The Slow Way

Surrender is sometimes the work of naming my weaknesses and allowing them to drag me to the love of God, where I am fully known, and fully myself, with or without my abilities, usefulness, or performance..

• Find "Lake Coatepeque" on The Brilliance's newest album Feel It.
• Read For the Life of the World by Alexander Shmemann
• Find Psalm 104 here
• Micha is offering a zoom workshop for her Substack paid subscribers this February 24. Here's a link to learn more about it! If you're interested in participating in the workshop and future online interactive conversations with me, become a paid subscriber and support my work! Here's a link to learn more.
• This reflection and practice were also published this week in The Slow Way Letter on Substack.
• 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 Threads.
• Micha's other (award winning!) podcast, The Lucky Few, is all about Down syndrome advocacy. She cohosts it with Heather Avis and Mercedes Lara.

Preorder Micha's new book Blessed Are The Rest of Us: How Limits and Longing Make Us Whole for 40% off at BakerBookHouse.com. The first 200 people to preorder from Baker will also receive a signed copy of the book and a fun little gift. Jump over there and get your preorder in.

Prayer is an act of intention where I don't deny the micro and macro ache of this life. The hurts that arrive in our lives or the lives of those we love, and the Greater Pain that lives in our societies and systems. And still we choose the thorny, winding path of hope. We choose it with eyes wide open, so we may see when we bump into God.

• Find Everything Belongs by Richard Rohr.
• Read Hunting Magic Eels: Recovering an Enchanted Faith in a Skeptical Age by Richard Beck.
• Read Marilynne Robinson's novel Gilead.
• Read "The Sacrament of the Present Moment by Jean-Pierre de Caussade.
• If you're interested in more on Epiphany a link to Good Shepherd New York's Epiphany Guide.
• Learn more about mini breaks here and here.
• Micha is offering a zoom workshop for her Substack paid subscribers this February 24. Here's a link to learn more about it! If you're interested in participating in the workshop and future online interactive conversations with me, become a paid subscriber and support my work! Here's a link to learn more.
• This reflection and practice were also published this week in The Slow Way Letter on Substack.
• 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 Threads.
• Micha's other (award winning!) podcast, The Lucky Few, is all about Down syndrome advocacy. She cohosts it with Heather Avis and Mercedes Lara.

Preorder Micha's new book Blessed Are The Rest of Us: How Limits and Longing Make Us Whole for 40% off at BakerBookHouse.com. The first 200 people to preorder from Baker will also receive a signed copy of the book and a fun little gift. Jump over there and get your preorder in.

Glory somehow shows up when we suffer, not because suffering is a payment, but because it's a truth-teller, a revealer. We need winter—for all its ache and ice and clarity—where Love has more space in all the sparseness to reach us.

• Find Everything Belongs by Richard Rohr
• Read Psalm 27 here.
• If you're interested in more on Epiphany a link to Good Shepherd New York's Epiphany Guide.
• Micha is offering a zoom workshop for her Substack paid subscribers this Febrary 24. Here's a link to learn more about it! If you're interested in participating in the workshop and future online interactive conversations with me, become a paid subscriber and support my work! Here's a link to learn more.
• This reflection and practice were also published this week in The Slow Way Letter on Substack.
• 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 Threads.
• Micha's other (award winning!) podcast, The Lucky Few, is all about Down syndrome advocacy. She cohosts it with Heather Avis and Mercedes Lara.

Preorder Micha's new book Blessed Are The Rest of Us: How Limits and Longing Make Us Whole for 40% off at BakerBookHouse.com. The first 200 people to preorder from Baker will also receive a signed copy of the book and a fun little gift. Jump over there and get your preorder in.

There is no boundary around holiness: all of this world is worthy of God's holy smudge. In fact, the act of blessing is simply recognizing and marking what is already true. This is the task of Epiphany for us. We show up like the wise men, carrying our gifts. What we're invited to bring the Christ is almost always what we love. Blessing the people and things around us is just another way of saying that this world matters, that life is more than the edges of things; it's the white hot center where meaning lives. Blessing is saying that everything belongs there in the sacred space, that what we have to bring is a gift worthy of the Christ child.

