Confluence Formation

In my last reflection I wrote about the practice of having the audacity to suck at something. Here are two things that I have had the audacity to suck at lately:

* Improv comedy

* Fly fishing

And it isn’t even that you have to be terrible at the thing, really, to get the full benefit of the practice. It just has to be something that you are not already excellent at, that you are a little bit intimidated by, and that you are willing to try nevertheless.

Both improv and fly fishing are things that had lingered a long time on my bucket list before I opened myself up, through them, to the various practices of audacity, courage, deliberate mediocrity, good-enoughness, and being more comfortable with feeling a little bit uncomfortable.

Read to the bottom to explore how I can support you in your practices of audacity.

With improv, “Yes, and…” is the big thing. Holding a posture and practice of “Yes, and…” is about being willing to go with the flow of whatever emerges in the scene that you are creating with your co-creators. 

If your scene partner waddles up to you like a penguin, the best way to kill the scene is to fold your arms across your chest and say, “Penguins are dumb.” 

The best way to keep the scene going is to start waddling like a penguin right alongside of them and say something like, “I can’t believe we finally got out!!”

In the first scenario you end up with a stage with a grumpy guy on it standing at odds with a poor dumb penguin. There’s not a lot of juice to that scene.

But in the second scenario you’ve got a stage with two penguins who just escaped from the zoo. That scene can go somewhere.

With fly fishing, “Yes, and…” also applies. I think. I’m still catching on. But I know last month when I was standing in a stream in North Carolina and my line got tangled up I didn’t just chuck the rod into the water and walk away. I said yes to the tangle, and took a deep breath, and took my time untangling it, and noted why my cast went awry in the first place, and smiled at the all around beauty of the moment, and and and.

Do I need to reel you in on this one? Or do you see it? 

Do you see the ways that a practice of “Yes, and…” might help infuse some juiciness into your relationships? how that conversation with your partner or that interaction with the stranger might have played out differently by approaching it with a posture of possibility and co-creation?

Do you see how a posture of “Yes, and…” might help you untangle tangles in your work day? might help you shift from frustration, desperation, cynicism to patience, dexterity, perspective?

“Yes, and…” isn’t always about literally saying “Yes.” 

It’s about staying open, to the river’s flow. It’s about listening deeply, to your scene partners. It’s about being brave with your creative ideas while holding them generously enough to engage the co-creative process of a day.

It’s about showing up on the stage of your day paying attention, with curiosity, and ending up somehow on a penguin heist.

It’s about showing up to catch fish, and catching maybe a few fish (though maybe, also, none at all) but hooking firmly on, nevertheless, to the ways that the river moves and the fish think and the insects hatch and the shadows form.

Thank you for reading. This post is public so feel free to share it.

How can I support you?

I am now accepting clients who need a coach! 

If you want to make a difference through your work, if you’re striving to make a change in the world, and you feel overwhelmed, frustrated, or stuck:

* Read the About Coaching section below.

* Schedule a 30 minute Discovery Call with me.

* Then meet with me, to see if coaching might be the best next step for you.

About Coaching

Some people come to coaching because they have a big dream but they aren’t doing it. Some people come to coaching because that don’t have a dream but want to discover one.

Either way, coaching is a chance to meet purposefully with someone who has the heart to see you as you truly are (spoiler: you are a hero, whole and complete!), and the skills to help you discover possibilities that you haven’t seen before. 

It’s a process of getting the support that you need in order to clarify your intentions, design accurate goals, and take authentic action toward them, all within a consistent and supportive relationship.

With me, it’s also kind of like having Ted Lasso in your rolodex.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit arammitchell.substack.com

I have been combing the internet for sources of insight at the confluence of wildness and spirituality. The internet is not the most relevant place to search for such things. The most relevant places to search are wild places and wild spirits, your very own and those belonging to others. But there is no shortage of wild wisdom out there—even among the ones and zeros—for those who have eyes to see. 

