice patience, forgiveness, and empathy with our siblings in Christ.

So there’s the disclaimer: if you come to Thrive, expect God to work through all that happens in close community with your fellow participants. Trust that both the easy parts and the hard parts are part of your formation. We’re accepting applications for the pilot cohort through July 17. I’ll be sure to share updates on the 2027 cohort when information is available.

When I forget, who will I be? God of the depths remember me. . . .
When all is lost, who will I be? God of the cross, remember me. . . .
When all is dark, where will I be? Here in your arms, remember me. . . .

These words are from the verses of a song called “Remember Me,” recorded by musicians Nick Chambers and Page CXVI with The Porter’s Gate. I’m listening to it today because I’ve been preoccupied with the topics of memory and the loss thereof recently. As a pastor of an intergenerational church for nearly ten years, I have been here long enough to watch certain older members of our congregation lose their cognitive capacities. One, about whom I wrote in this year’s Ash Wednesday poem, lost her ability to speak coherently but never lost her warmth of heart. She had family who ensured she was cared for her until her death. Others do not have family members available, so we, the Church, try to step up and provide assistance. It’s not easy, nor is it always clear what we should do. Your prayers for wisdom and direction are appreciated.

In his artist’s statement about “Remember Me,” Chambers explained how the song found its inspiration in a congregation like ours:

Having worked in an older congregation that knew well the realities of cognitive decline, I wanted to write a song that was sharp enough to give voice to those living with dementia and expansive enough to join all voices in solidarity. There are specific faces and families that inspired “Remember Me,” a song about questioning, surrendering, and ultimately hoping in the memory of the God who holds us all, beyond our cognitive capacities.1

To hope in the memory of God is to trust that God will not forget us, even when others do, even we we forget ourselves. We might qualify that, though. Most of us hope that God has a selective memory, a gracious memory, one that conveniently forgets our failures and mistakes. Psalm 25:7, attributed to King David, expresses this preference in prayer: “Do not remember the sins of my youth or my transgressions; according to your steadfast love remember me, for the sake of your goodness, O Lord!” In other words, “Forget what I did wrong but please remember me through the lens of grace.” This is, after all, what we often do for loved ones at their death. Speakers at memorial services extol the virtues of the deceased while passing over their flaws. Recognizing this tendency, a member of my church said to me this week, “I don’t want to turn into a saint when I die.” She can rest assured that I will give God the credit for all that is good in her, but I also won’t stop anyone from telling stories of how God’s goodness shines through her.

Then there are the memories that we wish to forget, the painful or traumatic experiences we wish we could erase from our memories eternally. I have prayed many times with parishioners for God to heal their memories so that past traumas would not continue to inflict pain in their lives. I am a strong advocate of therapy and always refer such congregants to qualified therapists in addition to any pastoral care I provide. My role as pastor is these cases is simply to lead in prayer. Following such times of prayer, I have heard several people describe seeing Jesus enter into the scenes of their traumatic memories, offering the consolation of his presence and compassion. Such visions don’t change the historical facts of what happened, nor do they explain or justify the suffering endured, but something often changes in the minds of those who were wounded. For some, a newfound peace takes the place of anxiety or anger. Therapeutic techniques like EMDR yield similar benefits for others, with or without the addition of prayer. However the healing comes, I see it as a gift from God.

But dementia doesn’t allow us to choose which memories disappear or capacities we lose. You forget whether you already made a phone call today long before you forget the pains of the past. There is no cure for dementia, and witnessing these effects in congregants I know has sent me searching for ways to avoid it. For weeks I’ve been listening to various podcast episodes related to brain health. The most common recommendations boil down to common sense health advice: exercise regularly, sleep well, and eat a healthy diet. Then comes the advice to treat the brain like a muscle: if you exercise it, it will stay fit. Use it or lose it. So read real books, do tasks that require deep concentration, learn to play a musical instrument or to speak a new language. Somewhere along the way I also heard that sports that combine physical activity with hand-eye coordination do double-duty, keeping both the blood flowing and the brain working. I made a note of the advice, but I still haven’t tried pickleball.

While the risk of dementia rises as we age, we’re also immersed in present-day threats to our cognitive capacities. Cal Newport argued in a recent opinion piece for the New York Times that the fight to keep our brains healthy is like a public health crisis (“There’s a Good Reason You Can’t Concentrate”). After comparing our cognitive health to other public health issues, Newport argues that digital technology is sabotaging our ability to think deeply. He even includes links to studies that suggest using AI to replace cognitive effort allows those parts of our brains to atrophy. It makes sense: Once you start using a calculator to do math, you forget how to write out the work to find the solutions by hand. So also with generative AI and our skills of composition. Writing is part of the learning process, synthesizing information in our brains and helping us retain it longer. Allowing AI to do your writing for you lets your brain stop exercising. It’s easier to let the chips in the data center do the work for you, but, as Newport says, “The strain required to craft a clear memo or report is the mental equivalent of a gym workout by an athlete; it’s not an annoyance to be eliminated but a key element of your craft.”

For the record, I don’t use AI as a replacement for my own writing. I enjoy writing and outsourcing it to AI would take all the pleasure out of crafting and preaching a sermon or writing an essay here for me. I have used AI for other tasks: brainstorming song choices for worship services, writing the code to embed a chart in an email, comparing documents to scan for differences, identifying sources for further research, troubleshooting problems in areas for which I am not skilled.

The last of those examples occurred this week as our church’s administrative assistant and I tried to figure out why her computer, despite having more than adequate RAM and a decent processor, was operating so slowly. Who’s better than a computer to fix a computer? After Claude helped identify a solution, I noticed a prompt on the side of the screen asking me to bring my history from other AI platforms to Claude so it can get to know me better. Google sent me an email last week with a similar request, linking directly to the prompt that I could use to get other platforms to package all they know about me into something transferable to Gemini. My mind turned to Psalm 139:

Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when published

O Lord, you have searched me and known me. 
You know when I sit down and when I rise up; 
you discern my thoughts from far away. 
You search out my path and my lying down, 
and are acquainted with all my ways. 
Even before a word is on my tongue, 
O Lord, you know it completely.  
 - Psalm 139:1-4     

Once we thought only God knew us inside and out. Now AI wants to know me that well. For some people, the song with which I opened this post could easily be changed to “When I forget, who will I be? AI will remember me.” Who needs to hope in the memory of God when our brains will be stored away in data centers? I don’t want to sound cynical about this. On the one hand, I want to be cautious about the downstream effects on how we think. On the other hand, maybe there are computer scientists out there who are trying to create AI that supports people living with dementia. If so, I know someone who might benefit from it right now. I wouldn’t want such support to become a substitute for the real relationships with our church or trust in God’s faithfulness, but it’s worth a shot.

At present, though, there is no cure for dementia, and I don’t see a technological savior on the horizon. I have seen Jesus heal the pain of traumatic memories, but I have not see him restore short-term memory function. It seems that eventually both those with dementia and those caring for them have to come to a place of acceptance. Despite our best efforts, our bodies and brains will eventually decline. We are mortal. So we hope in the memory of the immortal God who became mortal for our sake.

The second and third verses of “Remember Me,” sing “When all is lost, who will I be? God of the cross, remember me. . . . When all is dark, where will I be? Here in your arms, remember me. . . .” In these lines the singer finds Christ expressing compassion and solidarity through the suffering of the cross. Christ bears the weight of acceptance with us, asking us to surrender as he did. Jesus’s words to Peter will prove true of all of us: “when you grow old” someone will “take you where you do not wish to go” (John 21:18). John adds that “He said this to indicate the kind of death by which he would glorify God.” I wonder if those who experience cognitive and physical decline as they age can also consider it a doorway to intimacy with Christ. As a pastor who has witnessed but not yet experienced such decline, this is what I tell my congregants.

To prepare to embrace such a way of relating to God, we can practice forms of prayer that don’t depend on our cognitive capacity. If, as Thomas Keating said, “Silence is God’s first language,” then our ability to relate to God does not depend upon our ability to form or speak words. Silent prayer hopes in the memory of God, trusting that God knows what we need before we ask (Matthew 6:8). Silence can also provide respite for caregivers. In Belden Lane’s book The Solace of Fierce Landscape, he tells of his mother’s decline with both cancer and Alzheimer’s disease, during which he found comfort in practices of silence and solitude taught by the Desert Fathers and Mothers of the early Church. In his own words:

“The desert’s profound exterior silence invites one to an unnerving, interior silence for which one is usually ill-prepared. Yet the fruit of this silence is a vulnerability absolutely essential to the spiritual life. Actual entry into a desert geography isn’t necessary for acquiring the nakedness of word and thought that desert teachers of prayer advise. In my own case, it was a mother’s terrifying silence of memory, brought on by Alzheimer’s disease, that echoed my utter inability to change any of the things happening to either of us. It was a silence symptomatic of a general loss of control to which I had to consent. This is what the desert Christians cultivated in their practice of apophatic prayer.”2

So, I will resume my practice of contemplative prayer, now considering it part of my dementia prevention plan as well as a source of strength to continue in ministry. And I will look for Christ amid the confusion of those for whom I care. If you also care for those facing cognitive decline, or if you are facing it yourself, I pray that God will grant you peace and an awareness of God’s presence as you find your way forward. “May the God of peace himself sanctify you entirely, and may your spirit and soul and body be kept sound and blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ” (1 Thessalonians 5:23). Amen.

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I’ve been thinking a lot about Blue Glacier again recently. One reason is that this September, my friends Megan Shelly, John Creasy, and I will lead a contemplative backpacking trip along the Hoh River Trail in Olympic National Park. This is the trail about which I wrote in my essay “In Search of Silence” which I then included in my collection of sabbatical essays, A Broad Place. Over four days we’ll travel 36 miles, beginning in the temperate Hoh Rain Forest, ascending through other ecosystems to the base of Blue Glacier, and then descending back to the rain forest. Along the way we’ll curate contemplative experiences for you and provide spiritual direction to help you hear the voice of the Spirit who “renews the face of the earth” (Psalm 104:30). Want to come along? Check out the details of the trip here and then join us here for an information session on May 12 at 6:30pm EST. I’m excited to go back to this place that spoke to my soul so deeply two years ago. And that leads me to the second reason I’m thinking about Blue Glacier: Holy Week reminded me that I need silence to listen to God.

