The Daily Edify

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 [email protected]. 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 [email protected]. 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 [email protected]. 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 [email protected]. 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 [email protected]. 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 [email protected]. 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 [email protected]. 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 [email protected]. 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 [email protected]. 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 [email protected]. Thanks for listening, friends. You are loved and never alone!