Along with everything else it is, the internet is an archive of story, conversation, perspective, poetry, and song all telling the tale of how a bunch of featherless bipeds made their way on the crust of this planet.

So I have been compiling sources from the archive to weave into my own contribution, the online course that I am designing, which is getting close to ready for release into the wild.

In my search I came on a conversation that adrienne maree brown had with Marcia and en Lee, the founders of Taproot Sanctuary, a permaculture community in Detroit. The conversation meanders a little too much to fit the constraint of the learning experience that I am designing, but I have gleaned some welcome wisdom from listening in. 

They spend the hour talking about the people who have shaped and inspired them, about the way that the world tilts toward change, and about how to go about getting in right relationship with change.

At one point en Lee says, “We have to skill up.” And that got me thinking about the sort of skills I spend my days trying to gain and trying to hone.

He says: “It should be a human right to be able to live in right relationship with our bioregion and with our neighbors, but we’re deprived of these skills that may have been passed down to us in the past.”

Then he says something that I found so delightful and true, as he was reflecting on the ways that we block ourselves from seeking new skills. We block ourselves with fears of failure, with imposter syndrome, with the misconception that we need to be properly enrolled on a path of expertise before we can even begin to glean and hone new skills. We block ourselves from acquiring the things we need in order to live our best lives.

To all that, en Lee said we should go ahead and give ourselves permission to suck at things on the way to getting better at them. “I can really suck at this,” he says, “But as long as I have a relationship with it I will get better and better.”

So today, rather than asking you: “What have you learned from life lately?” I am asking you this: “What have you sucked at lately, but had the courage to try nevertheless?”

This isn’t quite the same thing, but it comes to mind just now as I squint out the window into the the sun: That the flowering trees lining the sidewalks in my Cambridge neighborhood don’t get every blossom just right, but you wouldn’t know it from across the street, looking at the way they burst with the audacity to bloom, bloom, bloom.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit arammitchell.substack.com

After Easter this year I flew from Boston to a conference center in a little corner of the Blue Ridge Mountains. They are called the Blue Ridge Mountains because the trees on the mountainside emit hydrocarbons that—when seen from a distance—huddle over the mountains in a haze of blue. When you are in the mountains, and not just beholding their hazy edges from afar, things are more vivid. Up close each tree communes with well-defined and tangible edges.

In the mountains, among the vivid trees, each day for a few days, I took folks out for a saunter on the trails. This was the third year in a row that I have traveled south to North Carolina to help shape the Discovering Renewal retreat.

The first time I guided hikes for Discovering Renewal I landed at Montreat a few days early. I had scouted the trails as best I could on some digital maps. But I hadn’t done much actual walking on the trails, which felt important to actually do before taking actual people for actual walks. 

I traipsed around the trails solo for a few days, took lots of notes, came up with a route or two that would work for a big group full of folks with different abilities and needs, then awaited their arrival, and dove in.

Last year, when I returned, I went a couple of days early and reacquainted myself with the trails, and with my trail liturgy, before guiding the retreat.

For every trip, retreat, workshop, course, or talk that I offer, I make some sort of liturgical flow to ground us and guide us through the experience. The liturgy tends to originate in my mind and notebook. Then, with a walk, I massage it into my heart. 

Usually the liturgy is a variation (or a collection of variations) on a simple thematic spiritual progression: Wrestle, rest, return. Sometimes I share the liturgy out loud, and sometimes I just use it as a quiet compass to keep me oriented in the work of facilitation.

But always, one way or another, I put the liturgy into practice by extending it to the group. They embody it. Usually there are as many ways to embody the liturgy as there are bodies engaged in it. By taking what I offer and embodying it, they transform the liturgy from something with hazy hues to something with sharp edges; from an imagined vision to a lived encounter.