Two weeks ago our church observed Holy Week, and the contrast between our Good Friday and Easter services left me thinking that our words often get in the way. Our Easter sunrise service went much like last year’s at Berthoud Reservoir. Before the service began, a church member and I watched a muskrat swimming in the lake, carrying green stems in his mouth. When others joined us on the dock, we exclaimed “Christ is risen!” and launched into song, my fingers, numb from the cold, requiring God’s help to find the right strings on my guitar. Since our church spent Lent studying Dietrich Bonhoeffer, I chose to read from Bonhoeffer’s 1940 Easter sermon, in which he describes the resurrection as God’s “Yes” to reconciliation, to us, and to creation. Readers here might appreciate his words about the earth: “God has given [the earth] a new future, a new promise. The very earth God created bore the Son of God and his cross, and on this earth the Risen One appeared to his own, and to this earth Christ will come again on the last day.”1 This earth. With all its lakes and forests and glaciers, blackbirds and muskrats and geese, this earth matters to God. Amen.

As I read those words, I could hear the Red-winged Blackbirds calling out around me. But while last year I had imagined that they were joining us in singing praise, this year I had a strong feeling that they were telling me to shut up. Underneath a beautiful sunrise, with the sounds of birds all around, I had spoken much longer than I typically do at such services. I suddenly felt weary of the sound of my own voice. I stuck to the script for the rest of the service but left wishing we’d taken more time for silence. In short, I wanted the joy of Easter, but with the contemplative tone of our Good Friday service.

In that Good Friday service, we alternated between singing contemplative music and hearing scripture readings that told the story of the passion. After each reading a candle was extinguished. There was no sermon; the scriptures just spoke for themselves. And in the days that followed, I received more messages and comments about the power of the Good Friday service than I have for any other service in the ten years I have served this congregation. Perhaps next Easter we’ll take the same approach: just read the scriptures and let them speak for themselves.

The Apostle Paul knew that too many words could get in the way, especially when we attempt to embellish the message of Christ. In 1 Corinthians, Paul says he was sent “to proclaim the gospel, and not with eloquent wisdom, so that the cross of Christ might not be emptied of its power” (1:17). Later he downplays his own public speaking skills, giving us the impression that he preached like a nervous middle-schooler in a speech class: “I came to you in weakness and in fear and in much trembling” (2:3). But he says this weakness made room for God to work: “My speech and proclamation were not with plausible words of wisdom, but with a demonstration of the Spirit and of power, so that your faith may rest not on human wisdom but on the power of God” (2:4). The more preachers try to make the message sound impressive, the more we try to conjure a specific response in our hearers, the more we get in the way. If we have a choice between saying too much and saying too little, it’s better to be quiet and let God fill in the gaps.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer also wrote about the need to leave room for God to speak in our daily lives: “We are silent at the beginning of the day because God should have the first word, and we are silent before going to sleep because the last word also belongs to God. We keep silence solely for the sake of the Word.”2 When in your life do you take time in silence to leave room for God to speak?

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Just like how we need to balance time in community with time alone, we need to balance our sound with silence. The shout that “Christ is risen!” resonates more after the silence of Good Friday and Holy Saturday. It’s in the stillness and quiet that we can hear God say “Yes” to new life for us and for creation.

To write an entire book about two often overlooked verses in the Bible, one must appreciate the sacredness of hidden things. That’s what Ryan Tinetti has done with The Quiet Ambition: Scripture’s Surprising Antidote to our Restless Lives. In it, Tinetti explores 1 Thessalonians 4:11-12, which he translates to say, “Make it your ambition to live quietly and to tend your own business and to work with your hands, so that you might walk gracefully toward outsiders and have need of nothing.” Within these verses, Tinetti finds wisdom that offers relief from the exhausting demands of our world and gives a holy dignity to the most ordinary of lives.

Tinetti presents “quiet ambition” as an alternative to what Henry David Thoreau called “lives of quiet desperation.” While that desperation sometimes manifests as depressed resignation in the face of life’s challenges, Tinetti also recognizes it in the “restless ambition” which “attempts to stave of existential anguish with frenzied activity” (p. 13). Within the church, we tend to baptize the latter and call it “doing great things for God.” In truth, this urge to accomplish great things is often less about God’s call upon our lives and more about the influence of the hectic world in which we live.

Twice in the book Tinetti uses the word “acceleration” to describe the problem of restless ambition. In the second instance, he notes that “Quiet desperation is sped along by the acceleration of modern life” (p. 141). Though Tinetti doesn’t directly cite his work, this observation echoes the diagnosis German sociologist Harmut Rosa applied to life in our age. In The Uncontrollability of the World, Rosa writes that “Since the eighteenth century, life in the modern ‘western’ world has undergone a structural change at every level, as a result of which the basic institutional structure of modern society can be maintained only through constant escalation . . . constant economic growth, technological acceleration, and cultural innovation.” (p. 9). Driven by the fear of falling behind, we respond to this acceleration by grasping at control, relating to others and to objects in the world with increasing aggression. This can even manifest in grand ambitions to “change the world,” as Tinetti explores in chapter 9. Rosa’s response to this problem is to seek what he calls “resonance,” a kind of relational encounter that relinquishes control and invites a free and transformational response from the other.

The Quiet Ambition describes a way of life that makes room for resonance, and it does so clearly and accessibly for any reader. Tinetti, who is a Lutheran pastor and seminary professor, writes with a pastoral heart, relatable voice, and a generous sprinkling of dad jokes. The book is divided into five parts, each dedicated to a portion of Paul’s instructions in 1 Thessalonians 4:11-12. Every two chapters are followed by a brief section offering practices to help readers live into Tinetti’s vision of a life shaped by these verses.

Rather than living with quiet desperation or restless ambition, readers are invited to live humbly, recognizing what they are (and are not) truly called to do. Against the noise of relentless smartphone notifications, readers are urged to cultivate “one square inch of silence” in their lives. (That phrase is taken from the work of acoustic ecologist Gordon Hempton, who found a place of pure quiet in Olympic National Park and marked it as one square inch of silence.) The chapters on “working with one’s hands” address the value of physical activity, labor in the trades, baking bread, and creativity in general. The final chapters present Christian witness as a matter of doing “small things with great love,” as Mother Teresa said. In addition to abundant biblical examples, Tinetti illustrates his points with stories from the lives of both historical and contemporary figures ranging from St. Therese of Lisieux to Rosa Parks. Even the lives of humble celebrities like Barry Sanders and Rich Mullins have lessons on living quietly.

Though quiet ambition does lead to a more peaceful life, we should not confuse it with quietism. Lest we use the instruction to “tend your own business” as an excuse to avoid addressing the crises of the world around us, Tinetti reminds us that disciples of Jesus are sent back into the world to participate in God’s mission. As a timely example, Tinetti offers a story from the life of Dietrich Bonhoeffer. In 1933 Bonhoeffer left Germany to pastor two congregations in a suburb of London. There, from a distance, Bonhoeffer thought he could support his colleagues in Germany while still maintaining his own safety. But a letter from Karl Barth corrected him: “Your church’s house is on fire, that you know enough and know well enough how to say what you know, to be able to help, and in fact you ought to return to your post by next ship!” (p. 178). In Bonhoeffer’s case, quiet ambition meant fulfilling his duty, even though it led to his eventual imprisonment and execution.

The Quiet Ambition also reminded me of another figure who, like Bonhoeffer, resisted the Nazis: Franz Jägerstätter, whose refusal to swear allegiance to Hitler or fight for the Nazis during World War II is retold in Terrence Malick’s film A Hidden Life. In the film, Franz’s decisions and his wrestling over their moral implications take place in a lonely village, out of view of the rest of the world, but that makes them no less valuable or meaningful. The film ends with a quote form George Eliot which speaks to the life of quiet ambition: “The growing good of the world is partly dependent upon unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number to lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs.”

The Quiet Ambition invites us to live faithfully in the hidden places of our lives, regardless of our circumstances. In doing so, this book offers both relief for those who are weary from frantic lives and a sober call to attend to what matters most, even when it goes unnoticed by the world.

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For Lent this year, I chose to add a creative practice to my morning routine. After the intense focus I gave to writing my collection of sabbatical essays, A Broad Place, my well for creative work went dry for a while. My schedule also picked up, first with a busy Christmas season, then a return to full-time ministry at my church, and then travel for continuing education. Then February brought multiple deaths and memorial services with families connected to our church. With ministry requiring so much output, other creative work kept taking the backseat. So, when Ash Wednesday arrived, I felt I needed a Lenten practice that would spark my creativity again.

Enter the two books that I am using for poetry prompts: The Magic Words by Joseph Fasano and Draw Close by Stephanie Dunn. In The Magic Words, Fasano offers a series of poems that one completes by filling in blank lines with their designated noun, verb, or adverb. It’s like a poetry mad lib, but with enough space for originality that the user feels like they are creating a genuinely unique and personal poem. I first encountered Fasano’s work on Threads, where he regularly posts examples of completed poems sent to him by people around the world. Whether by children with vivid imaginations or by adults with dementia, the examples he shares are stunning.

Draw Close is much more open-ended. Dunn presents a scripture verse and brief meditation for each day of Lent, highlighting one word for the reader to use as a prompt for creativity. Though the title Draw Close suggests art, any form of creative response is fair game. When our congregation used Draw Close as a Lenten devotional in 2025, we had people respond with watercolor paintings, music, quilts, poems, and more. So far this during Lent, my own practice has been to warm up with a prompt from The Magic Words, then turn to Draw Close and write a fresh poem based on its scripture passage.

On Ash Wednesday, the prompt in Draw Close was, appropriately, “Ash.” I thought of the poem I published on Ash Wednesday of 2025, “Imposition,” and wrote a sequel, bearing in mind the recent death of a congregation member. Perhaps this will become a series, with a new Imposition poem every Lent. Here’s this year’s:

 Imposition #2 (Ash Wednesday 2026)
Who will mark my forehead tonight?
Take the bowl of ashes from my hand,
dip a finger until it is stained
black and trace a cross on me,
trace a target for Death. 
                                         It will end
one day, one second, this life.
Dust I am, dirt and breath, 
and to ashes I will return.
Even now, as age and toil and sun
erode my skin, thin my hair: dust.

