The Daily Edify: Recent Episodes
Jeff Lehn
Get spiritually grounded and aligned with the flow of love each weekday morning with The Daily Edify. Each episode focuses on a spiritual practice, a poem, a book, a sacred text — something that can empower us to be more fully alive to the gift that is the day before us. Jeff Lehn is a pastor in Chicago, and has a heart for all people to live authentic, joyful and compassionate lives.
Today's episode is about empathic distress. It's what we experience when we feel the pain of others' but feel unable to help alleviate it. Instead, we're invited to let our empathy be a pathway to compassion, an active place where we can acknowledge the suffering of someone, assuring them of our support, and seek to help them.
Today's episode is about being mindful of the preciousness of life and making two-degree shifts toward "eulogy virtues," the things that matter most. I tell the story of downloading the app, "WeCroak," and how it has grounded me in these weighty days. Thanks for listening!
Today's episode is inspired by a question I first heard from Barbara Brown Taylor: "What's saving your life right now?" It's a powerful question that invites us to name concrete things that are helping us stay attuned to what matters most. I answer the question for myself - and it would be different a day from now and certainly a year from now. But that's part of its generativity. I encourage you to answer the question for yourself, tell a loved one and ask them to answer it too.
Today's episode is about how change actually happens: not through outside heroes to swoop in and work on their own, but through small groups of dedicated people who want to heal the world. We hear a few lines from Margaret Mead, Howard Thurman and John Paul Lederach, but then spend a few minutes on the recent TED talk by David Lamotte, "Why Heroes Don't Change the World." How can you be part of realizing God's dream in the three-feet around you right now? Which 2-3 people can you meet with to work on something that breaks your heart right now?
Today's episode is about the cliche, "Life is short." We explore how being fierce with reality can be clarifying and animating for our life. I mention a few recent books: Life Is Short by Dean Nickles and Four Thousand Weeks by Oliver Burkemann. And then we end with words from Henri Frederic-Amiel, "Life is short, so we do not have much time to gladden the hearts of those who walk with us. So be swift to love and make haste to be kind." Deep peace to you, friends!
Today's episode is about the practice of "scruffy hospitality," a term coined by Jack King. I learned about it from the recent book by Oliver Burkemann, Meditations for Mortals. The basic idea is that we need to forgo "hospitality with excellence" for the more human and compelling "scruffy hospitality" - a way of living and inviting others into our presence that reminds us we are human.
Today's episode is about "joyspan," a new concept I learned about recently. Rather than "lifespan" or "healthspan," "joyspan" focuses on the quality of our life and how we might grow, adapt, give and connect with others, especially in the second half of life. The term was coined by Dr. Kerry Burnright, who served as a professor at UC Irvine for nearly 20 years, and who recently came out with a book, "Joyspan: The Art and Science of Thriving in Life's Second Half."
I'd love to hear from you at thedailyedify@gmail.com. Thanks for listening, friends. You are loved and never alone!
Today's episode is about a conviction of Desmond Tutu, archbishop of South Africa, which later became a hymn. I share a story I learned about from the spiritual autobiography of him I read a couple of years ago, written by this long-time assistant, Michael Battle. In the midst of so much fear and brokenness in the world, it's crucial for me to remember the deepest truths and this story and hymn help me do that. I hope it helps you, too, friends.
Feedback? I'd love to hear from you at thedailyedify@gmail.com. Thanks for listening, friends. You are loved and never alone!
Today's episode is about the potent theological symbol of the table - a place of gathering, connection and sustenance. We remember who and whose we are. This summer, we've been "eating our way" through the Gospel of Luke with Jesus. His table practice was radical, inspiring the harshest criticism from his opponents (e.g. "a glutton and drunkard...a friend of tax collectors and sinners it"). This focus on the table has been blessing and inspiring me in this tumultuous time we are living through. How can we gather with others around the table to remind ourselves that we belong to one another?
Feedback? I'd love to hear from you at thedailyedify@gmail.com. Thanks for listening, friends. You are loved and never alone!
Today's episodes is about "thresholds" - those times of transition in our lives and what they offer to our spiritual lives. Thinking about our kids growing up, the changing seasons and the gift of being present to each moment given to us.
Feedback? I'd love to hear from you at thedailyedify@gmail.com. Thanks for listening, friends. You are loved and never alone!
Today's episode is about the beatitudes of Jesus - why they still matter and how we can take our cue from them in these tumultuous times. Sorry for the long hiatus! It's good to be back today.
Feedback? I'd love to hear from you at thedailyedify@gmail.com. Thanks for listening, friends. You are loved and never alone!
Today's episode is about the invitation to "get proximate." It comes from Bryan Stephenson, the celebrated human rights lawyer and founder of the Equal Justice Initiative. He encourages us to get proximate, get close, to those who are on the margins, disfavored, homeless and incarcerated. That's how we truly see them and find deep connection. I learned a lot more about Stephenson and his work last November, when a group of us from our church went on pilgrimage to Alabama for three days, visiting Selma, Montgomery and Birmingham.
Feedback? I'd love to hear from you at thedailyedify@gmail.com. Thanks for listening, friends. You are loved and never alone!
Today's episode is about the "reverse golden rule." We've all heard of the Golden Rule, found in all major world religions - in Christianity, we hear Jesus say in the Sermon on the Mount, "Do unto others and you would have them do unto you." But the "reverse golden rule" is the opposite of that - treating yourself in the way you reflexively treat others. Sometimes the most difficult person to love is ourselves. This is very similar to the practice of self-compassion, something we've discussed on this podcast before (check out the work of Dr. Kristin Neff to learn more). The point here is not to be self-indulgent, but to love ourselves in such a way that we can bear God's image and live in and for love in the world, which is always God's dream for all of us.
Feedback? I'd love to hear from you at thedailyedify@gmail.com. Thanks for listening, friends. You are loved and never alone!
Today's episode is about the concept of finite and infinite games. It was developed by religion scholar James Carse, a longtime professor at NYU. He wrote a book of the same title in the mid 1980s and the idea is really generative. In a finite game, there is a clear winner and loser, the rules are static and the game ends. In an infinite game, the purpose is to simply continue the games, the rules change over time and there are no winners or losers. This reframing has helped me understand the work of building the beloved community differently, and given me strength to keep on keeping on.
Feedback? I'd love to hear from you at thedailyedify@gmail.com. Thanks for listening, friends. You are loved and never alone!
Today's episode is about the changing of seasons and the remembrance of All Saints' last Sunday. We recite Kathleen McTigue's poem, "They Are With Us Still," and wonder about the impact of the saints, the ancestors, those who've gone before us in this life - making our living possible, encouraging us on, modeling for us how to live the way of love.