This is like what happens at church, or any community of spiritual practice. When those who gather begin to embrace a string of stories, symbols, and songs with their voices, postures, emotions, and actions—worship takes place. The hazy hues of the divine come into focus through the expressions of practitioners.

This year, going back to Montreat, I felt familiar enough with the trails to not need a review. But I still flew in a day early, and took to the streams to commune with the trout. 

I caught only nibbles—and the branches of trees leaning over the stream above me, and the undersides of rocks, and the radical understanding that no matter how many times you step into it, you never step in the same river twice.

Speaking of, I’ll be back again after Easter next year, if you’re keen to join.

PS – Beginning next month, as part of my rigorous training with the Academy for Coaching Excellence, I will be taking on new clients who are in need of coaching.

If you are developing a liturgy (or outline or concept or plan of action) for any sort of creative project, and you could use some support to see it through: Touch base with me!

I’d love to connect and see if what I have to offer can help you bring into focus what you have to offer.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit arammitchell.substack.com

A sunrise like today’s makes me think about that sentiment that appears through the pen of the prophet who wrote: “His mercies never come to an end, they are new every morning.”

Sometimes I procrastinate a long while from doing a thing that I want to do, and then I wake up one day and I’m like, “Ahhh *deep sigh* new mercies.” And I just go ahead and do the thing.

I like to sit every morning at my desk and peek out the window askance at the sunrise, and write. 

But I don’t always do it. 

Because: Plenty of reasons—I have ten other projects going that all want my attention, I went camping for a few days because I needed some rest, and now I’m behind on my list, and I have to go to the dentist, and the grocery store, and make phone calls, and walk the dog, and fold the laundry, and put out the compost, and go to the library, and go to the coffee shop, and zero my inbox. 

I do have to do all (most) of those things. And honestly, I love the ordinary things that fill up life. All those things are beautiful. My dentist is great. But, sometimes when there is a simple thing that I truly want to do, like sit down and write for thirty minutes, I let all of the rest of it pile up in my mind until I’ve built a mound of justified inaction.

Then, when several days go by, then a week, then two, and I haven’t done the thing that I want to do, what I usually think that I need is a boost of intention to get going again. I think that I can shovel my way out of inertia with intention.

I’ll begin setting my intention at some point each day, noting how important it is to me to sit down and write the next day. 

“Here is a mound of inaction, and intention is my shovel,” I’ll say to myself. 

And intentions are like shovels. They can be useful. When they’re put to use. But, after a week or two of stating my intentions, I often end up with that original little mound of inaction sitting right next to a great big pile of shovels.

And I’m like: “Hmm, now all these shovels are in my way. Surely I need to build a shed so that I can store my shovels.”

You see how it goes. That’s familiar, right? 

For you it might not be sitting down to write. The thing you truly want to do could be pretty well anything. It’s probably something creative. It’s probably something that’s good for you. And—in order to do the thing—it is very unlikely that you need any more shovels or sheds.

Once we step around the mound it can all feel a little silly that we were treating it like a mountain. Haha. Silly me. Deep sigh. New mercies. 

But it’s no wonder we get stuck, because sometimes the legit mountains also get in the way. (Even though they are the way.) 

We have great big mountain sized ambitions: “I want to write a book.” or “I want to grow my business.” or “I want the lead role in a play.” 

These dreams and desires and ambitions are mountains, glorious in their grandeur!

And in the shadow of these ambitions it’s easy to let slip our grip on the value of the next doable thing.

“I want to write a book” is not my next doable thing. “I’m going to write for thirty minutes” that’s my next doable thing.

“I want to grow my business” or “I want the lead role in a play” are not the next doable things. 

If those are the mountains that you’re climbing, hurrah! I can’t wait to give you my money or watch you perform. And also, I can’t tell you what your next doable thing is. No one can. 

But I can tell you this, whatever mountain you’re climbing: 

* Your next doable thing is a whole lot smaller than the mountain itself, it’s something you can—well—do, in one stride. 

