In just one month, Eden Spiritual Care will celebrate our seventh birthday! That’s seven years of seeking to follow the passion God has given us for breaking down barriers to Christ-centered spiritual growth opportunities and offering high-quality resources that meet real-life needs.
 
Recently, our board of directors sat down to review what has proven most life-giving for folks who engage with Eden Spiritual Care. We also asked how we can continue meeting these needs while stewarding donor funds and team energy as best as we can.
 
Eden Spiritual Care’s founding happened to take place at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, and while many start-ups found this a tremendously challenging time to get off the ground and gain momentum, our online classes and retreats soared. Our very first classes quickly filled to capacity, with people joining in from across the globe, creating diverse and enriching community. In more recent years, we’ve seen hunger for online community tapering off, while the stresses, grief, opportunities, and questions from life in our world today create a desire for deeper processing and space for discernment. It’s no surprise, then, that we’re seeing steadily increasing engagement with the spiritual direction sessions Eden Spiritual Care offers.
 
So as a team, we have decided to focus intently on spiritual direction in this new year, and conserve resources we’ve typically poured into classes, book groups, and retreats.
 
Our two online “Retreats in Place” will remain available for you to access whenever you’d like, as will our “Prayer in Real Life” podcast-based class. Our social media posts will continue to offer thoughtful reflection questions, quotes, and pieces of beauty. But new classes, book groups, and retreats will be on pause this year.
 
In the coming months, please watch our newsletter and social media pages for new content related to spiritual direction. Maybe you’ve heard of spiritual direction but aren’t quite sure what it is. Maybe you’ve met with a spiritual director before, but still have questions about this practice of processing your life through the lens of faith or spirituality with a trained listener. We hope we can shed some light, and perhaps you’ll decide to book a no-obligations get-to-know-you session with one of our three certified spiritual directors.
 
Here’s to another year of seeking to follow God’s guidance. May Eden Spiritual Care’s response to this nudge to concentrate our resources on spiritual direction serve you well and serve Christ well. 



​Continue the conversation in the comments, below! 

Have you ever gone on a personal retreat? 

Four years ago, some friends sparked my interest when they asked my husband and I if we would be willing to look after their children over a weekend, while they went on a personal retreat. The retreat was not a programmed event through a church or organization. Our friends booked a small cabin in rural Southwest Michigan and highly recommend this retreat center to us.

Following their steps, we decided to give it a try and have gone at least four times. It’s amazing what silence and simplicity do to heal your nervous system! 

This retreat center was true to its name. It wasn't a place where people could also enjoy a family vacation and fun activities. In fact, there’s not much to do there. Nearby is an abbey where visitors can attend mass. Weather permitting, you could go on walks, but otherwise, you stay in your cabin, read, meditate, pray, journal, do some type of art, and talk if you decide to bring someone along. No phone signals or Wi-Fi connection. 

But a recent retreat took on a new twist for me. My spirit was crying out for rest. I decided to go on a solo retreat—something I had never done before. For three days and two nights, it was total silence and stillness. I had to let go of the things I normally relied on for comfort and security—my partner and conversations. Upon my arrival, I sensed that I wasn’t going to be able to think my way through the quiet and stillness of the next few days. And to my surprise, I felt fear of being alone, especially after the days got dark, alone in a cabin in the middle of nowhere and completely cut off.  

But in the last hours before I had to leave to return home on the third day, I realized what a gift this had been—to be alone for three days, particularly alone in the dark. There's a quote from Barbara Brown Taylor that captures this well: “What darkness has taught me is that it is fine to slow down enough in the dark to feel my way instead of thinking my way forward.” My solo retreat in the end can be described as slightly terrifying, but also exciting and full of wonder and rest. 

The next time your spirit is crying out for rest, listen to it. Remember, Jesus frequently withdrew from crowds and from his disciples. Despite his ministry's demands, he found time to retreat in solitary places and restore his spirit.
​

Have you gone on a solo retreat? Does the idea excite you? Terrify you? (Continue the conversation in the comments, below.)

This summer, I am retiring.  Despite 10 years being relatively happy in my workplace, I am thrilled for this change. I am one of those people who usually doesn’t like their job. Pretty much all my life, I bounced around from hated jobs to loathed jobs, but they allowed me to stay home with my son when he was young and travel with my husband on missions. I treasured both opportunities, but I really had nothing to show that was my accomplishment. I was feeling lost and resentful. I had finished my bachelor's degree over 25 years of flirting with learning, but I still didn’t know what I wanted to be when I grew up and I was flailing.

