We get to take everything we bring and carry in our hearts, minds, and even our bodies—including both love and grief— and turn it into compost, remembering that compost is the lovely result of breaking down everything that’s no longer useable to feed and nourish something new.

I’ve been writing for as long as I can remember. Without writing, I’m not sure how I would have processed some of the toughest griefs, most profound joys, sorrows, and transitions throughout my life.

The form of writing I’m referring to is journaling or therapeutic poetry writing. These forms are an integral practice for me to move into stillness. Doing so, I enter a state of active listening, allowing what comes through to come through. Sometimes it doesn’t make sense at the time but allowing myself to write without judging what I’m writing frees the creative spirit to speak through me.

Therapeutic poetry writing is the act of using creative expression to process emotions, reduce stress, and improve mental health. It is a cathartic tool that helps individuals narrate difficult experiences, validate feelings, and increase self-awareness without needing prior artistic experience. Read that last part again. There is no need for prior artistic experience. This is not something that must be learned or earned. It is a tool for releasing what we’re holding and for knowing ourselves more deeply. It’s a means much like yoga that allows my nervous system to experience the gift of stillness.

This is a practice that enables catharsis and release. Writing allows individuals to release pent-up emotions, particularly when dealing with trauma, grief, or chronic pain. We get to take everything we carry in our hearts, minds, and even our bodies—including both love and grief— and turn it into compost, remembering that compost is the lovely result of breaking down everything that’s no longer useable to feed and nourish something new. This is the work of creating new life.

There’s more. Therapeutic writing practices can reduce PTSD, anxiety, and depression symptoms, increase insight by helping transform abstract feelings into concrete imagery making them easier to understand, and improve memory by enhancing cognitive function.

Stillness can be hard to access. Often stillness seems to depend on the state of my mind, the state of my life, the length of my to-do list, the availability of quiet or space to be alone. Since leading a portion of a women’s retreat last weekend, I’ve been considering all the ways we make stillness something that has to be earned, rather than a gift that allows our truest, most essential self to emerge. When I am not combating stillness with all of the reasons I don’t deserve to rest in it, I find myself entering my own spacious internal landscape of peace, quiet listening, engaged and even joyful awareness.

So, this comes as a quiet invitation to retreat by writing today. Begin first by centering yourself. Pause for a moment to be still. Begin to breathe deeply. Center your senses upon the presence of our heart’s wisdom.

Then begin to engage the practice with some warm-ups. See if you can write without judgement or too much thought and spend about 10-30 seconds on each exercise below. Fill in these sentence stems with the first thoughts that come to you:

~Today I am…

~Someday, I will…

~I wonder why…

~I think coffee is…

~5 foods I love are…

~4 sounds I love are…

~3 places I love are…

~2 ways I love to relax are…

~If I could have any 1 pet it would be…

Now, look back over what you wrote. Is anything standing out to you as curious, interesting, shimmering in some way with possibility for more words? Perhaps it’s a sound or a food you love. Perhaps it’s what you’re wondering about. Choose something on which to write more. I once began by answering the stem with the sound of the ocean. Then looking back, I realized the reasons I love this sound are because of the memories and possibilities it evokes. My second round of writing became a love letter to the ocean.

Set a timer for 5-10 minutes and allow yourself to write more in any way that inspires you—as a poem, a prayer, a letter, or additional narrative. See if you can keep yourself moving your pen the whole time, even if that means doodling on a page, in order to keep your brain processing through words and movement.

Once your timer ends, allow yourself to stop wherever you are. Perhaps it will have felt like an eternity, perhaps no time at all. Either way, let it be enough for now. If there’s more, you can return later.

Then consider trying this one. First read this poem by Mark Nepo called “The Appointment.”

What if, on the first sunny day,
on your way to work, a colorful bird
sweeps in front of you down a
street you’ve never heard of.
You might pause and smile,
a sweet beginning to your day.
Or you might step into that street
and realize there are many ways to work.
You might sense the bird knows some-
thing you don’t and wander after.
You might hesitate when the bird
turns down an alley. For now
there is a tension: Is what the
bird knows worth being late?
You might go another block or two,
thinking you can have it both ways.
But soon you arrive at the edge
of all your plans.
The bird circles back for you
and you must decide which
appointment you were
born to keep.    

Another quiet invitation to follow this bird on this retreat day. From this poem, pull the lines: Or you might step into that street and realize there are many ways to work. You might sense the bird knows something you don’t and wander after. Write what comes next. Where is that bird leading you? What is important about it? Is it to the past, the present, or perhaps the toward the future? What does the bird look like? Your surroundings? Are you alone or are there others you see or are being led toward? How do you feel as you consider it all?

Stillness is not a right to be earned once we’ve reached the bottom of some endless to-do list. It is a gift, a command, offered to the depth of our souls so that we may live with greater fullness. Yoga and walking in nature and writing; breaking bread around a table of friends—these are ways we can enter the stillness that is our grace to receive.

If you want more of this (and so much else that is designed to allow you to fall in love with life), join my amazing partner, Jen Rolston, and me in Sagres, Portugal this September. Read all about our venture into retreat business partnership and this upcoming trip, and find your way to sign up, by clicking here: Embrace Delight in Sagres

I am thinking about compost and how beautiful it is. It’s gardening season after all. But there’s more. I shared a writing workshop with a group of women at a retreat this weekend and the image of compost became a thread woven through the time.

There’s more to this, both a story and an explanation. For today, though I am on the road, traveling home without a computer to work from. So, I’ll leave you with this small seed planted, and a post from the past.

I have been an obsessive overthinker my whole life, which is one of the many reasons I write. Where else can all those thoughts go? Certainly, they need a little space to move.

So, I write. And often the act of having a conversation with myself on paper is enough to see the obsessive thoughts in a new light or to exorcise them entirely.

I obsess over all manner of things. Many times, it’s fears about or plans for my children’s future that churn and churn. These days I obsess over my teenagers more than ever.

Their education, mental health, physical health—all concerns that consume me. A moment in my brain sounds a little like this: Ava’s eating sugar and chips again. Why did I ever bring these things into the house? She doesn’t know how to cook. What if she can’t take care of herself when she moves out. What if she can’t ever move out? Michael wants to eat all day. Is it healthy to be THIS hungry? Where will they go to school in the fall? Is there an emotional and mentally sound environment? Why can’t Ava keep her room clean? When did Michael start getting darkened upper lip hair? What else am I missing?!

Having let all the obsessive thoughts out on paper, I take a breath. Literally. Did you just take one with me? That was a lot to hold inside, I note.

The act of creating words on paper infuses a different energy to the thoughts. No longer locked in my brain, I see them shapeshift. Seeing them in my journal, they look a lot like blue waves rolling across the wide, white ocean. Now they roll on, held outside me. They no longer are me. They are something that can be contained elsewhere, looked at, touched, observed. They will shift and change and one day some other string of thoughts will fill the space they occupied.

This self-observation shifts me to a softer presence. As I pause, I place my attention on my heart. I am no longer sitting high in my head, gripped by my thoughts. I notice, though, that my face still holds some of the tension from all the constriction this obsessing creates. I sit and observe this tension, breathe softly, and as I do, I notice my jaw and then my shoulders start to relax. I smile a little.

This act is a kind of meditation for me. The years I’ve spent sitting, observing breath and thoughts, opening my heart to hold the waves, has brought me closer to a space in which I can ride the rise and fall. I can watch the movement of the waves. Not always immediately, but eventually I remember again to reside in the present, to let it be bigger and more real than the obsession. Eventually I remember I am always held in a vast ocean—all my thoughts, all my worry, all the gripping fear. When I remember to ride the waves, I feel the ocean of awareness it’s all part of.

Writing, meditation, prayer are acts that help me wake up and reside in a wider, more loving awareness. This is where connection begins and how joy becomes possible again. Remembering I am held in this vastness, I rest in a more peaceful place with room to observe rather than remain constricted by the gripping sensation that my thoughts produce.

Longtime teacher, Thich Naht Hanh, who died this past week at age 95, spent his life as a peace activist, reminding students of a softer way to live. He wrote, “Peace is present right here and now, in ourselves and in everything we do and see. Every breath we take, every step we take, can be filled with peace, joy, and serenity. The question is whether or not we are in touch with it. We need only to be awake, alive in the present moment.” Whether or not we are in touch with it, peace.