* If you’re willing to look—not up at the mountain (you can bask in its glory later) but right down at the path by your feet—you’ll see it.

* It’s very unlikely that you need a shovel or a shed to do it.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit arammitchell.substack.com

As a wilderness guide, the ability to pivot from your itinerary when the weather, terrain, group, circumstance, or who-knows-what requires it—that’s one of your most vital capacities. The same goes for any practitioner of wild spirituality.

It’s interesting though, because it’s seldom crystal clear whether the pivot is entirely necessary. It’s always some combination of managing risk and expectations, and about moving through with the confidence that you can alter course without needing to compromise the purpose of the experience.

Sometimes it is clear. Sometimes it’s clear because the risk calculus makes it so: The river is heavily flooded, this is no longer where we are going to cross. 

Sometimes it’s clear because an opportunity to enhance the experience becomes available: The group has been moving more quickly than I anticipated, turns out we have time for this epic side hike to a natural arch, and the group is game. Duh, let’s go!

I’m making a pivot.

This pivot is the latter sort. As I gathered some feedback from folks interested in Spiritual Formation in the Wild, and consulted with my collaborators at The School of Global Citizenry, I got a vision for a new route that is going to enhance this particular experience. 

I’m redesigning the course that I told you about earlier this month. I’ll be offering two experiences of learning and formation, rather than one:

* The first offering will be a stand-alone offering, with much of the same value of the original course, but more financially accessible as an on-demand, self-paced course. 

* The second will be a cohort-based experience that I will facilitate for folks who want to apply what they’ve learned on a deeper personal and vocational level.

Spiritual Formation in the Wild • Coming very soon!

This will be a self-paced online course with guided nature connection practices, lessons about the methods, history, and benefits of nature connection, and audio reflections by yours truly.

It will qualify learners for 2 continuing education units (20 contact hours) certified through The School of Global Citizenry. 

The course fee: $89 • Enrollment opening later this Spring. I’ll keep you posted!

Spiritual Leadership in the Wild • Coming in 2025!

This one will be a guided online cohort experience for folks who want to strengthen their calling and creative contributions. This experience will build on the personal practices and lessons from Spiritual Formation in the Wild, as I guide you on a multi-week delve into exploring wilderness as an arena of communal formation, and helping you find applications to your work in the world.

I’ll send out more specs around the bend. Meanwhile I’m keen to hear from anyone who might be interested in either or both of these courses: What excites you about them? What are the barriers that would keep you from joining?

Because I really hope you will join.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit arammitchell.substack.com

“We are animal in our blood and in our skin. We were not born for pavements and escalators, but for thunder and mud.” — Jay Griffiths, Wild: An Elemental Journey

Perhaps you’ve heard: Loving on nature is good for us. A little biophilia goes a long way toward making us feel better. 

In 2017 The Nature Fix, by Florence Williams, landed on bookshelves. In it Williams explores a host of efforts to study the biophilia hypothesis, which posits that throughout human evolution “peaceful or nurturing elements of nature [have] helped us regain equanimity, cognitive clarity, empathy and hope” (page 22).

Williams structures her exploration on the layers of positive effect that nature has on how well our bodies function when near to nature. Just five minutes of exposure to nature, whether looking out a window or standing in a park, can serve to drop our blood pressure and wash us in a sense of calm (part 2). Several hours immersed among trees and the sounds of birds and the sight of moving water provides rest for our fatigued brains and can even strengthen our bodies’ immune responses (part 3). And several days in the backcountry, removed from screens and the constant barrage of consumer driven society, can be enough to give us a full cognitive overhaul, rendering us more calm, creative, and kind (part 4).

Makes sense. We are, after all, animal in our brains, in our blood and in our skin.

In 2012 Amos Clifford founded the Association of Nature and Forest Therapy. If you’ve heard about forest therapy or forest bathing, Clifford probably gets some of that credit. His outfit has helped to popularize a guided approach to forest therapy, based on the Japanese practice of shinrin-yoku, which is essentially a multi-sensory immersion in a forest environment for the sake wellness.