Fortunately, I was invited to take spiritual formation classes and found that I lost my attitude, resentment, and judgement, and found direction, grace, and a long-lost calling. At 59, I went to seminary and found a renewed faith in Jesus. All of which begged the question, “Now what?” I decided if I am to be happy, I needed to take some even bigger risks.

The first was agreeing to live part-time in Mexico with my husband. We agreed on two months here in the US, and two months there. Our first two months in Mexico starts this September, and I took my first Spanish class recently (part of the risk…I don’t speak Spanish). This introvert is daring to venture into new environments and cultures, alone! My husband will be working a good part of the trip.

The second is seeking ordination. I have dreamed of this for many years, yet thought it was too late. Then my pastor encouraged me to pursue it and to stay active with my church in small-group training, mentoring, and preaching when we are in country. I have turned in my application and I am putting the finishing touches on my required paper before the mandatory interview by the ordination committee. My knees knock each time I think of it!

The third is staying busy since my husband is not retiring at all. Eden Spiritual Care has given me the opportunity to pursue Spiritual Direction, teaching classes, and facilitating book clubs, all online, so I can be in two different countries living a dream to serve God vocationally.

I tell you this because it is never too late to take risks and challenge yourself to grow and be joyful. At 65, I am excited and flushed every day thinking of the possibilities. 

Are there dreams you wanted and never pursued? Are you hearing the Lord’s voice whisper to you? Fear not! Dare to dream. To follow. Dare to go!

 
Continue the conversation in the comments, below.

Years ago, as I helped my parents pack up my childhood home for a move to a retirement community, I came across a first edition copy of Anne Morrow Lindbergh’s Gift From the Sea. In this 1956 release, Lindbergh shares her meditations on youth and age; love and marriage; peace and contentment—all written during a brief vacation by the sea. She challenges the trappings of modernity that threaten to overwhelm us, the ways we make life more complicated. And though she later admits the popular, slim volume was not her best work, it remains a timeless classic.
 
Nearly 70 years later I find it resonates. This passage, especially, seems written for our times:
 
“Today a kind of planetal point of view has burst upon mankind. The world is rumbling and erupting in ever-widening circles around us. The tensions, conflicts and sufferings even in the outermost circle touch us all, reverberate in all of us. We cannot avoid these vibrations.

“But just how far can we implement this planetal awareness? We are asked today to feel compassionately for everyone in the world; to digest intellectually all the information spread out in public print; and to implement in action every ethical impulse aroused by our hearts and minds. The interrelatedness of the world links us constantly with more people than our hearts can hold. Or rather—for I believe the heart is infinite—modern communication loads us with more problems than the human frame can carry. It is good, I think for our hearts, our minds, our imaginations to be stretched; but body, nerve, endurance and life-span are not as elastic. My life cannot implement in action the demands of all the people to whom my heart responds.” *

In our digital age, we’re stretched even further, the vibrations shake us. I find comfort in knowing, however, that the “heart is infinite.” I’m reminded of the vision of love George Fox recorded in his journal: “I saw that there was an ocean of darkness and death, but [also] an infinite ocean of light and love, which flowed over the ocean of darkness. And in that also I saw the infinite love of God.”  Perfect love casts out fear (1 John 4:18). The light shines in the darkness and the darkness has not overcome it (John 1:5).

There’s no question we’re in trying times. Daily, I find myself praying for wisdom and discernment to know what is mine to do. I can’t conjure hope on my own, nor can I compel myself to love. So this too becomes my prayer: “Help me to love.”
 
*Anne Morrow Lindbergh, Gift From the Sea, 1956.
 

​Continue the conversation in the comments, below

One of my favorite Christmas stories is A Christmas Carol. A real hot take, I know. I enjoy a good spin on the story, and Spirited (2022, PG-13) is an interesting expansion of Dickens’ tale. **SPOILERS AHEAD** Spirited purports that Dickens’ novel was based on true events, and it wasn’t the only time three spirits visited someone on Christmas Eve night to try to change them into a better person. In fact, there is an entire organization in the afterlife dedicated to this annual event. Their goal each year is to create “one less hateful human” in the world. However, they tend to focus on changing people far less cruel and self-focused than Ebenezer Scrooge, whom they had considered unredeemable.
 