Feedback? I'd love to hear from you at thedailyedify@gmail.com. Thanks for listening, friends. You are loved and never alone!
Today's episode is about a lovely blessing from Julian of Norwich, entitled "God's Love for Us." A friend shared it with me during my sabbatical and reciting it as becoming part of my morning routine. It has helped me relax into the bigness and beauty of God's love.
Feedback? I'd love to hear from you at thedailyedify@gmail.com. Thanks for listening, friends. You are loved and never alone!
After a long hiatus, we're back with a new episode today about home. I share a bit more about my sabbatical during spring/summer and a visit to Holy Wisdom Monastery (Madison, WI) in particular. While there, I learned a beautiful rendition of the Lord's Prayer that I recite and then discuss for a moment.
Feedback? I'd love to hear from you at thedailyedify@gmail.com. Thanks for listening, friends. You are loved and never alone!
Today's episode is about grace. We read Denise Levertov's lovely poem, "The Avowal," and reflect on a mantra I've come to cherish recently: "Grace has brought me safe thus far and grace will lead me home" (drawn from the hymn, "Amazing Grace").
Feedback? I'd love to hear from you at thedailyedify@gmail.com. Thanks for listening, friends. You are loved and never alone!
Today's episode is about the juxtaposition yesterday of Ash Wednesday and Valentine's Day. I mention a helpful article from the Atlantic written by Esau McCauley, and the book by Brian Doyle, "One Long River of Song."
Feedback? I'd love to hear from you at thedailyedify@gmail.com. Thanks for listening, friends. You are loved and never alone!
Glad to be back after a hiatus, friends!
Today's episode is about light and darkness. They are not oppositional, but complementary forces with a symbiotic relationship. It's the Advent theme our church focused on in December and is generative for our spiritual lives, especially in these humdrum days of February. I reference Barbara Brown Taylor's book, "Learning to Walk in the Dark," Simon and Garfunkel's song, "The Sound of Silence," and invite us to consider all the goodness that comes to us in the dark (as well as the light).
Feedback? I'd love to hear from you at thedailyedify@gmail.com. Thanks for listening, friends. You are loved and never alone!
Today's episode is about the spiritual practice of blessing - especially with our words. We begin with the most famous blessing in the whole Bible from Numbers 6:24-26 - "The Lord bless you and keep you..." We need to receive this blessing ourselves and then share it with others and with all creation. Our words don't confer, but reveal the blessing that's already there. The late Irish priest and poet John O'Donohue defines blessing another person as “drawing a circle of light around a person to protect, heal, and strengthen them.” What might it look like to do that more intentionally in your life?
Feedback? I'd love to hear from you at thedailyedify@gmail.com. Thanks for listening, friends. You are loved and never alone!
Today's episode, in anticipation of the Thanksgiving holiday, features a prayer by Ted Loder, "My Words Can't Carry All the Praise," from his book, Guerrillas of Grace. I hope you have a blessed holiday, friends.
Feedback? I'd love to hear from you at thedailyedify@gmail.com. Thanks for listening, friends. You are loved and never alone!
Today's episode is about the concept of flow developed by Hungarian-American psychologist, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. A flow state is when you are so absorbed in what you are doing that you lose all sense of yourself, and time seems to fall away, and you are flowing into the experience itself. He wrote a book in 2008, Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience, to explain the concept in an accessible way. You can learn more from him in a TED talk he gave back in 2004 here.
Feedback? I'd love to hear from you at thedailyedify@gmail.com. Thanks for listening, friends. You are loved and never alone!
Today's episode is about a concept I first heard Arianne preach about several years ago in a sermon at the church we served together in Fort Wayne. The concept is "the cushion of the sea," and it comes from Arthur Pierson. The gist is that there's a layer of the ocean so deep that it remains undisturbed, completely calm, even when the storms and wind are churning the much more shallow waters above it. God's love and light and life are like that. God's peace is like that. It can be an anchor for us, as our lives and the life of the world are facing profound fear, anxiety and violence.
Feedback? I'd love to hear from you at thedailyedify@gmail.com. Thanks for listening, friends. You are loved and never alone!
Today's episode is an invitation to tend to your own pain, as we reel from terror and war in Israel and Gaza in these very difficult days. We talk about what is ours to do, Richard' Rohr's line about pain ("If we don't transform our pain, we will most assuredly transmit it") and the call to engage in healing of ourselves, so that we can be more fully alive in the world.
Feedback? I'd love to hear from you at thedailyedify@gmail.com. Thanks for listening, friends. You are loved and never alone!
Today's episode is about the "eight wonders of life" that Dacher Keltner articulates in his new book, "Awe: The New Science of Everyday Wonder and How it Can Transform Your Life." He defines awe as the feeling of being in the presence of something vast that transcends your current understanding of the world. Fascinating and practical stuff.
Feedback? I'd love to hear from you at thedailyedify@gmail.com. Thanks for listening, friends. You are loved and never alone!
Today's episode is about something I've learned from my social worker friends: unconditional positive regard. As my friend and colleague Allison Bengfort writes, "It's an intentional, emotional posture that the best therapists extend to their clients...assum[ing ]the best in the client. It assumes that the client is inherently good, worthy, and worthwhile. It is able to separate misguided choices and challenging behaviors from who the person is deep down." We explore this posture in our lives and how we might cultivate it further.
Feedback? I'd love to hear from you at thedailyedify@gmail.com. Thanks for listening, friends. You are loved and never alone!
Today's episode is about the spiritual practice of gratitude - in particular, deep gratitude. We touch on a retreat I attended last week, a line from the apostle Paul's letter, 1 Thessalonians ("Give thanks in all circumstances") and Diana Butler Bass' recent book, Grateful: The Transformative Power of Giving Thanks.
Feedback? I'd love to hear from you at thedailyedify@gmail.com. Thanks for listening, friends. You are loved and never alone!
Today's episode features a short poem by Dawna Markova, "I Will Not Die an Unlived Life." It reflects on how to inhabit our lives, risk our tender significance, and set aside the voices of fear. It invites us to embrace our lives as they actually are, receive the seed we've been given and to nourish them to blossom and then fruit.
I first heard this poem at a coaching summit for pastors four years ago in Bloomington, Illinois, and it blesses me still to this day. I hope it blesses you too.
Feedback? I'd love to hear from you at thedailyedify@gmail.com. Thanks for listening, friends. You are loved and never alone!
Today's episode is about the practice of forgiveness - I primarily draw from my experience with the Christian tradition, but the act of forgiving is part and parcel of what it means to be human. And, in recent years, many other disciplines have taken up the topic of forgiveness, exploring its relevance to their field, from psychology to medical science to philosophy to evolutionary biology.