For years she took the bowl of ashes 
from my hand, this unrelenting deacon,
servant of servants, and she traced 
the cross on me, smiling,
and today she to whom I said
"Repent and believe the Gospel," is ash.
She who said to me, "To dust you will return," 
returns. 

"All of us go down to the dust," the funeral liturgy
prays, "yet even at the grave we make our song: 
Alleluia, Alleluia, Alleluia." 
                                                Give rest to all Your servants, 
Lord, in a place where Alleluias intrude upon our grief
where we smile in the face of Death, 
where You take the bowl of ashes
forever from our hands.

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On a windy December afternoon, a couple members of my church and I walked around the Conservation Gardens at the Northern Colorado Water Conservancy. We had recently completed Wild Indigo Guild’s eight-week course on relating to God through nature, and one of our teachers, my friend John Creasy, had come to visit us to debrief the program in person. Though few of the plants at the conservation garden appeared as vibrant as they do in spring and summer, we marveled at the beauty of some of them. Kathy, our congregation’s resident master gardener, and John pointed out interesting plants to one another, sharing details they knew about each while I listened in, feeling like a novice. A joint fir caught our eyes with its bluish color and long segmented stems. Hearing that Sunset hyssop attracts butterflies, I quickly made a note in my phone with its name, beginning a list with future landscaping ideas.

Despite my professed love for and admiration of creation’s beauty, gardening and landscaping has held little personal appeal to me over the years. I love the feeling of moving through nature - hiking, running, backpacking - all to get to new vistas. Doing the slow work of tending the land in my yard has seemed boring to me, even an annoyance that prevented me from having more time out on the trails. I say this by way of confession now, having realized through our Wild Indigo Guild classes that I was missing out on opportunities to encounter God in my own backyard. Though I love the mountains, I don’t have to go as far as I think to see creation’s beauty. To borrow a phrase from entomologist Douglas Tallamy, why travel to a national park when I could have a “Homegrown National Park.”

That phrase caught the attention of all our church’s Wild Indigo Guild participants when we read Jerry Adler’s profile of Tallamy for Smithsonian Magazine. It’s also a theme in his book Nature’s Best Hope: A New Approach to Conservation that Starts in Your Yard. (I haven’t read Nature’s Best Hope yet, but it’s going on my 2026 to-read list.) As the Adler summarizes Tallamy’s vision, he wants to see our vast swaths of lawn replaced “with native North American flora, supporting a healthy array of native North American butterflies, moths and other arthropods, providing food for a robust population of songbirds, small mammals and reptiles.” Replacing lawns with native plants is already popular in northern Colorado for the sake of saving water, given our short supply and ever-increasing population here. But Tallamy’s concerns go deeper. Adler observes that lawns are “a landscape that for ecological purposes might as well be a parking lot,” unable to support life. Replacing lawn with native plants creates habitat for other creatures, particularly insects like bees who pollinate other plants and caterpillars. That in turn attracts birds who feed on those insects. All of this together creates a more beautiful, diverse, and sustainable landscape.

Such care for the earth ought to be a common concern for all humanity, but it’s particularly relevant for people of faith. In Genesis 2:8, we read “The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to till it and keep it.” The Hebrew word translated “keep” in that sentence is shamar, a verb that shows up later in Psalm 121 to describe God’s protective and nurturing care of us: “The Lord is your keeper; the Lord is your shade at your right hand. . . . The Lord will keep you from all evil; he will keep your life.” Some translations try to capture the nuance of the word shamar in these verses by using other words: protect, guard, watch over, preserve. This means that, along with the ability to delight in the beauty of creation, God’s also given us a responsibility to protect and care for the earth.

Wild Indigo Guild, a ministry founded by John Creasy and Evan Clendenin, helps faith communities practice such care with a three-phase program. The first phase (which our congregation at First Presbyterian Church of Berthoud just completed), consists of eight sessions that combine contemplative spiritual practices with education about the principles of permaculture. Practitioners of permaculture seek to create sustainable landscapes agricultural systems by following and imitating patterns that are present in nature. That sounds complicated, but the way our teachers John and Evan presented the principles made them very accessible and relevant for all of us, from those who were avid gardeners to novices like myself. The second phase Wild Indigo Guild offers includes assistance in designing a permaculture landscape for congregations who choose to do so. The third phase includes coaching and guidance during the actual implementation of that design.

If these topics are of interest to you and your faith community, I encourage you to reach out to John and Evan. Both are also trained spiritual directors who are particularly attuned to the ways God speaks to us through nature. One more shameless plug on behalf my friend: John is also writing a book about trees that’s due to be published in early 2027.

In a few days we’ll celebrate Christmas. As I anticipate singing “Joy to the World” in our Christmas Eve service, I’m already thinking about the line “let heaven and nature sing” differently. As followers of in the incarnate Christ, we can choose to join creation’s song through the decisions we make in our own backyards.

For ten months, I’ve had the following quote from James Clear saved in a note on my phone labeled “Writing Motivation.”

Writing is the superpower of humankind. It is our truest form of magic. Writing allows you to conjure up something of value where nothing previously existed. It costs little for you to write down the lessons of your life and yet those few minutes spent writing can be life-altering for the right reader. As I once saw it put: “there is someone out there with a wound in the exact shape of your words.”

The fact that I held onto this quote for months is proof of Clear’s point: the right words at the right time can have healing and transformative effects on a reader. That would be reason enough to write, but the effects of writing upon the author are just as valuable. I experienced this through the past year of work on my recently completed sabbatical writing project, A Broad Place. In the words of Henri Nouwen,

“Writing is a process in which we discover what lives in us. The writing itself reveals what is alive. . . . The deepest satisfaction of writing is precisely that it opens up new spaces within us of which we were not aware before we started to write. To write is to embark on a journey whose final destination we do not know.”1

Notice that Nouwen says writing “opens up new spaces in us.” This echoes his definition a spiritual discipline as “the effort to create some space in which God can act.”2 Those words, in turn, shaped what I wrote in A Broad Place, a series of essays about four spiritual disciplines that create broad places where God can act in our lives: Silence, Solitude, Simplicity, and Stability. If you are a paid subscriber of this Substack or one of my regular coaching clients, you should have already received a PDF version of the completed project. Members of my church will receive digital copies today and will be invited to join me for discussion groups in coming weeks. If you’re not in one of those groups and want to read it, just upgrade to a paid subscription and I’ll be happy to include you in the early readers group. Either way, keep reading because the rest of this post is free, and here I’m sharing what I learned through this project, both about writing and about myself.

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What I’m Discovering about Writing:

Some pastors try to write books during their sabbaticals. I used my sabbatical to travel and explore, then tried to write about it afterward. As a result, I struggled to carve out dedicated time in my weekly routine to work on the project. Upon reentry from sabbatical, I slid right back into my previous routines, missing an opportunity to establish new rhythms of life and work. Those rhythms included time for writing as part of my pastoral work, but they didn’t yet have space for the longer slower process of crafting something larger. Lesson Learned: Creativity flourishes with dedicated time and space to work.

I started making more substantial progress on this project when I joined a cohort for creativity at our local library over the summer. These friends provided accountability and support to help me move beyond talking about writing to actually writing. Looking back, I now wish I had requested more support and advice from others in earlier stages of the project. Self-directed writing can feel exhausting because of the endless decisions to be made. If I were starting a similar project from scratch today, I would enlist a writing coach or editor to consult with at each stage of the process. Lesson Learned: It is wise to have an “abundance of counselors” (to borrow the language of Proverbs 11:14 and 24:6).

Wise counselors might also have warned me to pay close attention to my sources. In the notes I gathered while preparing for this project, I included a quote from Richard Foster about contentment. When it time came to put it in my essay on Stability, I couldn’t find the correct citation for it. I was certain the quote came from either Celebration of Discipline or Freedom of Simplicity. After skimming the appropriate chapter in Celebration of Discipline and finding nothing, I searched for contentment in the index of Freedom of Simplicity. That index entry placed contentment in pages 87 to 89 in the book, to which I turned only to find that they were a blank space between chapters. Apparently, there was an error in the index, and the topic was covered in pages 103-106. Except those pages didn’t have the quote I’d used. Deciding to accept technological assistance, I searched for the quote in Google Books, only to find that the words I had attributed to Foster were actually taken verbatim from Helen Rhee’s book Loving the Poor, Saving the Rich which I read more than ten years ago and no longer have. Searching my own Google Drive revealed that I had quoted her in a sermon in 2015 in which I also quoted Foster and when I had searched my own files for quotes about contentment, I pulled out Rhee’s words and misattributed them to Foster. After all that work, I decided that the quote wasn’t worth the work of introducing Rhee’s book as context for the quote, so I left it out the final version of the essay. Lesson Learned: Pay attention to the details, including all your sources and citations.

One more general writing lesson: “Of making many books there is no end, and much study is a weariness of the flesh” (Ecclesiastes 12:12). If I had wanted to, I could have extended this project for years and written volumes about each topic. To produce something I could share with others before the end of this year, I had to define my scope, choose what to include and what to exclude, and confine myself to those parameters. This also meant I couldn’t take time to chase every rabbit trail of research possibilities that came up. One night in late October, I was listening to an audiobook as I fell asleep and I heard something that seemed relevant to my writing. Later that night, unable to sleep, I began worrying that I would have to read the whole book before I could finish writing, and that would delay the whole project by weeks. Maybe that would have made the project better, but endlessly chasing such trails would have prevented me from reaching my goal. Lesson learned: Limit inputs and work within boundaries or else you’ll never finish.

What I’m Discovering about Myself:

A couple years ago, Katelyn Beaty wrote a post about why most pastors shouldn’t try to be authors. Personal ambition often drives pastors to pursue writing for an audience they don’t yet have while neglecting the congregations they do have. We do this because pastors are especially susceptible to the temptations to be relevant, spectacular, and powerful (to use Nouwen’s framing of Jesus’ temptation in the wilderness from In the Name of Jesus). Becoming an author is an attractive way for a pastor to seek those very things, and it takes a practical holiness and humble ego to not put such a quest ahead of one’s congregational responsibilities. As I recall, Eugene Peterson was the one example Beaty gave of a pastor who had the humility to balance these roles well.

