The Slow Way

I've spent the past decade pushing back on what I would now call the "toxic positivity" of evangelical Christian culture, pushing from within at first, and now speaking from outside, about the dangers of soul-crushing theology dressed up as personal transformation, and that culture's tendency to bury the ones who are crushed in the process. What if the way toward Easter life is found in the wisdom of our own mortality, in the real and powerful acknowledgement that we are limited creatures, here for a limited amount of time, and invited to make the world a place that looks like the kind of life Jesus offered in his resurrected body: whole, scarred, on the other side of hell, transformed, and transforming others through forgiveness. In this week's podcast, I'm thinking about the days that come AFTER Easter, how we view our time and mortality, and also a sloth curled up in the rain (because I'm a mom of boys).

Links:

• This reflection and practice were also published this week in The Slow Way Newsletter.
• Click HERE for free downloads/printables for our Easter themes.
• If you feel like it, check out the docuseries with the sloth here.
• Read Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals by Oliver Burkeman here.
• Find a transcript of this episode here.
• Find Micha's website and sign up for her weekly newsletter here
• Check out The Slow Way online store
• Find Micha on Instagram
• Find Micha on Twitter
• Micha's other podcast, The Lucky Few, is all about Down syndrome advocacy. She cohosts it with Heather Avis and Mercedes Lara.
• Found: A Story of Questions, Grace, and Everyday Prayer is available everywhere books are sold

How do we talk about Easter? The truth is, listener, I have a much easier time talking about the sad days: the Ash Wednesdays, the Good Fridays. I'm a melancholy type all the way through. Celebrating is something I've learned to do, but dang. Sometimes it's hard for me. Today we're supposed to wake up and remember (believe, even!) that all things are being made new. That the Holy One who was killed by the powers of the empire isn't defeated. That there is something in this universe more powerful than Death itself.

Happy Easter, friends. Here's to a bigger resurrection than we ever thought possible.

Links:

• This reflection and practice were also published this week in The Slow Way Newsletter.
• Click HERE for free downloads/printables
• Check out The Slow Way online store
• Find a transcript of this episode here.
• Find Richard Rohr's book The Universal Christ here.
• Find Micha's website and sign up for her weekly newsletter here
• Find Micha on Instagram
• Find Micha on Twitter
• Micha's other podcast, The Lucky Few, is all about Down syndrome advocacy. She cohosts it with Heather Avis and Mercedes Lara.
• Found: A Story of Questions, Grace, and Everyday Prayer is available everywhere books are sold

Today is Good Friday, one of the days of the Christian calendar that I've always connected most deeply to. Not because I love thinking about crucifixion or because I think I can possibly grasp what happened on the cross. But because it's a day we're all allowed to be sad and mad and heartbroken and quiet at church. And if you ask me, we could do with a lot more of those kind of days.

I hope you can relate to this special edition of The Slow Way as we head into Easter. Thanks for listening, friends.

Links:

• This reflection and practice were also published this week in The Slow Way Newsletter.
• Click HERE for free downloads/printables
• Check out The Slow Way online store
• Find a transcript of this episode here.
• Find Micha's website and sign up for her weekly newsletter here
• Find Micha on Instagram
• Find Micha on Twitter
• Micha's other podcast, The Lucky Few, is all about Down syndrome advocacy. She cohosts it with Heather Avis and Mercedes Lara.
• Found: A Story of Questions, Grace, and Everyday Prayer is available everywhere books are sold

What comes to mind when you consider your own ballooning faith — the life moments when your faith felt wild and out of your control, and perhaps also alive in a way that feels far off now? What do you do when faith feels like it floated so high you can no longer reach it? What does it look like to settle your faith into the earth, ground yourself in humility, in the recognition that you don't have to understand everything, don't have to have every answer, and can actually find your hope in the place of mystery?

As you walk through your own practice of Holy Week, remind yourselves of the teachings of Jesus, consider his washing of the disciples feet and his final Passover with his disciples, and as you sit with his heartbreaking prayers on Thursday night, what mystery are you invited into? What is the ache you notice in yourself? I wonder what it would mean for you to lean into that ache this week.