What is human forgiveness and how do we go about it? We talk a bit about the practice, and I mention the book by Desmond and Mpho Tutu, "The Book of Forgiving: The Fourfold Path for Healing Ourselves and Our World," citing the path it suggests as a way to approach the difficult, costly and complex work of forgiveness.
Feedback? I'd love to hear from you at thedailyedify@gmail.com. Thanks for listening, friends. You are loved and never alone!
Today's episode is about failure, and the invitation to keep doing it in our life, our work, our faith, and our relationship. Failure is human. Failure is healthy. Failure is how we grow. We share stories about James Dyson, Dr. Norm Larsen, the apostle Paul, among others. We end with a mention of the recent book, In Praise of Failure: Four Lessons in Humility. Let's reframe failure as inevitable, as part of life, as an opportunity to grow.
Feedback? I'd love to hear from you at thedailyedify@gmail.com. Thanks for listening, friends. You are loved and never alone!
Today's episode is about something neuroscientists are teaching us through their research: negative and critical thoughts are like velcro - they stick and hold. Whereas positive and joyful thoughts are like teflon - they slide away. These thoughts can come from others or ourselves. This is part of a "negativity bias" we all have. But there's a way to counteract this tendency. We can learn to hold onto the good and loving things or thoughts that come our way. In order for them to imprint in our "implicit memory," scientists tell us we need to consciously savor them for at least 15 seconds. Otherwise, they often slide away.
Feedback? I'd love to hear from you at thedailyedify@gmail.com. Thanks for listening, friends. You are loved and never alone!
Today's episode features is blessing by the inimitable John O'Donohue, "For the Traveler." It's drawn for his book, "To Bless the Space Between Us," which is one of Arianne and I's all time favorites - chock full of gorgeous and evocative language that offers blessings for various and sundry life moments.
As my family prepares to take a trip this week, I'm thinking of this blessing and the gift it invites us into. I hope it blesses you as well!
Feedback? I'd love to hear from you at thedailyedify@gmail.com. Thanks for listening, friends. You are loved and never alone!
Today's episode is about the concept of blue minding, first popularized by the marine biologist, Wallace Nichols. The basic idea is that being in or near blue water reduces stress and helps us get grounded in a primal and spiritual way. Since our bodies are 60% water and our brains are 75% water, this makes intuitive sense.
I've always found being in or near water to be a "thin place," and I'm grateful to have this term and set of research to make better sense of it.
Feedback? I'd love to hear from you at thedailyedify@gmail.com. Thanks for listening, friends. You are loved and never alone!
Today's episode is about Loretta Ross and her courageous and brilliant work that invites us to "call in" instead of "call out." Ross isan activist, public intellectual and professor of women’s studies at Smith College.
I find her invitation to be both challenging and helpful, a summons to improve the connection and understanding in our corner of the world. I learned about Ross from an article written three years ago, and it's stayed with me ever since. She also has a website (with a four-week online course) and moving TED talk.
Feedback? I'd love to hear from you at thedailyedify@gmail.com. Thanks for listening, friends. You are loved and never alone!
Today's episode is about the African concept of "ubuntu," inspired by my reading of the spiritual biography of Desmond Tutu. The basic idea is this: "a person is a person through other persons." The myth of the isolated, self-sufficient individual is not only misleading: it's wrong biologically, psychologically and spiritually. We explore what "ubuntu" might have to offer us as a framework for leading our lives in this time of great challenge and great opportunity.
Here are a couple of links to explore "ubuntu" more deeply: here and here.
Feedback? I'd love to hear from you at thedailyedify@gmail.com. Thanks for listening, friends. You are loved and never alone!
Today's episode reflects on something I'm learning from the recent spiritual biography of Desmond Tutu, written by Michael Battle. "Goodness is given" is something I'm learning from Tutu's life - something that kept him sane and compassionate in his remarkable work to participate in resisting the evil regime of apartheid in South Africa in the 1980s and 90s.
Feedback? I'd love to hear from you at thedailyedify@gmail.com. Thanks for listening, friends. You are loved and never alone!
Today's episode is about a simple and funny story that happened to Arianne and Noah the other day. It reminded me of the spiritual practice I've committed to this summer: the practice of paying attention and engaging in joy and laughter.
Feedback? I'd love to hear from you at thedailyedify@gmail.com. Thanks for listening, friends. You are loved and never alone!
Today's episode is aptly titled "today." I share about one of my favorite yard signs in our neighborhood that I walk by a couple of days a week (it simply says "today!"), how often Jesus focuses our attention on "today," and a story from Greg Boyle about how this one-word meditation (on the word "today") has been an ancient spiritual practice in the Christian tradition (as it has been in many faith traditions) for centuries.
Feedback? I'd love to hear from you at thedailyedify@gmail.com. Thanks for listening, friends. You are loved and never alone!
Today's episode is me riffing on the "odd and wondrous calling" I'm privileged to live out. Here I'm referring to the work of being a pastor, but I would argue it applies to whatever your calling is - it may include what you do for a paycheck, but it may not. This is the work you have been put on this earth to do - your purpose, what puts you in the flow, the healing love you have to offer this world. Listen in as I share a recent series of things I had the opportunity to be part of.
Like you, some days I'm exhausted and wonder if anything I'm doing is helping anyone at all. And in other season I'm blown away with gratitude. Right now is the latter and I want to tell you about it as we enter the downshift of summer routines.
Feedback? I'd love to hear from you at thedailyedify@gmail.com. Thanks for listening, friends. You are loved and never alone!
Today's episode is about finding a summer mantra, a way to set an intention and deeply experience all that this season has to offer. We read one of favorite poems by Mary Oliver, "The Summer Day," and then I reflect on the mantra I've settled on this summer: paying attention. The idea is to look and listen, bear witness to the beauty and brokenness I see in myself, in others and in creation. I encourage you to land on a mantra for these warm and winsome days as you seek to be fully alive to the love that is your ever-present companion.
Feedback? I'd love to hear from you at thedailyedify@gmail.com. Thanks for listening, friends. You are loved and never alone!
Today's episode is about the work of Tricia Hersey, founder of the Nap Ministry (in 2016). I first learned of her work in the fall of 2022 that featured her new book coming out, "Rest Is Resistance: A Manifesto." (More recently, she has published the highly practical collection, "The Nap Ministry's Rest Deck: 50 Practices to Resist Grind Culture.")
Tricia views rest as an issue of racial and social justice, a connection to her enslaved ancestors and a way to resist white supremacy and capitalism. She runs a "Nap Chapel" in a little-used Presbyterian church down in Atlanta, where she lives with her husband and son. Her Instagram account, thenapministry, is the easiest way to connect with her inspiring work.