Good, simple, structured, slow, immersive, communal encounters with the lovely stuff that lingers in the resins of trees, the mycelial cocktails of soil, the presence of wild kin, and the noted absence of digital pings.

In 2005 Richard Louv coined the phrase “nature-deficit disorder” with his book The Last Child in the Woods, where he pointed at the harms that come with too many digital pings that keep us (and our kids) from getting not-enough-immersion among the elements. 

In 1990—among those blissful days before we carried digital pings in our pockets—my dad picked me up one afternoon from Skiles Test Elementary School and drove me to Turkey Run State Park where we hiked on trail #3 and climbed a forest hillside littered with oak leaves. 

I had never struggled as much, in my 7 years of life, to get from one place to another, as I did on that hillside. The slope was steep, the ground soft and slick, the gravity heavy. I applied myself with Sisyphean dedication. I sunk my fingers into the soil, clawing as I climbed toward my dad’s hand stretched out at the top. I’d get close, and hit a loose patch of leaves, and slide in the mud back to the bottom. And then, with glee, claw my way back up again.

I didn’t know that I was stirring up and ingesting all kinds of phytoncides, giving my immune system a boost. I wasn’t tracking my blood pressure, my brain function, my levels of equanimity or cognitive clarity. 

But I knew—in my little animal self—that I was right where I belonged, rolling around on the forest floor.

There are books you can read. There are training programs you can take. There are skills to acquire, explanations to glean, guides to seek, inspiration to find. Which is all grand. To whatever extent the science and testimonials and experiences of others motivates you to go find your own regular rhythms of biophilic renewal, beautiful. 

But at some point—maybe even at this very point—stop reading what I’m writing, and for God’s sake don’t Google another goddamn thing about the benefits of nature, and go ahead and carry the elemental fibers of your blessed animal body through whatever threshold stands between you and something wild. Go love on nature a little.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit arammitchell.substack.com

Wilderness therefore is for everyone—the hardy hikers as well as the vast majority who have never known what it means to carry a pack… Wilderness is more than camping or hiking; it is a symbol of a way of life that can nourish the spirit.

– Sigurd Olson, Living Wilderness (1968)

Update about Spiritual Formation in the Wild here.

Life is wild. I am wild. Wilderness is powerful. Wilderness is dangerous. Wilderness is in me. Wilderness confronts me. Wilderness calls me. Wilderness points me home.

The idea of wilderness—and the material stuff of experiences that we call wild—are brimming with vitality, complication, and invitation. This is what Sig Olson was talking about when he wrote that wilderness “is a symbol of a way of life that can nourish the spirit”.

I was paddling on the Wisconsin River with my dad and my friends John and Peter. This was several years ago, but I remember it vividly. We were paddling downstream into a fierce wind that was whipping up waves, and that all but reversed the current. Cold rain stung my eyes and cheeks. It was precarious. It was tohu va bohu—the chaos of wildness that precedes creation in the origin myth of the Hebrew bible. It was glorious.

I was in the stern of one of our two canoes. I was responsible for keeping the boat rightly oriented to the wind and the waves. A touch too much in one direction and the wind would catch the bow and twirl us broadside to the waves, which would swamp us with one gulp. But if I kept our nose pointed into the waves, we’d ride through, soggy but afloat.

My mind was empty of all but the task of holding this balance. 

I say mind, but there wasn’t time between gusts for conscious calculation. My whole body—my whole sensory self—partook in the task. And for all of their ferocity, the wind was not a foe, nor the current, nor the waves. They were companions in this play of balance. 

Each tilting wave informed the way I angled my wrists and thereby angled the blade of the paddle in the water. Each gust that I felt on my cheek informed how I leaned my torso; informed the muscle that I put into each stroke, or my restrained pause between gusts.