I want to take Peterson’s example and Beaty’s advice to heart. As I wrote my essay on Stability for A Broad Place, I discovered a renewed sense of call to be a pastor and specifically to pastor my current church: First Presbyterian Church of Berthoud. This call was reaffirmed at a congregational meeting this past Sunday where the members voted to bring me up from three-quarter-time to full-time ministry at the church. I’m grateful that writing is part of that pastoral calling, not just because I get to write sermons but because writing in general is a form of soul-exploration that informs all my service as a pastor. So I’ll continue writing here in my free time, but I don’t plan to pursue any projects the size of A Broad Place for a while. (For those who are wondering, I will continue my current coaching relationships but am not currently accepting new clients.)

All that said, I didn’t write A Broad Place just to put it in a drawer and hide it. I’m still discerning who to share it with beyond the audiences already named above. I wrote this as a passion project, not a vanity project, so I’m not attached to any outcome regarding how many people read it. If those who read it now find it beneficial, I would consider other ways to share it: Perhaps I could separate the essays as submissions to periodicals? Or self-publish a version of it as an eBook? Or finally consult with a writing coach or editor for help with the questions? Feel free to comment with your recommendations.

I’ll close with one Richard Foster quotation for which I do have an accurate source: “As writers, our first incarnational task is to be ourselves filled with this life we are talking about.”3 I want to be filled with the life I described in A Broad Place, so now it’s time for me to go outside and marvel at the wonders of the creation. May you likewise be blessed to be led out into a broad place for your own encounter with the mystery and beauty of God.

A few weeks ago, during an early morning run, I was making my way up a hill near our neighborhood when a hawk sprung into the air from a fencepost beside me and flew over my head. In the dawn’s low light, I had run up the sidewalk to within feet of the hawk without noticing it. Disturbed from its perch by my presence, it flew on over the road and up the hill to a large tree from which it could scan the field below it for prey.

As I continued my run, wondering at the beauty and power of the hawk, I remembered a story Thomas Merton tells in his book The Sign of Jonas. Merton was watching a congregation of starlings in a tree on his monastery’s property when,

“From behind the house and over my roof a hawk came down like a bullet and shot straight into the middle of the starlings just as they were getting off the ground. They rose into the air and there was a slight scuffle on the ground as the hawk got his talons into the one bird he had nailed. . . . I tried to pray, afterward. But the hawk was eating the bird. And I thought of that flight, coming down like a bullet from the sky behind me and over my roof, the sure aim with which he hit this one bird, as though he had picked it out a mile away. . . . I think that hawk is to be studied by saints and contemplatives; because he knows his business. I wish I knew my business as well as he does.”1

The hawk knew his business. In other words, he had a single aim, one target on which he zeroed in and pursued to the end. This singularity of purpose, or inner simplicity, is what Merton says saints and contemplatives could learn by studying hawks.

Annie Dillard drew a similar lesson from a different creature in her essay “Living with Weasels.” The strong jaws of weasels enable them to sink their teeth into prey and not let go. In the example Dillard provides, an eagle that was shot out of the air was then found with “the dry skull of a weasel fixed by the jaws to its throat.” The weasel had attacked and then held on to the bird, even as the bird flew away, even as the bird presumably ate the parts of the weasel it could reach. Even in death the weasel did not let go. Just as Merton’s hawk knew its business, the weasel had a single purpose to which it clung. Dillard therefore instructs her readers to likewise “grasp your one necessity and not let it go.”2

So, what does it take to know one’s business as well as a hawk does, to grasp one’s calling as tightly as weasel? The fact that Merton was still figuring it out well into his time in the monastery should be a relief for those of us who are still searching for clarity. It’s normal and good to continually be discerning and refining where we focus our energies. If we’re not, we risk getting distracted and going off course.

A few months ago, while attending a community event in Berthoud’s Town Park, an acquaintance approached me with a surprising statement: “This doesn’t usually happen to me but I feel like God gave me a word for you: pinhole purpose. I’ve been watching you and you’re doing too many things. What you need is a pinhole purpose.” I received the word with gratitude because it rang true. I was doing too much: pastoring a church at three-quarter time, providing coaching and spiritual direction for a handful of other Christian leaders, participating in a year-long continuing education program at my seminary, writing a series of essays about my sabbatical, and trying to publish something at least once a month on Substack. This work was all on top of daily life as a husband and father during a busy time in our family’s life. And I was training for an ultramarathon as my form of recreation. With so many competing claims on my time, attention, and energy, a pinhole purpose sounded like a relief.

As I reflected on my friend’s words, I realized that while my sabbatical had taught me lessons about material simplicity, I hadn’t yet absorbed its lessons about inner simplicity. True simplicity, writes Richard Foster in his book Freedom of Simplicity “is an inward reality that can be seen in an outward lifestyle.”3 A person who has inner simplicity knows who they are and what their purpose is in life. Because of that, they can confidently reject the distractions and temptations that arise to challenge that identity and purpose. Instead, many of us live overly complicated lives because we are divided within ourselves, seeking to appease the competing demands within us. As the Quaker writer Thomas Kelly put it, “We feel honestly the pull of many obligations and try to fulfill them all. And we are unhappy, uneasy, strained, oppressed and fearful we shall be shallow.”4

Kelly’s words resonate with me. Perhaps they resonate with you, too. So what can we do about it?

As a coach and spiritual director, I would ask a client seeking inner simplicity to consider the following questions.

• What commitments or responsibilities in your life are non-negotiable? Your purpose, calling, or vocation begins with the present reality of your life. The hawk knows its business is searching for prey because that’s non-negotiable for its survival.

• Now that you’ve identified what’s essential, you have freedom to sort through what’s not. What can you remove from your schedule, your commitments, and your mental load? Meister Eckhart said, “The soul does not grow by addition, but by subtraction.”

• If you have been trying to do too many things and your attention has been scattered, why? What might you be avoiding by staying so busy?

• Where do you say yes when you want to say no? What would change if you were honest? Inner simplicity requires saying no to many good things so you can say yes to what’s best.

• Who do you seek to please? As a recovering people-pleaser myself, I remind myself often of Galatians 1:10: “Am I now seeking human approval, or God’s approval? Or am I trying to please people? If I were still pleasing people, I would not be a servant of Christ.”

• What can you do that others cannot? If you’ve been given unique gifts, talents, or training, does your life make use of those strengths, or are you scattering your energy in less fruitful activities?

From my own experience, I know that regular contemplative practices create space to answer these questions. Time in solitude helps you recognize who you are apart from the identities other project onto you. Silence helps you filter out the voices that distort your sense of purpose. Journaling gives us space to honestly voice thoughts we might not otherwise express. Companionship in the journey helps, too, whether it’s in the form of conversation with friends and family, or more formal relationships like coaching and spiritual direction.

I want to know my business like the hawk does. I want to grasp my purpose and not let go. I pray that you will find the same clarity, as well.

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I was near the back of the pack when the starting gun sounded. A 55k race is long enough to allow time for the faster and slower runners to spread out and the middle of the pack runners like myself to settle in between them. So, I started The Grand Mesa Ultras 55k behind the crowd, confident I could find space in the early miles to pass anyone going slower than my intended pace. Except I was wrong. Over the first few miles of the crowded single-track trail, I found only a few opportunities to pass without breaking trail etiquette and tromping off-trail over wildflowers or tripping over plants. So, I waited patiently for turns to pass at wide spots on the trail and when we reached a stretch on a gravel road, I sped up in search of lost time.

I had chosen this race because it felt like home for me. My dad’s side of the family has a cabin on Grand Mesa and this race included the Crag Crest Trail Loop, the lower end of which comes close to our cabin. I grew up hiking Crag Crest and have run it several times in recent years. So when I reached the portion of the race that covered the lower end of the loop trail, I was ready to let loose and run as I had at other times before. Except, again, I couldn’t. The runner in front of me was less comfortable on downhills and slowed significantly when the lower loop began its descent. I patiently waited for a few minutes before I asserted myself and asked if I could pass. She graciously agreed and I thanked her with a smile and some encouraging words. This pattern continued with other runners as I followed the trail up the east side of the loop and across the crest, ascending from roughly 10,300’ elevation to nearly 11,200’.

The second half of the race, however, brought different challenges. Rather than running on my familiar Crag Crest Loop, I was running on the Mesa Top Trail for the first time. The 30k runners had completed their race, so the crowd had thinned dramatically. With temperatures climbing and fatigue increasing, I found myself taking more walking breaks, even on flatter terrain. Instead of feeling eager to pass each runner in front of me, I found myself going miles without seeing anyone at all. Apparently having someone going at a slow pace in front of me was still more motivating than having no one in front of me.

Then I noticed this: when I did catch up to someone, I found myself subconsciously matching their pace. If they were running slowly, I ran slowly. If they were walking, I stopped running and walked. In my fatigued state, my brain defaulted to the pace of those around me, rather than the pace I intended to run. And that’s the life lesson in this post: Who you follow sets your pace. The community around you influences how you run your race.

Back in May, I published a post called "Growing Through Accountability” where I listed four communities and structures of accountability upon whom I was leaning: (1) The Preaching in a Post-Christian Age Initiative (PPCAI) at Pittsburgh Seminary, (2) a creativity cohort at our local library, (3) mentor coaching to renewal my credential from the International Coaching Federation, and (4) a training plan for a race at the Grand Mesa Ultras on July 26. The PPCAI program will continue through May of 2026, but the other three have all come to their appointed ends, and I can attest that the community surrounding me influenced the outcome in every case.

I joined the Creativity Cohort at the library particularly because I wanted support and accountability finishing my sabbatical writing project. The group’s encouragement did indeed help me get unstuck, resulting in the completion of one of the four essays and significant progress on the others. I hope to share more here in the next month. As for coaching, I completed my mentoring coaching in early July, submitted my renewal application to ICF later that month, and received word yesterday that my application was approved. This matters because coaching isn’t formally regulated. Anyone can claim to be a coach, but an ICF credential represents a particular commitment to excellence, ethical standards, and accountability. I believe that commitment makes me a better coach for the clients I serve.

