The Slow Way: Recent Episodes
Micha Boyett
A sacred space for all the frantic strivers, serial doers and weary achievers. You're invited in for a moment of reflection, an opportunity for prayer, and a chance to practice going slow.
I find that Jesus is always in the business of calling us to his way, a way that will totally ruin our comfort seeking, surface level naval gazing. He demands a bigger, truer pleasure. The kind that wakes up our whole selves — our desires, our bodies, our moral courage, our self-giving love.
This is the final The Slow Way Podcast episode. I have delighted in recording these episodes, in sharing my writing with you in this particular way. I know some of you will be disappointed with my decision to close this part of my work down. Me too! I have loved being here with you and I wish I had endless finances and time and energy. But the internet is a tough place and I'm putting my resources toward my Substack letter and will continue over there to work towards new ways of offering you content.
If you haven't yet listened to the audiobook of Blessed Are The Rest of Us you might enjoy that! I'm giving a copy away every week of September over on Instagram. Or you can get it the good old fashioned way.
Thanks for being here on this 101 episode journey! What a thing we've done.
xoxo,
Micha
- Find the audiobook for Blessed Are The Rest of Us: How Limits and Longing Make Us Whole here.
- Leave a review for Blessed on Amazon here!
- It's availble at 40% off the price of other booksellers at BakerBookHouse. Just use the code SLOWWAY at checkout.
- Learn more about Micha's other podcast The Lucky Few at their website and instagram.
- Find a transcript of this episode here.
- Find Micha's website and sign up for her weekly newsletter here.
- Find Micha on Instagram.
- Find Micha on Threads.
Celebrating all the stories, all the practices, all my attempts to tell the truth.
- Here's a link to Micha's new book Blessed Are The Rest of Us: How Limits and Longing Make Us Whole. Find it at Target, Barnes and Noble, Amazon, and Bookshop.org
- Blessed on Amazon here!
- It's availble at 40% off the price of other booksellers at BakerBookHouse. Just use the code SLOWWAY at checkout.
- Learn more about Micha's other podcast The Lucky Few at their website and instagram.
- Micha will be hosting a weekly virtual book club for paid subscribers this spring, following the release of her new book. If you're interested, become a paid subscriber and support her work! Here's a link to learn more.
- Find a transcript of this episode here.
- Find Micha's website and sign up for her weekly newsletter here.
- Find Micha on Instagram.
- Find Micha on Threads.
It’s true that the world is beautiful. And it’s also true that the beauty and goodness in the world can dissolve in front of us. Life is unpredictable, like the author of Ecclesiastes says, it’s a “chasing after the wind.” * Click here for Robert Siegel's book A Pentecost of Finches. * Here's a link to his poem "Aubade." * I love the Bible Project. Here's their summary of the book of Ecclesiastes. * Find the Lectio Divina scripture passage here. * Here's a link to Micha's new book Blessed Are The Rest of Us: How Limits and Longing Make Us Whole. Find it at Target, Barnes and Noble, Amazon, and Bookshop.org. * Leave a review for Blessed on Amazon here! * It's availble at 40% off the price of other booksellers at BakerBookHouse. Just use the code SLOWWAY at checkout. * Learn more about Micha's other podcast The Lucky Few at their website and instagram. * Micha will be hosting a weekly virtual book club for paid subscribers this spring, following the release of her new book. If you're interested, become a paid subscriber and support her work! Here's a link to learn more. * Find a transcript of this episode here. * Find Micha's website and sign up for her weekly newsletter here. * Find Micha on Instagram. * Find Micha on Threads.
How we make meaning is how we live. And the gift of the spiritual life is that it teaches us to make meaning, to find our story in a bigger story. *
I’m looking for stories from YOU about what The Slow Way means to you. Here’s how to help! Record a video or voice memo of you sharing one or more of the following:
Where do you listen to The Slow Way? How do you use the Slow Practices? How has The Slow Way mattered in your life?
Send your voice memos to michaboyett@gmail.com and you might be included in my 100th episode!
- Find Richard Rohr's book Things Hidden here.
- Here's a link to Micha's new book Blessed Are The Rest of Us: How Limits and Longing Make Us Whole. Find it at Target, Barnes and Noble, Amazon, and Bookshop.org.
- Leave a review for Blessed on Amazon here!
- It's availble at 40% off the price of other booksellers at BakerBookHouse. Just use the code SLOWWAY at checkout.
- Learn more about Micha's other podcast The Lucky Few at their website and instagram.
- Micha will be hosting a weekly virtual book club for paid subscribers this spring, following the release of her new book. If you're interested, become a paid subscriber and support her work! Here's a link to learn more.
- Find a transcript of this episode here.
- Find Micha's website and sign up for her weekly newsletter here.
- Find Micha on Instagram.
- Find Micha on Threads.
I’ve been working out how to offer the young people I love a vibrant faith that insists on their own goodness, their own original spark, and I am still fumbling a bit to give them language for encountering God. I believe that the long-way of conversion is a good way. And that Jesus’s invitation to move toward wholeness is the kind of faith I want for the kids I love.
I’m not sure if there’s an answer to these questions, but I do believe that for all of us who are reconstructing our faith with courage and great hope, we have to do so with the understanding that the ones who come after us will carry the scripts we give them.
- Find Richard Rohr's book Things Hidden here.
- Find Julia Cameron's book The Artist's Way here.
- Here's a link to Micha's new book Blessed Are The Rest of Us: How Limits and Longing Make Us Whole. Find it at Target, Barnes and Noble, Amazon, and Bookshop.org.
- Leave a review for Blessed on Amazon here!
- It's availble at 40% off the price of other booksellers at BakerBookHouse. Just use the code SLOWWAY at checkout.
- Learn more about Micha's other podcast The Lucky Few at their website and instagram.
- Micha will be hosting a weekly virtual book club for paid subscribers this spring, following the release of her new book. If you're interested, become a paid subscriber and support her work! Here's a link to learn more.
- Find a transcript of this episode here.
- Find Micha's website and sign up for her weekly newsletter here.
- Find Micha on Instagram.
- Find Micha on Threads.
When we pray, when we practice holding tight to the vision God has for the world, it makes sense that we might begin to make eye contact as a form of prayer. You are important. You matter. I see you.
What is the life of loving our neighbor if it isn’t the overflow of sacred love? Jonathan spent the day waiting to be seen. And my gift was that I had the longing of Holy Spirit in me, allowing me to see him, to take his hand in mine.
Isnt' this the spiritual life? Presence, generosity of spirit, choosing to see ourselves as deeply loved by our Creator, and every other human we encounter as just as worthy of that love?
- Here's a link to Micha's new book Blessed Are The Rest of Us: How Limits and Longing Make Us Whole. Find it at Target, Barnes and Noble, Amazon, and Bookshop.org.
- Leave a review for Blessed on Amazon here!
- It's availble at 40% off the price of other booksellers at BakerBookHouse. Just use the code SLOWWAY at checkout.
- Learn more about Micha's other podcast The Lucky Few at their website and instagram.
- Micha will be hosting a weekly virtual book club for paid subscribers this spring, following the release of her new book. If you're interested, become a paid subscriber and support her work! Here's a link to learn more.
- Find a transcript of this episode here.
- Find Micha's website and sign up for her weekly newsletter here.
- Find Micha on Instagram.
- Find Micha on Threads.
The work of God is not just slow, it’s remarkable. It’s intricate. It’s miraculous, precisely because it takes so much time. As I wrote last week, we are unlearning the ways of an anxious culture. When I first began this process of unlearning, I hoped it wouldn’t ache to release the anxious ways I had followed all of my life. But it did ache, and it still does. Slowing our work and bodies, and attempting to realign ourselves with the rhythm of the natural world involves real risk. It can hurt. We need mentors for such a task.
- Find Lore Ferguson Wilbert's new book The Understory here.
- Here's a link to Micha's new book Blessed Are The Rest of Us: How Limits and Longing Make Us Whole. Find it at Target, Barnes and Noble, Amazon, and Bookshop.org.
- Leave a review for Blessed on Amazon here!
- It's availble at 40% off the price of other booksellers at BakerBookHouse. Just use the code SLOWWAY at checkout.
- Learn more about Micha's other podcast The Lucky Few at their website and instagram.
- Micha will be hosting a weekly virtual book club for paid subscribers this spring, following the release of her new book. If you're interested, become a paid subscriber and support her work! Here's a link to learn more.
- Find a transcript of this episode here.
- Find Micha's website and sign up for her weekly newsletter here.
- Find Micha on Instagram.
- Find Micha on Threads.
Those unlearning the ways of an anxious culture are leaning into queerness as a metaphor for approaching the sacred: We are leaning into “possibilities beyond”...We’re learning a new path. * Find Jonathan Merritt's children's book My Guncle and Me here. * Find Queering Contemplation by Cassidy Hall here. * Find the Contemplating Now podcast episode I quoted from with Therese Taylor-Stinson here. * The prayer we pray in A Slow Practice can be found in The Asian Journal of Thomas Merton. * Here's a link to Micha's new book Blessed Are The Rest of Us: How Limits and Longing Make Us Whole. Find it at Target, Barnes and Noble, Amazon, and Bookshop.org. * Leave a review for Blessed on Amazon here! * It's availble at 40% off the price of other booksellers at BakerBookHouse. Just use the code SLOWWAY at checkout. * Learn more about Micha's other podcast The Lucky Few at their website and instagram. * Micha will be hosting a weekly virtual book club for paid subscribers this spring, following the release of her new book. If you're interested, become a paid subscriber and support her work! Here's a link to learn more. * Find a transcript of this episode here. * Find Micha's website and sign up for her weekly newsletter here. * Find Micha on Instagram. * Find Micha on Threads.
This past week I made it home for good after a wild month of traveling and speaking about my book, just in time to sit down with my toughest reader, my life companion, and my favorite guy around, Chris Hohorst, on his experience of Blessed Are The Rest of Us. We've never done this sort of thing before, and it was a delight.
A few more links!
- Find out more about Suzanne Stabile here.
- Here's a link to Micha's new book Blessed Are The Rest of Us: How Limits and Longing Make Us Whole. Find it at Target, Barnes and Noble, Amazon, and Bookshop.org.
- It's availble at 40% off the price of other booksellers at BakerBookHouse. Just use the code SLOWWAY at checkout.
- Learn more about Micha's other podcast The Lucky Few at their website and instagram.
- Micha will be hosting a weekly virtual book club for paid subscribers this spring, following the release of her new book. If you're interested, become a paid subscriber and support her work! Here's a link to learn more.
- Find a transcript of this episode here.
- Find Micha's website and sign up for her weekly newsletter here.
- Find Micha on Instagram.
- Find Micha on Threads.
Last Wednesday night, I had the opportunity to gather with friends, family, and readers in the beautiful General Theological Seminary Chapel of the Good Shepherd, to talk about my new book, Blessed Are the Rest of Us. I was honored to have my friend, the beloved author Shauna Niequist, with me to chat about the process of writing the book, some of the books major themes, and even what I hope the youth group I help lead (who were also present in the room!) can take from this book.
So excited to share with you: The Blessed Are The Rest of Us Book Launch conversation, with special guest, Shauna Niequist!
Just a note, towards the end we took questions from the audience: You won't be able to hear the Q+A questions from the audience. As best as I remember these are the questions that were asked:
- Who are "the rest of us"?
- How long did it take you to write this book?
- What does it look like for a church to be fully inclusive? How can we love and welcome Ace and other people with disabilities into our congregation?
A few more links!
- Find out more about Shauna Niequist's books and other work here.
- Here's a link to Micha's new book Blessed Are The Rest of Us: How Limits and Longing Make Us Whole. Find it at Target, Barnes and Noble, Amazon, and Bookshop.org.
- It's availble at 40% off the price of other booksellers at BakerBookHouse. Just use the code SLOWWAY at checkout.
- Learn more about Micha's other podcast The Lucky Few at their website and instagram.
- Micha will be hosting a weekly virtual book club for paid subscribers this spring, following the release of her new book. If you're interested, become a paid subscriber and support her work! Here's a link to learn more.
- Find a transcript of this episode here.
- Find Micha's website and sign up for her weekly newsletter here.
- Find Micha on Instagram.
- Find Micha on Threads.
Today my newest book Blessed Are The Rest of Us comes into the world! Today’s episode is going to be a little different. I’m sharing a bit about how I came to write this book and what the big ideas are underneath the story I tell of loving and raising my son, Ace.
How did I come to realize that this wasn't just a story about my son, but a story about all of us in Jesus's poem in Matthew 5? How did I begin to recognize that the invitation to explore Ace's vulnerability was actually an invitation to explore and receive my own?
I hope you'll tune into my thoughts about Blessed Are The Rest of Us, and you'll go purchase it today, wherever books are sold!
- Micha's new book Blessed Are The Rest of Us: How Limits and Longing Make Us Whole releases one week from today!!! Find it at Target, Barnes and Noble, Amazon, and Bookshop.org.
- It's availble at 40% off the price of other booksellers at BakerBookHouse. Just use the code SLOWWAY at checkout!
- Learn more about Micha's other podcast The Lucky Few at their website and instagram.
- Micha will be hosting a weekly virtual book club for paid subscribers this spring, following the release of her new book. If you're interested, become a paid subscriber and support her work! Here's a link to learn more.
- Find a transcript of this episode here.
- Find Micha's website and sign up for her weekly newsletter here.
- Find Micha on Instagram.
- Find Micha on Threads.
As Jeff Chu says, “A robust theology of the compost reminds us that death and the things of death, our sin, our suffering, the ways we hurt each other, the ways we harm ourselves— These things are never the end of God's story.” What a thing: to choose to believe that God can redeem our slow-transforming lives, to believe that the Divine slammed God’s own heart back into a dead body, waking it up, announcing that death and suffering is never the truest narrative.
- This reflection and practice were also published this week in The Slow Way Letter on Substack.
- Find Jeff Chu's beautiful Evolving Faith talk on the Theology of the Compost here.
- Learn more about Micha's other podcast The Lucky Few at their website and instagram.
- Micha will be hosting a weekly virtual book club for paid subscribers this spring, following the release of her new book. If you're interested, become a paid subscriber and support her work! Here's a link to learn more.
- Find a transcript of this episode here.
- Find Micha's website and sign up for her weekly newsletter here.
- Find Micha on Instagram.
- Find Micha on Threads.
Micha's new book Blessed Are The Rest of Us: How Limits and Longing Make Us Whole releases one week from today!!! You can preorder it and find it waiting in your mailbox on April 9 if you order soon! Get it for one more week at 40% off at BakerBookHouse.com. The first 200 people to preorder from Baker will also receive a signed copy of the book and "The Lucky Few" temporary tattoo. So fun! Jump over there and get your preorder in.
In a moment when his life was fading, when his suffering was at its height, I believe Jesus was responding to our suffering with his own suffering. Acknowledging our grief with his own.
Today I'm sharing an orginal poem by me, along with a practice of sacred listening to a bit of the Good Friday story.
- This reflection and practice were also published this week in The Slow Way Letter on Substack.
- Learn more about Micha's other podcast The Lucky Few at their website and instagram.
- Micha will be hosting a weekly virtual book club for paid subscribers this spring, following the release of her new book. If you're interested, become a paid subscriber and support her work! Here's a link to learn more.
- Find a transcript of this episode here.
- Find Micha's website and sign up for her weekly newsletter here.
- Find Micha on Instagram.
- Find Micha on Threads.
Preorder Micha's new book Blessed Are The Rest of Us: How Limits and Longing Make Us Whole for 40% off at BakerBookHouse.com. The first 200 people to preorder from Baker will also receive a signed copy of the book and "The Lucky Few" temporary tattoo. So fun! Jump over there and get your preorder in.
This Holy Week, we will be reminded that Jesus's answer to the reality of human pain and suffering was to suffer. It ws to gather all of us up and live out the dream of God.
- Find Life Worth Living: A Guide to What Matters Most here.
- Learn more about Micha's other podcast The Lucky Few at their website and instagram.
- Micha will be hosting a weekly virtual book club for paid subscribers this spring, following the release of her new book. If you're interested, become a paid subscriber and support her work! Here's a link to learn more.
- This reflection and practice were also published this week in The Slow Way Letter on Substack.
- Find a transcript of this episode here.
- Find Micha's website and sign up for her weekly newsletter here.
- Find Micha on Instagram.
- Find Micha on Threads.
Preorder Micha's new book Blessed Are The Rest of Us: How Limits and Longing Make Us Whole for 40% off at BakerBookHouse.com. The first 200 people to preorder from Baker will also receive a signed copy of the book and "The Lucky Few" temporary tattoo. So fun! Jump over there and get your preorder in.