The Ghost of Christmas Present is tired of these easier cases and wants to take on an unredeemable in the coming year. He notes the ripple effects on the world that would occur from changing an unredeemable would be much greater. The team reluctantly goes along with Christmas Present’s plan, and their fears about doing so are borne out: their target, media consultant Clint Briggs, does not play along and actively works against their efforts to change him. But Christmas Present refuses to give up.
 
Clint does eventually do something good, in part due to the work of the three spirits haunting him. However, Christmas Present expresses confusion when the singing that signals that their work has been successful doesn’t start. Clint explains that he isn’t wholly changed. He did one good deed, but he’s going to go back to work the next day and continue doing the horrible things he had been doing (oppositional research to crush the competition, no matter the cost). No one’s whole being is changed overnight, he claims.
 
Clint then does one more good deed, something that goes against his very being. As he sings in the song that occurs after this good deed, signaling that he has changed:

Clint: “I thought when the push came to the shove, I knew just what I'd do. I'd put me before you”

Christmas Present: “But you didn't”

Clint: “I guess I didn't”
 
Is he completely changed at this point? No, but he has started on a path of change that he intends to follow and the movie shows him following it years in the future. Clint demonstrates to himself and the spirits that change is a process, and it doesn’t have to happen in a single night or involve an intense experience. Even small changes can have ripple effects.
 
In this version of A Christmas Carol, the theme is about making small changes in our day-to-day lives, which are sustainable and build up over time, creating ripple effects on who we are, the people we interact with, and the world we live in. Though Road-to-Damascus experiences do happen, change typically involves steady work over time. The Apostle Paul was clearly changed drastically by his encounter with the risen Christ, but he still had work to do to understand his experience and determine how to move forward on his new path. And the people around him had to be convinced of his change, partly through trusted people speaking up for him and partly through witnessing sustained change in his behavior over time.
 
Maybe your Christmas was the transformative day/season you had hoped it would be this year or maybe it wasn’t. Regardless, Jesus’ advent, presence with us, teaching, transformation, and guidance are with us all year long. “And whether it’s Christmas day or a random day in May” (as the song in Spirited goes), you can take steps to be more of the person Christ is calling you to be, to join into God’s work of redemption, reconciliation, salvation, and healing for the whole of Creation. Christ calls us to take up our cross and follow every day. It is difficult, continuous, effortful work. It creates ripples in our lives, in the lives of others, and upon all that God has made.
 
And, just like in Spirited, we do not do it alone. Emmanuel, God with us, is always walking beside us and leading the way ahead of us. We are called to be in community as we work toward making these changes, small or large though they might be at any given time. I’m looking forward to walking with you, waving to you, taking your hand, helping you up, cheering you on, and receiving all of this and more from Jesus and you in the coming year!
 
P.S. I highly recommend listening to the song “Do a Little Good” from Spirited, or at least reading the lyrics (below). It always brings tears to my eyes in terms of its hope and encouragement and even more so as I acknowledge God’s essential presence and action in the process.



Continue the conversation in the comments, below.

I have a tendency to fill my plate to overflowing with anything and everything. Food, tasks, classes, work, hobbies...you name it. I am one of those people who has to stay busy! The problem comes when I realize I have put on too many pounds, the task list is impossible to finish, work has a zillion deadlines looming, and I put away one more craft project for a "next time" that rarely comes. I run around trying to catch up, until eventually I buckle under the load.
 
Usually it is around this time that I realize every plate is full except for the plate I use to dine with Jesus. I also realize that Jesus has been tugging at my heart saying, “I can help with all that, you know.” At some point, I finally see that to stop and be with Jesus is the only antidote to the busyness and floundering I’ve brought upon myself. I don’t know how many times I am going to have to learn this lesson before it sticks! So I reprioritize and my perspective changes. I spend time reading a few verses of the Bible before breakfast. I pray on my way to work. And I set three things for the top of my list to complete. I still don’t always get everything off my plate, but I see things much differently.
 
When I am in charge of what I need to do, feeling overwhelmed is a part of the process. When Jesus is in charge of what I need to accomplish, I see the trees and the forest. I see the details in my work that I enjoy, instead of the tedium and boredom that bring me down. When I take the time to include Jesus, my days go smoother and I enjoy a multitude of things to tackle like a game to win. We are a formidable team!
 