In these cases, the cohort at the library and my mentor coach were like runners around me on the trail who pushed me to go faster. They helped me perform better. But this principle that those around us influence us, both consciously and subconsciously, applies to far more than our personal and professional ambitions.

In Brad Stulberg’s book The Practice of Groundedness, he recounts that, "Researchers from Yale University closely monitored nearly five thousand people living in the small town of Framingham, Massachusetts, for three decades. They found that when someone became happy or sad, that emotion rippled throughout the entire town.”1 In the abstract for the British Medical Journal article reporting on this study, it says the researchers found that

"the relationship between people's happiness extends up to three degrees of separation (for example, to the friends of one's friends' friends). People who are surrounded by many happy people and those who are central in the network are more likely to become happy in the future. . . . . A friend who lives within a mile (about 1.6 km) and who becomes happy increases the probability that a person is happy by 25%.”

All this led the researchers to conclude “People's happiness depends on the happiness of others with whom they are connected. . . . Happiness, like health, [is] a collective phenomenon."2 If this is true, then who we choose to surround ourselves with matters far more than we realize. Who is pacing you in the race of life? Who do you need to surround yourself with to get where you want to go?

In the end, I had a great day at the Grand Mesa Ultras 55k. I’m thankful for the race organizers who put on an excellent event and for all of my companion runners out there on the trails. I finished in the middle of the pack: 18th overall a field of 65 runners, and 12th out of 37 men. And I was greeted at the finish line by family, complete with my youngest daughter jumping into my arms, nearly knocking me over and filling me with gratitude for the community that surrounds me. I know who I want to surround me and I look forward to the miles to come.

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In the Anchorage Museum hangs a work of art entitled White Noise, American Prayer Rug. Made by the artist Nicholas Galanin, the pattern on the wool and cotton rug evokes television static: a black border encases a blurred and sparkling mixture of teal, white, and gray dots and threads. Rust colored flecks dot the left and upper right sides of the rug, as though a more colorful image lies obscured behind the static. The viewer wonders what beauty is trying to poke through, but the image is distorted, the antenna broken, the signal jumbled.

Galanin is an indigenous artist with roots in the Tlingít and Unangax̂ peoples, and much of his work explores the conflicts between native ways of life and the dominant American culture. In this case, the conflict is represented by noise drowning out silence. Galanin explains,

White noise refers to steady droning tones used to mask or obliterate unwanted sounds, an active dissociation occurring when a signal is gone or lost. . . . The American Prayer Rug is hung on a wall in place of flat screen television, as the image accompanying the droning sound we use to distract us from our own suffering, from love, from land, from water, from connection. There is no space for prayer, only noise.

No space for prayer. Only noise. This reality is, in a roundabout way, exactly what brought me to the Anchorage Museum in early July of 2024. I was on a summer-long sabbatical from pastoral ministry, immersing myself in nature and seeking communion with God by spending time outside in the beauty of creation. One day during the Alaskan leg of the sabbatical, heavy rains washed away my family’s plans to go rock-climbing with friends, so we chose instead to visit the Anchorage Museum.

After the children explored the interactive science exhibits about characteristically Alaskan phenomena like earthquakes and the aurora borealis, we moved upstairs to the quieter floors of the museum where the walls were lined with visual art. Following the laughter and chatter of the children’s portion of the museum, the silence was refreshing. How fitting it was then to encounter White Noise, American Prayer Rug, a tangible reminder of my sabbatical’s purpose.

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“You do not rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of your systems.” - James Clear

As I write this, I’m sitting in the bleachers next to the pool where my older daughter’s swim club practices. I watch as the coaches shout instructions from the pool deck and the swimmers splash through lap after lap, pausing to catch their breaths after each interval before sliding into the next drill assigned by the coaches. I don’t know all the ins and outs of swimming - I’m a runner, and I’m much more comfortable on trails than in any pool - but this routine over the past few months has led many of the team members to improve their times significantly, my daughter included. And this is where I see a valuable lesson. As much as my daughter loves swimming, she wouldn’t have grown in her form, speed, and skills as a swimmer without her coaches who have taught her and held her accountable in practices. Though she has an internal love of the sport, it’s the external system of the swim club that has facilitated her growth.

Right now I’m also benefiting from external systems of accountability in several areas of my life. Here’s a rundown of them, listed according to the different areas of life in which they’re pushing me to grow: intellectually, creatively, professionally, and physically. Perhaps as you read you’ll recognize areas of your life in which you, too, would benefit from more systems to support your growth.

(1) Intellectually: I recently travelled to Pittsburgh to join the inaugural cohort in Pittsburgh Theological Seminary’s “Preaching in a Post-Christian Age Initiative.” For three days, I learned alongside church leaders from across the country, seeking to discern how to communicate about faith in an increasingly secular world. I may write more about what we’re studying in a future post, but for the purposes of today’s topic I just want to observe how this program has turned on portions of my brain that had sat dormant for a few years.

For this opening course in the Preaching in the Post-Christian Age Initiative, we were asked to read a novel (Sally Rooney’s Beautiful World Where Are You) and a short work of academic sociology (Hartmut Rosa’s The Uncontrollability of the World). We were also given lectures to watch in advance, reflection questions, and an assignment to bring artifacts representing ourselves and our contexts to the opening gathering. In recent years I’ve completed separate training programs in coaching and spiritual direction, but they haven’t included dense philosophical reading. I’ve read plenty of novels recently, too, but I haven’t analyzed any in this depth since I was in college. This experience at the seminary feels like being back in a graduate level classroom. I’m being asked to raise my level of intellectual engagement, I have received a syllabus to follow toward that goal, and I have a community to hold me accountable to it. So I’m doing the work, and I’m growing.

(2) Creatively: I am still working to complete the writing project that I started during my sabbatical last summer. Though I care deeply about the content that I’m writing and want to share more of the lessons from last summer’s travels and studies with others, I have repeatedly let more urgent ministry matters intrude on my writing time. Without someone expecting me to hand it a finished product by a certain date, I’ve procrastinated on finishing what I’ve begun. So, one week after Easter, I found myself saying to a committee in my church, “I need accountability to finish this. I want you to set a deadline, otherwise I’ll just keep pushing this off in favor of doing things that are more urgent.” Now I have a deadline: our church’s summer retreat day on June 28.

But simply having a deadline isn’t enough, so I signed up for extra accountability by joining a creativity cohort at our local library starting in June. The work we do for that cohort will be distinct from my sabbatical project, but I’m hoping it will spark my creativity, keep me in a regular rhythm of writing, and help me build relationships with other local writers.

(3) Professionally: I am an ICF Associate Certified Coach. (For those who are new here, think leadership and life coaching, not athletic coaching. Read this page for more explanation.) At this level of coaching, I’m required to renew my credential every three years. This means accruing hours of continuing education credits from a variety of topics. Recent courses I’ve taken have covered somatic coaching, eco-coaching, team coaching, ethics, mental fitness, and positive intelligence. In addition, I’m going through Mentor Coaching, a process in which I submit video recordings of coaching sessions (with the client’s full awareness and consent) to be reviewed by a mentor who evaluates my coaching and provides advice for improvement. (I only need one more recording to complete this requirement, so if you’d like a free 30 minute coaching session in exchange for letting me record it just hit the message button below!) All that said, the external accountability provided by the International Coaching Federation keeps me growing as a coach.

(4) Physically: I recently started listening to Ryan Holiday’s “Daily Stoic” podcast and have noticed that some of wise sayings of Stoic philosophers he shares are paralleled or echoed in the Bible and in the writings of the desert fathers and mothers of the church. For example, consider the similarity between Epictetus saying “We treat the body rigorously so that it will not be disobedient to the mind” and the Apostle Paul saying “I discipline my body and make it my slave, so that, after I have preached to others, I myself will not be disqualified” (1 Corinthians 9:27). To that end, I have heard Holiday say more than once (including in this recent episode) that he deliberately doesn’t train toward competitions or races. The daily discipline of exercise is the marathon for him.

That’s admirable, but I don’t work that way. Just as I need an external deadline and a community to hold me to it to do my best writing, I am my most disciplined at exercise when I’m training for a race. So I am currently training for the Grand Mesa Ultras 55k. This event includes the Crag Crest Trail, the trail on which I learned to hike as a child. In recent years, I’ve enjoyed running the trail whenever we’ve gone back to visit the cabin that’s been shared within my dad’s side of the family for generations. I’m looking forward to both the challenge of the run and to being on familiar ground. This is what gets me out of the door to run now before 6:00 each morning. I’m also following the same training plan I’ve used for two other races of a similar distance because I know I can’t improvise my way into the shape I need to endure for 34 miles that day. I need the wisdom of (athletic) coaches and trainers who are wiser than myself to accomplish that goal.

If you’ve read this far, you probably care about your own personal growth in one or more of these areas of life. What is one way you’d like to begin growing right now? If you could use some external support and accountability seeking that growth, the coaching I provide may help. I have room for new clients this summer and it’s easy to schedule your first appointment using Calendly.

At 6:00 a.m. on Easter morning, a dozen people from our church walked out onto the dock at Berthoud Reservoir. Red-winged Blackbirds sang around us and a few ducks swam in the water nearby. I called out “Christ is risen!" and our band of early morning worshipers called back “He is risen indeed.” I read John 20:1-18, recounting how Mary Magdalene found Jesus’ tomb empty and then met the risen Jesus outside the tomb and mistook him for a gardener. To help bring that last image to life, I read Andrew Hudgins’s poem “Christ as a Gardener,” which playfully pictures Jesus in a broad-brimmed hat and muddy robe, laughing as he renews the Earth, unable to resist the urge to pluck up weeds and plant new seeds. As creation comes to life through his touch, he is lifted into heaven: “Beneath his feet, seeds dance into the air. They rise, and he, not noticing, ascends on midair steppingstones of dandelion, of milkweed, thistle, cattail, and goldenrod.”

After pausing to reflect on the poem - wondering how Jesus might appear in disguise to us today, how he delights in renewing the earth, how we’re invited to embrace such playfulness - we joined the blackbirds in singing, adding the words “Be not afraid, sing out for joy! Christ is risen, alleluia!” Be not afraid.