This week, I want to remind us that the movement toward wholeness doesn’t have to be that complicated. Sometimes it’s simply allowing ourselves to recognize that we’re loved.
- Find Savannah Guthrie's book Mostly What God Does here.
- Here's a link to A Celtic Primer: The Complete Celtic Worship Resource and Collection.
- Learn more about Micha's other podcast The Lucky Few at their website and instagram.
- Micha will be hosting a weekly virtual book club for paid subscribers this spring, following the release of her new book. If you're interested, become a paid subscriber and support her work! Here's a link to learn more.
- This reflection and practice were also published this week in The Slow Way Letter on Substack.
- Find a transcript of this episode here.
- Find Micha's website and sign up for her weekly newsletter here.
- Find Micha on Instagram.
- Find Micha on Threads.
Preorder Micha's new book Blessed Are The Rest of Us: How Limits and Longing Make Us Whole for 40% off at BakerBookHouse.com. The first 200 people to preorder from Baker will also receive a signed copy of the book and "The Lucky Few" temporary tattoo. So fun! Jump over there and get your preorder in.
When we see the world as it really is we get to live in such a way that our vulnerabilities are exposed. Vulnerability is the way we give and receive love. Vulnerability is also the way toward pain. This is not anything new in the world. It’s simply love—sharing our lives, being honest about our pain, and allowing ourselves to be decentered and recentered. We don’t do it so we can be an example. But when we do it with authentic generosity, we can sometimes be an invitation for others.
- Find Michael Rudzena's recent sermons here, here, and here.
- Learn more about Micha's other podcast The Lucky Few at their website and instagram.
- Micha will be hosting a weekly virtual book club for paid subscribers this spring, following the release of her new book. If you're interested, become a paid subscriber and support her work! Here's a link to learn more.
- This reflection and practice were also published this week in The Slow Way Letter on Substack.
- Find a transcript of this episode here.
- Find Micha's website and sign up for her weekly newsletter here.
- Find Micha on Instagram.
- Find Micha on Threads.
Preorder Micha's new book Blessed Are The Rest of Us: How Limits and Longing Make Us Whole for 40% off at BakerBookHouse.com. The first 200 people to preorder from Baker will also receive a signed copy of the book and "The Lucky Few" temporary tattoo. So fun! Jump over there and get your preorder in.
We always have an invitation to learn from the wise ones among us, and the turtles and tortoises of the world may not be sexy, but they carry a knowing that just might settle our souls. When we’re tempted to speed up simply because everything around us says to hurry, let’s remind ourselves that this Lent we’re living in Turtle Time. Slowing ourselves so that we can explore the questions that matter, pursue the life that truly satisfies, use our resources with wisdom and love for the people, land, and creatures among us.
- Find Sy Montgomery's book On Time and Turtles: Mending the World, Shell By Shattered Shell here.
- Find Brian Doyles essay "Joyas Vladoras” in his collection One Long River of Song
- Here is Walter Bruggemann's book A Way Other Than Our Own.
- Micha will be hosting a weekly virtual book club for paid subscribers this spring, following the release of her new book. If you're interested, become a paid subscriber and support her work! Here's a link to learn more.
- This reflection and practice were also published this week in The Slow Way Letter on Substack.
- Find a transcript of this episode here.
- Find Micha's website and sign up for her weekly newsletter here.
- Find Micha on Instagram.
- Find Micha on Threads.
- Micha's other (award winning!) podcast, The Lucky Few, is all about Down syndrome advocacy. She cohosts it with Heather Avis and Mercedes Lara.
Preorder Micha's new book Blessed Are The Rest of Us: How Limits and Longing Make Us Whole for 40% off at BakerBookHouse.com. The first 200 people to preorder from Baker will also receive a signed copy of the book and "The Lucky Few" temporary tattoo. So fun! Jump over there and get your preorder in.
Repentance is the acknowledgment of our missteps, and the adjustment of our stance so we are in line with Divine Love. And this, according to Sarah Bessey, requires vulnerability and grief.
Can we get serious this week? Serious enough to acknowledge to ourselves, to God, and to one another how we have missed the path of Love? May we carry the weight of God’s transformative kindness, believing Sarah’s words: “There is no place you can go where you will outrun God’s love and longing for your wholeness.”
- Find Sarah Bessey's new book Field Notes for the Wilderness here.
- Micha is offering a zoom workshop for her Substack paid subscribers this February 24. Today is the last day to sing up, Here's a link to learn more about it!
- Micha will be hosting a weekly virtual book club for paid subscribers this spring, following the release of her new book. If you're interested, become a paid subscriber and support her work! Here's a link to learn more.
- This reflection and practice were also published this week in The Slow Way Letter on Substack.
- Find a transcript of this episode here.
- Find Micha's website and sign up for her weekly newsletter here.
- Find Micha on Instagram.
- Find Micha on Threads.
- Micha's other (award winning!) podcast, The Lucky Few, is all about Down syndrome advocacy. She cohosts it with Heather Avis and Mercedes Lara.
Preorder Micha's new book Blessed Are The Rest of Us: How Limits and Longing Make Us Whole for 40% off at BakerBookHouse.com. The first 200 people to preorder from Baker will also receive a signed copy of the book and "The Lucky Few" temporary tattoo. So fun! Jump over there and get your preorder in.
What makes Lent powerful is its insistence on not celebrating, on demanding a season of restraint. What makes Lent powerful is that it invites us to make a choice toward honesty with God and ourselves, a choice to get solemn about what we discover in our core, and live that restraint on the outside. It's a forty day invitation to move from the edges of our lives to the deep, heavy center of us.
- Read Jesus's words in Matthew 23
- Sarah Bessey's new book Field Notes for the Wilderness releases today!
- Brian McLaren's book is Faith After Doubt
- Micha is offering a zoom workshop for her Substack paid subscribers this February 24. Today is the last day to sing up, Here's a link to learn more about it!
- If you're interested in participating in the workshop and/or future online interactive conversations with me, become a paid subscriber and support my work! Here's a link to learn more.
- This reflection and practice were also published this week in The Slow Way Letter on Substack.
- Find a transcript of this episode here.
- Find Micha's website and sign up for her weekly newsletter here.
- Find Micha on Instagram.
- Find Micha on Threads.
- Micha's other (award winning!) podcast, The Lucky Few, is all about Down syndrome advocacy. She cohosts it with Heather Avis and Mercedes Lara.
Preorder Micha's new book Blessed Are The Rest of Us: How Limits and Longing Make Us Whole for 40% off at BakerBookHouse.com. The first 200 people to preorder from Baker will also receive a signed copy of the book and "The Lucky Few" temporary tattoo. So fun! Jump over there and get your preorder in.
Ash Wednesday sounds morbid to some, but it exists to tell us the truth, to ask us to come close to the reality of this life: we are always transforming, growing toward wisdom. And it will end. But I love that in the Christian tradition death is understood as a both/and. It is a result of brokenness in the world and it is also a threshold, a transition to fullness of life. As the Apostle Paul wrote, death is still with us, but through Jesus it has lost its sting.
- Read Life Worth Living: A Guide to What Matters Most
- Here's the “further up and further in” qote from CS Lewis.
- " a voice behind us whispering" comes from Isaiah 30:21
- Micha is offering a zoom workshop for her Substack paid subscribers this February 24. Here's a link to learn more about it! If you're interested in participating in the workshop and future online interactive conversations with me, become a paid subscriber and support my work! Here's a link to learn more.
- This reflection and practice were also published this week in The Slow Way Letter on Substack.
- Find a transcript of this episode here.
- Find Micha's website and sign up for her weekly newsletter here.
- Find Micha on Instagram.
- Find Micha on Threads.
- Micha's other (award winning!) podcast, The Lucky Few, is all about Down syndrome advocacy. She cohosts it with Heather Avis and Mercedes Lara.
Preorder Micha's new book Blessed Are The Rest of Us: How Limits and Longing Make Us Whole for 40% off at BakerBookHouse.com. The first 200 people to preorder from Baker will also receive a signed copy of the book and a fun little gift. Jump over there and get your preorder in.
Surrender is sometimes the work of naming my weaknesses and allowing them to drag me to the love of God, where I am fully known, and fully myself, with or without my abilities, usefulness, or performance.. * Find “Lake Coatepeque” on The Brilliance’s newest album Feel It. * Read For the Life of the World by Alexander Shmemann * Find Psalm 104 here * Micha is offering a zoom workshop for her Substack paid subscribers this February 24. Here's a link to learn more about it! If you're interested in participating in the workshop and future online interactive conversations with me, become a paid subscriber and support my work! Here's a link to learn more. * This reflection and practice were also published this week in The Slow Way Letter on Substack. * Find a transcript of this episode here. * Find Micha's website and sign up for her weekly newsletter here. * Find Micha on Instagram. * Find Micha on Threads. * Micha's other (award winning!) podcast, The Lucky Few, is all about Down syndrome advocacy. She cohosts it with Heather Avis and Mercedes Lara.
Preorder Micha's new book Blessed Are The Rest of Us: How Limits and Longing Make Us Whole for 40% off at BakerBookHouse.com. The first 200 people to preorder from Baker will also receive a signed copy of the book and a fun little gift. Jump over there and get your preorder in.
Prayer is an act of intention where I don’t deny the micro and macro ache of this life. The hurts that arrive in our lives or the lives of those we love, and the Greater Pain that lives in our societies and systems. And still we choose the thorny, winding path of hope. We choose it with eyes wide open, so we may see when we bump into God.
- Find Everything Belongs by Richard Rohr.
- Read Hunting Magic Eels: Recovering an Enchanted Faith in a Skeptical Age by Richard Beck.
- Read Marilynne Robinson's novel Gilead.
- Read “The Sacrament of the Present Moment by Jean-Pierre de Caussade.
- If you're interested in more on Epiphany a link to Good Shepherd New York's Epiphany Guide.
- Learn more about mini breaks here and here.
- Micha is offering a zoom workshop for her Substack paid subscribers this February 24. Here's a link to learn more about it! If you're interested in participating in the workshop and future online interactive conversations with me, become a paid subscriber and support my work! Here's a link to learn more.
- This reflection and practice were also published this week in The Slow Way Letter on Substack.
- Find a transcript of this episode here.
- Find Micha's website and sign up for her weekly newsletter here.
- Find Micha on Instagram.
- Find Micha on Threads.
- Micha's other (award winning!) podcast, The Lucky Few, is all about Down syndrome advocacy. She cohosts it with Heather Avis and Mercedes Lara.
Preorder Micha's new book Blessed Are The Rest of Us: How Limits and Longing Make Us Whole for 40% off at BakerBookHouse.com. The first 200 people to preorder from Baker will also receive a signed copy of the book and a fun little gift. Jump over there and get your preorder in.
Glory somehow shows up when we suffer, not because suffering is a payment, but because it’s a truth-teller, a revealer. We need winter—for all its ache and ice and clarity—where Love has more space in all the sparseness to reach us.
- Find Everything Belongs by Richard Rohr
- Read Psalm 27 here.
- If you're interested in more on Epiphany a link to Good Shepherd New York's Epiphany Guide.
- Micha is offering a zoom workshop for her Substack paid subscribers this Febrary 24. Here's a link to learn more about it! If you're interested in participating in the workshop and future online interactive conversations with me, become a paid subscriber and support my work! Here's a link to learn more.
- This reflection and practice were also published this week in The Slow Way Letter on Substack.
- Find a transcript of this episode here.
- Find Micha's website and sign up for her weekly newsletter here
- Find Micha on Instagram
- Find Micha on Threads.
- Micha's other (award winning!) podcast, The Lucky Few, is all about Down syndrome advocacy. She cohosts it with Heather Avis and Mercedes Lara.
Preorder Micha's new book Blessed Are The Rest of Us: How Limits and Longing Make Us Whole for 40% off at BakerBookHouse.com. The first 200 people to preorder from Baker will also receive a signed copy of the book and a fun little gift. Jump over there and get your preorder in.
There is no boundary around holiness: all of this world is worthy of God’s holy smudge. In fact, the act of blessing is simply recognizing and marking what is already true. This is the task of Epiphany for us. We show up like the wise men, carrying our gifts. What we’re invited to bring the Christ is almost always what we love. Blessing the people and things around us is just another way of saying that this world matters, that life is more than the edges of things; it’s the white hot center where meaning lives. Blessing is saying that everything belongs there in the sacred space, that what we have to bring is a gift worthy of the Christ child.
- Find An Altar in the World by Barbara Brown Taylor
- Here's a link to Good Shepherd New York's Epiphany Guide.
- This reflection and practice were also published this week in The Slow Way Letter on Substack.
- Find a transcript of this episode here.
- Find Micha's website and sign up for her weekly newsletter here
- Find Micha on Instagram
- Find Micha on Threads.
- Micha's other (award winning!) podcast, The Lucky Few, is all about Down syndrome advocacy. She cohosts it with Heather Avis and Mercedes Lara.
Preorder Micha's new book Blessed Are The Rest of Us: How Limits and Longing Make Us Whole for 40% off at BakerBookHouse.com from January 15, 2024 through the rest of the year. Just enter SLOWWAY at checkout. The first 200 people to preorder from Baker will also receive a signed copy of the book and a fun little gift. Jump over there and get your preorder in. Don’t forget to use the code!
Can we allow ourselves to cease the relentless pursuit of doing enough, and instead choose to be kind to ourselves and one another—to make warm and generous meals, to sit with people we love under blankets, to dream, and to ask ourselves who we are if we’re not proving ourselves? These are the spiritual practices of Epiphany, to be still long enough to see the revelation for all that is.
- Find Wintering: The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times.
- Here's a link to The Little Book of Hygge: The Danish Way to Live Well.
- This reflection and practice were also published this week in The Slow Way Letter on Substack.
- Find a transcript of this episode here.
- Find Micha's website and sign up for her weekly newsletter here
- Find Micha on Instagram
- Find Micha on Threads.
- Micha's other (award winning!) podcast, The Lucky Few, is all about Down syndrome advocacy. She cohosts it with Heather Avis and Mercedes Lara.
Preorder Micha's new book Blessed Are The Rest of Us: How Limits and Longing Make Us Whole at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and available everywhere books are sold.
This Christmas, Jesus is making us whole through our longings, our longings for a world of goodness and peace, and also, our longings for things to be put right in our own lives. * Find Jonathan Pennington's book The Sermon on the Mount and Human Flourishing here. * Read the Beatitudes here. * Find Phillippians 2 here. * Read Isaiah 30 here. * This reflection and practice were also published this week in The Slow Way Newsletter. * Find a transcript of this episode here. * Find Micha's website and sign up for her weekly newsletter here * Find Micha on Instagram * Find Micha on Threads. * Micha's other (award winning!) podcast, The Lucky Few, is all about Down syndrome advocacy. She cohosts it with Heather Avis and Mercedes Lara.
Preorder Micha's new book Blessed Are The Rest of Us: How Limits and Longing Make Us Whole at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and available everywhere books are sold.
“…at last they were beginning Chapter One of the Great Story,” I whispered. It was 2 am. “...which no one on earth has read: which goes on for ever.” The work of helping my dad into the next story was holy and heavy with love. And the words I spoke lived in the realest part of me. I think that’s what it means to believe, even when doubt is ever present.
Maybe it’s strange to write about death during Advent, a season of waiting for a birth. But birth and death go hand in hand, and I’ve been thinking we should consider them together more often. Last week I wrote about Mary’s choice to give birth to a child from God, and how her consent led to her powerful song of liberation. How does consent lead to liberation? The same way that death leads to new life, the same way the end of a story leads to a story that goes on forever. This is the logic of Love. And the door to that Love somehow has to do with belief.
- Find The Last Battle by C.S. Lewis here.
- This reflection and practice were also published this week in The Slow Way Newsletter.
- Find a transcript of this episode here.
- Find Micha's website and sign up for her weekly newsletter here
- Find Micha on Instagram
- Find Micha on Threads.
- Micha's other (award winning!) podcast, The Lucky Few, is all about Down syndrome advocacy. She cohosts it with Heather Avis and Mercedes Lara.
Preorder Micha's new book Blessed Are The Rest of Us: How Limits and Longing Make Us Whole at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and available everywhere books are sold.
Mary sings that God’s justice moves us toward liberation for the ones who are discarded by society, allowing a girl like her, pregnant outside of marriage, to overcome the shame and humiliation her culture placed on her, to reverse the rules of who gets discarded, and who gets to matter. I am certain that Jesus’s courageous and wise young mother taught him the power of a God who brings hope to the least of these, that it was her teaching that led him to the heart of the good news he came bringing.