Sometimes I feel Jesus inviting me to even more slowing down. For a while, this looked like me taking retreats twice a year. Just for a day. Usually, I took a drive to the ocean where I could put my feet in the sand and hear the power of the waves. It is easy to find God at the ocean. I miss that now that I don’t live 45 minutes away from the ocean. But I am pledging to get away from this desert heat where I now live, and go to the mountains where I can spend some time alone with God. Time to dine with Jesus, time to talk to him about how much I love him and how I got off track once again. Then a time to renew my heart.


Buckling under the load--can you relate? What helps you? Continue the conversation in the comments, below.

I’m really good at plowing through pain. I tell myself that it’s the only way someone with chronic pain like me can get things done. I want to tackle as much as I can–be it work, chores, exercise, or fun, in community and on my own, because inevitably, the pain will force me to stop. When I’m forced to stop, I keep still and wait until the pain eases. I have to wait it out for days, sometimes weeks. Those days are difficult, often laced with confused emotions, guilt, anxiety, and sadness. So on the flip side of doing too much, I find myself doing very little, while waiting. Through college, graduate school, work, and married life, this pain controls what I can or can’t do, my mood, relationships, confidence, interests, and plans. 

This summer, desperate and discouraged, I enrolled in a 12-week pain rehabilitation education program at Mary Free Bed Hospital, in Grand Rapids, Michigan. There, our cohort was presented with an alternative way of getting things done: pacing. Mind blowing and groundbreaking? Not really. It’s simple, but most of us are terrible at remembering to do it. I believe anyone, not just those of us dealing with illness and pain, would benefit from practicing a “slow and steady” approach to life.

When pacing, activity is timed and we plan rest breaks. Rest does not equate to doing nothing. Rest or downtime activities are intentional restorative activities. Some examples of rest include sorting the mail, making a phone call, hydrating, pausing from looking at the computer to rest our eyes, messaging a friend, and deep breathing exercises to bring our stress level down.

Remembering to rest while we’re still going strong doesn’t happen easily. My brain refuses downtime because I believe I can do more. We like to connect frequent rest breaks to unhelpful narratives of I’m not giving it my all or I'm lazy. Knowing this would be an issue, our instructor told us to set a timer. Our timed activity is determined by taking the average length of time we’re able to tolerate activity free of pain, reduced further by 20%. I’m now pacing my daily exercises and outdoor yard work. Instead of letting pain determine how long and far I can walk or do yard work, I time both activities so they last only 15 minutes. Since pacing, I’ve actually been able to do more in the long run. This in contrast to previously trying to power through in one fell swoop, followed by days of being out. By breaking up my activities and planning periods of rest, I feel more in control, instead of overwhelmed by the unpredictability of pain and pain itself.

Where in your life are you being invited to pace and intentionally plan restorative breaks? How might pacing strengthen your relationship with God and loved ones? What are some examples of ways you like to rest and restore? How have others demonstrated “slow and steady” for you?


Continue the conversation in the comments, below!

There’s a saying in Western Oregon where I live: “If you don’t like the weather, wait five minutes.” This is especially apropos in early spring, when gloom and rain descend one minute, and sunshine prevails the next. Hail. Rain. Sun. Rain. Clouds. Repeat through March and into April. Darkness and light juxtaposed daily.
 
I’m writing on Good Friday, the darkest day imaginable for those first followers of Jesus. They see their friend tortured and put to death, then, in despair and fear, lock themselves into a room together and try to wrap their minds around the events of the previous few days. With their hearts and minds a tangled mess, they huddle to hash out their futures. What’s going to happen now?
 
Just hours earlier, Jesus had hosted a special supper just for them. They shared a meal, and as they sat around the table Jesus promised that he was going to be with them always. He gave them wine to drink and bread to eat—tangible reminders of his presence with them. In them.
 
Towards the end of their time together, Jesus wrapped a cloth around his waist and knelt to wash each disciple’s feet in turn. Peter objected: “Master, I should be the one washing your feet!”
 
“No,” Jesus said. “I do this for you so that you will be ready to do the same for others.” He was showing them how to respond to the Imago Dei—the image of God—in each person they met. Every time they offered hospitality or care for a neighbor, God would be there.
 
By the time you read this we’ll have moved past Good Friday and through Easter. The Light will have overcome the darkness, Life prevailing. Oregon’s spring weather will continue to fluctuate, but temperatures will get milder, the rains softer. I’ll go out to my flower beds and discover that the peonies I planted last year have sprouted and pushed their way up through the mulch. Life has been moving, growing in the darkness, hidden. Even when I couldn’t see God, God was there.