I'm pondering how to engage in deep and frequent rest this summer, as I take a break from the podcast and daydream about the next season that will begin in the fall. Feedback? I'd love to hear from you at thedailyedify@gmail.com. Thanks for listening, friends. You are loved and never alone!
Today's episode is about a story, "The Birthday of the World," that Rachel Naomi Remen received as a gift on her 4th birthday from her grandfather, an Orthodox Jewish rabbi. Last fall, she published the story, beautifully illustrated by Rachel Sumpter, as a children's book. It's a powerful and moving story about the creation of the world and our call to engage in healing the world with the unique light we've been given. We've read it with our kids a number of times and they love it!
Remen is trained as a pediatrician and for many years has taught medical students at UC San Francisco, focused on the art of healing. She has published two award-winning books, "Kitchen Table Wisdom" and "My Grandfather's Blessing." For more from Remen, listen to this interview with Krista Tippett or check our her website here.
Feedback? I'd love to hear from you at thedailyedify@gmail.com. Thanks for listening, friends. You are loved and never alone!
Today's episode is about epistemic humility, an idea that goes all the way to Socrates in Plato's "Apology." The basic idea is that we should be humble about anything that we know because it might be revised someday - with new knowledge, new language, new perspective. I was inspired to share after reading a recent article from the U of Chicago's "Center for Practical Wisdom" - which was founded 7-8 years ago to study how we might apply wisdom to our personal and communal lives.
Needless to say, our world is sorely lacking in epistemic humility, with the most outlandish rage-fueled pronouncements garnering the most attention and the most clicks. How might you embody epistemic humility in your life, your work, in your home, family and neighborhood? It may seem trivial, but this posture can change the world.
Feedback? I'd love to hear from you at thedailyedify@gmail.com. Thanks for listening, friends. You are loved and never alone!
Today's episode is about a poem by Padraig O'Tuama, "The Facts of Life" (drawn from his collection of poetry published in 2018, "Sorry for Your Troubles"). I first heard this poem about a year ago and it's been working on me ever since. It's moving and tender and piercing in its realism and wisdom.
After reading the poem, we reflect on a few of its lines and how they speak to the depth and rhythm of our spiritual journey. Here's a video of Padraig reciting the poem and explaining a bit more of its context.
Feedback? I'd love to hear from you at thedailyedify@gmail.com. Thanks for listening, friends. You are loved and never alone!
Today's episode is about the "myth of closure," a phrase I've borrowed from the recent book by family therapist, researcher and author, Pauline Boss (The Myth of Closure: Ambiguous Loss in a Time of Pandemic and Change). The basic idea is that, when it comes to grief, "closure" is an unhelpful and unattainable idea. In many ways, "closure" is a made-up media word that fails to capture the complexity of the grieving process.
It's more helpful to speak about grief in terms of learning to live it or finding meaning in it or beginning to carry it differently. Boss is most well known, however, for a term she coined in the 1970s as a graduate student: "ambiguous loss." This type of loss as a graduate student in the 1970s to articulate the type of grief that doesn't have official verification or immediate resolution (e.g. the death of a loved one when the body is not recovered; a loved one with Alzheimer's).
Feedback? I'd love to hear from you at thedailyedify@gmail.com. Thanks for listening, friends. You are loved and never alone!
Today's episode is about two German words and how to cultivate one instead of the other. Schadenfreude has entered the cultural lexicon here in the U.S. and can be defined as our tendency to take a cruel pleasure in the misfortune of others. Freudenfreude, however, is the something we can cultivate in its place - it means to take joy and happiness from the success of others. I read an article about Freudenfreude a few months ago and have been chewing on it ever since. How might we practice this today?
Feedback? I'd love to hear from you at thedailyedify@gmail.com. Thanks for listening, friends. You are loved and never alone!
Today's episode is about resume virtues vs. eulogy virtues, something David Brooks heard from his rabbi years ago and which he talks about in his book, The Road to Character.
Feedback? I'd love to hear from you at thedailyedify@gmail.com. Thanks for listening, friends. You are loved and never alone!
Today's episode is about the Japanese art form of kintsugi, which means "golden mending." I learned about this art form from a friend a few years ago and have returned to it often as a metaphor for faithful and generative living.
Kintsugi repairs broken pottery by mending the cracks with a gold lacquer. The breakage is viewed as part of the history of the object and not something to disguise. that doesn't .
Makoto Fujimara has written a recent book, Art and Faith: A Theology of Making, in which he devotes an entire chapter to kintsugi. He also speaks about it at length in the commencement address he gave a few years ago.
Feedback? I'd love to hear from you at thedailyedify@gmail.com. Thanks for listening, friends. You are loved and never alone!
Today's episode is about an early church tradition known as risus paschalis - the Latin phrase translates to "the Easter laugh" or "God's joke." If the best definition of a joke is one of exaggeration – the difference between what we expect and what we get – then the “joke” God played on the devil on Easter morning by raising Jesus from the dead is in a league of its own.
Often celebrated on the second Sunday of Easter, today many churches honor the risus paschalis tradition by holding a "Holy Humor Sunday." As Karl Barth, the towering 20th century Swiss theologian once said, "Laughter is the closest thing to the grace of God."
Feedback? I'd love to hear from you at thedailyedify@gmail.com. Thanks for listening, friends. You are loved and never alone!
Today's episode is inspired by the suddenly gorgeous spring (summer?) weather we've been having in Chicago this week. It's also about developing a "play ethic" (as opposed to merely a "work ethic), and reflecting on how playfulness is fundamental to a generative spirituality.
Dr. Stuart Brown is a psychiatrist and the founder of the National Institute for Play. He defines play as engaging in an activity for enjoyment, rather than for a serious or practical reason. Play has seven properties:
- it is apparently purposeless;
- it is voluntary;
- there is an inherent attraction to it;
- while doing it there is freedom from time;
- it diminishes the consciousness of self;
- it has improvisational potential (open, not ridged); and
- it has a continuation desire which makes you want to do it more.
I also mention the thoughtful and new-ish book by Brian Edgar, The God Who Plays: A Playful Approach to Theology and Spirituality. If I ever take a sabbatical, I want "play" to be the theme I focus on!
Feedback? I'd love to hear from you at thedailyedify@gmail.com. Thanks for listening, friends. You are loved and never alone!
Today's episode is about a snippet or two from the ministry of Jesus: (1) when the disciples were arguing about which one of them was the greatest and he welcomes a child to his side to teach about true greatness; (2) when the disciples were shooing away children, but Jesus is having none of it, and instead says if all of us don't receive the kingdom of God like children we will never enter it. A study by O.M. Bakke, "When Children Became People: The Birth of Childhood in Early Christianity," was helpful in making sense of how countercultural Jesus was in his intentional welcome of children and the way he treated them as whole people.