My focus at the moment seems fairly personal, but it’s also a reflection of the wide world. The inner mirrors the outer in so many ways. In the face of so much to fear outwardly, why should writing or mediation matter? Peace in any form conveys more peace. A turn toward the vastness of loving presence does not mean that the obsessing ends or that it solves the problems. But often the path clears long enough that a better way appears forward. A path I don’t have to control yet am guided upon. A path that provides a whole lot more space to breathe.

The Peace of Wild Things, by Wendell Berry

When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

Several nights this past week when I should have been sleeping, I found myself awake. Three AM, and all was not well in my mind. Despair had grown in me and festered in the dark hours. Why is 3 AM the time when anxiety comes to call with its lengthy list of worries and all the ways I must seek to control the world around me?

In this time, Wendell Berry came back to me. Waking in the night, night after night, fearful for my life and the lives of my children, for the children of the world, my aching heart wondered, where is peace? Attaining it with my lists and plans and mental repetitions, I could not. Surely, I hoped, there must be a way to recall it. Out, amongst the wild things, perhaps, where I might reside for a time in grace.

I recalled the way that Malcolm Guite spoke of how a poem could come back, not merely for the sake of memorized words, but to become a kind of prayer, a murmuring of comfort to connect one moment to another. This is how the poem came to me, an antidote to despair written in another turbulent time when the country was torn by division, by fights against Civil Rights and the war in Vietnam. The heart of angst coming to companion me in the night, a balm to remind me in the wee hours that I was not alone, to prod me onward toward rest.

Later, this passage came to me from a book I was encouraged to read:

How might I separate beauty from grief and celebrate a world that is still good? Particularly as I wonder if it even is so. With evil parading itself louder and louder, how might we not remain in despair, fighting one another and our own selves, defying rest and wellbeing? What, if anything, can we do to soothe a tattered nervous system and remember the potential of love?

Make yourself a promise, dear friend, to go out into the world this week once each day and stand where the wild things are. Find a space to breathe in and look up and beyond the world of information that wants to close in upon us. Have you ever seen the shine of a Grackles feathers in the sunlight? Let beauty overwhelm you, if but for a moment. Spend some time with the sunrise or the sunset. Stand under the stars. May all that tethers you to unrest fall powerless to the ground. May beauty have its word.

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Thirty-five years ago, when I was 16, my father died on a warm, sunny, early March morning. He and my mother together Easter shopping for my brothers and me when it happened. It was shocking and completely outside the scope of my personal understanding.

Three days later, on the morning of his viewing, one of my closest friends showed up at my home with a folded magazine page and instructed me to put it in my pocket so that anytime the service became too overwhelming or if I needed to keep myself from crying, I could reach my hand in and think of something else. It was a picture of a nude man she had pulled from a magazine (whose magazine and how she attained it, I did not ask and still do not know).

It was the most absurd thing at the time, and somehow it worked. That night, every time I put my hand in my pocket, I giggled silently, tricked, for a moment, into remembering something other than the grief that felt like it was swallowing me into silence.

What I didn’t know then, but have learned since, is the wisdom of this friend to provide me a way of knowing that death wasn’t the only story in that room. It wasn’t the end of the story either. As it turns out, this is the tricky truth I’ve lived into over and over since. Grief and the promise of living past its initial sting and overwhelm, death and life going on in friendship, the hollowness of sadness too massive for tears and laughter that washes into those hollow places—all of it can get mixed into the same moment, the same heart.

I thought of this story listening to this beautiful conversation between Kate Bowler and Rowan Williams, the 104th Archbishop of Canterbury who is also a theologian, professor, and poet: The Strange Gift of Joy I listened as I spent the day in my garden, tending to the beds, trimming dead branches from roses, and planting new Hellebores, the Lenten Rose that defies winter’s not-quite-finished-with-us temperatures to bring color and beauty to a mostly still bleak landscape. To me, they’re the promise-of-Spring flower.

In the podcast, the two reflect on joy and the ways that it often shows up unexpectedly. Joy is the strange gift that surprises us. It is not something that lives in certainties. You can’t, as Williams says, “manufacture or commodify” joy; you can’t plan for it or schedule it and quite often it “happens to you when you’re not expecting it.” Maybe it would be more predictable if we could plan for joy, or buy just the right thing to experience it, or work our way into a state of perfection to hold onto it, but would it really be better? I don’t think so.

Kate mentions the poet Christian Wiman, who said that “you can’t grab onto joy, just like you can’t surprise yourself.” Try to imagine it—surprising yourself. “Surprise! Here I am!” you say, as you jump out at yourself. It’s not possible. But joy is. Sometimes it comes over me when I’m in a state of peace, like when I’m in my garden and discover my Hellebores have bloomed again even though I had forgotten about them. And sometimes it comes in the paradox of time when grief and death, the very afflictions of humanity, sit heaviest upon my heart. Suddenly, Surprise, here I am! Joy in the absurdity of a nude picture of a male model in a 16-year-old girl’s pocket at her father’s funeral.

You know, I haven’t spoken to that friend in a very long time, but I will likely never forget her gesture. I don’t remember a lot about that day of my father’s viewing. My Italian grandfather and uncles sitting in a circle like a grieving group of Mafia affiliates, me standing in the back of the funeral parlor for most of the night—that’s about it. Except for the moment that my mother asked my brothers and me to go to the casket together with her toward the end of the evening. As the casket was closed and my world seemed to close in on itself, I put my hand in my pocket, and somehow, in some strange absurdity, I was comforted.

Can you imagine it? I can, which is why I knelt in the earth on a cool spring morning this week past and planted more Lenten Roses. It’s why I will wake early tomorrow to watch the sun rise and move my not-so-nimble body on my yoga mat. It’s why today I’ll sing Hallelujah with a group of fellow church congregants. And it’s why, these days, I weep for all things at least as much as I sigh with gladness. Life—and joy—is born again today, and grief is sitting right next to them both.

In this week’s yoga class, we consider the physical and spiritual heart of things: Yoga with Christa

Spring is an ephemeral time. Or seems to be, particularly as temperatures shift. It sneaks up when I’m not paying attention. Here in West Virginia, if I’m not careful, it can seem like we go from winter straight to summer (and some weeks like this one past, we literally did with a 40-degree swing in temperature from one day to the next). I imagine spring comes more slowly than my lack of attention notices, loosening the tight bind of winter, turning days toward increasing light, and brown, seemingly dead branches to small shoots of green.

On a walk this week I found myself contemplating hard things, dead places inside me. Without my phone in hand, it was easier to allow my mind and eyes to wander. As I walked, I found myself by a rock outcropping. In the center of the rocks, in a completely improbable place because there was no visible soil, a flower had pushed its way through. In what appeared hard and impenetrable, something small and beautiful had found a way to make itself known.

Sometimes I can’t make myself see new life in the hard places. And then, a small thing reminds me that I haven’t been paying attention to the whole picture. Which is why, when I read this poem by Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer, I paused for a while and breathed. Then I took myself outdoors to discover what life was doing outside my anxious control.

Today’s Headline, by Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer
 
And then one day, while I read
aloud to my husband the news
and felt the widening hole in my heart,
he raised his hand to quiet me.
I followed his gaze out the window
to see in the yard a small fluffy thing
with black and white eyespots on its head.
A northern pygmy owl beside our door,
stout body slightly smaller than my fist.
It turned its neck a full half circle
to look at me with bright yellow eyes.
In an instant, I shifted from disgust
with the world to awe. Awe for this
fierce bespeckled miracle, this wonder
of feather and beak and claw, this
small being in the grass looking back
at me as if to say, Here is also the news.
How surprising the world can be.
How quickly, when I let it, amazement
overwrites my fear and makes
of the hole in my heart a home.

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I often think back to a piece of art I encountered twenty years ago. The artist was a fellow student during my first yoga teacher training. We were asked to bring to our retreat weekend an object that somehow represented us, a thing that would reveal with more wholeness who we were at that time.

The young artist brought a fabric wall hanging that was layered with dark and light colors. The material was sheer, dyed with blacks, and blues, grays and yellows. The colors shifted between deep, darker and then lighter shades, one moving into the next.