In contrast to that Easter morning, I found myself very much afraid back on the fourth Friday of Lent. That day our family traded in our aging Volkswagen Jetta for a Nissan Leaf, our first electric vehicle. An online carbon footprint calculator tells me this step will prevent 5.26 metric tons of carbon from entering the atmosphere over the next two years. That assumes that the electricity is generated cleanly, but we’re enrolled in a program through our electric co-op that lets us buy green power in 100 kWh blocks for only 10 cents more per block. It sounds too good to be true, but for a mere 70 cents extra per month, our electric consumption is supposed to be completely sustainable. That means getting an electric car was a significant step for us as family toward living a more sustainable lifestyle.

So why did I feel fear instead of elation? Because as I put our older daughter to bed that night, I started wondering if anything we do now is too little, too late. What’s one small EV in the face of much larger systemic and governmental threats to the environment? What sort of world will my children inhabit years from now? Will doing our small part now make any difference in the long run?

A year ago, I read a novel by Kim Stanley Robinson called The Ministry For the Future. It belongs to the genre known as “cli-fi,” or climate fiction, which imagines the future in light of the expected effects of climate change. The scientist and church member who recommended The Ministry For the Future to me to described it as a scientifically realistic picture of where we’re headed. Opening with a blistering heatwave in India, its characters endure other disasters, political conflict, violence, and more before any effects to counter climate change take hold.

Then last fall I read Brian McLaren’s Life After Doom. Throughout the book, McLaren makes the case that hope is complicated. Misplaced or naïve hope, in particular, can lead to apathy, as McLaren argues has happened in the case of climate change. Whether we expect technological innovations, governmental intervention, or the second coming of Christ to rescue humanity from the effects of climate change, emphasizing such hope risks enabling complacency. If such miracles don’t come to pass in our lifetime, what kind of world can we look forward to?

In Chapter 2, McLaren lists four types of futures in which we could live: (1) Collapse Avoidance - in which the world manages to avoid the worst effects of climate change; (2) Collapse/Rebirth - in which everything falls apart but a new society emerges; (3) Collapse/Survival - a dystopian future in which few survive to live very brutal lives; and (4) Collapse/Extinction. To help us imagine life in each scenario, McLaren names novels that depict each scenario. Cormac McCarthy’s The Road is a picture of Collapse/Survival, The Hunger Games shows us Collapse/Rebirth, and The Ministry for the Future envisions Collapse Avoidance. As McLaren explains, climate scientists find it increasingly difficult to imagine any future for humanity on earth that doesn’t involve some kind of civilizational collapse. Even the best case scenario involves more natural disasters, massive social and political instability, and a reordering of the way the world works. Hence my deep feelings of fear on the very day we took a tangible step to less our impact on the environment.

To McLaren’s credit, he warns readers to be careful to guard their mental health while reading Life After Doom, and his later chapters do offer a different kind of hope for meaningful and purposeful life on the other side of such scenarios. Art, appreciation of beauty, and cultivating community can all buoy our spirits, and as this quote from Thomas Merton in chapter 20 shows, we can still choose to live with joy and delight: “No despair of ours can alter the reality of things, or stain the joy of the cosmic dance which is always there...We are invited to forget ourselves on purpose, cast our awful solemnity to the winds and join in the general dance.”

On Easter morning we cast solemnity to the winds and joined the general dance. As we celebrated the empty tomb, we praised the one “in whom we live and move and have our being” (Acts 17:28), the one through whom and for whom we believe all things have been created (Colossians 1:16). I believe that confidence in Christ’s resurrection is not just naïve hope, and I do believe that his Spirit renews the face of the earth (Psalm 104:30). And these beliefs make me want to steward and protect the beauty of the earth. Joy and hope should both lead to action.

I spent today, Earth Day, in the company of a dozen other church leaders who have been working to discern and envision the future of the camp the regional body of our denomination has owned in the mountains above us: Highlands Presbyterian Camp and Retreat Center. One told me that as the team began its work together a couple years ago, they dedicated time to “listening to the land.” As they explored the camp property individually, they all heard the same message: “Take care of me.” The team has listened. They created a conservation easement for the camp property, took steps to mitigate wildfire risks, cleaned up the camp’s water supply, and even reintroduced beavers to the creek that flows through the camp. For their efforts, the camp earned the Boulder Valley and Longmont Conservation District “Conservationist of the Year Award” for 2024.

These actions and these people show me that our faith that is not naïve hope. It is faith that both invites creation to sing out for joy and challenges us more faithful stewardship. May we continue to follow the lead of Christ the Gardener in caring for the earth.

The world’s oldest tree resides at 10,000 feet of elevation in the Ancient Bristlecone Pine Forest of California’s White Mountains. It’s named Methuselah, after the biblical figure who was said to have lived 969 years (Genesis 5:27). The Methuselah tree has lived much, much longer. It’s thought to be more than 4,800 years old.

On June 22, 2024, my dad and I hiked a four-and-a-half-mile loop trail through the Ancient Bristlecone Pine Forest from which we were told we would be able to see Methuselah. The catch is that Methuselah is intentionally left unmarked, its exact location left undisclosed for its protection. In September of 2008 an arsonist set fire to the visitor center at the trailhead and destroyed other nearby trees. Thankfully Methuselah survived.

As we hiked, we tried to guess which one was Methuselah. We considered the size of each tree and the number of twists and bends in the gnarled trunks and branches. We also considered the slope of the mountainside and the proximity of the trees to gullies which we imagined might provide protection from the wind or extra water during rainstorms. In the end, though, we had no way of knowing which tree was the patriarch, and we left wondering which of our favorite candidates could have been the one.

Back at the trailhead, I spotted a sign with the heading “Secrets of Old Age.” The text on it contrasted the bristlecone pines that grow on flat terrain with those that grow on steep or rugged hillsides:

Ancient bristlecone pines have a special look: spiked dead tops, bare wood on limbs and trunks, distorted polished limbs and exposed roots, thin strips of bark growing up the tree. Yet the trees growing [close to this sign] have a different look. These bristlecones are in a sheltered location, normally thought of as ‘good’ growing conditions. They are tall, full and upright. But these youngsters just don’t live as long as the ancients. Their wood is softer, making them more susceptible to invasion and disease. Look at the hillside in front of you. These bristlecones are growing on a ‘poor’ site - perfect conditions for old-age trees! The slope is steep, exposed, and the soil is very dry. Yet this is where we find the old majestic, weathered trees.

Lesson one from crooked trees: hard things can strengthen us. Enduring adversity, it seems, is the secret to old age for a bristlecone pine tree. This is a helpful lesson from nature for those of us who spend so much of our lives seeking comfort, only to find ourselves over-reliant on external factors for our happiness. Being less attached to external comforts may make us more resilient. As the saints of old knew, voluntarily foregoing certain pleasures strengthens a person’s character and capacity for self-discipline.

But today I’m interested in a deeper lesson from these crooked trees. The challenging conditions in which the oldest trees grow also give bristlecones their unique shapes and textures. None of these trees are identical. Each is as different as a fingerprint or snowflake, completely unique. Looking at them, I hear Molly Tuttle’s song “Crooked Tree” in my mind. In the song, Tuttle celebrates the gift of her uniqueness and individuality, comparing herself to a crooked tree:

People say I'm different and my way of life seems strange
I took the road less traveled, twists and turns along the way
But like the crooked tree
I'm growing stronger day by day as the clouds roll by

A river never wonders why it flows around the bend
A mountain doesn't question how it rose up from the land
So who am I to wish I wasn't just the way I am? Who am I?

Oh, can't you see a crooked tree won't fit into the mill machine?
They're left to grow wild and free
Oh, I'd rather be a crooked tree

I first heard this song when Tuttle played it live at the RockyGrass festival in Lyons, CO, in July of 2023. Before performing it, she shared about her own experience of living with alopecia and having to wear wigs to cover her baldness. Then to emphasize the meaning of the song, she removed her wig to play the song, showing the cheering crowd that she was unafraid to be the person she was uniquely created to be, even if it struck others as strange.

Though Molly Tuttle doesn’t use the language of faith to express this insight, her lyrics remind me of what Trappist monk Thomas Merton wrote decades ago in his book New Seeds of Contemplation:

“A tree gives glory to God by being a tree. It 'consents,' so to speak, to His creative love. It is expressing an idea which is in God and which is not distinct from the essence of God, and therefore the tree imitates God by being a tree. The more a tree is like itself, the more it is like Him. If it tried to be something it was never intended to be, it would be less like God and therefore it would give him less glory” (p. 31)

Merton, of course, applies the lesson to us: We also imitate God and give God glory be being fully ourselves. Holiness, for Merton, has little to do with pious religiosity and everything to do with being the unique person God made you to be: “For me sanctity consists in being myself and for you sanctity consists in being your self. . . . For me to be a saint means to be myself” (New Seeds p. 33).

That makes being a saint sound easy, at least if you’re a tree. But as humans who are social creatures, we consciously face pressures to conform every day to the expectations of others. Those social pressures are one kind of “mill machine,” to use Tuttle’s image, stripping away our uniqueness and creating uniformity. Resisting that pressure takes courage and vulnerability, even to the point of being brave enough to take off your wig in front of thousands of people.

And this leads me to the book I’m currently reading: The Courage to Be Disliked by Ichiro Kishimi and Fumitake Koga. Through an imagined dialogue between a philosopher and a young disciple, the book explores the psychological theories of Alfred Adler. The argument is too rich for me to fairly summarize here, but for the purpose of this post, the book teaches that most of our emotional problems come from caring too much what other people think of us. When we fear being disliked by others, we chase after affirmation, affection, and recognition. That appetite for acceptance is like an internal mill machine, shaping us to become people we were never intended to be.

Thus the philosopher in the book says “Freedom is being disliked by other people . . . Unless one is unconcerned by other people’s judgments, has no fear of being disliked by other people, and pays the cost that one might never be recognized, one will never be able to follow through in one’s own way of living” (pp. 144-145). This doesn’t mean that one actively seeks to be disliked. It’s not a license to be rude or harmful to others. But it does mean that one has to give up the illusion that one can control what others think or feel and practice being brave enough to be oneself.

