Attending to Small Miracles

Two dozen women sat in a neat circle together, mostly strangers. At the head of the circle (if there can be such a thing), four facilitators convened. Well, more beamed at the group who had come from all corners of the country and the UK.

These joyful hearted facilitators held many professional titles between them: spiritual directors, professional coaches, clergy, seminary professor, former dean of Duke Divinity School, organizational developer, healer, yoga instructor, non-profit founder, abbess at a monastic community, and more.

More impressive than their titles and the professional skills they’d utilize in our week together was the incredible breadth of their lives: the truths they’d unearthed in themselves, the sacred reverberations of their vocational calls, the hard-earned wisdom that had stuck to their boots, and the commitment to doing all this together.  

With the experience of their lives and through the tools they’d picked up along the way, they invited us onto an island of sanity.

In July or August I usually take a two-week separation from work. This year, I cut my vacation short – not to attend to my inbox, but to attend to my soul. I spent what would have been a second week of vacation in highly structured spiritual renewal designed for women leading at the helm of a transitioning institutional structure.

Leaders in churches and non-profits gathered for five days in the forest for PowerPoints on Hildegard von Bingen and Thecla of Iconium, deep and vulnerable conversation, professional coaching, spiritual direction, to shift from survival to thriving through our own wisdom, and to find our islands of sanity.

From Meg Wheatley who coined the term, “an Island of Sanity is a gift of possibility and refuge created by people’s commitment to form healthy community to do meaningful work. It requires sane leaders with unshakable faith in people’s innate generosity, creativity, and kindness. It sets itself apart as an island to protect itself from the life-destroying dynamics, policies, and behaviors that oppress and deny the human spirit. No matter what is happening around us, we can discover practices that enliven our human spirits and produce meaningful contributions for this time.”[1]

What a deep breath of fresh air!

By the second or third day it felt like we’d been at it for weeks. Soul work, as renewing as it is, carries an intensity that takes you out of Chronos and into Kairos time. As we attended to our souls and our vocational journeys, we were also charged with attending to the small miracles we often rush through. This came by way of a John O’Donohue poem we were given before the first session. I’ve shared this one with you all before, and today as we excitedly launch the new church year, I want to share it again. It’s called, “A Blessing for One Who is Exhausted.”

Talk of exhaustion would usually come up at the middle or end of a big season of action together, not at the beginning. However, I find it instructive and permission giving for us as we begin a new year again:

When the rhythm of the heart becomes hectic,
Time takes on the strain until it breaks;
Then all the unattended stress falls in
On the mind like an endless, increasing weight.

 The light in the mind becomes dim.
Things you could take in your stride before
Now become laborsome events of will.

Weariness invades your spirit.
Gravity begins falling inside you,
Dragging down every bone. 

The tide you never valued has gone out.
And you are marooned on unsure ground.
Something within you has closed down;
And you cannot push yourself back to life. 

You have been forced to enter empty time.
The desire that drove you has relinquished.
There is nothing else to do now but rest
And patiently learn to receive the self
You have forsaken in the race of days.

At first your thinking will darken
And sadness take over like listless weather.
The flow of unwept tears will frighten you. 

You have traveled too fast over false ground;

Now your soul has come to take you back.

---

Take refuge in your senses, open up
To all the small miracles you rushed through.

Become inclined to watch the way of rain
When it falls slow and free.

Imitate the habit of twilight,
Taking time to open the well of color
That fostered the brightness of day.

Draw alongside the silence of stone
Until its calmness can claim you.
Be excessively gentle with yourself.

Stay clear of those vexed in spirit.
Learn to linger around someone of ease
Who feels they have all the time in the world.

Gradually, you will return to yourself,
Having learned a new respect for your heart
And the joy that dwells far within slow time.

Despite the newness of fall, the truth is that many in our community are feeling weary. Excited about the good coming forth in these coming months, and, tired from a heavy lift of a year.

For all the solutions, political strategy, and tactics swirling around us to ‘fix things,’ the poet offers none of these. Instead, he offers a promise: that when we’ve lost ourselves or when we feel like we are marooned on unsure ground, we will be able to come back. When the world around us feels unrecognizable, when grief blankets the news cycle like a thick fog, when our own lives drift into stormy seas, joy can still come in the morning.

For me, every moment of joy in a hard time is a small miracle. These small miracles of joy do not change what we must work through, they do not raise up justice in places where it is needed, they do not ‘fix’ much at all. But they do shore up our hearts, enabling us to do the hard work and to advocate for justice in places where it is needed without losing ourselves in the unattended stress of the world’s brokenness. This is part of what it is to be on an island of sanity.

As we dive into Rally Day and Sunday’s Ministry Fair, may we all attend to the small miracles as our community does life together. I urge you to resist the temptation to rush through them in the tangle of logistics or our drive to keep moving forward toward the care of our neighbor, because this noticing is what ultimately holds us together to get there in the first place.

This season, we’ll follow the poet’s instruction:
When weariness invades your spirit, notice the small miracles.
When gravity begins falling inside you, dragging down every bone, attend to the joy around you.
When your thinking darkens, imitate the habit of twilight and open to the well of color that fostered the brightness of day.

The slow and steady structure of the retreat last week created a spaciousness for us all to attend to – and dwell in – the small miracles that took place amongst us: naming them, celebrating them, laughing and laughing and laughing amidst them. We were no longer strangers, but companions for the journey on an archipelago of sanity to anchor our souls.

With the fall coming in full swing, many of us don’t have a lot of ‘slow’ to go around, so I offer this short blessing for the launch of our year in the hope that more of us would be no longer strangers but companions for the journey on an archipelago of sanity to anchor our souls:

May we take a breath when we find ourselves in a hectic pace.
May we deepen not only our breathing but also our relationships with the people in front of us.
May we persevere in the Christian call to pursue justice and peace, but not at the expense of losing ourselves or losing our way in the pursuit.
May the laughter come easy and the joy make our burdens light, attending to the small miracles amongst us that delight our souls.
May we boldly be the ‘we’ that God calls us to be. May we be loved. 

Amen.

Miraculously,
Pastor Karyn

[1] https://margaretwheatley.com/books/restoring-sanity/