When I saw it, I was struck by its depth of familiarity. It looked like the moment I’d driven through that very morning. As I’d driven in the early pre-dawn, moving slowly uphill toward my destination, the darkness shifted into the gray fog of early morning. Back and forth the colors moved in front of me, dark and light, until cresting the hill I was met by cloud and sunlight and fog all mixed together in brightness and subtler dark.

Malcolm Guite, a poet who is brilliant of word, and who also looks and sounds like I imagine an old mariner from Moby Dick might, speaks of the way poetry allows space for the contradictory to come together, and in doing so, allows us to plunge the depths of emotion and idea, dark and light experiences, within ourselves and the world. Poetry is a great form of prayer, he says, because of this. There is just so much that is at odds with itself that makes for life as it is. Life can’t be held in one dimension or in one hue.

He speaks of the idea of words containing their own magnetic field, one that is activated when it comes in contact with the field of another word:

“I don’t know if you ever did in science in school, that thing with bar magnets and iron filings. You put the iron filings and get the magnet underneath and suddenly some kind of symmetry shows. I think of words as not meaning a single thing, but as having a hidden, complex semantic field—like a magnetic field. What is activated and what kind of power comes out of a word depends on how it’s arranged with other words…And just as magnets in their magnetic field are capable of producing electricity—generators and motors—there’s a power. There’s literally almost a live current running through a line that makes you say, ‘sharp compassion’ or ‘civil butchery.’”

This field, he says, either draws words together naturally or contains them at opposite poles, with a vibration like a hum, pushing them apart, repelling them, with an invisible pulse remaining as an inescapable “quivering” beneath.

The bar magnet image, the colored fabric, the poem as prayer—each with an energetic field that reminds me of the ambiguity of life. Each day, I feel the quivering of poles repelling me and drawing me nearer. Entering the layers, I find myself in prayer. The words often make no sense logically, but a hum under my heart pushes me from dark to fog to light, and into a richer kind of understanding that’s illuminated again.

The complexity comes to me as “bright sadness,” “aching beauty,” “static momentum,” “merciful rage.” This life holds me in wonder for the layers that are ambiguously complex, mysterious, horrific and wonderful in ways that I can’t explain at all.

Overture: Night, by Thomas R. Smith

You and I clamber up the rough path,
drops gathered on lichen and granite.
The wind blows rain in our faces.
A dozen yards below our feet
the escarpment drops away...
I think of those secret lives
forever hidden whose songs we will not hear.
From one end of this valley to the other are nothing
but reasons to live.

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This week I learned of an acronym that’s provided me an interesting practice. WAIT, or why am I talking? It was particularly enlightening after considering the parable of the fig tree last Sunday. After entering a period of forced waiting and realizing how desperately I wanted to fill in the gap of time with phone calls and words. Waiting in silence, frankly, can really suck.

In the work I do with teenagers, the guidance I’ve learned is to offer them opportunities that allow them to experience “safe discomfort.” This happens when, as a leader, I ask them open-ended, thought-provoking questions and don’t answer for them. Safe discomfort happens in that uncomfortable gap in time when an automatic, easy answer isn’t quickly offered just to get us past the silence. It takes time and space to process big questions without going for the quick response. But isn’t that the work of maturing, to move past easy answers to a space in which true wisdom might be discerned?

The space that’s recommended for teenagers to arrive at answers, or sometimes additional questions, on their own? One minute. That’s it. One. Yet, consider the last time you sat after a question for a minute, waiting for a response. If you can recall a time, it might bring up a lot of discomfort.

This awareness is important in our political discourse, too. In these heated and divisive times, people often experience something called “reactance.” This is a psychology term that refers to the inner resistance that can make people oppose something they may not even disagree with or understand fully because they feel talked down to or put on the spot emotionally.

Effective communication that moves toward genuine conversation and change requires that people feel included. This feeling builds trust, which in turn, allows for time for discernment. Again, however, it is necessary to WAIT—to stop the onslaught of dialogue long enough to ask, why am I talking, and to listen.

Why am I talking? And am I better waiting, discerning longer, listening, allowing understanding to expand first?

I’m considering using this acronym as a mantra. Wait. Wait. Let the silence do what the silence can. Because I do not want to find myself wondering, after speaking or acting, why I did.

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There’s a parable story from the Bible that goes something like this:

A landowner has a fig tree that he finds, after 3 years, has produced no fruit. Nada. Not even a too small to eat fig. The frustrated owner, desiring production and a return on this investment, calls out to the gardener demanding that the tree be chopped down. Though the landowner is likely the gardeners “superior” as the one paying the gardener for this work, the gardener pauses rather than immediately honoring the order.

“Give it another year,” the gardener suggests. “I’ll dig it and fertilize it and let’s see what happens.”

The owner, though reluctant, enters the pause with the gardener, and decides to wait.

And what happens from here? This is the question I asked the elementary students today as we reflected on this story. What do you think happens next?

From the parable, we do not know. The elementary students had many ideas. Maybe the tree produces—lots and lots of figs and they have to start a fig stand at the farmer’s market (much like, one of my student’s regaled us, a neighbor friend whose chickens started laying a CRAZY number of eggs). Maybe the fertilizer helps and it starts to produce some figs, just enough for breakfast. Maybe it never produces and gets chopped down anyway. Maybe it never produces, but they see the tree is lovely and provides shade and shelter, so they let it remain, just as it is.

The truth is, waiting for something we hope for, something we desire, something we need, something we’ve worked for, is hard. We could come up with all sorts of scenarios when we’re waiting. All sorts of possibilities of what will happen in the “what’s next” of the time that often feels interminable. But we never really know. Despite our best efforts, our hopes, our desires, our needs, waiting doesn’t hold any more guarantees than not waiting. An incomplete story is just that—incomplete. And, harder yet, it might stay that way.

As I write this, I am waiting for news about a loved one. I heard this message and lesson today and something in me knew it was for me. Now I really know. The lesson wasn’t that there’s a fix in the waiting. The waiting doesn’t necessarily produce the results we want. Maybe it’s not for production anyway. And let’s be honest, we might not wait well at all.

My first thought in my own waiting was to call people I knew. To distract myself somehow. Then I remembered the second part of the lesson. In the waiting, God is here. And so, I entered the pause.

Much like the gardener, I can hear a voice telling me to give myself a moment, give the situation a moment. Rushing past the waiting won’t serve.

Waiting is hard. I truly do know this. Waiting is hard. I know something else—you know this, too. Maybe there’s something you are waiting for as you read this. Maybe you’re preparing to act within the waiting. Wherever and how ever you are friend, may you have the space to remember this—there is something that happens in the space of a pause, the space of a breath, that can make the tight, constriction of waiting grow even a smidge more spacious. May that space be yours in all your waiting and desiring and working for a future none of us can know or control.

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My friend Michael Trotta died this past week. Michael was one of the greatest storytellers I’ve ever known. He was a self-proclaimed mischief maker, the kind of person who lived with a twinkle in his eye, saw magic in the world, and created magic of his own. He had a keen discernment for the ways that we make and are made by story.

Michael had a podcast called “Story Mischief” and, like so many strange and beautiful things, his voice and work are living on past his body. Each of his episodes begins with him saying this:

“Stories are mischievous little buggers that have been shaping our personal and cultural identities for over ten thousand years. On this podcast, we take a careful look at just how that is. Why? Because while some stories have the ability to lift us up, transform and make us feel whole, others have the ability to divide, mislead and keep us playing small - and who’s got time for that non-sense.”

Who’s got time for that nonsense? The stories that divide, mislead, and keep us playing small—these are the stories that seem to be getting the most airtime these days. What about those other stories—the ones that transform us, make us feel whole?

Those are the stories Michael was interested in telling and encouraging others to tell. He inspired me to teach from my own love of story, to tell my story, to experience life as a long, woven story of time. When he invited me in 2022 to be a guest on his podcast, I couldn’t have been more honored.

With Michael, I was able to retell and discuss one of my favorite myths from the Upanishads—the story of the young adolescent Nachiketas going to visit Yama, aka Death. Like all good stories, it’s lived in and with me for years, one that I continue to understand all over again. I’ve recounted it for you in the past. If you want to read those, you could find them here: Embodying Love Part 1 and Embodying Love Part 2. Better yet, listen to my conversation with the spectacular Michael Trotta here: Story Mischief Podcast on Spotify or here: Story Mischief on Listen Notes.