That dance with the elements, that’s my understanding of spiritual formation.

Spiritual formation is the wild practice of living in balanced relationship with every element and quality of human nature. And wilderness—above all—is a venue for that practice.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit arammitchell.substack.com

I almost came to tears holding the gaze of a giant beech tree the other day. It was midday, clear skies, Emma and I and the golden doodle were out for a walk to the river. It was cold but comfortable. We were talking. My gaze was inward, clutching at my thoughts.

Emma and the doodle went across the street to deposit a bag of dog s**t in the trash, so I paused for a moment. When I pause, sometimes I remember to look around. This was one of those times. I looked around, and caught on the largest wild being in sight: A century old beech tree in the lot of a schoolyard. 

Old trees of any sort—whether gnarly, sprawling, or tall—have always made me emotional. This was that, but also beyond that. In a brief and subtle encounter with the beech tree I let my thoughts go and for a moment I felt the fullness of the world around me.

I was talking with a friend the other day. She’s going through a tough thing with her family, and she’s feeling like she can’t fix it, because, well, she can’t fix it. She’s been holding it together really well, but one evening earlier in the week, she told me, she couldn’t keep holding it together. The flood of feelings broke through. She lost her composure.

In her words, she said: “I just had an unfortunate moment of insanity.”

I laughed. We were at the stage in our conversation where it was possible to laugh with each other, where neither of us where taking ourselves too seriously. Which is an important stage in a conversation to be at if you are going to laugh at an otherwise serious thing that someone shares with you. 

I laughed and I said, “Everything you’re feeling makes so much sense, and maybe feeling it that strongly, given the circumstances, was actually one of the more sane things that you’ve felt.”

And there it is.

We’re holding our composure or clutching our thoughts, going through our day innocent to the fact that life is forcefully flowing through the earth beneath us and stretching out into the sky above us. Then something shifts. Something catches us unguarded and gaping. Or something releases in us. In wonder, awe, or confusion—for whatever reason—we surrender ourselves to the lunacy of the unbound moment. We let ourselves feel what we feel with complete precision.

It would be too much to maneuver through each day with constant precision. But may we all, from time to time, be blessed with such subtle moments of temporary sanity.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit arammitchell.substack.com

The more I practice paying attention, the more readily I am able to notice that mole hills are, in fact, not mountains.

When I was a child my favorite line in the bible was the one in Peter’s letter where he tells his readers: “Cast all of your anxiety on God, because God cares for you.” There is a container that is big enough to hold what I am not big enough to hold. I can feel the big things that I feel and spill them into the trustworthy presence of the divine. Well before I had any significant cares of my own to feel anxious about, I latched on to that sentiment.

Then I grew a little, got some life under me, and still I held fast to that idea. In that idea I found the comfort of surrender that I needed as an adolescent in order to navigate the worries and losses that clustered around my parents’ divorce. In that idea I found the confidence and inner-company that I needed in order to untether from safe harbor and set out, into the world, as a young and sensitive man, full of feeling and tenderness. 

Once abroad, in a way, I held fast to the idea even as my concept and experiences of God flowed into a salty worldview that was broader and deeper than the one I’d swum in when I was a child.

In a way, I hold fast to it still. I have been deliberately practicing surrender in the face of overwhelm for over thirty years now. I’ve grown strong as I’ve grown up in the practice. But the clusters of care have grown too. 

Tangles of hardship grow up alongside us all. We who dare to engage the wildness of life without numbing ourselves to its joys and discomforts will inevitably find ourselves snagged in the thickets of loss—the fears of loss and of actual loss.

And there is not a direct path through the wilderness. Wilderness paths fold and bend. They circle, turn, and spiral, even as they progress. So it goes with our formation as wild beings. 

Spiritual formation is not linear, it’s lived. And everything alive has curves and ebbs and flows.