 
Continue the conversation in the comments, below!

​“Aargh!”

“Rejoice!”

A growl and a song emerged from my lips in quick succession as I stood at the changing table with my 1-year-old son on Christmas Eve morning. With the confidence of someone who believes they have a wipe firmly in hand, I had plunged my bare finger into my son’s soft, warm, wet filth.

The disgust and frustration with myself lasted longer than my exclamation, but I quickly switched back to singing “O Come, O Come, Emmanuel.” We sing to our son on the changing table, as this tends to keep him happy and distracts him, in the hope that he would not feel the need to flip onto his stomach or stick his own hands into his mess. It works. Sometimes.

My wife later pointed out the strange juxtaposition she experienced hearing these two distinct shouts from the other room, transitioning smoothly from irritation to exultation. It made me think of the “already” and the “not yet” of Christmas. The “already” being the assurance we have that Jesus entering the world as a baby, the life he led, his death, and his resurrection have changed things utterly. And the “not yet” being the recognition that the fullness of this promise will not be with us this side of eternity.

As we live in the “not yet,” we are called to join with God in the work of bringing more of the “already” into our present. As Jesus left his heavenly throne to live in the messiness of our world, we, too, will need to get our hands dirty (both metaphorically and, as with my hand on Christmas Eve morning, literally). In “The Work of Christmas,” Black theologian, educator, and civil rights leader, Howard Thurman, shows us how:
 
“When the song of the angels is stilled,
When the star in the sky is gone,
When the kings and princes are home,
When the shepherds are back with their flock,
The work of Christmas begins:
To find the lost,
To heal the broken,
To feed the hungry,
To release the prisoner,
To rebuild the nations,
To bring peace among others,
To make music in the heart.”
 
As we engage in this work of Christmas all year long, it will sometimes be more “Aargh!”, as the world is not as it was meant to be. And it will sometimes be more “Rejoice!”, as Christ has made and is making all things new. And it will often lead us to shout both at once, as we live in both the “already” and the “not yet.” May God grant us the grace and ability to hold and live out the “Aargh!” and the “Rejoice!” of Christmas together throughout the year!


​Continue the conversation in the comments, below!

In church recently we sang this song:
 
"In the heart of God,
calm and quiet is my soul,
like a little child,
resting in its mother's arms"
 
In years past when we’ve sung this, I’ve relished the thought of my soul being calm and quiet, tucked up in the heart of God. But this time as I sang it, I held my own baby, and marveled with humble gratitude at his contentedness within my arms. A healthy parent works to be a safe refuge, a dependable comfort, a reassurance. And I get the opportunity to try to be that for my son. On most days, so far, it seems like he finds that calm, that refuge, that comfort, that reassurance in me.
 
As a spiritual director, I’m fascinated by people’s God image. That is, by how a person pictures/imagines/perceives God, and where that image comes from. Do they view God as exacting? Distant? Tender? Forgiving? Humorless? Unpredictable? Comforting? Research shows that our earliest conceptions of God typically link with how we experience our primary caregivers when we’re young. Chances are, the way we perceive God reflexively (which may be different from what we’d actually tell others we believe about God) aligns with how we view or viewed one or more of those caregivers. Of course, this isn’t always the case. But I’ve seen it hold up many times.
 
As I rocked my baby to the beat of the song, I pondered: Could it be that even though he hasn’t been able to understand my words when I’ve told him about God, my son will be able to know—that in fact, he already knows—a little of who God is because of me? I am in awe of that possibility, and pray I may help his soul know love and safety and quiet in God.
 
And at the same time I pray that none of my shortcomings obscure his sense of who God is. That God is always bigger than me to him. That God will be a safe refuge, a dependable comfort, and a reassurance for him when I am not.
 
I believe all of us have an opportunity to show a little of who God is to others, whether or not we are parents. In fact, we can help to expand or counterbalance the limited or flawed perceptions of God others might be carrying since their childhoods. We might do this for our friends, our spouses, our parents, our coworkers, and even the people we cross paths with at the grocery store. How have people done that for you? How might you do that for the people you encounter today?

Continue the conversation in the comments, below!

 
(Song by Stephen Iverson)
(Photo by Anne Fischer Photography)