I hadn’t listened to that podcast since it first came out but it was a gift to return to Michael’s voice and wisdom. I was struck by the particular way his humor, insight, and humility could draw a person out of their head and into the heartbeat of a story. I thought of all the “deaths”—of my business, parts of my identity, a beloved friend—that his friendship carried me through and the way he encouraged me to experience the story of each. I thought of the ways that death continues to teach me and the ways that friendship gets written into us like the most beautiful story of all.

As I reflected on this myth and Michael, I realized I’d written about Nachiketa and his visit to Death after another beloved friend, Victoria, died in 2022. This is part of what I wrote then:

If I could, I’d say this aloud to Michael now: “I have seen you and I have loved you.” If I could, I’d read him that final paragraph and summarize it this way: “You may not have gotten everything ordered or perfect, but I know you knew how to meet life as one who knows how to also hold the hand of Death.”

Michael and I talked about the essence of being a human, and I’d say that is what his work was encouraging everyone to get at. His work is a beautiful undercurrent in every retreat, every training, every story I’ve offered since knowing him.

Bless you, Michael Trotta. And bless you, too, dear friend. May you set aside the performative to reconnect to the heart of what it means to be human. May you know death as the most profound teacher your precious life could have.

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Sometimes I question my engagement. I don’t attend protests or write letters to politicians. Lately, though, I’ve been thinking about acts of kindness and of showing up for people as the kind of engagement that is also world changing.

John Wesley, the 18th century Methodist leader, is attributed with saying, ""Do all the good you can, by all the means you can, in all the ways you can, in all the places you can, at all the times you can, to all the people you can, as long as ever you can.” Sometimes there is no other reason than because we should take care of one another for the engagement we pursue.

When I was sick last week, a local woman, who I am certain had many other things on her to-do list, upon learning that I was ill went out of her way to bring me homemade chicken soup. It was packed with ginger and turmeric, warming and filled with bright orange coins of carrots and tender pieces of hand shredded chicken. It brought tears to my eyes and was the exact medicine my body needed. Thank you didn’t feel like enough gratitude at all.

Engagement in this way can feel like I am not doing enough, but as the recipient of such an act, I can say it changed my world in that moment. It’s hard, though, to be this kind of engaged when I’m engaged in ways that draw me away from people. Like social media scrolling ways.

Instead, when I get out into nature, intentionally smile and reflect kindness to everyone I encounter in the world, practice staying grounded, care for myself the best I can and say yes when others offer to care me, I find it’s more possible to stay engaged in ways that I have agency.

With that in mind, I am sharing one more week of a former “Verbal Flow” (my first blog) post from February four years ago. As I read this one, I was filled with waves of love and gratitude to remember this special, but what seemed like at the time, mostly ordinary moment. It doesn’t feel ordinary at all now in retrospect, given that I no longer snowboard, that my daughter has created a life for herself that is more often separate from me and my son can drive himself to go off and do these things entirely on his own. I am overcome by what a miracle it felt like to use my body in this way again, and I vow (though I know as I do, I’ll break it) not to bemoan or take for granted this physical form. Now, as I read this, I am amazed to discover again that it’s the ordinary that often becomes extraordinary.

So, how are you staying engaged? How will you in the week ahead? You never know what acts of love today might mean in the future. Read on, and at the end you’ll find a new yoga practice that emphasizes proprioception and core strengthening.

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Let me respectfully remind you

Life and death are of supreme importance.

Time swiftly passes by and opportunity is lost.

On this night the days of our lives are decreased by one.

Each of us must strive to awaken.

Awaken.

Take heed.

Do not squander your life.

~A traditional Gatha, a meditative verse chanted nightly in Zen temples~

The week behind us offered me two things. The second was a head cold that had me foggy-brained and made it difficult to keep my eyes open. The first was a funeral for the father of one of my oldest friends. In fact, this friend was my first love, and so I carry a world of memories about his father, the whole family, and the way that I once thought they might be a family I’d call my own. Funny how memories return with death. And lovely the way that old love sometimes gets carried within, miraculously adding to the life rings in our heart.

The head cold part of the week kept me from being able to write a new post. The death part of the week made me remember a post I knew I’d written several years ago. Like a nudge I couldn’t ignore, the post just happened to be written on this same weekend—the weekend of Valentine’s Day—four years ago. It felt timeless and was a reminder to me of something I needed to relive.

So much feels untenable in the world. So many reminders of life as I understand it dying off. In this, there are glimpses of love that should not be ignored. For the remainder of February, I want to offer these glimpses here. Should you wish to share your own in the comments, I’d love to know how you’re witnessing these days that essential humanness that shalt not be taken away.

In the meantime, let us bless all the love that helps shape us and makes it so hard to let go. Perhaps we’ll even find ourselves whispering into our loved ones, darling, I am here for you.

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Inspired by and a desire to support the efforts of good in the world, if you make any donation to the reputable and important group, The Immigrant Rapid Response Fund supported by The Woman’s Foundation of Minnesota, and message me with your receipt, I will add you for a yearlong complimentary subscription to Your Sunday Retreat. Click on either underlined title above to learn more and donate. Many thanks to Mary Ann McKibben Dana for her inspiring Substack “The Blue Room” and for her inspiring nudge toward supporting our neighbors in Minneapolis.

Autobiography in Five Short Chapters, by Portia Nelson 

I. 
I walk down the street. 
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk. 
I fall in. I am lost. I am helpless. 
It isn't my fault. 
It takes forever to find a way out. 

II. 
I walk down the same street. 
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk. 
I still don't see it. I fall in again. 
I can't believe I am in the same place. 
It isn't my fault. 
It still takes a long time to get out. 

III. 
I walk down the same street. 
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk. 
I see it there, I still fall in. 
It's habit. It's my fault. I know where I am. 
I get out immediately. 

IV. 
I walk down the same street. 
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk. 
I walk around it. 

V. 
I walk down a different street.

What is the about human nature that keeps us walking down the same street, falling in the same hole, over and again? Maybe not you, but me for sure. I have a couple of holes I revisit. This week it was one I fall into when I start to despair, when I feel desperate to control, when humanity feels unfixable.

My hole is not your hole (I know, because I was in there all alone this week), but I do believe I’m not alone in falling into them. And to be clear, falling into a hole has felt like a decent defense against the harms, hurts, injustice, racism, murder, and utter hatred that is literally screaming its siren in every direction. Louder and louder each day.

I have to walk down another street.

Friends, let us not allow any of this that is betraying humanity allow us to forget our own and others. Let us not add to the betrayal.

I haven’t been able to stop thinking about a piece written by CS Lewis, first published in 1948. I believe we all know what that time in history had revealed. The piece is called “On Living In An Atomic Age.” The bombs he writes of are literal, but I think the truth is we’re living in our own “atomic age.” He writes this:

The atomic force of evil need not dominate my mind. Climbing out of my hole, I realized that my blood pressure was exceedingly high (and I don’t mean metaphorically). It was clear what stress and my way of handling it, pushing through it, have been doing to my body. So, then, what to do?

Today, I’ll take a retreat from the news. It will be there tomorrow. Today, I will take vitamins, drink water, practice yoga with slow and deep breathing. What can I manage? I want to be found listening to music, teaching young people and reminding them they’re beloved, writing poetry, dreaming up my garden, enjoying a glass of wine with friends, laughing with loved ones. I want to be remembered for the way I hug and the way I listen when someone most needs. This is what I can manage in this retreat day. Every single thing here is possible.

What is possible for you, dear friend? Please don’t let every moment be consumed by intensity and anger, by struggling to hold everything up alone. I do believe we feel grief and anger because we know how beautiful life could be, how beautiful life still is, and out of a longing to contribute to making it ever so. Let yourself be found today remembering that.