And, sure, the more we practice taking deliberate steps on the path of our formation, the more readily we will notice that mole hills are not mountains, and bumps are not blockades. But still, we’ll wobble.

It’s okay to wobble. At least I hope so. The past couple months I’ve been wobbly as hell, getting snagged most days and thrown off balance by overwhelm and self-doubt. Coming from the ruptures and radical change of my midlife moment, I’ve got plenty of reasons to be off balance. Though, in my experience, self-doubt doesn’t really need reasons.

My self-doubt shows up gnarly—pretty well anytime I have a chance to lean in to life with fullness, or with greater ease, or with clarity, or something to offer. My self-doubt shows up mean, insisting that I’m a poser, a fake, a fraud, an imposter.

Nevertheless, when I’m stuck in thickets of self-doubt, I find that it suits me best to be gentle with me. To look that doubting part of me square in my beautiful eyes, and say gently, firmly: “It’s okay. I hear you. No wonder. Don’t worry. I’ve got this.”

How about this: The harsher the thorn, the gentler we pluck. 

How about this: Rather than running headlong into the thicket, let’s pause.

Practicing pause lets us get a little bit of distance between what we’re feeling (the doubt, the worry, the smallness) and what’s available (our fullness, our toughness, our gentleness), so that the obstacles can become invitations for brave and honest reflection, for humble and active response.

It’s simple, but simple isn’t easy. It’s not linear. Access to our own best wisdom is going to ebb and flow. We’re going to wobble. That’s okay. But it’s okay, too, to find your balance again. And again and again.

Earlier this week I shared that I launched a business. The thickets, and my response to them, have been a big part of getting there. Next time I write, I’ll share a few more ways that—smack dab in the midst of the wobbles so far this year—I’ve had the audacity to show up with my fullness, joy, and creativity. 

And I’d love to hear about your maneuvers of resilience in the wilderness too.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit arammitchell.substack.com

I just launched a business! Now it’s time for show and tell. And I feel like a kid standing up in front of a classroom of his peers, excited and nervous.

I’ve been toying with the right analogy, actually. Do you launch a business? or build a business? or plant a business? or grow a business? or conjure up the audacity, against the odds, to become a business?

Whatever the analogy: I made a thing!

And it’s designed to be a living thing. Like every lasting creation, it’s meant to be something that is continually made. 

After all the work that I have put into building the foundation—after all the self-doubt and self-talk, all the coaching and feedback, all of the reflection and gathering and drafting and revising and framing—I am now occupying this precise moment where:

* I either stand back by myself and admire the thing in its static, unchanging form;

* or I risk sharing, and thereby changing, the thing.

Because the nature of the thing I made has to get shared to come alive.

It has to flow together with others—with folks like you—who are alive to the things that they want to make and birth and steward and champion in this world. 

It has to flow into the hearts and minds of people who are awake to themselves, and who are willing to entertain the possibility that—smack-dab in the midst of life—they can keep on becoming who they were born to be.

Here’s the thing I made: Confluence Formation | Coaching & Spiritual Care.

And here’s how you can help it come alive:

* Schedule some time to talk with me! I want to hear your feedback and curiosities, and any ideas or leads that you have about how to channel Confluence Formation into the lives of people it would help.

* Share the coaching page specifically with people you know who might need help getting past obstacles that are blocking their creative flow.

* Look at the spiritual care page and consider joining me for the 8-week Spiritual Formation in the Wild course that I will be teaching this Spring.

I’m going to keep at it. Keep on making this thing. I’d love for you to join me along the way, in whatever ways you’re able and interested. 

Meanwhile, thank you for being part of this Substack community of practice. Your presence is an encouragement and inspiration to continue following Mary Oliver’s instructions for living a life: “Pay attention. Be astonished. Tell about it.”

Right alongside of today’s creative practice: Make something. Get excited. Tell about it.

So, what about you? What’s wowing you of late? What have you been making recently? 

Tell us about it.

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