- Read The First Advent in Palestine: Reversals, Resistance, and the Ongoing Complexity of Hope by Kelley Nikondeha.
- This reflection and practice were also published this week in The Slow Way Newsletter.
- Find a transcript of this episode here.
- Find Micha's website and sign up for her weekly newsletter here
- Find Micha on Instagram
- Find Micha on Threads.
- Micha's other (award winning!) podcast, The Lucky Few, is all about Down syndrome advocacy. She cohosts it with Heather Avis and Mercedes Lara.
Preorder Micha's new book Blessed Are The Rest of Us: How Limits and Longing Make Us Whole at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and available everywhere books are sold.
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Mystery is the core of my faith these days. Because no matter how many people prop a pine tree in water and twist twinkle lights through it, no matter how many Playmobile nativity sets are opened and play-acted by little ones, the story of baby Jesus is wild. When we allow ourselves to sit with it, to ask all the questions there are to ask, we are left with a choice—to either believe in just how marvelous it would be if the Creator came to us as a babe, or to embrace a season of gifts and cozy and connections, but write the Jesus part off along with most of our culture. What do we do with a story of God that lies beyond any modern, practical notions of how the world works?
- Find Brian Doyle's book of essays, One Long River of Song here.
- This reflection and practice were also published this week in The Slow Way Newsletter.
- Find a transcript of this episode here.
- Find Micha's website and sign up for her weekly newsletter here
- Find Micha on Instagram
- Find Micha on Threads.
- Micha's other (award winning!) podcast, The Lucky Few, is all about Down syndrome advocacy. She cohosts it with Heather Avis and Mercedes Lara.
Preorder Micha's new book Blessed Are The Rest of Us: How Limits and Longing Make Us Whole at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and available everywhere books are sold.
This Thanksgiving, can we think about the concept of gratitude beyond lists or feelings? Let's consider gratitude as a practice that begins in our own bodies, in our choice to stop, our choice to quiet our minds. When we learn to stop and get quiet so we can really look, our graittude becomes more than a feeling. It becomes something we carry into our ordinary lives.
- Find the Ted Talk from Benedictine monk David Stendl-Rast here.
- Find the video A Grateful Day with Brother David Steindl-Rast here.
- This reflection and practice were also published this week in The Slow Way Newsletter.
- Find a transcript of this episode here.
- Find Micha's website and sign up for her weekly newsletter here
- Find Micha on Instagram
- Find Micha on Threads.
- Micha's other (award winning!) podcast, The Lucky Few, is all about Down syndrome advocacy. She cohosts it with Heather Avis and Mercedes Lara.
Preorder my new book Blessed Are The Rest of Us: How Limits and Longing Make Us Whole at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and available everywhere books are sold.
We who believe in the one Breath can either spend our lives demanding it show up where we'd like for it to show up, or we can stand in the open air and let it blow when it pleases.
- Find Brian Doyle's One Long River of Song here.
- Find my previous Slow Way Letter inspired by Doyle's book of essays.
- Find more information on PROMPT speech therapy here.
- This reflection and practice were also published this week in The Slow Way Newsletter.
- Find a transcript of this episode here.
- Find Micha's website and sign up for her weekly newsletter here
- Find Micha on Instagram
- Find Micha on Threads.
- Micha's other (award winning!) podcast, The Lucky Few, is all about Down syndrome advocacy. She cohosts it with Heather Avis and Mercedes Lara.
Preorder my new book Blessed Are The Rest of Us: How Limits and Longing Make Us Whole at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and available everywhere books are sold.
We rarely get to finish, do we? Seventy percent. Good enough? Love and apologies and trying again. Hoping for grace to soften the edges of the thirty percent. What else can we do?
- Find Maggie Smith's You Could Make This Place Beautiful here.
- This reflection and practice were also published this week in The Slow Way Newsletter.
- Find a transcript of this episode here.
- Find Micha's website and sign up for her weekly newsletter here
- Find Micha on Instagram
- Find Micha on Threads.
- Micha's other (award winning!) podcast, The Lucky Few, is all about Down syndrome advocacy. She cohosts it with Heather Avis and Mercedes Lara.
Preorder my new book Blessed Are The Rest of Us: How Limits and Longing Make Us Whole at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and available everywhere books are sold.
But sometimes prayer is the act of moving things around, recognizing what in our lives needs removing, and what in our lives needs transforming. The intricate system of our inner soil can be rich, or it can be lacking. And it can survive on its own for a while. But eventually, if we neglect it, the weeds spring up, the soil loses nutrients. Our lifeforce slumps.
- Padraig O'Tuama's new book of prayers, Being Here, is available for preorder. It will release in January.
- This reflection and practice were also published this week in The Slow Way Newsletter.
- Find a transcript of this episode here.
- Find Micha's website and sign up for her weekly newsletter here
- Find Micha on Instagram
- Find Micha on Threads.
- Micha's other (award winning!) podcast, The Lucky Few, is all about Down syndrome advocacy. She cohosts it with Heather Avis and Mercedes Lara.
Preorder my new book Blessed Are The Rest of Us: How Limits and Longing Make Us Whole at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and available everywhere books are sold.
- Find Amber Haines’ and Seth Haines’ new collaborative book, The Deep Down Things here.
- Ivanka Demchuk's icon of young Mary receiving the angel can be found here.
- Click here to view Caravaggio's “The Incredulity of St. Thomas.”
- And see his “Madonna and Child with St. Anne” here.
- Erin Lane writes extensively about the concept of "mothering" as a verb rather than a noun in her book Someone Other Than A Mother.
- Read Mary's song of liberation in Luke Chapter 1.
- If you're interested in learning more about prayer using icons, Henri Nouwen's book Behold the Beauty of the Lord is a great place to start.
- This reflection and practice were also published this week in The Slow Way Newsletter.
- Find a transcript of this episode here.
- Find Micha's website and sign up for her weekly newsletter here
- Find Micha on Instagram
- Find Micha on Threads.
- Micha's other (award winning!) podcast, The Lucky Few, is all about Down syndrome advocacy. She cohosts it with Heather Avis and Mercedes Lara.
Preorder my new book Blessed Are The Rest of Us: How Limits and Longing Make Us Whole at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and available everywhere books are sold.
From Every Moment Holy by Douglas McKelvey.
“We praise you, O Lord, for our limits!
limits you have given us for
our good and for your glory.”
The subtitle of Blessed Are the Rest of Us is “How Limits and Longing Make Us Whole.” I love that word “limits.” Limits speaks to more than weakness, more than failure, more than the ache in us for justice. Our limits in the presence of the divine is part of the core of who we are. Limits, as the prayer says, are for our good.
- Find Every Moment Holy by Douglas McKelvey here.
- This reflection and practice were also published this week in The Slow Way Newsletter.
- Find a transcript of this episode here.
- Find Micha's website and sign up for her weekly newsletter here
- Find Micha on Instagram
- Find Micha on Threads.
- Micha's other (award winning!) podcast, The Lucky Few, is all about Down syndrome advocacy. She cohosts it with Heather Avis and Mercedes Lara.
Preorder my new book Blessed Are The Rest of Us: How Limits and Longing Make Us Whole at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and available everywhere books are sold.
How do we live, in all our moments, learning to emulate God’s mercy? I can be frustrated with the world’s lack of care, the intrinsic ableism in all of us that allows for casual complaints about kids and their need to get with the program of typical development. But, even in that hurt I am invited to curiosity and care. To be a mercy-emulator, to practice the way of Jesus.
To see the dignity and worth of every person I encounter, pausing in my frustration long enough to show interest in the real person, made in the image of God, longing for mercy.
Links:
- Find Every Moment Holy by Douglas McKelvey here.
- Click here to read Radical Acceptance by Tara Brach.
- This reflection and practice were also published this week in The Slow Way Newsletter.
- Find a transcript of this episode here.
- Find Micha's website and sign up for her weekly newsletter here
- Find Micha on Instagram
- Find Micha on Threads.
- Micha's other (award winning!) podcast, The Lucky Few, is all about Down syndrome advocacy. She cohosts it with Heather Avis and Mercedes Lara.
Preorder my new book Blessed Are The Rest of Us: How Limits and Longing Make Us Whole at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and available everywhere books are sold.
Ritual is part of our daily lives. Rituals are the ways we honor moments of significance. The special occasions that bring us into community with loved ones throughout the year. The carols we sing at Christmas, the blowing out of birthday candles, the first dance at a wedding, the pallbearers carrying the casket, the blessing of babies in our places of worship. We need rituals to make sense of the world.
And we need rituals to make room for the holy in our presence, to recognize that the holy is already among us.
Links:
- Click here to read Amy Davis Abdallah’s new book Meaning in the Moment.
- Click here to find Shannon K. Evans on Instagram.
- This reflection and practice were also published this week in The Slow Way Newsletter.
- Find a transcript of this episode here.
- Find Micha's website and sign up for her weekly newsletter here
- Find Micha on Instagram
- Find Micha on Threads.
- Micha's other (award winning!) podcast, The Lucky Few, is all about Down syndrome advocacy. She cohosts it with Heather Avis and Mercedes Lara.
Preorder my new book Blessed Are The Rest of Us: How Limits and Longing Make Us Whole at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and available everywhere books are sold.
Let me be set free by love, O God.
Let me be set free to love.
What if that’s the thing? Settling into the reality of our lives, receiving it as it is. And being set free by love—the love of ourselves, the love of this season of our lives, the love of ones we’re charged to care for, and the love of God?
Discerning the law of love in our hearts, and being set free by it.
Links:
- Click here to find Celtic Benediction: Morning and Night Prayers.
- Click here to find The Celtic Way of Prayer.
- Find last week's Slow Practice here.
- This reflection and practice were also published this week in The Slow Way Newsletter.
- Find a transcript of this episode here.
- Find Micha's website and sign up for her weekly newsletter here
- Find Micha on Instagram
- Find Micha on Threads.
- Micha's other (award winning!) podcast, The Lucky Few, is all about Down syndrome advocacy. She cohosts it with Heather Avis and Mercedes Lara.
Preorder my new book Blessed Are The Rest of Us: How Limits and Longing Make Us Whole at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and available everywhere books are sold.
Are we paying close enough attention to look with the eyes of reverence, to make space in our imaginations for an image of God that stretches beyond our small experiences and into the “eternal current” of God at work in the world?
Links:
- Click here to find the article "The Feminine Way to Wisdom" by David Brooks.
- This reflection and practice were also published this week in The Slow Way Newsletter.
- Find a transcript of this episode here.
- Find Micha's website and sign up for her weekly newsletter here
- Find Micha on Instagram
- Find Micha on Threads.
- Micha's other (award winning!) podcast, The Lucky Few, is all about Down syndrome advocacy. She cohosts it with Heather Avis and Mercedes Lara.
Preorder my new book Blessed Are The Rest of Us: How Limits and Longing Make Us Whole at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and available everywhere books are sold.
Wholeness is not asking for an entirely new way. It’s simply asking us to take what’s already there and press out the creases, a little at a time. Links:
- Find the full poem by Antonio Machado andTranslated by Robert Bly here.
- Find Radical Acceptance: Embracing your Life with the Heart of a Buddha, by Tara Branch here.
- Find my instagram posts about the brain treatment Ace and I recieved here and here.
- This reflection and practice were also published this week in The Slow Way Newsletter.
- Find a transcript of this episode here.
- Find Micha's website and sign up for her weekly newsletter here
- Find Micha on Instagram
- Find Micha on Threads.
- Micha's other (award winning!) podcast, The Lucky Few, is all about Down syndrome advocacy. She cohosts it with Heather Avis and Mercedes Lara.
Preorder my new book Blessed Are The Rest of Us: How Limits and Longing Make Us Whole at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and available everywhere books are sold.
Today’s replay is from Episode 18, in which I shared about how, after my dad died, I went months without the debilitating migraines that defined my two years before his death. How, when I recorded that episode, I hoped those months of lightness without pain were a true healing. I had been worried to share that story, because what if I called myself “healed” and then the migraines came back?
Listener, they did. In the summer of 2022 they returned with a vengeance and have remained.
What do I believe about those sweet months in my deepest time of grief, when I was free of pain? Was it an answer to my dad’s prayer, to mine? Was it a gift in a season of suffering? Was it relief from the stress of watching my dad suffer?
In her book To Be Made Well, Amy Julia Becker writes that, “to live in God’s healing presence is like swimming in the ocean: immense, frightening, powerful, beautiful. Where, as the Psalmist writes: ‘deep calls to deep,’ where answers don’t come easily, where pain is exposed rather than covered over, where healing leads to transformation.”
Whatever healing means for me, I want my pain—both the physical and emotional—to be exposed rather than covered over. Healing as transformation.
Links:
- This reflection and practice were also published this week in The Slow Way Newsletter.
- Click HERE for free downloads/printables
- Check out The Slow Way online store
- Read more from @amyjuliabecker
- Find a transcript of this episode here.
- Find Micha's website and sign up for her weekly newsletter here
- Find Micha on Instagram
- Find Micha on Threads
- Micha's other podcast, The Lucky Few, is all about Down syndrome advocacy. She cohosts it with Heather Avis and Mercedes Lara.
Preorder my new book Blessed Are The Rest of Us: How Limits and Longing Make Us Whole at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and available everywhere books are sold.
This replay of Episode 34 from August 2022 considers the language we use when we talk about “seeking God.” What is authentic faith? And what does it mean for it to be a long-term, whole-hearted pursuit that involves the world around us, our stories, and our particular ways of being. Healthy spirituality needs the body. It can never be a mind-trick. It involves the kind of integration required in knowing our habits and motives and weaknesses, and connecting those to our pursuit of the expansive love of the Divine.
Links:
- This reflection and practice were also published in my Slow Way letter
- Read The Sound of Life’s Unspeakable Beauty by Martin Schleske
- Find a transcript of this episode here.
- Find Micha's website and sign up for her weekly letter here
- Find Micha on Instagram
- Find Micha on Threads
- Micha's other podcast, The Lucky Few, is all about Down syndrome advocacy. She cohosts it with Heather Avis and Mercedes Lara.
Preorder my new book Blessed Are The Rest of Us: How Limits and Longing Make Us Whole at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and available everywhere books are sold.
May the last late light of summer glow spread wide enough to stir your longing for whatever it is your body, your soul, your heart is asking you to notice. May you walk slower this week into the end of the summer so you can listen to the stirring. May you notice the nudge of the Spirit pointing to love even in the close of one story and the opening sentence of another.
Links:
- I announced my new book and cover a few weeks ago on Instagram. So excited to share it with you!
- This reflection and practice were also published this week in The Slow Way Newsletter.
- Find a transcript of this episode here.
- Find Micha's website and sign up for her weekly newsletter here
- Find Micha on Instagram
- Find Micha on Threads.
- Micha's other (award winning!) podcast, The Lucky Few, is all about Down syndrome advocacy. She cohosts it with Heather Avis and Mercedes Lara.
Preorder my new book Blessed Are The Rest of Us: How Limits and Longing Make Us Whole at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and available everywhere books are sold.
“Inasmuch as we are dying,” Shannon K. Evans writes in her book Rewilding Motherhood, “we are also creating. Inasmuch as old things are passing away, we are also being made new. We are less of who we were and so much more of who we will be. . . God is all in all.”
For something to become new, the old thing must let go—a shadow lengthening, a leaf releasing from the branch, the earth tilting ever so slightly away from the source of light.
Links:
- Here's a link to Shannon K. Evans' book Rewilding Motherhood
- I announced my new book and cover a few weeks ago on Instagram. So excited to share it with you!
- This reflection and practice were also published this week in The Slow Way Newsletter.
- Find a transcript of this episode here.
- Find Micha's website and sign up for her weekly newsletter here
- Find Micha on Instagram
- Find Micha on Threads.
- Micha's other (award winning!) podcast, The Lucky Few, is all about Down syndrome advocacy. She cohosts it with Heather Avis and Mercedes Lara.
Preorder my new book Blessed Are The Rest of Us: How Limits and Longing Make Us Whole at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and available everywhere books are sold.
Links:
- Here's a link to Marjorie J. Thompson’s Soul Feast: An Invitation to the Christian Spiritual Life
- And here's a link to One Long River of Song by Brian Doyle.
- I announced my new book and cover a few weeks agoon Instagram. So excited to share it with you!
- This reflection and practice were also published this week in The Slow Way Newsletter.
- Find a transcript of this episode here.