A little miracle happened this week. After several days of registering high blood pressure readings, I practiced some slow moving, slow breathing, strengthening and grounding, yoga. Similar to last week’s practice with an emphasis on a little longer holds and deep attention to breath. And when I was finished my blood pressure had dropped to a more normal, much healthier reading (picture me with my hands raised in a gesture of hallelujah)! So, I can’t help myself. There are many things that could help the world right now that I cannot do. This is a thing I can do. For another week, all readers regardless of subscription, are receiving the recorded yoga practice. I truly hope it lowers your blood pressure, your stress, your anxiety, helps you climb out of some hole and find a new street. Click on the underlined bold title to practice: Yoga with Christa

I spent the second to last week of January in Pittsburgh, the neighborhood of the perhaps the greatest advocate to being a neighbor, Mr. Fred Rogers. I am dating myself, but I’ve likely already done that in numerous ways. I jokingly say that Mr. Rogers is the only babysitter I remember. His show was a regular program throughout my childhood. In fact, I can recall still watching him when I’d stay home sick during my middle school years.

Pittsburgh was this year’s location for the coursework and conference for the Association of Presbyterian Christian Educators. And, because Fred Rogers was an ordained Presbyterian pastor, there was some “Mr. Rogers Theology” that was inescapable.

What I mean by this, in part, was the incredible gift I received in remembrance of how Fred Rogers led people through his gentle presence, a soft voice, deep connection and embodied human dignity, to love and care for one another. He was leading in a way that seemed so simple but richly encouraged people to strengthen their own internal system, presence, and ability to love, and then extend that love outward to another. To all others. How essential it is, truly, to establish a rooted presence, available to love and listen and stand in the strength of integrity amidst reactivity and the louder voice of fear.

One of our speakers (who has an incredible Substack called The Blue Room), Mary Anne McKibben Dana, spoke of a long-beloved book, A Failure of Nerve, by Edwin Friedman, and his call to strong leadership. I revisited this book in the past week and read Friedman’s call for leadership that begins with the individual work of maturing oneself.

This is leadership that is about presence more than skill or ability. It’s leadership that is strong enough to engage in deep listening, speak truth to power, avoids the herding instinct of the loudest voices, and avoids reactivity through a calm and steady presence. This is leadership that considers the whole environment and takes responsibility for personal harms that have contributed to an unhealthy environment. It is the presence that is willing to avoid a quick-fix mentality and focus instead on enduring change, willing even to navigate discomfort over symptomatic relief. It requires attention to maturing our own system in order to be the be the “strength in a system." How to do this hard work, during days and times when hope, faith, courage, and both physical and mental resources are being seriously tested?

After the conference, I couldn’t leave Mr. Rogers behind in Pittsburgh. I began watching old clips and episodes of his iconic show, found myself singing his songs around the house. One clip that I couldn’t stop thinking of comes from episode #1065 which aired May 9, 1969. I watched the full episode and then rewatched the clip multiple time, found by clicking here. In the clip, it’s a hot day and Mr. Rogers is soaking his bare feet, when Officer Clemmons, a Black man, arrives. Mr. Rogers invites Officer Clemmons to join him and the two enjoy a good soak and the shared resources of water and towel.

In the tiny 3 minute, whimsically delightful clip, Mr. Rogers has brought his strong and steady presence to make a statement about human dignity, about loving one another, and about inviting each other in. Even more, his actions make a statement about what it means to be a “neighbor” and what it means to be the kind of leader who values humans as each and all equally created in a beloved image of God.

It’s all seemingly so simple, but you see, if you’re not familiar with what was happening in the world outside Mr. Rogers’ neighborhood, the news was not good. This was a time when public pools were being called to desegregate and the ongoing reactivity against human rights had made pools the location of riots as well as acts of hateful violence, with many public officials deciding to close or destroy pools rather than integrate. You can read a short summary of this history here.

The voices outside Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood were loud, pulling people into a herd of shared angry mob mentality. Mr. Rogers’ voice was softer, a steady presence. He separated from the herd, risked hatred for his simple act, looked to plant seeds of long-term relationship, all without ever diminishing his human dignity through mutual acts or words of angry hatred toward another.

How can this be possible, I wonder? This past week I rewatched A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood, the movie in which Tom Hanks plays Mr. Rogers. There’s a scene I haven’t been able to stop thinking about in light of this question. In the scene, the character of Joanne Rogers, Fred’s wife, is asked by the reporter writing about Mr. Rogers, what it’s like to be married to a “living saint.” She bristles at this characterization and responds, “You know, I'm not fond of that term. If you think of him as a saint, then his way of being is unattainable. He works at it all the time. It's a practice. He's not a perfect person.”

The real-life Mr. Rogers struggled with difficult interpersonal relationships, a temper spurred by anger and disappointment, depression. But he practiced loving self so he could love neighbor. I imagine this work as the co-regulation to peace and steadiness that makes for a much more responsive, mature internal system of living. The work of this is truly not easy, but it is attainable. And I think necessary. Because I long to live in the kind of neighborhood that loves one another into being, the kind of neighborhood where we recall our creative and resourceful presence, where we rise together into a way of life that is beautiful and life-giving. It happens often in the simplest ways imaginable.

Dear friends, I do believe there are enough of us working to be this kind of presence in the world. I believe I’m not the only person longing for this kind of neighborhood or asking, where do we begin? where do I begin? So, before I leave you for today, I’ll offer some tools for the week ahead. Rest as you need friends. Take good care of your body’s needs. Call a beloved friend. Feed the birds. Eat something delicious and nourishing. And perhaps try these below:

• Watch some Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood (and perhaps let yourself sing along to the all of the songs). Here’s the full episode of that 1969 clip: May 9, 1969 episode #1065

• Cultivate some truly grounded strength out in your body accompanied by deep nervous system decompression in this week’s yoga class with me. Full disclosure, this edition is full of real-life moments! :) Yoga With Christa

• Read this beautiful poem by Naomi Shihab Nye (I read this at the end of the yoga class above if you want to hear it). This is the kind of neighborhood I want to live in and truly believe it’s possible. All is not lost indeed:

  Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when published

  Gate A-4, by Naomi Shihab Nye
  
  Wandering around the Albuquerque Airport Terminal, after learning
  my flight had been delayed four hours, I heard an announcement:
  “If anyone in the vicinity of Gate A-4 understands any Arabic, please
  come to the gate immediately.”
  
  Well—one pauses these days. Gate A-4 was my own gate. I went there.
  
  An older woman in full traditional Palestinian embroidered dress, just
  like my grandma wore, was crumpled to the floor, wailing. “Help,”
  said the flight agent. “Talk to her. What is her problem? We
  told her the flight was going to be late and she did this.”
  
  I stooped to put my arm around the woman and spoke haltingly.
  “Shu-dow-a, Shu-bid-uck Habibti? Stani schway, Min fadlick, Shu-bit-
  se-wee?” The minute she heard any words she knew, however poorly
  used, she stopped crying. She thought the flight had been cancelled
  entirely. She needed to be in El Paso for major medical treatment the
  next day. I said, “No, we’re fine, you’ll get there, just later, who is
  picking you up? Let's call him.”
  
  We called her son, I spoke with him in English. I told him I would
  stay with his mother till we got on the plane and ride next to 
  her. She talked to him. Then we called her other sons just 
  for the fun of it. Then we called my dad and he and she spoke for a while
  in Arabic and found out of course they had ten shared friends. Then I 
  thought just for the heck of it why not call some Palestinian poets I know
  and let them chat with her? This all took up two hours.
  
  She was laughing a lot by then. Telling of her life, patting my knee,
  answering questions. She had pulled a sack of homemademamool
  cookies—little powdered sugar crumbly mounds stuffed with dates and
  nuts—from her bag—and was offering them to all the women at the gate.
  To my amazement, not a single woman declined one. It was like a
  sacrament. The traveler from Argentina, the mom from California, the
  lovely woman from Laredo—we were all covered with the same powdered
  sugar. And smiling. There is no better cookie.
  
  And then the airline broke out free apple juice from huge coolers and two
  little girls from our flight ran around serving it and they
  were covered with powdered sugar, too. And I noticed my new best friend—
  by now we were holding hands—had a potted plant poking out of her bag,
  some medicinal thing, with green furry leaves. Such an old country tradi-
  tion. Always carry a plant. Always stay rooted to somewhere.
  
  And I looked around that gate of late and weary ones and I thought, This
  is the world I want to live in. The shared world. Not a single person in that
  gate—once the crying of confusion stopped—seemed apprehensive about
  any other person. They took the cookies. I wanted to hug all those other women, too.
  
  This can still happen anywhere. Not everything is lost.