Feedback? I'd love to hear from you at thedailyedify@gmail.com. Thanks for listening, friends. You are loved and never alone!
Today's episode is about a spiritual practice I learned from Thomas Keating, the Trappist monk (1923-2018) who was a pioneer in the Christian contemplative prayer movement. For the past couple of years, I've started most days by reciting Keating's simple "welcoming practice" and offer it to you as a way to be grounded in God's love.
"Welcome, welcome welcome.
I welcome everything that comes to me today
because I know it's for my healing.
I welcome all thoughts, feelings, emotions, persons, situations, and conditions.
I let go of my desire for power and control.
I let go of my desire for affection, esteem, approval and pleasure.
I let go of my desire for survival and security.
I let go of my desire to change any situation, condition, person or myself.
I open to the love and presence of God and God's action within.
Amen."
Feedback? I'd love to hear from you at thedailyedify@gmail.com. Thanks for listening, friends. You are loved and never alone!
Today's episode is about Holy Week, the most important week in the Christian liturgical calendar. (It also a holy time for our Muslim friends who are practicing Ramanda, and our Jewish friends who are about to begin celebrating Passover.) It begins on Palm Sunday and ends on Holy Saturday, right before Easter. The four canonical gospels devote an extraordinary amount of space to the events of Holy Week, which suggests how crucial they are for seeing the face of God, which is suffering love and boundless compassion.
I share a couple of my favorite Holy Week spiritual practices: (1) reading the Passion account in one of the four gospels (I'm going to read Matthew's account this year); and (2) listening to sacred music (Handel's "Messiah" is a favorite - I love this recording by Voces8 from 2019).
Feedback? I'd love to hear from you at thedailyedify@gmail.com. Thanks for listening, friends. You are loved and never alone!
Today's episode is about "rule number six," a concept coined by Benjamin and Rosamund Zander in their thoughtful book, "The Art of Possibility." I first learned about this book about ten years ago on a clergy retreat, but was drawn to the wisdom of its practices to promote the "art of possibility." "Rule number six," one of the practices, is simple: don't take yourself too seriously.
Feedback? I'd love to hear from you at thedailyedify@gmail.com. Thanks for listening, friends. You are loved and never alone!
Today’s episode is about the practice of "awe walks" - which is just like it sounds. Taking a walk to cultivate awe. It doesn't cost anything - could be indoors or outdoors, though outdoors is better if you can manage it. It’s about unselfing the self, getting a wider perspective than the thoughts running through your own head.
Dacher Keltner’s new book on Awe is all over the place these days, and I plan on doing an episode on it once I finish reading it.
Feedback? I'd love to hear from you at thedailyedify@gmail.com. Thanks for listening, friends. You are loved and never alone!
Today's episode is about a concept from Howard Thurman called "the sound of the genuine" - something we can listen for in ourselves and in others. Thurman was a towering figure in the 20th century, but it not as well-known as other civil rights leaders, such as Martin Luther King Jr. (to whom he was a mentor). He was a theologian, philosopher, mystic, pastor and chaplain.
Feedback? I'd love to hear from you at thedailyedify@gmail.com. Thanks for listening, friends. You are loved and never alone!
Today's episode, released on March 17, is a nod to St. Patrick and his lesser-known breastplate prayer.
Feedback? I'd love to hear from you at thedailyedify@gmail.com. Thanks for listening, friends. You are loved and never alone!
Today's episode is about the recent book by Ed Yong, "An Immense World: How Animals Senses Reveal the Hidden Realms All Around Us.”Yong is a Pulitzer-Prize winning writer at the Atlantic.
In this book, he opens our eyes to the immensity of the world around us. Each creature has an Umwelt, a "sensory bubble" or slice of reality we can perceive, but with that we also have the illusion that we're perceiving all of reality. But we're actually not. We can't hear ultrasonic calls like a whale, or sense infrared radiation like a rattlesnake, or pick up magnetic fields like a robin. We human beings have our specific Umwelt, just as our dogs do (hearing and smelling things we cannot). This is humbling and fascinating stuff!
Feedback? I'd love to hear from you at thedailyedify@gmail.com. Thanks for listening, friends. You are loved and never alone!
Today's episode is about the idea that everyone and everything in our life can be our teacher.
Feedback? I'd love to hear from you at thedailyedify@gmail.com. Thanks for listening, friends. You are loved and never alone!
Today's episode is about the book of Esther, the fifth and final installment in our "Forgotten Books of the Bible" series.
The book is about Esther’s remarkable courage in the face of Haman's plot to destroy the Jewish people. The most famous line of the book comes in chapter 4, when Mordecai (Esther’s cousin, who becomes her guardian) tells her that perhaps it’s for “such a time as this” that she have become queen and joined the royal family, so that she can save the people from destruction.
Esther is read every year at the festival of Purim, which just happened earlier this week (March 6-7) - and continues to speak today against anti-Semitism and all forms of hate.
Feedback? I'd love to hear from you at thedailyedify@gmail.com. Thanks for listening, friends. You are loved and never alone!
Today's episode is about a little gem of a poem a friend recently shared with me - "The Most Important Thing," by Julia Fehrenbacher. It's a gentle, winsome invitation to create a home within ourselves, "a shelter of kindness that grows all the truest things."
I wonder if you're finding space in your days to do this holy work of creating "a shelter of kindness" within yourself? Far from indulgent, it nurtures self-compassion and allows us to love others not just today, but for the long haul.
Feedback? I'd love to hear from you at thedailyedify@gmail.com. Thanks for listening, friends. You are loved and never alone!
Today's episode is about seasons. Not so much the weather kind, but the personal and communal seasons of our lives.
I share four pieces of wisdom I've learned over the years: (1) we don't control when seasons begin or end; (2) liminal seasons are hard, those times in-between seasons ; (3) seasons don't last forever; and (4) God's love is with us in all the seasons of our lives, and there is a sacred gift in each one of them.Feedback? I'd love to hear from you at thedailyedify@gmail.com. Thanks for listening, friends. You are loved and never alone!
Today's episode is about a recent book by MaryAnn McKibben Dana, "Hope: A User's Manual." I found it to be so resonant that we picked as our theme for the season of Lent at the church I serve. It's a nuanced and thoughtful take on hope, replete with practical suggestions.
Feedback? I'd love to hear from you at thedailyedify@gmail.com. Thanks for listening, friends. You are loved and never alone!
Today's episode is about the book of Ecclesiastes, one of my favorite books of the Bible for its candor, subversiveness and wisdom.