- Find Micha's website and sign up for her weekly newsletter here
- Find Micha on Instagram
- Find Micha on Threads.
- Micha's other (award winning!) podcast, The Lucky Few, is all about Down syndrome advocacy. She cohosts it with Heather Avis and Mercedes Lara.
Preorder my new book Blessed Are The Rest of Us: How Limits and Longing Make Us Whole at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and available everywhere books are sold.
What does it mean to let our grief shape us into elders, choosing wisdom over bitterness? I’m certain the answer is in the circle of welcome: the magic of our fragile hearts holding one another’s fragile hearts, and how, somehow, in this uncertain carrying we honor each other’s experiences, loves, and sufferings. We learn to be vulnerable together, which just might be the hardest thing of all.
Links:
- Here's a link to The Wild Edge of Sorrow
- And here's a link to One Long River of Song.
- I announced my new book and cover a few weeks agoon Instagram. So excited to share it with you!
- This reflection and practice were also published this week in The Slow Way Newsletter.
- Find a transcript of this episode here.
- Find Micha's website and sign up for her weekly newsletter here
- Find Micha on Instagram
- Find Micha on Threads.
- Micha's other (award winning!) podcast, The Lucky Few, is all about Down syndrome advocacy. She cohosts it with Heather Avis and Mercedes Lara.
Preorder my new book Blessed Are The Rest of Us: How Limits and Longing Make Us Whole at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and available everywhere books are sold.
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Much of life is a choice to fling or not to fling. Will we be extravagant with the love we’ve been given, or will we hold ourselves back because of fear, the chance that all our flinging might not make a difference, or that we’ll be hurt in the process? “An abundant imagination feeds us courage,” my pastor Michael Rudzena said. “There is more than just one shot. There are seeds showering down all around us.”
Links:
- Here's a link to some of Barbara Brown Taylor's sermon on this passage.
- And here's a link to my pastor Michael Rudzena's sermon on the same passage.
- I announced my new book and cover last week on Instagram. So excited to share it with you!
- This reflection and practice were also published this week in The Slow Way Newsletter.
- Find a transcript of this episode here.
- Find Micha's website and sign up for her weekly newsletter here
- Find Micha on Instagram
- Find Micha on Threads. (Who needs Twitter?!)
- Micha's other (award winning!) podcast, The Lucky Few, is all about Down syndrome advocacy. She cohosts it with Heather Avis and Mercedes Lara.
Preorder my new book Blessed Are The Rest of Us: How Limits and Longing Make Us Whole at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and available everywhere books are sold.
In his longest recorded sermon, Jesus taught about the importance of the process. “Ask, and it will be given you; search, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened for you. For everyone who asks receives, and everyone who searches finds, and for everyone who knocks, the door will be opened.”
Asking, I’ve learned, isn’t a one and done process. Just as searching is a thing that keeps on going. We turn the room over until we find one treasure, and then—amazingly?— that treasure leads us to hunt for the next one.
Ask and search, Jesus said. Knock. And do it together. Ask and search and knock together.
Links:
- I announced my new book and cover last week on Instagram. So excited to share it with you!
- This reflection and practice were also published this week in The Slow Way Newsletter.
- Find a transcript of this episode here.
- Find Micha's website and sign up for her weekly newsletter here
- Find Micha on Instagram
- Find Micha on Threads. (Who needs Twitter?!)
- Micha's other podcast, The Lucky Few, is all about Down syndrome advocacy. She cohosts it with Heather Avis and Mercedes Lara.
Preorder my new book Blessed Are The Rest of Us: How Limits and Longing Make Us Whole at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and available everywhere books are sold.
I have a lot of regrets from my younger years of loving a God who seemed both demanding of sacrifice and somehow, simultaneously, filled with mercy. I didn’t know how to reconcile the two. So I preached a message of both to myself. Struggling with how one might turn one’s heart around without Love in the first place. Not knowing how, when I was most afraid, I leaned into the hollow how-tos, forgoing mercy when it felt too complicated. Sometimes exclusion is easier than the playful mercy of Jesus.
Links:
- I announced my new book and cover yesterday on Instagram! So excited to share it with you!
- This reflection and practice were also published this week in The Slow Way Newsletter.
- Find a transcript of this episode here.
- Find Micha's website and sign up for her weekly newsletter here
- Find Micha on Instagram
- Find Micha on Twitter
- Micha's other podcast, The Lucky Few, is all about Down syndrome advocacy. She cohosts it with Heather Avis and Mercedes Lara.
Preorder my new book Blessed Are The Rest of Us: How Limits and Longing Make Us Whole at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and available everywhere books are sold.
I haven’t written much about how I became LGBTQ+ affirming almost a decade ago. It was a slow process, one that was born of relationships with dear-to-me queer folks, revelations of the high percentage of LGBTQ+ people who have suffered deeply in the often abusive hand of the Church, and it was the work of Jesus in me, revealing the way of transforming love in a world where we cling to rules, even we see those rules destroying the lives of God’s beloveds.
This is about how I’ve come to know Jesus, how I’ve come to understand the movement of the Spirit of God in the world. It’s not an argument where I try to convince anyone of my reading of particular verses that seem to reject LGBTQ+ relationships. Changing one’s mind on this particularly thorny subject in the Church is not about finally understanding the original Greek of Paul’s letters, or reading the right scholar. It’s about perspective, experience, lens. I can’t convince anyone that I’m right, and that’s not my job.
But I did feel joy in telling the story of how I put on my Jesus glasses, saw my queer siblings in the way I believe God had been inviting me to see for a long time, and learned to imagine scripture in a way I never had before.
Mostly I wanted to tell you about the the quiet and holy sweetness of finally listening to my own conscience and finding that my relief was the voice of God there with me: “Hi, honey.” God said. “I’ve been here the whole time. You can trust me.”
Links:
- This reflection and practice were also published this week in The Slow Way Newsletter.
- Find a transcript of this episode here.
- Find Micha's website and sign up for her weekly newsletter here
- Find Micha on Instagram
- Find Micha on Twitter
- Micha's other podcast, The Lucky Few, is all about Down syndrome advocacy. She cohosts it with Heather Avis and Mercedes Lara.
Found: A Story of Questions, Grace, and Everyday Prayer is available everywhere books are sold.
On the Southern Baptist Convention’s vote to expel churches with women pastors, my calling to pastor (and the complicated denial of that call by my community and by me), and why I left the Southern Baptist church when I was twenty two, but still find myself brokenhearted for what could have been.
Links:
- Read about the Southern Baptist Convention's recent vote here.
- Find Martin Laird's book Into the Silent Land here.
- This reflection and practice were also published this week in The Slow Way Newsletter.
- Find a transcript of this episode here.
- Find Micha's website and sign up for her weekly newsletter here
- Find Micha on Instagram
- Find Micha on Twitter
- Micha's other podcast, The Lucky Few, is all about Down syndrome advocacy. She cohosts it with Heather Avis and Mercedes Lara.
Found: A Story of Questions, Grace, and Everyday Prayer is available everywhere books are sold.
For years I’ve told myself that the Jesus I saw mass produced in mega churches, political stages, and trotted out as social capital by the Church-As-Corporation was just a confused version of Jesus. That somewhere along the line leaders had gotten their eyes all fuzzy when they read scripture so they missed some massive portions of teachings from the Son of God who started the whole shebang. But, friends, there was some clarity for me this week as I watched this Hillsong docuseries, which really didn’t say anything new. We have all seen how reckless power, immaturity, and self-preservation practiced in the context of religious authority literally destroys lives, particularly the lives of the vulnerable under the spiritual care of those immature and reckless leaders.
But this time as I watched this Hillsong series, I thought: Oh. They actually don’t love the Jesus of the Bible. They love a different Jesus.
On Unsexy Jesus: the small, downward, ordinary ideas that got Jesus in trouble. And might just save the Church.
Links:
- This reflection and practice were also published this week in The Slow Way Newsletter.
- Find a transcript of this episode here.
- Find Micha's website and sign up for her weekly newsletter here
- Find Micha on Instagram
- Find Micha on Twitter
- Micha's other podcast, The Lucky Few, is all about Down syndrome advocacy. She cohosts it with Heather Avis and Mercedes Lara.
Found: A Story of Questions, Grace, and Everyday Prayer is available everywhere books are sold.
I’ve thought a lot about the way that water heals us, how we need its power. There’ve been scientific studies that show how even the sight and sound of bodies of water can increase neurochemicals in the brain, increase blood flow, which ultimately leads to relaxation. So maybe the ocean is talking to Ace, or maybe my child is uniquely designed to be more in touch (this is my suspicion) with the ways we humans are naturally oriented by our Creator toward goodness. We long for the beauty and power of water. We long for adventure. We long to be held and carried, to be released from the weight of our land-locked lives.
Maybe the water reminds us that the really real is always here among us. I’m pretty sure that the ache and the grace of seeing it are two sides of the same coin. Call it magic. Call it joy. Call it divine. See it in the ocean talking or the autistic boy who conducts the waves with his own arm flaps. Either way, the invitation is to pay attention, to allow ourselves space to see it.
Links:
- This reflection and practice were also published this week in The Slow Way Newsletter.
- Find a transcript of this episode here.
- Find Micha's website and sign up for her weekly newsletter here
- Find Micha on Instagram
- Find Micha on Twitter
- Micha's other podcast, The Lucky Few, is all about Down syndrome advocacy. She cohosts it with Heather Avis and Mercedes Lara.
Found: A Story of Questions, Grace, and Everyday Prayer is available everywhere books are sold
Our desire whispers how the world is not as it should be, even as we move through our daily rhythms of work and dinner-making and dish-washing and Netflix-binging. What will we do with our unrest? Links:
- This reflection and practice were also published this week in The Slow Way Newsletter.
- Find a transcript of this episode here.
- Read The Holy Longing: The Search For Christian Spirituality by Ronald Rolheiser
- Read Psalm 139 from The Message here
- Find Micha's website and sign up for her weekly newsletter here
- Find Micha on Instagram
- Find Micha on Twitter
- Micha's other podcast, The Lucky Few, is all about Down syndrome advocacy. She cohosts it with Heather Avis and Mercedes Lara.
Found: A Story of Questions, Grace, and Everyday Prayer is available everywhere books are sold
I don’t always live this value, but I hope that when my boys look back at their childhoods they will remember that we taught them to show up for people they love. When we have the opportunity to love someone in action, we do it. Even if it means braving the Holland Tunnel on a Friday night, dealing with two hours of Jersey traffic heading toward New York, driving my eight year old minivan through Manhattan all the way to the East side, letting whoever must honk at me, honk. Parallel parking on 3rd Avenue at 5:45 pm. And no, not for a Broadway show. For a middle school play.
I imagine that’s the kind of Friday night commute Jesus would have made too. Jesus would have cheered with delight for the drama kids, some of their voices cracking their way through songs, their costumes falling off their bodies, their families hollering in the audience, their teachers so openly adoring them.
In our culture of constant fretting and over-scheduling, taking the time to show up for the people we love, or perhaps, the people it feels difficult to love, can seem impossible. Today I want us to spend time imagining two different people in our lives: One, someone who showed up for you at some point when you needed it. Maybe, like me, you remember an adult who cared for you when you were young, whether they were significant during a vital life moment, or were simply a brief presence of kindness. Then, I want you to spend time imagining a person in your life you want to love with your presence. Someone you care about, but have struggled to make time for, or aren’t sure how to love well. I’ll guide you through it.
I am curious lately -- my hands pulling worm after worm out of my compost as I move the new soil from bin to vegetable garden -- about a God who might love the world enough to call plants and worms “kin.” What if we did the same? How do we gain tenderness toward the earth we live in, becoming those most passionate about seeing the earth cared for, nourished and returned to what’s right?
Perhaps that starts with our own hearts, with seeing the natural world as God sees it. Today we're asking the question: What if our neighbor is not only the human next door, but the living beings all around us?
Links:
- This reflection and practice were also published this week in The Slow Way Newsletter.
- Find a transcript of this episode here.
- Read Sing, Wrestle, Spin by Jennifer Grant
- Read Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Kimmerer
- Listen to and watch "Sycamore, Sparrow" by Good Shepherd Collective
- Find Micha's website and sign up for her weekly newsletter here
- Find Micha on Instagram
- Find Micha on Twitter
- Micha's other podcast, The Lucky Few, is all about Down syndrome advocacy. She cohosts it with Heather Avis and Mercedes Lara. On this week's episode they interviewed Noah Matthews Matofsky, Disney's first actor in a film with Down syndrome, who stars as the leader of the Lost Boys in the new movie Peter Pan & Wendy.
Found: A Story of Questions, Grace, and Everyday Prayer is available everywhere books are sold
This Christmas Eve, despite the challenge we can feel to believe this story of God coming to us through a boy in ancient Palestine, I invite you to imagine it afresh with me. It may not be easy to believe, but the gift of the story is in its humanity. A God who knows what it is to sit with a mother in the quiet. A God who knows the sweet slowness of a sunset. A God who has had to learn some manners. What if we cling to the small deliberate truths of God-with-us actually means.
Take some time to sit with Episode 5 of The Slow Way, to quiet your body and come close to God.
Links:
- This reflection and practice were also published this week in The Slow Way Newsletter.
- Find a transcript of this episode here.
- Find Micha's website and sign up for her weekly newsletter here
- Find Micha on Instagram
- Find Micha on Twitter
- Micha's other podcast, The Lucky Few, is all about Down syndrome advocacy. She cohosts it with Heather Avis and Mercedes Lara.
- Found: A Story of Questions, Grace, and Everyday Prayer is available everywhere books are sold
In the midst of her joy, perhaps Mary also knew a certain kind of darkness. Maybe she knew that the particular love she shared with her baby in those nine months would always be different from that time on. And that was all mixed in with the utter relief of holding him, of being on the other side of the suffering.
I wonder about Mary’s fragility. How weak and uncertain and terrified she must have felt.
And I wonder about you. How weak and uncertain and terrified you feel. I wonder what joy and sadness these weeks leading up to Christmas bring to the surface. Or if there’s a dread you carry with you. If there’s an uncertainty, or a fragility you don’t know how to name.
Today, can you sit in the silence and name it?
Links:
- This reflection and practice were also published this week in The Slow Way Newsletter.
- Find a transcript of this episode here.
- Find Micha's website and sign up for her weekly newsletter here
- Find Micha on Instagram
- Find Micha on Twitter
- Micha's other podcast, The Lucky Few, is all about Down syndrome advocacy. She cohosts it with Heather Avis and Mercedes Lara.
Found: A Story of Questions, Grace, and Everyday Prayer is available everywhere books are sold
Elizabeth and Mary held each other up, carried each other through their seasons of pregnancy, and their faithfulness to this turbulent moment in one another’s lives set the foundation for the work of their little boys: John the Baptist who would go wild in the woods, eating locusts, preaching repentance, making baptism the sacred marker it is, and clearing a path for the ministry of his cousin, Jesus. John would die a gruesome death, and Jesus would grieve, and teach us how to grieve. John and Jesus loved and served each other well because their mothers set a path for them to do so.
Today, let's consider the foundation you’re laying with your life. This may not be a season of giving birth (either literally or metaphorically), but the truth is that we’re always prepping the land for something. And the foundation you lay now will be felt by the ones who come after you.
Links:
- This reflection and practice were also published this week in The Slow Way Newsletter.
- Find a transcript of this episode here.
- Find Micha's website and sign up for her weekly newsletter here
- Find Micha on Instagram
- Find Micha on Twitter
- Micha's other podcast, The Lucky Few, is all about Down syndrome advocacy. She cohosts it with Heather Avis and Mercedes Lara.
Found: A Story of Questions, Grace, and Everyday Prayer is available everywhere books are sold
As we move closer to Christmas, I'm sharing with you a meditation on a poem about Glory. What if “glory”--that word we in the Church tend to overuse and undersell-- What if glory is actually the realest thing about Christmas. What if the angelic song is beyond our comprehension, because all of it a mystery of love, a mystery that changes the world. Sometimes prayer is simply sitting with the mystery. Will you join me?
Links:
- This reflection and practice were also published this week in The Slow Way Newsletter.
- Find a transcript of this episode here.
- Find Micha's website and sign up for her weekly newsletter here
- Find Micha on Instagram
- Find Micha on Twitter
- Micha's other podcast, The Lucky Few, is all about Down syndrome advocacy. She cohosts it with Heather Avis and Mercedes Lara.