I’m going to try to remember this each day when I look at the sticker from the Ancient Bristlecone Pine Forest that I stuck on the water bottle I use each day. It features a painting of an old bristlecone with a thick, twisted trunk and small patches of needles set against a backdrop of the eastern side of the Sierra Nevada mountains. May the gnarled branches I see on it give me the same courage to be disliked, to embrace discomfort, to become a saint.

A new year brings new adventures. I’m writing this post on a plane from Denver to San Diego, traveling there to lead a retreat for the executive council of the Presbytery of San Diego. It’s my first work trip of 2025, and I should be polishing the slideshow for our gathering tomorrow. Instead, I’ve been looking out the window of the plane: staring down from 24,000 feet at the tops of 14,000 foot peaks that I’ve climbed, snapping pictures of the Black Canyon of the Gunnison (a National Park near where I grew up), and admiring sandstone pillars and spires rising toward us as we fly over Utah and Arizona.

I’m on the wrong side of the plane to see sites I visited on sabbatical last summer like Capitol Reef and Death Valley, but traveling again over such expansive landscapes brings back memories that still want to put into writing. I journaled consistently throughout the summer, but those were mostly private reflections. They need to be sifted and sorted to be turned into lessons have broader application. I hope to get back on track with such work in the coming weeks. The needs of pastoral ministry and family busyness have all felt so urgent over the past three months that I’ve put off the important work of making space for creativity. If I were my own coaching client I’d ask myself some probing questions about this procrastination: Who are you seeking to please? Why deny yourself the pleasure of being creative? Why hide your gifts when you could let your light shine?

It's been a year and a month since I launched this Substack. Thank you to those who have read my work and supported me throughout this time. I know annual paid subscriptions recently renewed for several readers, and I truly appreciate your continued support. The emails and comments I receive back from you after I send out a post encourage me to keep writing, so please keep them coming, too.

The plane has traveled further now, and we’re above Lake Havasu City, on the Colorado River at the border of California and Arizona. I know this because, despite having my phone in airplane mode, the GPS on my phone still provides me with a blue dot on the map and I can match the shape of the lake to the cruder outline of it on the map. Now we’re over the southern side of the Mojave Desert. We’re not far from Joshua Tree National Park – another sabbatical destination – but, again, it’s on the wrong side of the plane.

It's getting hazy, too. Before the plane took off, I read news about wildfires near Los Angeles. Now we're flying through their smoke. The sky above the plane remains blue, but the setting sun is turning the smoke below us a faint pink. In clearer spots I can see desert, then a body of water: the Salton Sea. When we visited Joshua Tree last summer, we drove to Keys View, a high point from which visitors can see the Salton Sea in the distance, but that day’s haze obstructed our view.

Viewing the world from above puts things in a new perspective. I literally saw the forest through the trees as we flew over Colorado today, and that gave me space to reflect on the other ways one can lose track of the big picture amid a haze of distractions. So I’ll offer these questions for you: What’s clouding your vision? Where have you been choosing the urgent over the important? What can you do to get a view from above as you start 2025?

"You're carrying everything up?" said one of the hikers descending the western slope of Mt. Whitney, the shock evident in his voice. He was part of the headlamp parade – a group that had left Crabtree Meadow in the middle of the night, wanting to be on the summit by sunrise. I’d been invited to join them, but had chosen to sleep in until 6:00 a.m. They were hiking the Pacific Crest Trail, meaning that Mt. Whitney was just a fun side trip, a jaunt up a mountain with a daypack before potentially continuing north on the trail that afternoon. It was June of 2024, and I was hiking the High Sierra Trail, a 72-mile trail that runs west to east through Sequoia National Park and would take me up Whitney and down the other side. So, yes, I was carrying everything in my forty-pound pack all the way up to Trail Crest, the junction where I would meet the spur trail to the summit of Whitney.

A little farther up the trail I recognized another descending hiker, the one who had invited me to join the headlamp parade: Andrew. He had set up his camp next to my tent when he arrived at Crabtree Meadow the night before. I use the word “camp” here loosely. His sleeping bag rested on a mat made of Tyvek home wrap. Instead of a tent, a net surrounded him, protecting him from bugs but offering no insulation. He was going ultralight, carrying the bare minimum of gear and clothing. “Gloves. Those look warm,” he said when he noticed mine on my hands, implying he’d skipped packing his own in order to save weight.

We struck up a conversation in which I learned that he’d recently graduated with a degree in geophysics and was spending the summer on the trail. He’d hiked 26 miles that day – the distance of a marathon – carrying all he needed in a pack that weighed a fraction of what mine did. I marveled at the simplicity of his gear and clothing. Aware that I had packed one more meal than I would need on the trail, I offered him a package of dehydrated backpacking food. Just add hot water, wait fifteen minutes, and it’s ready to eat. Andrew kindly refused, explaining that he didn’t even have a stove to heat the water.

Simplicity is one of the virtues that attracted me to backpacking. In his book Backpacking with the Saints, Belden Lane notes that “Backpackers constantly deal with the question of what to take and what to leave behind. . . . The process demands careful choices. Packing for the trip is an exercise in values clarification.” Values clarification. In other words, what really matters to me? Do I think it’s worth the weight to have a mallet with which to hammer in tent pegs? I decided yes. Books? I had to compromise. I settled on bringing a thin journal and a field guide which a church member had loaned to me, then downloaded other reading material as eBooks on my phone. And a camp stove? Yes, I thought it was worth the extra weight to enjoy a hot cup of coffee each morning and a warm meal each night at my campsite.

Andrew, on the other hand, didn’t even have a tent that required pegs, much less a need for a mallet. He had ordered his trail experience for maximum efficiency, not luxury. On the morning that I climbed Mt. Whitney, I wrote in my journal: “I was cold in my sleeping bag in my tent. I don’t know how Andrew did it. But I do admire his simplicity. It’s a non-religious asceticism.”

Asceticism comes from the Greek word askesis, meaning bodily exercise or training. Athletically, the training plan that a marathon runner follows is their ascetic discipline, in the original sense of the word. Spiritually, asceticism is the bodily discipline someone may practice for spiritual purposes: fasting or keeping a strict diet, foregoing sleep in order to pray, or refusing other comforts or luxuries in pursuit of simplicity. In the fourth and fifth centuries of the Church, many Christians fled into wilderness environments like the deserts of Egypt and Palestine to practice these kinds of asceticism. The most famous was St. Antony of Egypt. As the story goes, Antony heard Jesus’ words to the rich man in church one day – “You lack one thing; go, sell what you own, and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me” (Mark 10:21) – and decided to do exactly that. Ridding himself of his possessions, he fled to the desert.

While I was on the High Sierra Trail, I re-read Thomas Merton’s book The Wisdom of the Desert, his collection and translation of some of the more famous sayings of desert monks like Antony. In the introduction, Merton wrote, “These were men who believed that to let oneself drift along, passively accepting the tenets and values of what they knew as society, was purely and simply a disaster. . . . Society - which meant pagan society limited by the horizons and prospects of life ‘in this world’ - was regarded by them as a shipwreck from which each single individual [man] had to swim for his life” (p. 3).

Ultralight through-hikers like Andrew may be our culture’s closest analog to the way the Desert Fathers and Mothers practiced simplicity in the wilderness, though not all are doing it for religious reasons or duration. Some hike the Pacific Crest Trail or Appalachian Trail as a gap year between stages of their education, others in response to a mid-life crisis, others to mark a transition in their relationships or career. Whatever their motivations, their choices about simplicity can teach powerful lessons to those of us who don’t live on the trail for months at a time.

I’m working on this essay a month before Christmas in 2024. Unlike the days before a backpacking trip when I ask myself, “What else can I do without?,” the culture around us encourages us to ask “How can I get more?” My daughters ask to borrow my phone so they can add items to their Amazon wish lists. My email inbox overflows with advance notice of Black Friday sales. In church, the Gospel readings for Advent tell us of John the Baptist, the ascetic desert prophet who said things like, “Whoever has two coats must share with anyone who has none, and whoever has food must do likewise” (Luke 3:11). Meanwhile, emails come to my inbox telling me that it’s time to buy another new coat so that I always have the right gear.

When I reached the spur trail near Trail Crest, I left my heavy pack at the junction and took only my coat, poles, phone and Garmin InReach on the 3.6 mile out-and-back trail to the summit of Mt Whitney. The lightness of not having my pack made me want to run, and I moved quickly for the first mile across the rocky traverse. I felt nimble and free, unencumbered. Spiritually speaking, those who have cultivated the virtue of detachment can move through life this way.

We don’t realize how much we consume until we have to deal with the disposal of our own waste. Our church had a dumpster day two summers ago. Decades of clutter had accumulated in the church, ranging from broken vacuums to unusable furniture. So, a team of volunteers spent a Saturday cleaning house, separating items that could be donated to our local Habitat for Humanity Store from items that could be recycled and from items that had to be thrown away. We filled a large dumpster to the point of overflowing. By the end of the day, I’d heard half a dozen congregants say they needed to do the same thing at home, too.

After summiting Whitney, I descended to Trail Camp, a campground at about 12,000 feet where climbers will often spend the night before or after summiting the peak. In my journal that day I wrote, “Trail Camp looks like the way the desert is portrayed in Orthodox icons of desert saints. Little vegetation. Lots of boulders and rocks . . . The only blemish on the campground is the number of used WAG bags that have been left behind.” WAG is an acronym for “waste alleviating gel.” While backpackers can dig catholes to bury their excrement on other stretches of the High Sierra Trail, the area around Whitney is both too frequently visited and too rocky to allow room for sufficient catholes. Hikers in the Whitney Zone are thus required to capture their waste in WAG bags and then pack them out when they leave.