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Resistance is NOT a one lane highway, by Dr. Jordan Fields

Resistance is NOT a one lane highway.
Maybe your lane is protesting, 
maybe your lane is organizing, 
maybe your lane is counseling, 
maybe your lane is art activism, 
maybe your lane is surviving the day. 

Do NOT feel guilty for not occupying every lane. 

We need all of them. 

We NEED everyone

I heard a word earlier in the week that I’ve been chewing on since: resistance. It stems from the Latin roots, resistere, meaning “to stand against” or “to withstand.” Those two definitions feel essentially different to me. To stand against something feels like the creation of a fortress of sorts, a strength to keep something from entering in and to openly say in body, words, or action that something is not welcome. In yoga terms, this reminds me of standing in Warrior pose with my feet firmly planted and my gaze steady before me.

To withstand feels like resistance as an act of containing whatever is unwelcome and not allowing it to break me. Here, in yoga terms, I imagine myself embodying a seated posture—grounded, available to yield, but steady in assurance.

Either position, either form of resistance, I sense is only possible with a nuanced nervous system, one in which I am not exhibiting the signs of overwhelm but awake and resourced. I know what those descriptors look like for me—able to communicate, to discern, alert to possibility but without paralysis or reactivity, supported. Most of all, I sense these definitions of resistance as a way in which my heart and spirit are able to withstand the presence of hatred and fear by refusing the entrance of either.

How to withstand and stand against each new day? Some moments it’s easy to find even a small glimmer of light and watch it shine, remember that darkness has not dismantled light. But other moments bring my heart into my throat, and I find myself choking on the painful experience or words.

Today, I drove past a vehicle painted with a combination of promotional and hate-filled messages. Reading the large-lettered words, shocking and provocative, on a vehicle parked across from an elementary school, rocked me. I arrived home to hear our landline portable phone sending out a persistent message: low battery, low battery. Me too, phone, me too.

My stance today is exhausted, so I am searching for a softer breath, more rest, a call to a friend, a date with beloved family who I can trust to laugh with me. Thank God. Laughter is an essential form of heart resistance. Because what I don’t want to miss is the wonder of creation and to celebrate the simplest blessing of my breath. And yes, I truly believe this is the best and most holy form of worship in these days. It’s so easy to miss both when my nervous system is calibrated to the noise around me. So, how to be involved in repair and healing and resist collapse into anger and despair?

Dear friend, you might be thinking of other kinds of resistance. They’re important too. This is the lane I know right now—to consistently practice care with my heart and nervous system that can allow me to offer refuge as a teacher and friend to the heart and nervous system of others. So that maybe together we can resist hatred, fear, and injustice in the lane that is ours.

If refuge in the form of yoga practices, prayer, poetry, and communal friendship is something that would benefit you or someone you know as you stand in your own lane, but budgets won’t allow for the financial commitment, please email me. I would be honored to share every full post to anyone who finds value here.

For this week, I’m including the week’s yoga practice and full post for one and all. What is giving you refuge in these days, friend, or what would you like to? Sometimes community provides us with the best tools, so write your response in the comments. And in the week ahead, may you have what you need to feel both the strength and the softness to enter this world and witness how beautiful it still and ever is.

Yoga this week: Yoga with Christa

The Well of Grief, by David Whyte

Those who will not slip beneath
    the still surface on the well of grief,

turning down through its black water
    to the place we cannot breathe,

will never know the source from which we drink,
    the secret water, cold and clear,

nor find in the darkness glimmering,
    the small round coins,
          thrown by those who wished for something else.

The world is filled with so many words this week. How, then, do I write about retreat and not honestly see the world as it is? I think it’s unlikely I need to recap all the ways the first week of this new year has been heavy and filled with injustice, heartache, fear, death. But isn’t this a retreat from all the noise? Weren’t we just talking about joy and the magic of a story of hope and the revelation of love?

I think it bears consideration to acknowledge today something precious. I’ve read and listened to people speaking about, yelling about, cursing about, and justifying, why a woman should or should not have lost her life this week. I wonder, have we gotten so lost in ideology, in weaponizing not only our words, but worse yet our minds, that we’re failing to put a period at the end of a story where it belongs?

In the course of this week, I read these words of Padraig O’Tuama’s in consideration of power:

“The question about difference [is] not only on the level of ‘who is right’ but also ‘who is wrong.’ Note the pronoun here—it is the who that is right or wrong. And the who is always a person or a group, and if the person or the group is wrong, then all kinds of things can be justified in maintaining such a story…When we say ‘You are a less adequate version of what we are’ we are often willfully ignorant of our own perpetrations…the easiest way to silence those who wish to tell other stories is to shut them up, and not only to shut them up, but to disgrace their name before you shut them up.” *from, In the Shelter

Read that as you will, but it speaks to me of how easy it is to erase someone’s humanity, to erase our own humanity. And what happens when we erase one another’s humanity? I think events of this past week answer that question.

I long to retreat not to exit the world, but to enter it with a more whole-hearted presence, aware of the ways that my mind and words and actions are often weaponized against, rather than holding love for. Last week I shared a blessing poem from Kate Bowler that ended with these words: “Never doubt it. God is writing you into the story of the world’s healing. And your own.”

How is this made so? I am just a small me without much power. Perhaps you are just a small you also without much power. A friend sent me a text this week, “I’m supposed to carry on with my life as usual? These days hard.” In the moment, I didn’t have any words. Words are both powerful and inadequate. Today, though, I would say, no, I don’t think we carry on as usual at all.

The retreat this week isn’t to escape or pretend or imagine another story. But to see the story that is, allow my heart to break so that my spirit never does. And so that I remember why a woman who I never knew is important to me and to the story of this world, I look deeply into the eyes of my daughter and her friends, but also into the eyes of people with whom I share nothing but our mutual humanity.

In the midst of so much heavy, I was also reminded this week of how it feels to be connected to someone through their care and surprised by the gift of love when someone chose to sneakily pay the check for my dinner companions and me. It was a relatively simple thing, but it felt like the giant and much needed reminder I needed of how generous humans can be.

Why does all of this matter so very much? Because life is too precious and beautiful for it not to.

If your world if too full of words, I offer this yoga practice. It is quiet and gentle and leaves room to arrive as you are without any pretense that you’re supposed to know how to proceed into the year ahead. Friends, please take very gentle care of yourself and your loved ones in these days. Click on the bolded title here to practice with me: Yoga with Christa

Dear friends, the year has turned and here we are beginning again. Yet, as we turn, so we return. Nature has returned to winter and now even the earth has made a turn so that light is returning. Turning and returning, this time reminds.

Each year at this time, my mind returns to T.S. Eliot and the poem Burnt Norton. He wrote:

Time present and time past
Are both perhaps present in time future,
And time future contained in time past.
If all time is eternally present
All time is unredeemable.
What might have been is an abstraction
Remaining a perpetual possibility
Only in a world of speculation.
What might have been and what has been
Point to one end, which is always present.

Time past and time future contained in time present. As I begin again, I, too, return. Like each season is held within the winter, each season past and to come is held in me.

Go, go, go, said the bird: human kind
Cannot bear very much reality.
Time past and time future
What might have been and what has been
Point to one end, which is always present.

What might have been and what has been have brought me to where I am right here, which feels like someone both repeating and beginning again. I am open to the possibility of changing and know that it’s unlikely that I’ll change much. I revisit what was this past year, mull the parts that feel like I turned down wrong roads. But I don’t know how I’d really make any of different:

At the still point of the turning world. Neither flesh nor fleshless;
Neither from nor towards; at the still point, there the dance is,
But neither arrest nor movement. And do not call it fixity,
Where past and future are gathered. Neither movement from nor towards,
Neither ascent nor decline.

Standing on my yoga mat early this morning, with tealights flickering in the darkened windowsill, I remembered why this time of year returns me to this poem. This is the time that feels like the still point. The year has not yet put on its new flesh, and yet it holds all the skin of the year past. I’m not quite moving toward something, yet I’m not held fixed either. I am neither going up nor down, simply held in the still point; a time when both the past and future, if I don’t rush too quickly onward, feel held in a present rich with imagining.

This might be the most beautiful time of the year. Today, along with some, I will celebrate Epiphany, a day to follow a star toward the imagination of truth and love. A journey that is intended to bring one to the stillness that holds one steady in creative imagination and wisdom.