- Found: A Story of Questions, Grace, and Everyday Prayer is available everywhere books are sold
This Advent we’ll be spending time with some of my original poems, considering the story of Christmas in a way that digs down deep into the thing underneath the thing, the story underneath the story. Let’s imagine a Mary we haven’t quite gotten to know. Let’s ask some questions that we may not answer, but which might help us live a little deeper into her story, and in doing so, into our own stories.
Will you join me?
- This reflection and practice were also published this week in The Slow Way Newsletter.
- Find a transcript of this episode here.
- Find Micha's website and sign up for her weekly newsletter here
- Find Micha on Instagram
- Find Micha on Twitter
- Micha's other podcast, The Lucky Few, is all about Down syndrome advocacy. She cohosts it with Heather Avis and Mercedes Lara.
- Found: A Story of Questions, Grace, and Everyday Prayer is available everywhere books are sold
Thanksgiving is a ritual we practice with others. The great thing about ritual is that it comes over and over, whether or not we’re ready for it. So each year we’re given another chance to do more than skirt above the surface of the day. After all, anyone can eat a meal. It takes intention to feast, though. It takes courage to celebrate the good in our lives, especially when the days that led to this one have been painful.
So this is my question for you: Where do you find yourself this Thanksgiving? Are you ready to reach below the sorrow of your life in order to find the gift underneath?
Links:
- This reflection and practice were also published this week in The Slow Way Newsletter.
- Find a transcript of this episode here.
- Read The Celtic Vision by Esther De Waal
- Find Micha's website and sign up for her weekly newsletter here
- Find Micha on Instagram
- Find Micha on Twitter
- Micha's other podcast, The Lucky Few, is all about Down syndrome advocacy. She cohosts it with Heather Avis and Mercedes Lara.
Found: A Story of Questions, Grace, and Everyday Prayer is available everywhere books are sold
As we move toward the holidays, what does it mean to gather with people you love and attend to them? What could it look like to move toward the complicated and sometimes difficult relationships in your life and find gratitude around the table? Wine certainly isn’t the only way to practice slowness and gratitude. But wine can teach us how to savor, how to notice what we enjoy, and how to find delight in the small gifts of this life. It can help us learn to practice joy together.
Today’s episode ponders what it might mean to attend to goodness, and why wine just might be a Christian response to the pain of this world.
Links:
- This reflection and practice were also published this week in The Slow Way Newsletter.
- Find a transcript of this episode here.
- Read Blood From a Stone by Adam McHugh
- Listen to This Good Word by Steve Wiens
- Find Micha's website and sign up for her weekly newsletter here
- Find Micha on Instagram
- Find Micha on Twitter
- Micha's other podcast, The Lucky Few, is all about Down syndrome advocacy. She cohosts it with Heather Avis and Mercedes Lara.
Found: A Story of Questions, Grace, and Everyday Prayer is available everywhere books are sold
In one month we’ll mark my dad’s death day. I bought my flight this week and will head to my mom’s house and spend that week with my siblings, nieces and nephews. Winter is not my favorite season, even with the delights of Christmas. As soon as the holidays move through us, we are left with months of ice and darkness. And Little Mikey will have to stay strong to survive the winter. I know trees know what to do with snow, but I can’t help feeling protective, as if in an ideal world I might dig his little roots up and bring him into my warm house.
I read a remarkable passage from St. John of the Cross yesterday morning. It was about the soul and its union with God: “So the understanding of the soul is now the understanding of God; and its will is the will of God; and its memory is the memory of God; and its delight is the delight of God.”
I like to think that somehow, all the ones we love are gathered up into the mind of God, so close to the Divine that their memories are God’s memory, their delights are God’s delights.
You're invited to reflect on this with me.
--
Links:
- This reflection and practice were also published this week in The Slow Way Newsletter.
- Find a transcript of this episode here.
- Read The Cure For Sorrow: A Book of Blessings for Times of Grief, by Jan Richardson
- Follow Richardson’s instagram account
- Find Micha's website and sign up for her weekly newsletter here
- Find Micha on Instagram
- Find Micha on Twitter
- Micha's other podcast, The Lucky Few, is all about Down syndrome advocacy. She cohosts it with Heather Avis and Mercedes Lara.
- Found: A Story of Questions, Grace, and Everyday Prayer is available everywhere books are sold
The spiritual life has to begin with a premise that God can be experienced, encountered. Starting from here is harder than it seems. Faith is not an unmovable feature inside us. It is less a mountain, and more an ocean, always moving, sometimes deep, sometimes shallow. Sometimes the places on the shore the water used to reach are now dried up. But the work of the spiritual life is to receive that constant shifting, not as failure of belief, but as part of the process.
When we think of faith as practice we move beyond ideas into spiritual connection. Our lives become lived with God, deepening beyond the intellect. And when that with-God-ness settles in the places that can’t be touched by the arguments or proofs or certainties of those who believe or don’t believe, there becomes room for knowing and resting in Reality.
Let’s talk about the idea of deepening our understanding of God in this episode of The Slow Way.
Links:
- This reflection and practice were also published this week in The Slow Way Newsletter.
- Find a transcript of this episode here.
- Read Spiritual Disciplines for Everyday Living by Ronald V. Wells
- Read The School of Charity by Evelyn Underhill
- Find Micha's website and sign up for her weekly newsletter here
- Find Micha on Instagram
- Find Micha on Twitter
- Micha's other podcast, The Lucky Few, is all about Down syndrome advocacy. She cohosts it with Heather Avis and Mercedes Lara.
Found: A Story of Questions, Grace, and Everyday Prayer is available everywhere books are sold
This is the story of so many who have found wealth and power in our world. We feel small. So we climb sycamore trees. We climb ladders. We climb power structures.
And we can convince ourselves from way up there that we have somehow saved ourselves. But really, we’re dangling above what’s real. We’re unsafe, lonely, unknown to our people and to ourselves.
And Jesus is down at the base of the things we’ve used to save ourselves, saying: “Come down from there and face the reality of who you are.”
Let’s return to our realest selves. Join me in this episode of The Slow Way.
Links:
- This reflection and practice were also published this week in The Slow Way Newsletter.
- Find a transcript of this episode here.
- Read “Exposing Zacchaeus” by Victor Westhelle
- Read about what Stephanie Spellers calls, “the Dream of God”
- Find Micha's website and sign up for her weekly newsletter here
- Find Micha on Instagram
- Find Micha on Twitter
- Micha's other podcast, The Lucky Few, is all about Down syndrome advocacy. She cohosts it with Heather Avis and Mercedes Lara.
Found: A Story of Questions, Grace, and Everyday Prayer is available everywhere books are sold
When we make space in our days and in our bodies to practice prayer, or silence, or sacred reading, we are actually doing rest. Hersey talks so beautifully about dreaming, but there is something sacred about the kind of sleep she is inviting all of us into. In her vision of rest, dreaming becomes its own kind of prayer practice. We allow ourselves to stop so our brains can be restored, coated in restorative fluid, flushed of toxins. And the presence of the Divine meets us there in that restoration. “To slow down is to allow the portal to open, the antenna to open, to link in, to allow you to get some information, to allow you to see your way out, to heal your way out, to create a new world.”
--
Links:
- This reflection and practice were also published this week in The Slow Way Newsletter.
- Find a transcript of this episode here.
- Listen to Glennon Doyle’s interview with Tricia Hersey here.
- Read Hersey’s new book, Rest is Resistance.
- Follow The Nap Ministry
- Read the research article I mentioned here.
- Read The Church Cracked Open by Stephanie Sellers
- Find Micha's website and sign up for her weekly newsletter here
- Find Micha on Instagram
- Find Micha on Twitter
- Micha's other podcast, The Lucky Few, is all about Down syndrome advocacy. She cohosts it with Heather Avis and Mercedes Lara.
Found: A Story of Questions, Grace, and Everyday Prayer is available everywhere books are sold
The life of faith is recognizing that we are each a seed planted, and helping one another stay close to the sustaining water that will help us grow and become the flourishing plant we were always meant to be. Community is believing that we all have something important to give, and that our Source has placed in each of us something valuable. Caring for each other begins with believing that the seed can grow into a tree, and believing that there is enough water available for us and for our neighbor, so we can all thrive.
It’s simple, and complicated. It’s magic and ordinary. It’s the Way of Jesus. Which is never as tidy as we’d often like it to be, and is always sparkling, always alive.
Links:
- This reflection and practice were also published this week in The Slow Way Newsletter.
- Find a transcript of this episode here.
- Find Micha's website and sign up for her weekly newsletter here
- Find Micha on Instagram
- Find Micha on Twitter
- Micha's other podcast, The Lucky Few, is all about Down syndrome advocacy. She cohosts it with Heather Avis and Mercedes Lara.
- Found: A Story of Questions, Grace, and Everyday Prayer is available everywhere books are sold
What does it mean to give our lives to more than an idea? What does it mean for faith to coexist with doubt but not be squishy or easily shaken? For us to allow it to settle in the deepest parts of us, so that it lives there sturdy and true, without pretense, without anything false? How do we hold a faith robust enough to reach the parts of us that are hardest to know, most painful to explore?
If your life belongs to the Loving Creator, it still belongs, there, where everything else has been lost.
Links:
- This reflection and practice were also published this week in The Slow Way Newsletter.
- Read Parker Palmer’s, Let Your Life Speak
- Read Psalms For Young Children
- Find a transcript of this episode here.
- Find Micha's website and sign up for her weekly newsletter here
- Find Micha on Instagram
- Find Micha on Twitter
- Micha's other podcast, The Lucky Few, is all about Down syndrome advocacy. She cohosts it with Heather Avis and Mercedes Lara.
Found: A Story of Questions, Grace, and Everyday Prayer is available everywhere books are sold
There is a blessing to be found in the naming of God. To name God is a grace we have been given, an invitation to connect with the unnamable, unfathomable Divine.
What and how we name God is the story we’re telling ourselves and the world.
What would you name God?
More in this week’s #theslowwaypodcast
Links:
- This reflection and practice were also published this week in The Slow Way Newsletter.
- Read Macrina Wiederkehr’s, The Flowing Grace of Now
- Read “Naming Objects Is the Opposite of Thoughtless Consumption” from The Atlantic, here
- Read “Why People Name Their Machines” from The Atlantic, here
- Read “Entering the Dark Cloud of God,” a sermon by Barbara Brown Taylor, here
- Find a transcript of this episode here.
- Find Micha's website and sign up for her weekly newsletter here
- Find Micha on Instagram
- Find Micha on Twitter
- Micha's other podcast, The Lucky Few, is all about Down syndrome advocacy. She cohosts it with Heather Avis and Mercedes Lara.
- Found: A Story of Questions, Grace, and Everyday Prayer is available everywhere books are sold
Lately I’ve been reclaiming blessing, not as something we get if we’re lucky or pious enough. But blessing as a gift by which we honor one another. It is taking something ordinary and pronouncing it remarkable, sacred. Barbara Brown Taylor says the act of blessing is not so much the work of conferring holiness as it is the hope-filled task of recognizing and acknowledging the holiness already there.
What if we release that other notion of blessing, the one that can make us feel small or unseen by God? What if instead we look for ways to “share in God’s audacity,” to boldly call the world around us good?
More in this week’s #theslowwaypodcast
Links:
- This reflection and practice were also published this week in The Slow Way Newsletter.
- Read An Altar in the World by Barbara Brown Taylor
- Find a transcript of this episode here.
- Find Micha's website and sign up for her weekly newsletter here
- Find Micha on Instagram
- Find Micha on Twitter
- Micha's other podcast, The Lucky Few, is all about Down syndrome advocacy. She cohosts it with Heather Avis and Mercedes Lara.
- Found: A Story of Questions, Grace, and Everyday Prayer is available everywhere books are sold
I don’t think sin is a birthright. I don’t think it is original to us at all. Don’t get me wrong, this world is a dumpster fire of hate and violence, greed and arrogance, exclusion and self-harm. Evil is in the air we breathe. But, that’s the thing. It’s in the air, not in us. God made us and called us good. Everything else — the evil, the hatred — is a lie we buy into from our earliest moments. Our egos tell us to be something we were never made to be. Our self-protective coverings insist that we can make ourselves into something valuable by rejecting the value of those around us. But none of that is true to the sacred center of us.
Let's talk about the good that grows in all of us.
--
Links:
- This reflection and practice were also published this week in The Slow Way Newsletter.
- Read The Ninefold Path of Jesus by Mark Scandrette
- Read Parker Palmer’s Let Your Life Speak: Listening for the Voice of Vocation
- Read Mindful Silence by Phileena Heurtz
- Read Mary Mrozowski’s Contemplative Outreach
- Find a transcript of this episode here.
- Find Micha's website and sign up for her weekly newsletter here
- Find Micha on Instagram
- Find Micha on Twitter
- Micha's other podcast, The Lucky Few, is all about Down syndrome advocacy. She cohosts it with Heather Avis and Mercedes Lara.
- Found: A Story of Questions, Grace, and Everyday Prayer is available everywhere books are sold
It’s almost fall. The wind moves through and we shiver. The boy in the pool who leaned back and moved his arms across the surface, a brief lifespan of gold across the water. He will get his back-to-school hair cut, throw on his backpack, and grow out of his hand-me-down jeans. And the world will shift on its axis, drawing us gently into a cool sunshine, apples in our u-pick bags. There’s no fighting the autumn, friends. It always comes for us.
The Psalmist tells us that “all our days pass away . . . Our days may come to seventy years, or eighty, if our strength endures; yet the best of them are but trouble and sorrow, for they quickly pass, and we fly away.” The answer to that reality? “Teach us to number our days, that we may gain a heart of wisdom.” There is a slowness in numbering our days, in choosing our co-rememberers, in celebrating the movement of time in all of its beautiful, achingly true reality.
Links:
- This reflection and practice were also published this week in The Slow Way Newsletter.
- Find a transcript of this episode here.
- Find Micha's website and sign up for her weekly newsletter here
- Find Micha on Instagram
- Find Micha on Twitter
- Micha's other podcast, The Lucky Few, is all about Down syndrome advocacy. She cohosts it with Heather Avis and Mercedes Lara.
- Found: A Story of Questions, Grace, and Everyday Prayer is available everywhere books are sold
When we release ourselves from the burden of proving our value by what we make of time, we can learn slowness for the sake of our whole selves – our minds, bodies and souls—and for the sake of those in our world who are most vulnerable. But this is spiritual work. If we want to value the lives of those who will never produce enough to be considered good, we have to first value ourselves outside of what we can do.
“When we begin to understand what it means to reside within God’s time, we are opened up to a whole new way of being in the world, a way that not only respects the difference that disability brings, but in a sense requires it.”
That’s why we need a vision of God that is love, and a vision of all that God has created as born from love. We are not robots set on earth to do enough work in enough time to be deemed good. We are born of love and given a loving, expansive creation: Time is a gift of love. That means we are invited to be whole bodies (not just brains), who are learning what it is to love one another.
Links:
- This reflection and practice were also published this week in The Slow Way Newsletter.
- Read Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis here.
- Read Becoming Friends of Time by John Swinton here.
- Find a transcript of this episode here.
- Find Micha's website and sign up for her weekly newsletter here
- Find Micha on Instagram
- Find Micha on Twitter
- Micha's other podcast, The Lucky Few, is all about Down syndrome advocacy. She cohosts it with Heather Avis and Mercedes Lara.
- Found: A Story of Questions, Grace, and Everyday Prayer is available everywhere books are sold
Today we’re considering the language we use when we talk about “seeking God.” How authentic faith must be a long-term, whole-hearted pursuit that involves the world around us, our stories, and our particular ways of being. Healthy spirituality needs the body. It can never be a mind-trick. It involves the kind of integration required in knowing our habits and motives and weaknesses, and connecting those to our pursuit of the expansive love of the Divine.
Links:
- This reflection and practice were also published this week in The Slow Way Newsletter.
- Read The Sound of Life’s Unspeakable Beauty by Martin Schleske
- Find a transcript of this episode here.
- Find Micha's website and sign up for her weekly newsletter here
- Find Micha on Instagram
- Find Micha on Twitter
- Micha's other podcast, The Lucky Few, is all about Down syndrome advocacy. She cohosts it with Heather Avis and Mercedes Lara.
Found: A Story of Questions, Grace, and Everyday Prayer is available everywhere books are sold
We’re back! Episode 33 is fresh and new at The Slow Way.
As we lean into the end of summer, some of us eking the last few weeks out of the sunshine and late nights on the porch, some already back in the motion of school and schedules, I hope we’ll practice a simple but transformative slow way: Listening to the stomach aches, the tight muscles, the sensations of joy or pleasure, and reminding ourselves that our bodies are actually us. They are not separate from our minds. And they have something to tell us about what’s next and where God is in our story.