When I was setting up my tent, though, I noticed that there were used WAG bags dotting the edges of the campground. In my journal I wrote, “I saw a dozen near the trail on the way down, too. Who goes to the trouble of bagging their own waste and then leaves it behind? Disgusting.” As I descended to Whitney Portal the next day, I ran into two forest rangers. We visited for a moment while they checked the validity of my trail permit. When I mentioned the abundance of WAG bags at Trail Camp they told me it had been several months since they had organized a cleanup. I’d imagined I was seeing one week’s or one month’s worth of waste. Instead, it was half a year’s worth of bagged and forgotten excrement. That makes the number of bags I saw seem a little less outrageous. But still, why had they been left behind? Were they forgotten, or deliberately left by people who felt gross packing such a bag into their backpacks? How much of our own garbage do we treat the same way at home, choosing to ignore the amount of waste our consumptive lives generate?

When I reached the trailhead at Whitney Portal, I tossed my WAG bag in the designated dumpster for them, one marked with signs indicating it held hazardous materials. Then I spotted a scale and a sign encouraging climbers to weigh their packs. I hung mine on the hook and saw the scale’s arrow slide to point at 40 pounds – this after I’d eaten all the food I’d packed for a week on the trail. I had imagined that I’d packed light. Now I laughed at myself, recognizing how hard it is to truly practice simplicity.

St. Ignatius of Loyola wrote that “Human beings are created to praise, reverence, and serve God our Lord. . . The other things on the face of the earth are created for human beings, to help them in working toward the end for which they are created. From this it follows that I should use these things to the extent that they help me toward my end and rid myself of them to the extent that they hinder me” (The Spiritual Exercises, Section 23).

These words from Ignatius provide what I think is the most helpful criterion for managing the abundance of possessions that are available to us: Does this item help me praise God? If so, keep it and use it. If not, get rid of it. For a week in the Sierras, the items I had in my pack helped me praise God by letting me encounter God in the beauty of creation. I could have gotten by with less, but each item in my pack had a purpose. Back at home now, I want to keep asking the same questions: What can I do without? What’s really necessary? What creates unnecessary waste? What will help me glorify God?

“In this trembling moment . . . is it still possible to face the gathering darkness and say to the physical Earth, and to all its creatures, including ourselves, fiercely and without embarrassment, I love you, and to embrace fearlessly the burning world?” - Barry Lopez

I read these words from Barry Lopez’s essay “Love in a Time of Terror” six weeks ago as Hurricane Milton was passing over Florida, just days after Hurricane Helene brought unexpected devastation to other parts of the country. Most of what I write about here pertains to the beautiful and awe-inspiring, transcendent side of nature. But I would be negligent if I didn’t bear witness to the terrifying and heartbreaking sides of our relationship with nature, as well. When Barry Lopez referred to “The gathering darkness” in the quote above, he meant all the ways human beings are harming and altering the planet: war, unchecked development, runaway carbon emissions, elimination of species, etc.

Our family encountered some signs of this gathering darkness in our travels over the summer. On the day we visited the Monterey Bay Aquarium, for example, I learned as much about plastic pollution in the ocean as I did about sea creatures. Displays describing the problem were included in nearly every exhibit. The interactive children’s area even had a video game designed to teach about the dangers of plastic waste to sea life. Players controlled fish who swam through the ocean eating what floated around them. Sometimes players got lucky and ate plankton or smaller fish. Sometimes (as in this photo) they ate plastic bottles and straws.

In Alaska, we visited glaciers that had receded dramatically in the past century. The photos below show the Holgate Glacier in Kenai Fjords National Park. I took the larger photo on our boat tour this past July. The two captioned photos are from the National Park’s Visitor Center, displaying how much the Holgate glacier has shrunk over the past century. In the 1909 photo, two arms of the glacier reach down to the water of Aialik Bay’s Holgate Arm. In the 2016 photo, only one arm of the glacier reaches the water, but it’s not visible because of the angle at which the photo was taken. My photo from the boat in July faces the portion that remains in contact with the water.

I’ve seen similar before and after photos of other glaciers we visited this summer: Exit Glacier in Kenai Fjords, Grinnell Glacier in Montana, Blue Glacier in Washington. When I took a group of out-of-state visitors to see Colorado’s Arapaho Glacier in September - the largest glacier in the state - one found it hard to hide her disappointment at how small it was.

None of this is news. But seeing it firsthand forces one to ask the question: How then should we live? The aquarium made it easy, at first, to repent of our habitual use of single-use plastic. The cafeteria served our lunch on reusable plates with real silverware, with no plastic straws in sight. We hadn’t traveled far beyond the aquarium, though, before we caught ourselves purchasing and using plastic again. We read the signs, got the message, and promptly returned to our ordinary ways of living.

At one point in her book Looking Up: A Birder’s Guide to Hope Through Grief, Courtney Ellis describes a road-trip with an environmentally conscious friend who couldn’t stomach the thought of supporting the oil companies whose gas stations provided the only fuel available on the trip. To continue the road trip, idealism had to give way to compromise, and that led to tears. Eventually, grief can motivate action, and all action is an expression of hope, so Ellis offers grace suggesting that all of these responses have their place: “We are invited to a dance from awareness to grief to working for good to trusting God with the rest” (Looking Up pp. 98-99).

I’m trying now to turn from awareness and grief back toward working for good and trusting God. Last week I attended a continuing education event for professional coaches about “Eco-Coaching” - coaching individuals in ways that help them recognize the environmental impacts of their decisions and empowers them to act with hope. I learned about visualization exercises that to lead to help people envision the future of their descendants and change the way the live now to become better ancestors. Later this morning, two other spiritual directors and I will meet to discuss Brian McLaren’s book Life After Doom: Wisdom and Courage for a World Falling Apart. It seems we all need new tools to live and serve in a world where “ecoanxiety” and “climate despair” are increasingly common mental health concerns.

These are small ways that I’m trying to care for others and help them love the world. My calling is not to be a scientist, or politician, or activist. I feel increasingly drawn toward the one-on-one side of ministry, caring for individuals and accompanying them as they discern and grow. Writing provides a different kind of one-on-one connection, available on a larger scale but still personal. So I continue to pray that my writing will inspire deeper reverence creation, and that such reverence will motivate change within us to be better stewards of the earth. These are all small actions, but I offer them in love and trust God to use them for good.

The sun rose as I was about two miles in to my morning run today. I was facing and moving west when I noticed everything around me starting to glow orange and yellow. I turned around to see the clouds lit up as though they were on fire, a reminder that each new day is an opportunity to love a burning world and chose hope in the face of darkness.

“I’m exhausted all the time.” That’s the title of a recent report on the lack of well-being among clergy since the COVID-19 pandemic. Ministry is draining, and it feels even more so in a world where church attendance is declining, congregations struggle to adapt, and conflicts abound. A Religion News Service article interpreting this report listed several suggestions to help pastors avoid burnout: make time for prayer and spiritual practices, prioritize therapy and mental health care, make space for play and fun, and improve communication between pastors and their congregations. I want to offer one significant addition to that wise list: get outside.

From September 24 to 27, 2024, I was privileged to lead a group of new worshiping community leaders on a backpacking trip in the Indian Peaks Wilderness of Colorado. All the individuals on this trip came from stressful ministry contexts, and the time we shared in the beauty of God's creation gave them a respite, a space to take a break and rest deeply in their souls. We began and ended each day with a meditation on a scripture passage related to creation. Then we spent the days hiking, admiring plants and animals, and enjoying fellowship with one another. The simplicity of this rhythm created space for the Holy Spirit to work among and within us, refreshing all of us. 

I was excited to lead this trip because I know from experience that exposure to nature is one way God heals and restores tired ministry leaders. In 2022, I led a private backpacking retreat in the same region for one of my coaching clients. Afterward, he wrote this on social media: “The mountains and all the creatures who lived there were gracious to me. The glory and the power of God were clarified there for me. I learned so much more than I can post on a thread, but I will say it was worth everything it took to get here.” That trip became the prototype on which we modeled this trip with leaders from the 1001 New Worshiping Communities movement.

As reported in the article Beth Waltemath wrote about our trip, many of those on the trip experienced similar renewal:

• “Each day I found myself a bit more in tune with my place in Creation. . . . I saw signs of the vastness of God’s glory and creativity.”

• “I was reminded that people are beautiful and struggling in all kinds of ways. I was reminded that God is bigger than we can imagine. I was reminded that God is also closer than we can imagine.”

• “Showing up to enter the Colorado Rockies with a group of incredibly talented, Spirit-led folks that I had never met was a risk but was the kind of risk that offered a reward found only in the extraordinary healing of connecting with land and others.”

If participating in such a trip appeals to you, here are a couple options:

• Emily Cowser, an apprentice in the 1001 New Worshiping Communities movement whom I have the privilege of coaching, will be leading a restorative wilderness experience for pastors in early 2025, canoeing the lower canyons of the Rio Grande. Check out her information packet to learn more and sign up.

• I plan to lead a similar backpacking trip in the summer of 2025. Comment or send me a message if you’re interested.

If you’re among the ministry leaders who feel exhausted all the time, I want you to know that there’s a way to continue in ministry without burning out. Start by following Jesus’ example and taking the time to get outside with God: “Come away to a deserted place all by yourselves and rest a while” (Mark 6:31). If you could use some support to make that happen, consider coaching or spiritual direction. Whatever form it takes, make space to let God refresh your soul in the beauty of creation.

In The Wisdom of the Desert, Thomas Merton’s translation of selected sayings from the early Christian mystics who lived lives of prayer in the wilderness during the fourth and fifth centuries, he relates this story:

A certain philosopher asked St. Anthony: Father, how can you be so happy when you are deprived of the consolation of books? Anthony replied: My book, O philosopher, is the nature of created things, and any time I want to read the words of God, the book is before me.

Similarly, the thirteenth century Dominican mystic Meister Eckhart wrote, “Every single creature is full of God and is a book about God. Every creature is a word of God. If I spend enough time with the tiniest creature, even a caterpillar, I would never have to prepare a sermon. So full of God is every creature.”

While it’s one thing to think theologically about the immanence of God in creation, St. Anthony and Meister Eckhart invite us to practice contemplation with this belief in mind, to read the book of creation by meditating on the nature of created things, to pray by spending time with the earth’s tiniest creatures, to listen to God speaking through creation.

As one way to enter this kind of contemplation, I’ve written and recorded a guided meditation which I’m publishing here for paid subscribers. Thank you all for supporting this work and for sharing in the contemplative life.

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