Thinking of that, I remembered another story from many years ago. I’m sharing a piece of that story from an old post, reimagined a bit, in honor of this time that is both new and a returning. I imagine this will be for each of you just like this time—for some new and for others, a reminder. Be well and gentle with yourself, friends, and in the coming weeks I’ll share new yoga practices and announcements along with stories, old and new.

I believe, as Mark Twain is rumored to have said, that the truth should never ruin a good story. Whether you or I believe a story to have happened exactly as it’s told, doesn’t matter as much as the story’s ability to grow a richer understanding of the heart of life and the possibility for reflection.

So, imagine with me, long ago, yet somehow not so long ago, a land wracked by war and dissension, split by power hungry rulers bent on doing harm and pushing those on margins farther from view. In this land, a baby is born. Because the parents are unable to afford good healthcare and most people see them as unwelcome strangers in an overcrowded land, the baby is born out of sight in a place that is unusual for a human birth to take place.

But because this is a really good story, the birth doesn’t remain secret. A few people, the wise ones, happen to be paying attention. We might say they’re simply not distracted by the noise of life and are able to see that something important has happened, a miracle possibly. Also, they’re willing to believe the wisdom of their intuition for truth.

They’ve heard rumor there’s a different way than discord, injustice, and fear. They’ve heard there’s a way of love and peace, and a truth bigger than the falseness the rulers would have them believe. And perhaps it’s because there has been so much hate, so much hardship in the world, that the sweet-smelling bundle of a new baby human is exactly the miracle these people need in order to believe it could be possible for love to be reborn in their lives.

These people are an interesting lot—foreigners, strangers in a strange land, their only GPS the light of a star. So, with a star in their eye, they each begin their walk toward something new. And because they travel with the wisdom they trust in, it is as if wisdom itself is walking toward new life.

In this story, wisdom walks not in plain sight or under the glare of sunlight; not during the constant noise of daytime or revealed in plain sight. Wisdom walks in in the quiet of darkness, when only the soft light of the stars shines. Wisdom walks away from riches and rulers, and toward that which is vulnerable, soft, tender and innocent.

I imagine these people—wisdom—walking softly, a bit unsure, eyes wide with anticipation and wonder, hearts beating with excitement and anxiety. What will they find as they walk toward that which has been born anew? They have gifts to offer from the life they’ve lived, yet they sense that the gift they’re moving toward will be worth more than anything they can carry in their hands. When they arrive, they are enveloped in the present and the gift of stillness that hovers within the presence of new possibility. They are returned to themselves.

This is the story I consider in this in-between season. This season hangs like an empty thought bubble above the world. It’s a time in which we are both ending and beginning. Perhaps, some wisdom from the year just past, or years before, begins to move toward the possibility of rebirth.

I am holding the story with tenderness, allowing soft and shimmering starlight to point toward a way of greater love—for the past and for the future. I am imagining, what if the static in my head and in the world doesn’t drown out a better story? What might the world know, what might my heart know then? What new life might we be returned to?

Dear Reader, thank you for being here, together, a community. I like to imagine us as a curious lot, people with imaginative wonder, who know life’s messy intensity and refuse to let the messy be the last word or only story. I like to imagine this community as people who long for connection, who have experienced the pleasure of their breath and body moving together, and who desire wholeness over perfection. Thank you each and all for being here with me through 2025. I am excited to grow with you in the coming year and welcome your thoughts to the table. Be well and see you 2026.

From for who you might become, by Kate Bowler and Jessica Ritchie:

God, I'm haunted by the shadows
of the old me.
The one who's tried every five-step plan,
every guru's solution to what ails me.
But nothing seems to stick.

I'm the same old me
with the same problems
and the same quiet hopes.

Is it my lack of discipline?
Or am I just a lost cause?
What new beginnings are possible?

Blessed are we, the incomplete,
standing at the edge of what could be
in this perpetual season of waiting
and looking and longing
for the fulfillment of hope.

Blessed are we, the restless,
grieving what's over, but isn't done,
what is gone, but isn't finished.

Blessed are we,
in our midnight struggle with past
and future,
while the present has already arrived 
outside our door
like flat-packed furniture
with missing parts.

God, what can we do
with what we have now?
And who we are?
And who might we become?

Blessed are we in the place
where desire and will
are beginning a conversation
about what this day,
this moment is for...

This is the clearing
where the light shines through,
where the new can begin.

Never doubt it.
God is writing you into the story
of the world's healing.
And your own.

At the End of the Year, by John O'Donohue

As this year draws to its end,
We give thanks for the gifts it brought
And how they became inlaid within
Where neither time nor tide can touch them.

The days when the veil lifted
And the soul could see delight;
When a quiver caressed the heart
In the sheer exuberance of being here.

Surprises that came awake
In forgotten corners of old fields
Where expectation seemed to have quenched.

The slow, brooding times
When all was awkward
And the wave in the mind
Pierced every sore with salt.

The darkened days that stopped
The confidence of the dawn.

Days when beloved faces shone brighter
With light from beyond themselves;
And from the granite of some secret sorrow
A stream of buried tears loosened.

We bless this year for all we learned,
For all we loved and lost
And for the quiet way it brought us
Nearer to our invisible destination.

At the end of this year, the best place I know to be is here softly, inside this moment, not distilling the year, but pausing to suspend time before crossing one threshold into the next.

There were many gifts in 2025, of which I could give thanks. For friends, old and new, for family still here. Days when delight shone, when my heart quivered from joy’s caress. Surprises in forgotten fields of time and also “waves in the mind [that] pierced every sore with salt” and called me to attention.

Through the year, there was a ton of love both received and given, sunrises watched from my own front porch and over the ocean, yoga classes and youth group classes offered, church services and pasta casseroles prepared. There were the experiences of a new country and an old state, renewed and also released friendships, deep desires fulfilled and those that left me heavy with longing and the feeling of missed opportunity. There has been the discovery of knowing myself as a person who longs to teach, to learn, and to both experience and create beauty. And discovering I’m still a person who causes harm, doesn’t always hold my tongue and sometimes gossips, likes sugar and Prosecco a little too much.

Considering it all, I can say I am still filled with hope, and perhaps that’s the most and best I can say for myself. This hope—in other humans, in the world, in myself—was tested this year and there were long weeks that it seemed ridiculous to even imagine a reason for doing so—hoping, that is.

Then, the Christmas story circled round again, and I remembered. Why are the old stories of a baby born in a manger told year after year? Why would the old passages of incarnation and embodiment be told? Some might even question if they’re even true. Why do we recall this story, this embodiment, over and again?

This year, sitting on my front porch wrapped in a blanket and watching the sky start to turn from dim near-dawn light to a startling flood of pink and purple, I imagined it—the baby born, embodied love. And I remembered my own two tiny babies. I remembered holding them, gazing at all that was yet to be, and for a moment—just a moment—there was nothing else but the peace of being near something so perfect, so utterly vulnerable, that I loved so completely. All I recall feeling was what could be called hope. On the porch that morning flooded in remembering and believing, I felt that hope again.

Does it matter that their stories haven’t unfolded the way I’d like? Does it matter that my own hasn’t either? Or the story I’d write for the world? Or does it matter more that I keep imaging that the story isn’t over, that as I step into this next threshold of a new year, I am carrying much, but with it all, hope, and maybe even a prayer? Hope, I believe, doesn’t need a story to turn out to be true; it is willing to keep imagining that it eventually will be.

So, why not end with this, from Kate Bowler, a blessing, a prayer, what, perhaps, all this hope can let me hope for in the days ahead, because no day (or year) is ever really finishable:

a blessing for an unfinishable day, by Kate Bowler 

God, it seems that stopping is impossible.

Dishes need to be washed.
Kids need to be fed.
Aging parents need to be cared for.
Deadlines need to be met.
Medicines need to be administered.
Diapers always need to be changed.
(They multiply if I sleep, after all.)

Can you ease the burden of perfection?

Free me from this fantasy
of the better me—my
new exercise regime,
my sumptuous (healthy!) new recipes,
the way the perfect placement
of my living room furniture
would flatter the afternoon light
on my social media feed.

God, make me more than perfect.
Make me more than a job or role,
or what I had planned for my golden years.