- This reflection and practice were also published this week in The Slow Way Newsletter.
- Read Hillary L. McBride’s “Wisdom of Your Body” here.
- Find a transcript of this episode here.
- Find Micha's website and sign up for her weekly newsletter here
- Find Micha on Instagram
- Find Micha on Twitter
- Micha's other podcast, The Lucky Few, is all about Down syndrome advocacy. She cohosts it with Heather Avis and Mercedes Lara.
Found: A Story of Questions, Grace, and Everyday Prayer is available everywhere books are sold
Last month I spent ten days on the campus of a Benedictine monastery, where there is an incredible pottery studio that seeks to embody the Benedictine values of stability, community, and hospitality. And I was re-reminded of this instruction from Saint Benedict. That all the utensils of our lives can be sacred.
Our hands are holy, and they are invited by the Life-Peace-Grace-Maker to create meaning out of everything.
Here’s a replay of episode 19, “Blessing the Work of our Hands.”
Links:
- This reflection and practice were also published this week in The Slow Way Newsletter.
- Click HERE for free downloads/printables
- Find a transcript of this episode here.
- Find Micha's website and sign up for her weekly newsletter here
- Find Micha on Instagram
- Find Micha on Twitter
- Micha's other podcast, The Lucky Few, is all about Down syndrome advocacy. She cohosts it with Heather Avis and Mercedes Lara.
Found: A Story of Questions, Grace, and Everyday Prayer is available everywhere books are sold
Here’s your reminder that doubt is not the thing that should trouble your soul. Fear is. The blessings of Jesus are particularly there for those who wrestle with their fear, hold it up to the light of Truth, and choose to embrace suffering for the sake of joining the good work of God in the world.
Can you imagine with me that in the dark distance a figure is coming. It’s beautiful. And it’s terrifying, because it is somehow the combination of your greatest regrets and failures and fears. It’s the embodiment of your own weaknesses and dread. And who wants to look at that? Take a moment to ask yourself, what do you need to wrestle? And what might be the blessing you need on the other side of your fear?
Links:
- This reflection and practice were also published this week in The Slow Way Newsletter.
- Find a transcript of this episode here.
- Find The Dream of God by Verna Dozier here.
- Find Micha's website and sign up for her weekly newsletter here
- Find Micha on Instagram
- Find Micha on Twitter
- Micha's other podcast, The Lucky Few, is all about Down syndrome advocacy. She cohosts it with Heather Avis and Mercedes Lara.
- Found: A Story of Questions, Grace, and Everyday Prayer is available everywhere books are sold
Growth is a gangly and uncomfortable season – whether it's the growth of our young teenage bodies, or the growth of our souls. We cannot enter into seasons of growth without instability and volatility. In other words, growth is awkward and uncomfortable. And there’s nothing we can do about that.
I have been reading and loving Lisa Colón DeLay’s book, The Wild Land Within. She describes the in-between seasons of growth this way: “God will always call us toward deeper, fuller lives. God beckons us toward more abundant joy and greater relief and solace.” Then she goes on to say, “Healing and spiritual growth, after it happens, look and feel like peace, gracious integration of yourself, and (felt) access to love and grace.”
There are so many moments of our spiritual lives when growth is going to force us to experience the discomfort of the in-between. Let's explore this in this week's episode.
Links:
- This reflection and practice were also published this week in The Slow Way Newsletter.
- Find a transcript of this episode here.
- Find Micha's website and sign up for her weekly newsletter here
- Find Micha on Instagram
- Find Micha on Twitter
- Micha's other podcast, The Lucky Few, is all about Down syndrome advocacy. She cohosts it with Heather Avis and Mercedes Lara.
- Found: A Story of Questions, Grace, and Everyday Prayer is available everywhere books are sold
We live in an empire, in a human-made system of the powerful and the powerless, and since the world began unraveling the truth that was born in us, in our original goodness given by God, we learn to slowly believe the lie of the Empire. It tells us that we can earn our place in the system. It tells us how to divide one another, how to assign value. We learn who is attractive, who is smart, who is capable, and we understand that if we want to have value, there are tasks to accomplish. There are people to please. There is a path toward winning.
Who are we if any of us thinks we must carry it all? Lean toward beloved community, friend. Start with your own heart.
Links:
- Find a transcript of this episode here.
- Find The Church Cracked Open by Stephanie Spellers here.
- Find Micha's website and sign up for her weekly newsletter here
- Find Micha on Instagram
- Find Micha on Twitter
- Micha's other podcast, The Lucky Few, is all about Down syndrome advocacy. She cohosts it with Heather Avis and Mercedes Lara.
- Found: A Story of Questions, Grace, and Everyday Prayer is available everywhere books are sold
As much as it might be difficult to believe, you are not your intellect, your power, your success, your ability to fit in at a party. You are not your ability to be happy, or healthy, or rich. It’s your weaknesses that bring you into the upside down of God’s values.
When we let go of control, when we open our hands we are, as Richard Rohr writes,”in a very creative and liminal space where God is most free to act in our lives.” And that is faith: letting go of control, believing that the life of weakness is actually the life of the Most Blessed.
Spend some time today considering Jesus’s words in Matthew 5 and reflecting on what it might mean to tell the truth to yourself.
--
Links
- “The Beatitudes” is a list of blessings Jesus bestows in his Sermon on the Mount in the gospel of Matthew, chapter 5. You can read the Message translation that Micha reads in the slow practice here.
- Find Richard Rohr’s book Jesus’s Plan For a New World here.
- This essay originally appeared in The Slow Way Newsletter here
- Find Micha's website and sign up for her weekly newsletter here
- Find Micha on Instagram
- Find Micha on Twitter
- Micha's other podcast, The Lucky Few, is all about Down syndrome advocacy. She cohosts it with Heather Avis and Mercedes Lara.
- Found: A Story of Questions, Grace, and Everyday Prayer is available everywhere books are sold
I've been thinking recently that prayer is a returning to love. And maybe if that’s the case, we can get rid of the upward image we often carry with us about what life is supposed to be. That we are moving up a line on a graph, moving from Point A (birth, at the left-side base of the graph) and ending up at the right hand corner. Complete. Final. Having checked off our big life dreams as we went. Instead, I think, life is like faith: circular, moving round and round, faster and faster, tighter as you get to the bottom. It’s like a tornado, really. We move around and around the sun, but also around and around each other, being pulled tighter toward what we’ve made the center, as life brings us closer to the point at the bottom of things.
- This reflection and practice were also published this week in The Slow Way Newsletter
- Find a transcript of this episode here.
- Find Micha's website and sign up for her weekly newsletter here
- Check out The Slow Way online store
- Find Micha on Instagram
- Find Micha on Twitter
- Micha's other podcast, The Lucky Few, is all about Down syndrome advocacy. She cohosts it with Heather Avis and Mercedes Lara.
- Found: A Story of Questions, Grace, and Everyday Prayer is available everywhere books are sold
One of the greatest gifts I was given in my childhood in the Church was the idea that God wants to speak to me, that God could “lay” something “on our hearts” or “lead” us to a decision. That God cares about the state of our internal consciousness. And not just that, God actually moves within that consciousness to act and guide us if we learn to listen. That idea has shaped my life in ways I can’t begin to name. Sometimes I wonder if that might just be the most important thing I learned in childhood: how to recognize when the Divine was stirring something inside me, forming me, inviting me to change direction.
What sounds complicated is actually simple enough for the ten-year-old I was. The Divine is calling, “Who will go?” And if we’re listening, we’re all invited to say, “I will.”
Join me in thinking about divine compulsions and attention in this episode.
Links:
- This reflection and practice were also published this week in The Slow Way Newsletter.
- Read Simone Weil’s Waiting for God here.
- Find a transcript of this episode here.
- Find Micha's website and sign up for her weekly newsletter here
- Check out The Slow Way online store
- Find Micha on Instagram
- Find Micha on Twitter
- Micha's other podcast, The Lucky Few, is all about Down syndrome advocacy. She cohosts it with Heather Avis and Mercedes Lara.
- Found: A Story of Questions, Grace, and Everyday Prayer is available everywhere books are sold
I have spent my life feeling somewhat outside of normal, experiencing my feelings in a way that felt unacceptable to the culture I was raised in. I cried too much as a kid, spent too much time alone in my room writing in my journal as a teen, or listening to sad, meaningful music as a young twenty-something. I often felt like my sadness didn’t measure up with the story of God I wanted to live into. I was supposed to find joy in the Lord! I was supposed to be fun and cool and especially caring so other people would want to know about Jesus. But I often found sorrow in the stories of the Bible I read each day as a 16-year-old Jesus-kid. Why didn’t people talk about how sad the Bible was? All those sick people needing healing? All the people who rejected Jesus’s words and went away confused?
Maybe you’ve felt this way before too. Let’s reflect on this together.
Links:
- This reflection and practice were also published this week in The Slow Way Newsletter.
- Read Bittersweet by Susan Cain here.
- Find a transcript of this episode here.
- Find Micha's website and sign up for her weekly newsletter here
- Check out The Slow Way online store
- Find Micha on Instagram
- Find Micha on Twitter
- Micha's other podcast, The Lucky Few, is all about Down syndrome advocacy. She cohosts it with Heather Avis and Mercedes Lara.
Found: A Story of Questions, Grace, and Everyday Prayer is available everywhere books are sold
Today I’m reflecting on the recent events in our world and wondering what to do next. This is a question I ask myself, and that I asked that day when I got the news about the school shooting. What is the appropriate way to respond? Is there a moment when the suffering around us becomes too much? When we can’t hold it all anymore, and we retreat into our small circles of relationships and focus on the world we can see and touch and experience in the places we live?
I believe that as we learn to value the goodness in our lives, we find the emotional strength to hold the pain of the world, to grieve collectively, and to recognize that no suffering outside of us or inside of us can be fixed to the accumulation of more.
Links:
- This reflection and practice were also published this week in The Slow Way Newsletter.
- Read Brené Brown’s Atlas of the Heart here.
- Find a transcript of this episode here.
- Find Micha's website and sign up for her weekly newsletter here
- Check out The Slow Way online store
- Find Micha on Instagram
- Find Micha on Twitter
- Micha's other podcast, The Lucky Few, is all about Down syndrome advocacy. She cohosts it with Heather Avis and Mercedes Lara.
- Found: A Story of Questions, Grace, and Everyday Prayer is available everywhere books are sold
Love is all of it. Love is the force we call God. Love is the feeling. Love is the action between two old friends, and the generosity between you and your waiter at lunch today. And in that broad definition, I think those of us who call ourselves Christian can step toward theology: not the kind that draws lines of who’s in and who’s out, of who gets it and who obviously doesn’t, but to lean toward a theology of God as Love that is moving toward all of us, calling each of us to come close, to experience a Love that transforms everything, and ultimately teaches us what to do with the feelings in our chest: how to turn the feeling of love into a way of living that transforms our relationships, visions of ourselves, and our small worlds. I originally published this episode much earlier this year, but the message still rings true today. Enjoy this replay of one of my favorites this week, friends.
Links:
- Find a transcript of this episode here.
- Find Micha's website and sign up for her weekly newsletter here
- Find Micha on Instagram
- Find Micha on Twitter
- Micha's other podcast, The Lucky Few, is all about Down syndrome advocacy. She cohosts it with Heather Avis and Mercedes Lara.
- Found: A Story of Questions, Grace, and Everyday Prayer is available everywhere books are sold
When I started writing my newsletter, I wanted to explore the “breathless pace” of our culture. I wanted to offer an alternative way of living that taps into our soul’s need for rest, meaning, and authentic connection with ourselves, each other, and the world around us. What I didn’t expect is how much my personal journey of grief would help me understand a core truth: that the hectic pace of our culture is actually an overflow of our failure to grieve. There is so much loss in our shared earth, and in our individual lives, and we don’t know how to hold grief and hope in the same hand. Real humanity must include grief over what has been lost. So where do we start?
Links:
- This reflection and practice were also published this week in The Slow Way Newsletter.
- Read The Wild Edge of Sorrow by Francis Weller
- Find a transcript of this episode here.
- Find Micha's website and sign up for her weekly newsletter here
- Check out The Slow Way online store
- Find Micha on Instagram
- Find Micha on Twitter
- Micha's other podcast, The Lucky Few, is all about Down syndrome advocacy. She cohosts it with Heather Avis and Mercedes Lara.
- Found: A Story of Questions, Grace, and Everyday Prayer is available everywhere books are sold
The more I explore rest, slowness, and the remarkable idea that we can’t hustle enough to overcome our humanity (which is to say, our mortality), the more I feel drawn to a reality underneath these invitations toward slowness: our finitude. I’m talking about our limits, our inability to live a multitude of lives in this one. We are contained here, to the careers we’ve chosen or that have chosen us. To the people we’ve loved, and the small circles of relationship we can truly invest in. And, as much as we might wish otherwise, to the place where we live.
Every stretch outside of those finite realities will require an exchange. In this episode, I’m talking about the choices I’ve made and have not made, the reality of our human frailty, and our desperate need for hope. I’m also walking you through a list-writing exercise to write a poem about someone you love. Tune in for more.
Links:
- This reflection and practice were also published this week in The Slow Way Newsletter.
- Read No Cure For Being Human by Kate Bowler
- Find a transcript of this episode here.
- Find Micha's website and sign up for her weekly newsletter here
- Check out The Slow Way online store
- Find Micha on Instagram
- Find Micha on Twitter
- Micha's other podcast, The Lucky Few, is all about Down syndrome advocacy. She cohosts it with Heather Avis and Mercedes Lara.
- Found: A Story of Questions, Grace, and Everyday Prayer is available everywhere books are sold
Long before my dad got sick I had left behind (mostly) the notion of God making some divine plan out of our most horrible realities. I didn’t want to be part of a divine will that left babies dead at birth, or that allowed 3-year-olds to get cancer. Not a divine will that determines who gets born into a dangerous family environment, allows children to be abused, or intends for an entire community to be devastated by drought, floods, or war. I don’t want to believe that God had a special will that included one friend dying of cancer at the age of 43, or another dying suddenly at the age of 37. What I cling to is a faith that says there is a Holy One who makes all things new. There is a Spirit who reaches into the devastation (why the devastation happens is a mystery) and creates life in the death. I want to believe that every good and perfect gift is from above, whether or not I understand why there are ugly and devastating things that happen simultaneously, along with all the goodness. I'm reflecting on grief and my own mortality this week. Join me in this new episode.
Links:
- This reflection and practice were also published this week in The Slow Way Newsletter.
- Listen to Evolving Faith podcast
- Find a transcript of this episode here.
- Find Micha's website and sign up for her weekly newsletter here
- Check out The Slow Way online store
- Find Micha on Instagram
- Find Micha on Twitter
- Micha's other podcast, The Lucky Few, is all about Down syndrome advocacy. She cohosts it with Heather Avis and Mercedes Lara.
- Found: A Story of Questions, Grace, and Everyday Prayer is available everywhere books are sold
When women are encouraged to find purpose and value wherever their gifts and desires lead them, whether toward traditional mothering or outside of it, the world thrives. When women are released from tired scripts about their purpose, they’re able to make meaning in a way that serves us all.
As we move toward Mother’s Day, I hope all of us, men, women, and gender non conforming, mothers and non-mothers, will take the time to ask what desire we are invited to open like a door, and what it might look like to invite God to transform that desire into devotion. Knowing that our God-given worth has nothing to do with the stories our culture tells us about what makes us valuable, but everything to do with the value inherent in us. We are made in the image of God, loved as our unique selves, and our desires, when offered to the world in love, can lead to the flourishing of all of us.
Links:
- This reflection and practice were also published this week in The Slow Way Newsletter.
- Read “Someone Other Than A Mother” by Erin S. Lane
- Find a transcript of this episode here.
- Find Micha's website and sign up for her weekly newsletter here
- Check out The Slow Way online store
- Find Micha on Instagram
- Find Micha on Twitter
- Micha's other podcast, The Lucky Few, is all about Down syndrome advocacy. She cohosts it with Heather Avis and Mercedes Lara.