• This reflection and practice were also published this week in The Slow Way Newsletter.
• Click HERE for free downloads/printables
• Check out The Slow Way online store
• Find a transcript of this episode here.
• Find Micha's website and sign up for her weekly newsletter here
• Find Micha on Instagram
• Find Micha on Twitter
• Micha's other podcast, The Lucky Few, is all about Down syndrome advocacy. She cohosts it with Heather Avis and Mercedes Lara.
• Found: A Story of Questions, Grace, and Everyday Prayer is available everywhere books are sold

So much of the life of faith is a steady nourishment of ritual. We do the thing over and over, not because every spiritual practice *feels* particularly powerful, or because prayer is a switch we turn on or off in order to get to the presence of God. But because the ritual is like healthy food and exercise and sleep. It demands something of us. It requires us to pursue the long-term good over the short-term comfort. It shapes us slowly and deliberately. And eventually, it builds a structure where we're tuned to the voice of God. Where we can hear the sound of the Divine because we've learned to listen.

One of my favorite rituals is my morning cup of coffee with my husband. I'm talking more about that in this week's episode. Thanks for listening, friends.

• This reflection and practice were also published this week in The Slow Way Newsletter.
• Click HERE for free downloads/printables
• Check out The Slow Way online store
• Find a transcript of this episode here.
• Find Micha's website and sign up for her weekly newsletter here
• Find Micha on Instagram
• Find Micha on Twitter
• Micha's other podcast, The Lucky Few, is all about Down syndrome advocacy. She cohosts it with Heather Avis and Mercedes Lara.
• Found: A Story of Questions, Grace, and Everyday Prayer is available everywhere books are sold

What if we treated all the utensils of our lives as if they were sacred? What if we blessed the kitchens where we throw together our twenty minute meals, and make the bed we will sleep in as if we were cozying up our space for the divine? What if the computer keys where we tap out messages on Slack are an invitation to love? What if the meeting we lead for our team of colleagues matters, not just to our career, but to the flourishing of the world? There's a phrase that keeps coming back to me from the Torah, the Hebrew book of Deuteronomy: "The Lord will open the heavens, the storehouse of his bounty, to send rain on your land in season and to bless all the work of your hands."

Our hands are holy, and they are invited by the Life-Peace-Grace-Maker to create meaning out of everything.

Links:

• This reflection and practice were also published this week in The Slow Way Newsletter.
• Click HERE for free downloads/printables
• Check out The Slow Way online store
• Find a transcript of this episode here.
• Find Micha's website and sign up for her weekly newsletter here
• Find Micha on Instagram
• Find Micha on Twitter
• Micha's other podcast, The Lucky Few, is all about Down syndrome advocacy. She cohosts it with Heather Avis and Mercedes Lara.

Found: A Story of Questions, Grace, and Everyday Prayer is available everywhere books are sold

The last massive migraine I had was in December, a handful of days before my dad died. He had stopped eating on a Thursday and that Friday I bought a flight, finished pre-Christmas tasks, and packed so I could make it to my parents in time to be with him for as long as he needed. That Saturday I was hit with a migraine and, as I was used to at that point, spent the afternoon in bed, medicated, with a heating pad on my neck and a lavender eye mask over my face. The next day I flew to Texas...

In this episode, I'm talking about the grief of losing my dad and the healing that has occured since. Join me for a conversation on spiritual and physical healing as I tell you a story about one of my last migraines.

Links:

• This reflection and practice were also published this week in The Slow Way Newsletter.
• Click HERE for free downloads/printables
• Check out The Slow Way online store
• Read more from @amyjuliabecker
• Find a transcript of this episode here.
• Find Micha's website and sign up for her weekly newsletter here
• Find Micha on Instagram
• Find Micha on Twitter
• Micha's other podcast, The Lucky Few, is all about Down syndrome advocacy. She cohosts it with Heather Avis and Mercedes Lara.
• Found: A Story of Questions, Grace, and Everyday Prayer is available everywhere books are sold

I've been thinking about light and darkness and waiting. This season of Lent is meant to be a season of darkness, an intentional time outside of feasting, outside of usual comforts. That intentionality is there as a way of pushing ourselves to notice that we are already living in a shadowed world, so used to dimness that we mistake the vague grayscale of our lives for color. Lent is a season to remind ourselves to see our own cracks and those around us as an invitation to more. Without seasons of intentional excavation of the shadows we live in, and the search for light, we can convince ourselves that the darkness is all there is: wars and power-mongering, individual glory at the expense of the common good, our own self-hatred and shame. But when we attend to those broken spaces, we find a way to the light we don't always even know we're seeking.