The main insight we'll unpack is that Ecclesiastes teaches us that since life is fleeting, we should enjoy the moments we are given. Love the people we love. Enjoy the work we do. Eat good food and drink good wine. Savor even the stupid little pointless moments, because that is your “share” in life. It is all a gift.
Feedback? I'd love to hear from you at thedailyedify@gmail.com. Thanks for listening, friends. You are loved and never alone!
Today's episode is about friendship, a spiritual practice that we sometimes neglect to our detriment. Friendship makes us human. It involves giving and receiving, mutual trust, and is crucial to our well-being. In this podcast, we touch on some wisdom on friendship from Jesus, Aristotle, Dana Robert and John O'Donohue.
Here's the "Friendship Blessing" by O'Donohue that I read at the end of the podcast, from his book, "Anam Cara: A Book of Celtic Wisdom."
"May you be blessed with good friends. May you learn to be a good friend to yourself. May you be able to journey to that place in your soul where there is great love, warmth, feeling, and forgiveness. May this change you. May it transfigure that which is negative, distant, or cold in you. May you be brought in to the real passion, kinship, and affinity of belonging. May you treasure your friends. May you be good to them and may you be there for them; may they bring you all the blessings, challenges, truth, and light that you need for your journey. May you never be isolated. May you always be in the gentle nest of belonging with your anam ċara.”
Feedback? I'd love to hear from you at thedailyedify@gmail.com. Thanks for listening, friends. You are loved and never alone!
Today's episode is about Ash Wednesday, the official beginning to the season of Lent in the Christian liturgical calendar. This is a day that reminds us of the beauty and preciousness of life and its mystery, a reminder that everything is temporary and we are made of the good elements of God's creation.
We reflect on a couple of lines from T.S. Eliot's poem, "Ash Wednesday," an invitation "to care and not to care" and "to sit still."
Feedback? I'd love to hear from you at thedailyedify@gmail.com. Thanks for listening, friends. You are loved and never alone!
Today's episode is about the spiritual practice of "beginner's mind." This simple practice is about dropping our expectations or preconceived notions about someone, something or someplace, so that we can experience it with fresh eyes, like a beginner would. We can do this with the mundane (eating breakfast, taking a walk, breathing) and the sacred (listening to music, doing yoga, praying).
It's a posture toward life that is grounded in curiosity and wonder. For me, this practice has helped to deepen my experiences, my relationships and to decrease the low-grade anxiety I often carry around through my day.
Feedback? I'd love to hear from you at thedailyedify@gmail.com. Thanks for listening, friends. You are loved and never alone!
Today’s episode is about finding room for lament and constructive anger through the lens of the ancient book of Lamentations, a part of the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament. It's the third installment in our series on the so-called “Forgotten Books of the Bible.” The context of this poetic, five-chapter book is the aftermath of the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple by the Babylonian army after 586 BCE.
We'll notice the five different voices in Lamentations, each given space to grieve in the way they need to. Lamentations reminds us that we can give each other the space to speak, the space to breathe, the space to protest, without losing our common voice and without forsaking our common humanity.
Feedback? I'd love to hear from you at thedailyedify@gmail.com. Thanks for listening, friends. You are loved and never alone!
Today's episode is in honor of Valentine's Day, which we celebrate tomorrow. It originated as a Christian feast day to honor the memory of a Christian martyr named Saint Valentine, who lived in Rome in the late third century. But of course today it has become a juggernaut of a cultural celebration of romantic love.
We look at (1) a new definition of love from Jacqui Lewis; (2) a fresh take on the Golden Rule ("In everything, do unto others as you would have them do unto you"); and (3) hear a prayer "For Valentine's Day," written by my spouse and partner, Rev. Arianne Braithwaite Lehn.
Feedback? I'd love to hear from you at thedailyedify@gmail.com. Thanks for listening, friends. You are loved and never alone!
Today's episode is about the book, "Wintering: The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times," written by the British author of fiction and non-fiction, Katherine May. The book came out in late 2020, at the height of the pandemic, when we are all enduring a vast "wintering" of sorts.
But she wrote it to make sense of the personal wintering she endured around the time of her 40th birthday. This book came to me at the right time, in spring of 2021, when I was wrestling with my own wintering. The book is a beautiful reflection on the wisdom of the natural world and the power of rest and retreat when life goes sideways.
As she writes in the book, "Wintering is a time of withdrawing from the world, maximizing scant resources, carrying out acts of brutal efficiency and vanishing from sight; but that’s where the transformation occurs. Winter is not the death of the life cycle, but its crucible."
Feedback? I'd love to hear from you at thedailyedify@gmail.com. Thanks for listening, friends. You are loved and never alone!
Today’s episode is about the book of Ruth, a part of the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament - the second installment in our series on the so-called “Forgotten Books of the Bible.”
Ruth opens with a famine in Bethlehem. It forces Elimelech and Naomi to flee as refugees to Moab, where there is still food. In direct contradiction to other parts of the Bible (e.g. Ezra and Nehemiah), their sons, Mahlon and Chilion, marry Moabite women, Orpah and Ruth. In a series of tragedies, all three of the men in Naomi's life die - first her husband, and then both of her sons. Naomi is devastated and assumes Ruth and Orpah will not follow her back to Bethlehem, where she hopes to survive by leaning on extended family. But Ruth insists on staying with her.
In the course of the story, Ruth becomes a paragon of faith and courage, a woman-oriented woman who can see possibilities in otherwise grim circumstances. Back in Bethlehem, Ruth marries Boaz, a relative of Naomi's, and they have a son, who would become the grandfather to King David.
One of only two women to have a book of the Bible named after them (the other one is Esther), Ruth is a beautiful and brave example for us today.
Feedback? I'd love to hear from you at thedailyedify@gmail.com. Thanks for listening, friends. You are loved and never alone!
Starting today, I'm going to publish three podcasts per week (on M, W and F) instead of five. Sorry today's is a bit late. Thanks for tuning in, friends!
Today's episode is about two-degree shifts, a view of growth that focuses on small, incremental changes that compound over time. In this conversation, we mention Jesus, the movie "What about Bob?" and the writer, Annie Dillard.
Feedback? I'd love to hear from you at thedailyedify@gmail.com. Thanks for listening, friends. You are loved and never alone!
Today’s episode is about the spiritual practice of breath prayer, an ancient and simple practice that helps us be more fully embodied. We breath, on average, 20,000 times a day and we mostly do it by default.
But ever since the sixth century CE Christians have been wedding prayer to the rhythms of breathing, an echo to the creation story in which God is said to have breathed in us the "breath of life" (Genesis 2). Christine Valters Painter’s book, “Breath Prayer: An Ancient Practice for the Everyday Sacred,” is a recent example of making this practice sing in today's context.