- Found: A Story of Questions, Grace, and Everyday Prayer is available everywhere books are sold
I’ve spent the past decade pushing back on what I would now call the “toxic positivity” of evangelical Christian culture, pushing from within at first, and now speaking from outside, about the dangers of soul-crushing theology dressed up as personal transformation, and that culture’s tendency to bury the ones who are crushed in the process. What if the way toward Easter life is found in the wisdom of our own mortality, in the real and powerful acknowledgement that we are limited creatures, here for a limited amount of time, and invited to make the world a place that looks like the kind of life Jesus offered in his resurrected body: whole, scarred, on the other side of hell, transformed, and transforming others through forgiveness. In this week’s podcast, I’m thinking about the days that come AFTER Easter, how we view our time and mortality, and also a sloth curled up in the rain (because I’m a mom of boys). Links:
- This reflection and practice were also published this week in The Slow Way Newsletter.
- Click HERE for free downloads/printables for our Easter themes.
- If you feel like it, check out the docuseries with the sloth here.
- Read Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals by Oliver Burkeman here.
- Find a transcript of this episode here.
- Find Micha's website and sign up for her weekly newsletter here
- Check out The Slow Way online store
- Find Micha on Instagram
- Find Micha on Twitter
- Micha's other podcast, The Lucky Few, is all about Down syndrome advocacy. She cohosts it with Heather Avis and Mercedes Lara.
- Found: A Story of Questions, Grace, and Everyday Prayer is available everywhere books are sold
How do we talk about Easter? The truth is, listener, I have a much easier time talking about the sad days: the Ash Wednesdays, the Good Fridays. I’m a melancholy type all the way through. Celebrating is something I’ve learned to do, but dang. Sometimes it’s hard for me. Today we’re supposed to wake up and remember (believe, even!) that all things are being made new. That the Holy One who was killed by the powers of the empire isn’t defeated. That there is something in this universe more powerful than Death itself.
Happy Easter, friends. Here’s to a bigger resurrection than we ever thought possible.
Links:
- This reflection and practice were also published this week in The Slow Way Newsletter.
- Click HERE for free downloads/printables
- Check out The Slow Way online store
- Find a transcript of this episode here.
- Find Richard Rohr’s book The Universal Christ here.
- Find Micha's website and sign up for her weekly newsletter here
- Find Micha on Instagram
- Find Micha on Twitter
- Micha's other podcast, The Lucky Few, is all about Down syndrome advocacy. She cohosts it with Heather Avis and Mercedes Lara.
- Found: A Story of Questions, Grace, and Everyday Prayer is available everywhere books are sold
Today is Good Friday, one of the days of the Christian calendar that I’ve always connected most deeply to. Not because I love thinking about crucifixion or because I think I can possibly grasp what happened on the cross. But because it’s a day we’re all allowed to be sad and mad and heartbroken and quiet at church. And if you ask me, we could do with a lot more of those kind of days. I hope you can relate to this special edition of The Slow Way as we head into Easter. Thanks for listening, friends.
Links:
- This reflection and practice were also published this week in The Slow Way Newsletter.
- Click HERE for free downloads/printables
- Check out The Slow Way online store
- Find a transcript of this episode here.
- Find Micha's website and sign up for her weekly newsletter here
- Find Micha on Instagram
- Find Micha on Twitter
- Micha's other podcast, The Lucky Few, is all about Down syndrome advocacy. She cohosts it with Heather Avis and Mercedes Lara.
- Found: A Story of Questions, Grace, and Everyday Prayer is available everywhere books are sold
What comes to mind when you consider your own ballooning faith — the life moments when your faith felt wild and out of your control, and perhaps also alive in a way that feels far off now? What do you do when faith feels like it floated so high you can no longer reach it? What does it look like to settle your faith into the earth, ground yourself in humility, in the recognition that you don’t have to understand everything, don’t have to have every answer, and can actually find your hope in the place of mystery?
As you walk through your own practice of Holy Week, remind yourselves of the teachings of Jesus, consider his washing of the disciples feet and his final Passover with his disciples, and as you sit with his heartbreaking prayers on Thursday night, what mystery are you invited into? What is the ache you notice in yourself? I wonder what it would mean for you to lean into that ache this week.
- This reflection and practice were also published this week in The Slow Way Newsletter.
- Click HERE for free downloads/printables
- Check out The Slow Way online store
- Find a transcript of this episode here.
- Find Micha's website and sign up for her weekly newsletter here
- Find Micha on Instagram
- Find Micha on Twitter
- Micha's other podcast, The Lucky Few, is all about Down syndrome advocacy. She cohosts it with Heather Avis and Mercedes Lara.
- Found: A Story of Questions, Grace, and Everyday Prayer is available everywhere books are sold
So much of the life of faith is a steady nourishment of ritual. We do the thing over and over, not because every spiritual practice feels particularly powerful, or because prayer is a switch we turn on or off in order to get to the presence of God. But because the ritual is like healthy food and exercise and sleep. It demands something of us. It requires us to pursue the long-term good over the short-term comfort. It shapes us slowly and deliberately. And eventually, it builds a structure where we’re tuned to the voice of God. Where we can hear the sound of the Divine because we’ve learned to listen.
One of my favorite rituals is my morning cup of coffee with my husband. I'm talking more about that in this week's episode. Thanks for listening, friends.
- This reflection and practice were also published this week in The Slow Way Newsletter.
- Click HERE for free downloads/printables
- Check out The Slow Way online store
- Find a transcript of this episode here.
- Find Micha's website and sign up for her weekly newsletter here
- Find Micha on Instagram
- Find Micha on Twitter
- Micha's other podcast, The Lucky Few, is all about Down syndrome advocacy. She cohosts it with Heather Avis and Mercedes Lara.
- Found: A Story of Questions, Grace, and Everyday Prayer is available everywhere books are sold
What if we treated all the utensils of our lives as if they were sacred? What if we blessed the kitchens where we throw together our twenty minute meals, and make the bed we will sleep in as if we were cozying up our space for the divine? What if the computer keys where we tap out messages on Slack are an invitation to love? What if the meeting we lead for our team of colleagues matters, not just to our career, but to the flourishing of the world? There’s a phrase that keeps coming back to me from the Torah, the Hebrew book of Deuteronomy: “The Lord will open the heavens, the storehouse of his bounty, to send rain on your land in season and to bless all the work of your hands.”
Our hands are holy, and they are invited by the Life-Peace-Grace-Maker to create meaning out of everything.
Links:
- This reflection and practice were also published this week in The Slow Way Newsletter.
- Click HERE for free downloads/printables
- Check out The Slow Way online store
- Find a transcript of this episode here.
- Find Micha's website and sign up for her weekly newsletter here
- Find Micha on Instagram
- Find Micha on Twitter
- Micha's other podcast, The Lucky Few, is all about Down syndrome advocacy. She cohosts it with Heather Avis and Mercedes Lara.
Found: A Story of Questions, Grace, and Everyday Prayer is available everywhere books are sold
The last massive migraine I had was in December, a handful of days before my dad died. He had stopped eating on a Thursday and that Friday I bought a flight, finished pre-Christmas tasks, and packed so I could make it to my parents in time to be with him for as long as he needed. That Saturday I was hit with a migraine and, as I was used to at that point, spent the afternoon in bed, medicated, with a heating pad on my neck and a lavender eye mask over my face. The next day I flew to Texas...
In this episode, I'm talking about the grief of losing my dad and the healing that has occured since. Join me for a conversation on spiritual and physical healing as I tell you a story about one of my last migraines.
Links:
- This reflection and practice were also published this week in The Slow Way Newsletter.
- Click HERE for free downloads/printables
- Check out The Slow Way online store
- Read more from @amyjuliabecker
- Find a transcript of this episode here.
- Find Micha's website and sign up for her weekly newsletter here
- Find Micha on Instagram
- Find Micha on Twitter
- Micha's other podcast, The Lucky Few, is all about Down syndrome advocacy. She cohosts it with Heather Avis and Mercedes Lara.
- Found: A Story of Questions, Grace, and Everyday Prayer is available everywhere books are sold
I’ve been thinking about light and darkness and waiting. This season of Lent is meant to be a season of darkness, an intentional time outside of feasting, outside of usual comforts. That intentionality is there as a way of pushing ourselves to notice that we are already living in a shadowed world, so used to dimness that we mistake the vague grayscale of our lives for color. Lent is a season to remind ourselves to see our own cracks and those around us as an invitation to more. Without seasons of intentional excavation of the shadows we live in, and the search for light, we can convince ourselves that the darkness is all there is: wars and power-mongering, individual glory at the expense of the common good, our own self-hatred and shame. But when we attend to those broken spaces, we find a way to the light we don’t always even know we’re seeking.
Links:
- This reflection and practice were also published this week in The Slow Way Newsletter.
- Click HERE for free downloads/printables
- Check out The Slow Way online store
- Read more from @sandramccracken, @amyjuliabecker, and @colearthurriley
- Find the newsletter from LM Sacasas here.
- Find a transcript of this episode here.
- Find Micha's website and sign up for her weekly newsletter here
- Find Micha on Instagram
- Find Micha on Twitter
- Micha's other podcast, The Lucky Few, is all about Down syndrome advocacy. She cohosts it with Heather Avis and Mercedes Lara.
- Found: A Story of Questions, Grace, and Everyday Prayer is available everywhere books are sold
This week I said something on Instagram about how fasting doesn’t need to equal suffering. What I meant was that there is enough suffering already in our lives. In the past ten years I’ve walked through a lost pregnancy, several terrifying diagnoses of my children, the death of a handful of beloved friends, the split of a church community I adored (caused by leadership decisions I had a hand in). I sat with my dad as he came to terms with his terminal illness and sat with him eleven months later when we ushered him to the end. And as I come to this first week of Lent at the tail-end of a pandemic, in a country divided into hardened edges, and watching an evil war catching flame before my eyes, I honestly can’t imagine choosing to suffer any extra bit right now.
Maybe you feel that way too? Now don’t hear me saying that suffering doesn’t cause growth. It sure does. And maybe suffering is the straightest path toward spiritual growth. But I don’t think we need to inflict external suffering on ourselves in order to grow. I am pretty sure I reject that idea completely.
Join me today as I reflect on how my concept of fasting has changed over time (I still can’t believe 23-year-old Micha was able to give up coffee for 40 days) and what my motivation for fasting is now.
Links:
- This reflection and practice were also published this week in The Slow Way Newsletter.
- Click HERE for free downloads/printables that say “we are becoming more fully alive to God”
- Read Hearts On Fire: Praying With Jesuits by Michael Harter here
- Find a transcript of this episode here.
- Find Micha's website and sign up for her weekly newsletter here
- Find Micha on Instagram
- Find Micha on Twitter
- Micha's other podcast, The Lucky Few, is all about Down syndrome advocacy. She cohosts it with Heather Avis and Mercedes Lara.
- Found: A Story of Questions, Grace, and Everyday Prayer is available everywhere books are sold
This past Thursday I was a wreck. Maybe some of you felt that way as well. Russia had invaded Ukraine and the seriousness of a war like this in Europe and what it means for all of us was heavy on me. I ache for my kids and the world they’re inheriting. Sometimes it feels like men grasping for power is still the very thing that just might kill us all. Or as my friend D.L. Mayfield wrote on Twitter last week, “I am so sick of violent men and the wars they start I could scream.”
The lectionary Gospel reading this past Sunday was from Luke 6, Jesus’ teaching that seems as wild and ridiculous as it did two thousand years ago: “Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you. If anyone strikes you on the cheek, offer the other also; and from anyone who takes away your coat do not withhold even your shirt.” How fitting.
The concept of “turning the other cheek” has been used to dominate, and to ask those without power to take their abuse with a smile. But what if the idea of turning the other cheek is a muscular, wholehearted response to violence? As my pastor said, “I will not respond from the place of pain [the cheek that was struck], I will [turn my healthy cheek and] respond from my wholeness.”
As we watch this unjust war unfold in the Ukraine, what could it mean for us to respond to violence from our wholeness?
Links:
- This reflection and practice were also published this week in The Slow Way Newsletter.
- Howard Thurman’s book Jesus and the Disinherited can be found here.
- Find a transcript of this episode here.
- Find Micha's website and sign up for her weekly newsletter here
- Find Micha on Instagram
- Find Micha on Twitter
- Micha's other podcast, The Lucky Few, is all about Down syndrome advocacy. She cohosts it with Heather Avis and Mercedes Lara.
- Found: A Story of Questions, Grace, and Everyday Prayer is available everywhere books are sold
As Ace’s mom, I’ve come to a conviction that the best, truest way of faith is the simplest. If it’s not an inclusive faith, if it demands jumping through belief hoops — rules of what it means to believe correctly — if my faith is not simple enough for my son to claim it as his own, I’ve missed the story. I was recently introduced to the work of E. Stanley Jones, a writer and Christian missionary to India in the early 20th century. I’m reading his book, The Christ of the Mount, published in 1931, and was immediately taken with the first page of Chapter One, in which he articulates something I’ve spent a lot of thought trying to grasp words for: Jesus, he says, is the simplification of God. In our quest for a slower life and a slower faith, this is a kind of shiny gold gift. Let’s simplify our belief. If we want to know what God is like, can we look at Jesus: Humble, always learning, unafraid to ask questions or grow, embracing those on the margins, bringing in the rejected, including everyone (especially the folks considered immoral), feasting, practicing gentleness, elevating justice, caring for the weakest around him, and pissing off the religious of his day with his inclusive message. He asks this of his followers: Do you believe that God can be this…me? Do you believe that healing is possible? Do you believe that there’s more to being alive than the daily grind of human existence? Do you believe that God is for you?
Links:
- This reflection and practice were also published this week in The Slow Way Newsletter.
- E. Stanley Jones’ book The Christ of the Mount can be found here.
- Find a transcript of this episode here.
- Find Micha's website and sign up for her weekly newsletter here
- Find Micha on Instagram
- Find Micha on Twitter
- Micha's other podcast, The Lucky Few, is all about Down syndrome advocacy. She cohosts it with Heather Avis and Mercedes Lara.
- Found: A Story of Questions, Grace, and Everyday Prayer is available everywhere books are sold
Here’s your reminder that doubt is not the thing that should trouble your soul. Fear is. The blessings of Jesus are particularly there for those who wrestle with their fear, hold it up to the light of Truth, and choose to embrace suffering for the sake of joining the good work of God in the world.
Can you imagine with me that in the dark distance a figure is coming. It’s beautiful. And it’s terrifying, because it is somehow the combination of your greatest regrets and failures and fears. It’s the embodiment of your own weaknesses and dread. And who wants to look at that? Take a moment to ask yourself, what do you need to wrestle? And what might be the blessing you need on the other side of your fear?
Links:
- This reflection and practice were also published this week in The Slow Way Newsletter.
- Find a transcript of this episode here.
- Find The Dream of God by Verna Dozier here.
- Find Micha's website and sign up for her weekly newsletter here
- Find Micha on Instagram
- Find Micha on Twitter
- Micha's other podcast, The Lucky Few, is all about Down syndrome advocacy. She cohosts it with Heather Avis and Mercedes Lara.
- Found: A Story of Questions, Grace, and Everyday Prayer is available everywhere books are sold
It may not shock you to hear that like the rest of the known world, I can’t get the soundtrack to Encanto out of my head. And, of course, we love “Surface Pressure.” The lyrics hit a little close to home for me, which I imagine might be the case for you as well. Because when Luisa, the superpowered older sister of Maribel, does everything she can to live up to her outward strength, and finds herself incapable of rest, unrelenting in her expectations of herself, we all understand the story she tells herself about her own value.
There is a reason so many of us feel the pressure that Luisa sings about in Encanto. We live in an empire, in a human-made system of the powerful and the powerless, and since the world began unraveling the truth that was born in us, in our original goodness given by God, we learn to slowly believe the lie of the Empire. It tells us that we can earn our place in the system. It tells us how to divide one another, how to assign value. We learn who is attractive, who is smart, who is capable, and we understand that if we want to have value, there are tasks to accomplish. There are people to please. There is a path toward winning.
Who am I if I can’t carry it all? Luisa sings. And maybe the question should be bigger: Who are we if any of us thinks we must carry it all? Lean toward beloved community, friend. Start with your own heart.
Links:
- This reflection and practice were also published this week in The Slow Way Newsletter.
- Find a transcript of this episode here.
- Find The Church Cracked Open by Stephanie Spellers here.
- Find Micha's website and sign up for her weekly newsletter here
- Find Micha on Instagram
- Find Micha on Twitter
- Micha's other podcast, The Lucky Few, is all about Down syndrome advocacy. She cohosts it with Heather Avis and Mercedes Lara.
- Found: A Story of Questions, Grace, and Everyday Prayer is available everywhere books are sold
It may not shock you to hear that like the rest of the known world, I can’t get the soundtrack to Encanto out of my head. And, of course, we love “Surface Pressure.” The lyrics hit a little close to home for me, which I imagine might be the case for you as well. Because when Luisa, the superpowered older sister of Maribel, does everything she can to live up to her outward strength, and finds herself incapable of rest, unrelenting in her expectations of herself, we all understand the story she tells herself about her own value.