Links:

• This reflection and practice were also published this week in The Slow Way Newsletter.
• Click HERE for free downloads/printables
• Check out The Slow Way online store
• Read more from @sandramccracken, @amyjuliabecker, and @colearthurriley
• Find the newsletter from LM Sacasas here.
• Find a transcript of this episode here.
• Find Micha's website and sign up for her weekly newsletter here
• Find Micha on Instagram
• Find Micha on Twitter
• Micha's other podcast, The Lucky Few, is all about Down syndrome advocacy. She cohosts it with Heather Avis and Mercedes Lara.
• Found: A Story of Questions, Grace, and Everyday Prayer is available everywhere books are sold

This week I said something on Instagram about how fasting doesn't need to equal suffering. What I meant was that there is enough suffering already in our lives.

In the past ten years I've walked through a lost pregnancy, several terrifying diagnoses of my children, the death of a handful of beloved friends, the split of a church community I adored (caused by leadership decisions I had a hand in). I sat with my dad as he came to terms with his terminal illness and sat with him eleven months later when we ushered him to the end. And as I come to this first week of Lent at the tail-end of a pandemic, in a country divided into hardened edges, and watching an evil war catching flame before my eyes, I honestly can't imagine choosing to suffer any extra bit right now.

Maybe you feel that way too? Now don't hear me saying that suffering doesn't cause growth. It sure does. And maybe suffering is the straightest path toward spiritual growth. But I don't think we need to inflict external suffering on ourselves in order to grow. I am pretty sure I reject that idea completely.

Join me today as I reflect on how my concept of fasting has changed over time (I still can't believe 23-year-old Micha was able to give up coffee for 40 days) and what my motivation for fasting is now.

Links:

• This reflection and practice were also published this week in The Slow Way Newsletter.
• Click HERE for free downloads/printables that say "we are becoming more fully alive to God"
• Read Hearts On Fire: Praying With Jesuits by Michael Harter here
• Find a transcript of this episode here.
• Find Micha's website and sign up for her weekly newsletter here
• Find Micha on Instagram
• Find Micha on Twitter
• Micha's other podcast, The Lucky Few, is all about Down syndrome advocacy. She cohosts it with Heather Avis and Mercedes Lara.
• Found: A Story of Questions, Grace, and Everyday Prayer is available everywhere books are sold

This past Thursday I was a wreck. Maybe some of you felt that way as well. Russia had invaded Ukraine and the seriousness of a war like this in Europe and what it means for all of us was heavy on me. I ache for my kids and the world they're inheriting.

Sometimes it feels like men grasping for power is still the very thing that just might kill us all. Or as my friend D.L. Mayfield wrote on Twitter last week, "I am so sick of violent men and the wars they start I could scream."

The lectionary Gospel reading this past Sunday was from Luke 6, Jesus' teaching that seems as wild and ridiculous as it did two thousand years ago: "Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you. If anyone strikes you on the cheek, offer the other also; and from anyone who takes away your coat do not withhold even your shirt." How fitting.

The concept of "turning the other cheek" has been used to dominate, and to ask those without power to take their abuse with a smile. But what if the idea of turning the other cheek is a muscular, wholehearted response to violence? As my pastor said, "I will not respond from the place of pain [the cheek that was struck], I will [turn my healthy cheek and] respond from my wholeness."

As we watch this unjust war unfold in the Ukraine, what could it mean for us to respond to violence from our wholeness?

Links:

• This reflection and practice were also published this week in The Slow Way Newsletter.
• Howard Thurman's book Jesus and the Disinherited can be found here.
• Find a transcript of this episode here.
• Find Micha's website and sign up for her weekly newsletter here
• Find Micha on Instagram
• Find Micha on Twitter
• Micha's other podcast, The Lucky Few, is all about Down syndrome advocacy. She cohosts it with Heather Avis and Mercedes Lara.
• Found: A Story of Questions, Grace, and Everyday Prayer is available everywhere books are sold