Try on this spiritual practice today, reciting a simple phrase as you inhale and then a simple phrase as you exhale, such as, "Be still and know/that I am God" or "Do not be afraid/I am with you always" or "Jesus/have mercy."
Feedback? I'd love to hear from you at thedailyedify@gmail.com. Thanks for listening, friends. You are loved and never alone!
Today’s episode focuses on “The Song of Songs,” a book of the Bible that’s often overlooked. It’s part of a short series we’re going to do on the podcast over the next five weeks. Once a week, we’ll spotlight one of the so-called “forgotten books of the Bible,” using the recent book by the same name by Robert Williamson Jr. I’m teaching a class on this book right now on Sunday mornings at the church I serve, First Pres Wilmette, and it’s been invigorating and fun.
The "Song" is a poem celebrating the love between two people. It's graceful, sensuous and full of erotic imagery, underlining the good gift of sexuality. We touch on a few themes of the book and end by reflecting on some of its closing lines, "Love is as strong as death, passion as fierce as the grieve..."
Feedback? I'd love to hear from you at thedailyedify@gmail.com. Thanks for listening, friends. You are loved and never alone!
Today’s episode is about the concept of the 200-year present. It’s an idea from Elise Boulding (that I learned about from Krista Tippett), the Quaker sociologist, poet and peace researcher, who was born in Norway in 1920 and moved to the US with her parents when she was 3 years old.
It was Germany’s attack on Norway in World War II that shook her and her family deeply: seeing her peaceful homeland violated, she recognized violence as a systemic global concern. At that point she began to engage in building peace, starting with anti-war activities, moving into the academic field, in sociology at Dartmouth College – where she developed the first Peace Studies program in the States.
When we think about the bigness of time, it’s hard to grasp, and so Boulding’s concept is meant to help us reflect on the specific span of time - “the 200 year present” - that each of us in fact inhabits.
Feedback? I'd love to hear from you at thedailyedify@gmail.com. Thanks for listening, friends. You are loved and never alone!
Today's episode is about the spiritual practice of "transcend and include" - first developed by Ken Wilbur, though I learned about it from Richard Rohr and Brian McLaren.
Feedback? I'd love to hear from you at thedailyedify@gmail.com. Thanks for listening, friends. You are loved and never alone!
Today's episode reflects on one of my favorite parts of the gospels, Matthew 11:28-30. "Come to me, all you who are weary and carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest." This is the only place in the teachings of Jesus where he directly associates himself with a personality characteristic, saying, he is "gentle and humble of heart." What if that was the first thing we thought of when we thought of Jesus?
Feedback? I'd love to hear from you at thedailyedify@gmail.com. Thanks for listening, friends. You are loved and never alone!
Today's episode reflects on the poem by Wendell Berry, "The Peace of Wild Things." I learned about this poem during my medical leave a year ago and it has stayed with me ever since.
Feedback? I'd love to hear from you at thedailyedify@gmail.com. Thanks for listening, friends. You are loved and never alone!
Today's episode is about "critical yeast," a concept articulated by the global peacebuilder, John Paul Lederach, in his book “The Moral Imagination: The Art and Soul of Building Peace.”
When we think about social change, we often think of arriving at "critical mass," getting large numbers of people behind a particular movement. But Lederach says that getting a small set of the right people involved in the right places is the key. The missing ingredient is "critical yeast," which is, as he defines it, “small groups of people in unlikely combinations, in a new quality of relationship.”
Feedback? I'd love to hear from you at thedailyedify@gmail.com. Thanks for listening, friends. You are loved and never alone!
Today's episode is about my favorite tree in our backyard at home: a beautiful, soaring white oak that (according to my very amateurish efforts, based on this Purdue University report here) is approximately 191 years old.
Last year, the Village of Wilmette, where we live, celebrated its 150th anniversary. All sorts of events were held, including some by communities of faith, to mark the occasion. It got me thinking more about our histories - how they shape us, constrain us, and can open us to new possibilities. I did a deep dive into the history of our church, which was founded in 1911. I reached out to our local history museum to answer some of my questions. And I was drawn to learn more about our natural habitat, the land on which we live, and to get acquainted with parts of God’s creation that have been here a lot longer than any one of us.
Feedback? I'd love to hear from you at thedailyedify@gmail.com. Thanks for listening, friends. You are loved and never alone!
Today's episode is about viewing our sighs as prayers, drawing on a generative line from the apostle Paul: "We don't know how to pray as we ought, but the Spirit intercedes for us with sighs too deep for words" (Romans 8:26).
I recently learned that there’s a physiological reason for sighing. On average, we sigh 12 times an hour – roughly every 5 minutes or so. Sighing re-inflates the 500 million alveoli in our lungs – the little air sacs closest to our bloodstream where carbon dioxide is carried out and oxygen is taken in. Apparently, if we did not sigh, our alveoli would collapse – we need to sigh to keep those air sacs open and flowing.
What if you viewed your sighs today as prayers?
Feedback? I'd love to hear from you at thedailyedify@gmail.com. Thanks for listening, friends. You are loved and never alone!
Today's episode is about the lifelong call to become the truest and deepest version of ourselves - the presence of light and life and love in the world. We mention a story told by Martin Buber from his book, "Tales of the Hasidim." Rabbi Zusya, before his death, said, ‘In the coming world, they will not ask me: ‘Why were you not Moses?’ They will ask me: ‘Why were you not Zusya?'
The point is to become ourselves. As Soren Kierkegaard once wrote, "Now, with God's help, I shall become myself."
Feedback? I'd love to hear from you at thedailyedify@gmail.com. Thanks for listening, friends. You are loved and never alone!
Today’s episode is about a better way to talk about that deeply misleading and cumbersome idea of “work-life balance.” David Whyte’s 2009 book, The Three Marriages: Reimagining Work, Self and Relationship, gives us much more expansive language for integrating our multifaceted lives.
The three marriages Whyte articulates are to (1) work, to (2) self and to (3) relationship. Whyte believes we are all, consciously or unconsciously, committed to these three marriages throughout our lives - and when we use the simplistic language of “balance” to make sense of them we end up impoverished. Because work and life are not actually separate things and therefore cannot be “balanced” against each other without causing havoc. Instead, he invites us to put these three marriages into spirited and lifelong conversation with one another - a marriage of marriages, if you will.
Feedback? I'd love to hear from you at thedailyedify@gmail.com. Thanks for listening, friends. You are loved and never alone!
Today’s episode is about the Internal Family Systems model, an integrative psychological approach for healing and restoring wholeness that I've found to be really helpful. IFS, as it's known, was developed by Richard Schwartz in the late 1980s, and is used today by many practitioners (including my own therapist). It combines family systems theory with a recognition that our minds are made up of relatively discrete sub-personalities.