There is a reason so many of us feel the pressure that Luisa sings about in Encanto. We live in an empire, in a human-made system of the powerful and the powerless, and since the world began unraveling the truth that was born in us, in our original goodness given by God, we learn to slowly believe the lie of the Empire. It tells us that we can earn our place in the system. It tells us how to divide one another, how to assign value. We learn who is attractive, who is smart, who is capable, and we understand that if we want to have value, there are tasks to accomplish. There are people to please. There is a path toward winning.
Who am I if I can’t carry it all? Luisa sings. And maybe the question should be bigger: Who are we if any of us thinks we must carry it all? Lean toward beloved community, friend. Start with your own heart.
Links:
- This reflection and practice were also published this week in The Slow Way Newsletter.
- Find a transcript of this episode here.
- Find The Church Cracked Open by Stephanie Spellers here.
- Find Micha's website and sign up for her weekly newsletter here
- Find Micha on Instagram
- Find Micha on Twitter
- Micha's other podcast, The Lucky Few, is all about Down syndrome advocacy. She cohosts it with Heather Avis and Mercedes Lara.
- Found: A Story of Questions, Grace, and Everyday Prayer is available everywhere books are sold
Growth is a gangly and uncomfortable season – whether it's the growth of our young teenage bodies, or the growth of our souls. We cannot enter into seasons of growth without instability and volatility. In other words, growth is awkward and uncomfortable. And there’s nothing we can do about that.
I have been reading and loving Lisa Colón DeLay’s book, The Wild Land Within. She describes the in-between seasons of growth this way: “God will always call us toward deeper, fuller lives. God beckons us toward more abundant joy and greater relief and solace.” Then she goes on to say, “Healing and spiritual growth, after it happens, look and feel like peace, gracious integration of yourself, and (felt) access to love and grace.”
There are so many moments of our spiritual lives when growth is going to force us to experience the discomfort of the in-between. More on the danger of growth in this week’s episode.
Links:
- This reflection and practice were also published this week in The Slow Way Newsletter.
- Find a transcript of this episode here.
- Find Micha's website and sign up for her weekly newsletter here
- Find Micha on Instagram
- Find Micha on Twitter
- Micha's other podcast, The Lucky Few, is all about Down syndrome advocacy. She cohosts it with Heather Avis and Mercedes Lara.
- Found: A Story of Questions, Grace, and Everyday Prayer is available everywhere books are sold
Love is all of it. Love is the force we call God. Love is the feeling. Love is the action between two old friends, and the generosity between you and your waiter at lunch today. And in that broad definition, I think those of us who call ourselves Christian can step toward theology: not the kind that draws lines of who’s in and who’s out, of who gets it and who obviously doesn’t, but to lean toward a theology of God as Love that is moving toward all of us, calling each of us to come close, to experience a Love that transforms everything, and ultimately teaches us what to do with the feelings in our chest: how to turn the feeling of love into a way of living that transforms our relationships, visions of ourselves, and our small worlds.
Links:
- This reflection and practice were also published this week in The Slow Way Newsletter.
- Find a transcript of this episode here.
- Find Micha's website and sign up for her weekly newsletter here
- Find Micha on Instagram
- Find Micha on Twitter
- Micha's other podcast, The Lucky Few, is all about Down syndrome advocacy. She cohosts it with Heather Avis and Mercedes Lara.
- Found: A Story of Questions, Grace, and Everyday Prayer is available everywhere books are sold
As much as it might be difficult to believe, you are not your intellect, your power, your success, your ability to fit in at a party. You are not your ability to be happy, or healthy, or rich. It’s your weaknesses that bring you into the upside down of God’s values.
When we let go of control, when we open our hands we are, as Richard Rohr writes,”in a very creative and liminal space where God is most free to act in our lives.” And that is faith: letting go of control, believing that the life of weakness is actually the life of the Most Blessed.
Spend some time today considering Jesus’s words in Matthew 5 and reflecting on what it might mean to tell the truth to yourself.
Links:
- “The Beatitudes” is a list of blessings Jesus bestows in his Sermon on the Mount in the gospel of Matthew, chapter 5. You can read the Message translation that Micha reads in the slow practice here.
- Find Richard Rohr’s book Jesus’s Plan For a New World here.
- This essay originally appeared in The Slow Way Newsletter this past June
- Find Micha's website and sign up for her weekly newsletter here
- Find Micha on Instagram
- Find Micha on Twitter
- Micha's other podcast, The Lucky Few, is all about Down syndrome advocacy. She cohosts it with Heather Avis and Mercedes Lara.
- Found: A Story of Questions, Grace, and Everyday Prayer is available everywhere books are sold
As I've been studying the Beatitudes I've begun to notice a circular pattern of generosity that begins with curiosity. When Jesus says blessed are the meek, or blessed are the poor in spirit, it's an invitation to those of us who don't see ourselves as meek or poor in spirit to be curious. Who are the meek? Where are they? And what does Jesus mean when he says they are blessed?
And as we become curious about the stranger---the one who makes inappropriate sounds in the back of the room, the child at the pool who doesn't act like other kids---that curiosity we practice is going to lead us to listen. Listening leads to knowing. And knowing leads to love. And once you begin to love the stranger you start to understand what Jesus means when he pronounces blessings upon the weak.
The supremely blessed, the ones Jesus invites all of us to know and love, are most often the ones the world tries to hide. Hush the noise maker in the back of the church. Move the child who's distracting out of the General Ed class and into the segregated classroom. Move out of the city and into a neighborhood where you no longer have to confront the suffering reality of homelessness. (Looking at myself here.)
It's a slow way, this business of listening, of searching for the blessed ones in the world. But I'm pretty certain that those who look for the ones Jesus blesses also end up finding Jesus along the way.
Links:
- “The Beatitudes” is a list of blessings Jesus bestows in his Sermon on the Mount in the gospel of Matthew, chapter 5. You can read it here.
- If you’d like to know about my life with Ace, who has a dual diagnosis of Down syndrome and autism, you can find our instagram account here.
- Find a link to Suzanne Stabile’s interview with Brian McClaren
- This essay originally appeared in The Slow Way Newsletter this past June
- Find Micha's website and sign up for her weekly newsletter here
- Find Micha on Instagram
- Find Micha on Twitter
- Micha's other podcast, The Lucky Few, is all about Down syndrome advocacy. She cohosts it with Heather Avis and Mercedes Lara.
- Found: A Story of Questions, Grace, and Everyday Prayer is available everywhere books are sold
We have moved into a new year, but love remains in last year. Everything that happened last year stretches its fingers into this one. What you loved and lost is still with you. And love doesn’t need the presence of a loved one to persevere.
Love is a gift we humans know and crave because it is the utter stuff of the divine. God is love, and when we love, we engage in the work of God. That means we do the same when our love perseveres as grief. The work of God.
When we sing "Auld Lang Syne" we're singing a story about love persevering, as Vision explained grief to Wanda in "WandaVision." When we grieve, we are a keeper of something true and beautiful.
Today, we consider what we may have lost in 2021, whether it's a person, a relationship, a community, a belief, our health, or even a sense of ourselves. Auld Lang Syne is an invitation to acknowledge the loss, and hold onto the goodness of love persevering. Because, after all, Love is the work of God.
Links:
- I found some helpful info on "Auld Lang Syne" from this article in USAToday.
- Find Tow'rs beautiful version of "Auld Lang Syne" on Spotify.
- Here's my Melancholy Christmas playlist on Spotify if you want to listen to continue the sad Christmas music into the new year. :)
- If you missed the phenomenon that was WandaVision last year, you can still watch it here.
- Find Micha's website and sign up for her weekly newsletter here
- Find Micha on Instagram
- Find Micha on Twitter
- Micha's other podcast, The Lucky Few, is all about Down syndrome advocacy. She cohosts it with Heather Avis and Mercedes Lara.
- Found: A Story of Questions, Grace, and Everyday Prayer is available everywhere books are sold
One gift of the last several years of my learning to hold both the beauty and the brokenness, the light and the dark, the faith and the doubt–all in one hand, is the knowing that Christmas, just like everything else in life, doesn’t have to be bruised forever by my own sorrow. It’s never one or the other, it’s always both. We are never asked to either celebrate or get off the Christmas train, though it may feel like that in our shiny-positive, instagram-curated culture.
The truth is that the Christmas story actually can hold all of it. There is a brokenness there in the giving of a child to humanity, the future knowledge of that child’s own suffering. There is a sorrow in the dirt and chill of his birth in a barn: his mother’s fear, his father’s angst.
On this Christmas Eve whatever you’ve lost this year, whatever you’re losing. Whatever you’re holding tight to. Whatever you’re celebrating. This is a reminder that Christmas is a both/and. God has made Godself known, through the coming of human child. God is here among us, in our broken spaces and our joy. In our hunger and our feasting. In the darkness, and in the light that shines.
- Find "You Took Your Own Heart" by The Brilliance on Spotify.
- "Both can be true," is a phrase I learned from Cara Meredith. Find her here and here.
- Find Micha's website and sign up for her weekly newsletter here
- Find Micha on Instagram
- Find Micha on Twitter
- Micha's other podcast, The Lucky Few, is all about Down syndrome advocacy. She cohosts it with Heather Avis and Mercedes Lara.
- Found: A Story of Questions, Grace, and Everyday Prayer is available everywhere books are sold
What about Mary? What did she know? What did she tell Jesus about the truth of his divinity? When scripture says he grew in wisdom and stature and favor, this is what I hear: His mama taught him to think deeply. His mama fed him and forced him to exercise. AND…his mama made sure he kept his manners, especially when arguing in the synagogue with the religious leaders of his day.
Today, as we near Christmas, I invite you to come close to this story in a fresh way. To consider what Mary witnessed as her son grew. To consider how much she was asked to sacrifice.
- Find Micha's poem "Christ's Mother Reflects: His Childhood" as well a transcript of the episode here. Note: Micha's poem is available for us with attribution to any group or person who wants to use it.
- Here's a link to Lucy Shaw's poem "Mary's Song," which is an epigraph in the beginning of Micha's poem.
- Find Micha's website and sign up for her weekly newsletter here
- Find Micha on Instagram
- Find Micha on Twitter
- Micha's other podcast, The Lucky Few, is all about Down syndrome advocacy. She cohosts it with Heather Avis and Mercedes Lara.
- Found: A Story of Questions, Grace, and Everyday Prayer is available everywhere books are sold
In the midst of her joy, perhaps Mary also knew a certain kind of darkness. Maybe she knew that the particular love she shared with her baby in those nine months would always be different from that time on. And that was all mixed in with the utter relief of holding him, of being on the other side of the suffering.
I wonder about Mary’s fragility. How weak and uncertain and terrified she must have felt.
And I wonder about you. How weak and uncertain and terrified you feel. I wonder what joy and sadness these weeks leading up to Christmas bring to the surface. Or if there’s a dread you carry with you. If there’s an uncertainty, or a fragility you don’t know how to name.
Today, can you sit in the silence and name it?
- Find Micha's poem "Darkness" as well a transcript of the episode here. Note: Micha's poem is available for us with attribution to any group or person who wants to use it.
- Find Micha's website and sign up for her weekly newsletter here
- Find Micha on Instagram
- Find Micha on Twitter
- Micha's other podcast, The Lucky Few, is all about Down syndrome advocacy. She cohosts it with Heather Avis and Mercedes Lara.
- Found: A Story of Questions, Grace, and Everyday Prayer is available everywhere books are sold
Elizabeth and Mary held each other up, carried each other through their seasons of pregnancy, and their faithfulness to this turbulent moment in one another’s lives set the foundation for the work of their little boys: John the Baptist who would go wild in the woods, eating locusts, preaching repentance, making baptism the sacred marker it is, and clearing a path for the ministry of his cousin, Jesus. John would die a gruesome death, and Jesus would grieve, and teach us how to grieve. John and Jesus loved and served each other well because their mothers set a path for them to do so.
Today, let's consider the foundation you’re laying with your life. This may not be a season of giving birth (either literally or metaphorically), but the truth is that we’re always prepping the land for something. And the foundation you lay now will be felt by the ones who come after you.
- Find Micha's poem "The Lord Is With Thee" as well a transcript of the episode here. Note: Micha's poem is available for us with attribution to any group or person who wants to use it.
- Find Micha's website and sign up for her weekly newsletter here
- Find Micha on Instagram
- Find Micha on Twitter
- Micha's other podcast, The Lucky Few, is all about Down syndrome advocacy. She cohosts it with Heather Avis and Mercedes Lara.
- Found: A Story of Questions, Grace, and Everyday Prayer is available everywhere books are sold
What is glory? Often folks in the Church throw that word "glory" around. It's over-used and under-sold. But what if glory is what Richard Rohr calls "The Really Real"? Or what Stephanie Spellers calls, "the dream of God coming true"? What if the manger scene is only a glimpse of the cosmic power of the coming of Christ, not only into the world, but into a Mystery we simply can't fathom?
Today we consider the glory beneath the flesh and dirt of the nativity story. We imagine the universe shook to its core by the power of Love.
- Find Micha's poem "How He Entered" as well a transcript of the episode here. Note: Micha's poem is available with attribution to any group or person who wants to use it.
- Find Micha's website and sign up for her weekly newsletter here
- Find Micha on Instagram at @michaboyett
- Find Micha on Twitter @michaboyett
- Micha's other podcast, The Lucky Few, is all about Down syndrome advocacy. She cohosts it with Heather Avis and Mercedes Lara.
- Found: A Story of Questions, Grace, and Everyday Prayer is available everywhere books are sold.
Today we consider the reality underneath the surface of things in the story of the mother of Christ. What it might mean to be a girl given care of all the power in the universe? Did she grasp what she was signing onto? Was she capable of holding the deep truth of her calling?
Today we imagine that she was aware, that she envisioned the depth of her own calling. And we spend a little time considering how we might live into our own stories, even when the story is not one we were expecting.
- Find Micha's poem "Star" as well a transcript of the episode here. Note: Micha's poem is available for us with attribution to any group or person who wants to use it.
- Here's a link to Lucy Shaw's poem "Mary's Song," which is an epigraph in the beginning of Micha's poem.
- Find Micha's website and sign up for her weekly newsletter here
- Find Micha on Instagram
- Find Micha on Twitter
- Micha's other podcast, The Lucky Few, is all about Down syndrome advocacy. She cohosts it with Heather Avis and Mercedes Lara.
- Found: A Story of Questions, Grace, and Everyday Prayer is available everywhere books are sold
Since we're starting out The Slow Way Podcast with a six-part Advent series, we thought it might be nice for any listeners new to the practice of Advent to have a little primer on the subject.
Though Advent's been around since the 5th century, it hasn't often been practiced in many non-liturgical, protestant churches. So if you haven't heard of it--other than in reference to candy calendars or wreaths--do not fear!
Listen up for Micha's quick overview of Advent's history and why many folks in non-liturgical churches are coming back around to the idea.
Welcome to The Slow Way Podcast, a space for all of us serial doers and weary achievers. This podcast is a sacred space, where you can rest, quiet your breath, and remember who you are.
I believe that in order to learn slowness in our lives, we must first begin by learning slowness in our spirits. Many of us come to prayer or meditation as another task to accomplish, instead of a transformational process. Some of us need to let go of all the to-dos we carry with us when we come to spiritual practices, and simply learn to sit and breathe. To recognize that there is nothing to do in this moment of divine connection except to receive from a God who loves us.
Each episode will be short, just 10-15 minutes long. Something you can pop in while you walk the dog, or run your errands. Or something you can listen to in the quiet with your cup of coffee in the morning.
Here’s what you can expect. 8-10 minutes of reflection. I’ll guide you through a thought, a scripture passage, or just an idea I’m processing. Then 5 minutes of guided contemplative prayer in response. That’s it.
We’ll begin with six episodes specifically designed to guide us through the Advent season. Then in the new year, The Slow Way will be a weekly podcast.
The first episode drops Tuesday, December 7th. I really hope I meet you there.
Links
- Find Micha's website and sign up for her weekly newsletter here
- Find Micha on Instagram
- Find Micha on Twitter
- Micha's other podcast, The Lucky Few, is all about Down syndrome advocacy. She cohosts it with Heather Avis and Mercedes Lara.
- Found: A Story of Questions, Grace, and Everyday Prayer is available everywhere books are sold