Make me something less predictable
than my to-do lists
and daily calendar.

In this culture of more, more, more,
make me less.

Less tidy and afraid,
less polished and buttoned up,
less prideful and judgmental.

Turn down the volume of my expectations,
and let me hear the birds sing
another lovely truth:

I am deeply and wholly loved.
I am beautiful and somehow delightful
even as I am unfinished.

For yoga class this week, I shared a movement-oriented class. This doesn’t mean Sun Salutations or inaccessibly athletic. It’s a class that incorporates movement within postures and a lot of warm up to prepare the body for a good strong standing practice. Hope it aids in circulation and warmth. Click on the bold link here: Yoga with Christa

Today marks the darkest day of the year in the Northern hemisphere. In many ancient traditions this would have been celebrated as the start of the new year. Now, that is not the case, as the calendar has replaced the workings of nature and the sun. Yet, today, I try to imagine it as true, that something new is in this darkness, waiting to be born.

I’ve been saying hello to the darkness, as in the heavy and hard and too much-ness of much of life, all month long. Most mornings, sitting in the quiet before sunrise with only a candle and my Christmas tree lights to see by, I have allowed myself to sit in the ache of it all, and cry. Why so much sadness? This year past has felt layered with grief upon grief, much like that old poem, “In the Bleak Midwinter,” by Christina Rosetti, that recalls snow upon snow, snow upon snow.

The month has passed with gray days that have grown shorter by minutes turning into hours. I have wondered all month about the way that first Advent hope, then peace, and now joy can sing in these dark days, a protest song, not in spite of, but along with. Sneaky hope, sneaky peace, sneaky joy—each one coming in not to replace whatever is, but to visit and be in together.

Thankfully, I’m not alone. The word community is made of such beautiful roots: coming from Latin, it combines com, meaning “together” or “with,” and munis, which is related to “gift,” “duty,” or “service.” The word literally means to “give among each other” and signifies a group bound by togetherness and commonality.

In years past, I held a yoga studio community that was characterized as “a space for community.” For many years, this space held the joy and sorrow, the tension and the letting go of tension, of the many humans who came and went. The Winter Solstice was a special day for this community and me. Each year, even after the studio space was closed, we hosted an event for community to come together, share in the movement of sun salutations, beautiful live music, and food. It was a true light in the darkness.

What happens to that light, to people holding one another together with their gifts and their service, when a particular space or event no longer is? This is the question I’ve pondered these past weeks.

Then, I found a particular togetherness right here in Substack. The writer, podcaster, and theologian, Kate Bowler and her Everything Happens community here on Substack has been holding each other all month long. Kate’s Advent reflections include a question to ponder, and each day, the community has shared their own reflections. The community is made of people who are living with illness, with aging, with the tumult of growing up kids and aging parents; people grieving lost loves or jobs loss or faith. People who are both heartsick and remembering joy, all holding each other’s longing. People who sound and feel a lot like me.

This week, as I read people’s memories of gifts that brought them joy, I felt less alone, discovered myself sharing in their remembered joy. Their memories sparked my own, and suddenly it was as if I was 10 years old, receiving not one but two wished for gifts—a Barbie Dreamhouse and a pottery wheel. I spent that Christmas season alternating between living out Barbie dreams and making misshapen cup-like objects. Then, a spill of remembered and joyful gifts came back.

We can give each other permission to feel all the things we feel during this season of holidays, darkness, new beginnings, and longed for hope, peace, and joy. I love what Kate Bowler writes about the moments of joy we might find ourselves in during these days. She calls them, “small, defiant flashes of gladness that refuse to be swallowed by grief.” They are “joyful, anyway” moments, “not because the circumstances were good, but because joy has a way of sneaking in sideways.”

It almost feels to me like a dare—like joy saying, I dare you to notice and soften a bit. Or like the Grinch (who I genuinely believe was just really feeling the weight of the world) suddenly noting the way his heart had opened to the experience of love.

Tomorrow and in the days to come, a turning will begin. A friend posted this week that her sneaky joy came when she found exactly one beautiful, perfect egg lain by one of her hens. The chickens stop laying through late fall as the sunlight starts to fade. Then, around the winter solstice, as if they know the light is preparing to return, they begin again to give their precious offering. A small, sneaky joy coming in sideways. Nature’s form of defiant hope.

I’ll leave you with this suggestion—could you share in some communal space your own sneaky joy, a gift of companionship to offer into the collective? I will tell you mine. This week, while my family rode coaster after coaster at the theme park Busch Gardens in Williamsburg, VA, I crossed a bridge where “Let There Be Peace on Earth” played and gazed at Christmas lights reflected off the water below. I was mournfully alone and the whole (admittedly sappy) scene choked me up.

Then, I crossed that bridge, and landed in “Italy,” where I discovered the loveliest man offering wine tastings. I was feeling the grief of being alone here, surrounded by so much theme park joy, and this man offered me just the right companionship (along with a little wine and dark chocolate). It was like joy took my hand for a moment and, suddenly, there was a spark of light. I spent the rest of the night smiling just a bit because I could say I’d been to Italy for a wine tasting.

One of my favorite parts of Kate’s writing are the blessings she offers at the end of each post. So here goes, a blessing of my own for you: Blessed are the ones willing to say hello to the darkness, and to remind others they’re not alone in this place. Blessed are the ones who shine a light into the longest nights, holding the hand of another with their particular story or ability to be with or simply because they’ve shown up.

“Writers imagine that they cull stories from the world. I’m beginning to believe…that it’s actually the other way around. Stories cull writers from the world. Stories reveal themselves to us. The public narrative, the private narrative—they colonize us. They commission us. They insist on begin told. Fiction and nonfiction are only different techniques of story telling.” ~Arundhati Roy, “Come September”

Stories cull writers from the world. It’s vanity, Roy says, to believe the opposite is true. Poems are another form of storytelling that happens through a writer. If we imagine this to be true, the story is alive and wants to be told and it’s the writer’s responsibility to heed the call. A story finds a writer, rather than the opposite.

Quite literally, I’ve been a writer for as far back in my life’s history as I can remember. Characters and setting have been added and subtracted from the central line of the stories told through me in poetry and nonfiction, but the plot lines have always been the same.

I dug through a chest of old poetry and journals today and there it was over and again. The story that wanted to be told was of a person longing to understand relationship and loss. The story of connection and the story of healing. The stories of a body.

After 51 years, there are more stories being held in this body of mine than it can hold. I think that’s when it must be written. When a body can no longer hold inside all of the stories that have been revealed to it, then the story has culled into being a writer. Then someone begins to say hello to the past and hello to the present, as much as hello to the future. All at once, a story, a poem told through a story, will greet all three.

This Advent season, I’ve been lighting every candle I’ve filled my home up with. The stories held in my body arise as a kind of darkness that isn’t erased by candlelight, but it does feel like I’m being held by something warm and alive.

What if I wrote it all down? Would it make any more or less sense told on paper? Would it make a difference to anyone to read?

What stories found me that led me to become a yoga teacher, a lover of poetry and word, a teacher who speaks of God to young and youngish aged people while listening to the stories finding each of them? This morning an Advent prompt found me, and I remembered something about embodiment and how that story keeps coming not only for me.

Story becomes flesh in communities of people, in people alone or feeling so. From that prompt this morning, came stories shared of flesh that felt broken and flesh that had healed. Stories were shared of making new life and making peace with what is. As I read, I sensed I was standing on holy ground with writers who had been found by their own particular story. Each one held a thread I could imagine and relate to. Suddenly, my own story was less alone.

Perhaps that’s the point of story. Perhaps that’s why the plot feels so familiar over and again. The characters come and go; the setting has an embodiment of its own. Yet, the stories we each and all live out share an inescapable similarity.

Narrative Theology #1, by Padraig O' Tuama

And I said to him:
Are there answers to all of this?
And he said:
The answer in in a story
and the story is being told.

And I said:
But there is so much pain
And she answered, plainly:
Pain will happen.

Then I said:
Will I ever find meaning?
And they said:
You will find meaning

where you give meaning.

The answer is in a story
and the story isn't finished.

May your own story find the blessing of community this week, dear friend, and may your precious and holy body hold as much story as it can bear. In this season of Advent, if you’d like, share a story or poem that brings you a moment of joy for this week ahead.