Dick Schwartz and his colleagues now run the IFS Institute, offering virtual trainings in this modality. They're so popular that they hold a lottery each time they open up a new training - and I've yet to get a spot for their Level I training!
I'm clearly no expert in IFS, but have found a few of its main principles to be transformative for my spiritual journey: that fact that we all have parts, all parts are good (and have good intentions, even if they're no longer serving us well), and all of us have a True Self (which is calm, curious, compassionate, creative, connected, confident, courageous, clear - 8 "C" words).
Feedback? I'd love to hear from you at thedailyedify@gmail.com. Thanks for listening, friends. You are loved and never alone!
Today’s episode is about the second half of an ancient commandment that many of us know by heart: “Love your neighbor as yourself.” It comes from Leviticus 19:18, part of the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament, that Jesus cited one day when asked which commandment in the law was the greatest. At first, he answers as expected by citing the "Shema" of Deuteronomy 6, "Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength." But then he adds: "a second commandment is like the first, 'Love your neighbor as yourself.'"
I've preached and heard a lot of sermons on the first half of that second commandment: "Love your neighbor." But until recently I'd rarely paid attention to the second half of it: the "as yourself" part. As it turns out, it's both prescriptive and descriptive. We can only give to others what we are already giving to ourselves. Far from being indulgent, honoring and loving ourselves allows us to love our neighbor well.
Feedback? I'd love to hear from you at thedailyedify@gmail.com. Thanks for listening, friends. You are loved and never alone!
Today’s episode features a beautiful poem by Hafiz, “We Have not Come Here to Take Prisoners.”
Hafiz was a Persian lyric poet who was born in Iran in the 14th century. Not much is known about his life, but his poetry is widely viewed as the pinnacle of Persian literature.
I discovered this poem a couple of years ago through a coach. Every time I read it, I’m re-centered and empowered to lead a life of love.
Feedback? I'd love to hear from you at thedailyedify@gmail.com. Thanks for listening, friends. You are loved and never alone!
Today’s episode honors the life and legacy of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. - the preacher, poet, civil rights activist, husband, father and theologian, who was only 39 when he was killed on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel in Memphis on April 4, 1968. He was there to support the city's striking sanitation workers and had just given the speech, “I’ve Been to the Mountaintop” the night before.In recent years, I've had a practice of re-reading King's "A Letter from a Birmingham Jail" on his federal holiday here in the U.S. (which is today, the third Monday in January). It grounds me and challenges me to remember that the point of my life, my faith, my existence, is to participate in love, to realize God’s dream of flourishing for all. If my faith is not doing that, not making the actual circumstances of my neighbor's life better, more just, more dignified, then it has missed the mark.
The part that catches my imagination this year is King's response to his fellow clergyman who have called him an "extremist." He pushes back, saying the question is not "will we be an extremist?" but rather "what kind of extremist will we be?" He invites us, following the example of Jesus, to be extremists for love.
Feedback? I'd love to hear from you at thedailyedify@gmail.com. Thanks for listening, friends. You are loved and never alone!
Today's episode is about the meaningful tradition of handing out "Star Words" (not to be confused with Star Wars) each year on Epiphany. It was started by a church in Connecticut back in 2009 and has since spread to hundreds of congregations (including ours here in Wilmette).
A "star gift” or “star word” is a simple card with a single word on it, words like “marvel,” “play,” “heal,” “generosity,” "intention," and "today." The word is meant to be received as a gift from God for the coming year. It may be an invitation, a challenge, a prayer or a reminder. The list we used at our church this year contained 160 different words.
Each year, I tape the word I receive to the inside of my journal or back door at home and frequently ask myself, "How am I experiencing ______? Where am I seeing God in this? Each year, the meaning of the word changes as the year goes out and I see it from many different angles. We've been doing this for 5-6 yeas now, and I've received different words: focus, adventure, playfulness, joy, healing, trust and (this year) silence.
If you'd like me to send you a star gift word, just shoot me an email and I'll send you one! I'd love to share this beautiful tradition with you.
Feedback? I'd love to hear from you at thedailyedify@gmail.com. Thanks for listening, friends. You are loved and never alone!
Today's episode is about living the questions. The phrase is drawn from a famous quotation by Rainer Maria Rilke in letter four of his "Letters to a Young Poet," written in 1903. Rilke was exchanging letters with Franz Kappus, a young military cadet who was wrestling with what to do with his life - should he continue with a career in the military, or quit and become a poet instead?
Rilke's sage advice to Kappus is to "live the questions" rather than merely answer them, since questions are more transforming than answers. And we might not be ready to fully live into an answer yet, anyway.
I quote an excerpt from the recent translation of Rilke's letters by Joanna Macy and Anita Barrows, which I first learned about in the delightful interview Krista Tippett did with them in her On Being podcast.
Feedback? I'd love to hear from you at thedailyedify@gmail.com. Thanks for listening, friends. You are loved and never alone!
Today's episode is about "holy indifference," a posture for living articulated by Ignatius of Loyola (1491-1556) in his book, "The Spiritual Exercises."
For Ignatius, "holy indifference" does not mean not caring. But it's about not being attached - to money, to status, to health - to maintain a stance of being engaged without being enmeshed, connected without being consumed. It's about knowing where we end and another person begins. About discerning what is ours to do and then surrendering the rest.
Feedback? I'd love to hear from you at thedailyedify@gmail.com. Thanks for listening, friends. You are loved and never alone!
Today's episode is drawn from the introductory chapter to a recent book by Gareth Higgins, "How Not to Be Afraid: Seven Ways to Live When Everything Seems Terrifying." Higgins is a storyteller and peace activist who was born in Belfast during “the Troubles” and now lives in Asheville, North Carolina. The book’s title makes it sound like a slick how-to manual, but it’s not. It’s a thoughtful and vulnerable account of Celtic spirituality that “points us toward tenderness, empathy and gentle encounter with each other and with our deepest and most relentless fears.”
One of the introductory chapters of the book is titled, “Fear Is a Story.” Fear is of course part of the human condition. We can’t avoid it. Some of it is healthy. But what Higgins is inviting us to notice is that the power of the fear we feel depends on the story we tell about it.
Feedback? I'd love to hear from you at thedailyedify@gmail.com. Thanks for listening, friends. You are loved and never alone!
Today's episode is about the practice of self-compassion.
Dr. Kristin Neff, currently associate professor of educational psychology at the University of Texas at Austin, is the pioneer of the self-compassion movement. See her TED talk here, her books here and the Center of Mindful Self-Compassion, which she founded with her colleague, Chris Germer.
Feedback? I'd love to hear from you at thedailyedify@gmail.com. Thanks for listening, friends! You are loved and never alone!