• Find An Altar in the World by Barbara Brown Taylor
• Here's a link to Good Shepherd New York's Epiphany Guide.
• This reflection and practice were also published this week in The Slow Way Letter on Substack.
• 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 Threads.
• Micha's other (award winning!) podcast, The Lucky Few, is all about Down syndrome advocacy. She cohosts it with Heather Avis and Mercedes Lara.

Preorder Micha's new book Blessed Are The Rest of Us: How Limits and Longing Make Us Whole for 40% off at BakerBookHouse.com from January 15, 2024 through the rest of the year. Just enter SLOWWAY at checkout. The first 200 people to preorder from Baker will also receive a signed copy of the book and a fun little gift. Jump over there and get your preorder in. Don't forget to use the code!

Can we allow ourselves to cease the relentless pursuit of doing enough, and instead choose to be kind to ourselves and one another—to make warm and generous meals, to sit with people we love under blankets, to dream, and to ask ourselves who we are if we're not proving ourselves? These are the spiritual practices of Epiphany, to be still long enough to see the revelation for all that is.

• Find Wintering: The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times.
• Here's a link to The Little Book of Hygge: The Danish Way to Live Well.
• This reflection and practice were also published this week in The Slow Way Letter on Substack.
• 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 Threads.
• Micha's other (award winning!) podcast, The Lucky Few, is all about Down syndrome advocacy. She cohosts it with Heather Avis and Mercedes Lara.

Preorder Micha's new book Blessed Are The Rest of Us: How Limits and Longing Make Us Whole at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and available everywhere books are sold.

This Christmas, Jesus is making us whole through our longings, our longings for a world of goodness and peace, and also, our longings for things to be put right in our own lives.

• Find Jonathan Pennington's book The Sermon on the Mount and Human Flourishing here.
• Read the Beatitudes here.
• Find Phillippians 2 here.
• Read Isaiah 30 here.
• This reflection and practice were also published this week in The Slow Way Newsletter.
• 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 Threads.
• Micha's other (award winning!) podcast, The Lucky Few, is all about Down syndrome advocacy. She cohosts it with Heather Avis and Mercedes Lara.

Preorder Micha's new book Blessed Are The Rest of Us: How Limits and Longing Make Us Whole at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and available everywhere books are sold.

"…at last they were beginning Chapter One of the Great Story," I whispered. It was 2 am. "...which no one on earth has read: which goes on for ever." The work of helping my dad into the next story was holy and heavy with love. And the words I spoke lived in the realest part of me. I think that's what it means to believe, even when doubt is ever present.

Maybe it's strange to write about death during Advent, a season of waiting for a birth. But birth and death go hand in hand, and I've been thinking we should consider them together more often. Last week I wrote about Mary's choice to give birth to a child from God, and how her consent led to her powerful song of liberation. How does consent lead to liberation? The same way that death leads to new life, the same way the end of a story leads to a story that goes on forever. This is the logic of Love. And the door to that Love somehow has to do with belief.

• Find The Last Battle by C.S. Lewis here.
• This reflection and practice were also published this week in The Slow Way Newsletter.
• 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 Threads.
• Micha's other (award winning!) podcast, The Lucky Few, is all about Down syndrome advocacy. She cohosts it with Heather Avis and Mercedes Lara.

Preorder Micha's new book Blessed Are The Rest of Us: How Limits and Longing Make Us Whole at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and available everywhere books are sold.

Mary sings that God's justice moves us toward liberation for the ones who are discarded by society, allowing a girl like her, pregnant outside of marriage, to overcome the shame and humiliation her culture placed on her, to reverse the rules of who gets discarded, and who gets to matter. I am certain that Jesus's courageous and wise young mother taught him the power of a God who brings hope to the least of these, that it was her teaching that led him to the heart of the good news he came bringing.

• Read The First Advent in Palestine: Reversals, Resistance, and the Ongoing Complexity of Hope by Kelley Nikondeha.
• This reflection and practice were also published this week in The Slow Way Newsletter.
• 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 Threads.
• Micha's other (award winning!) podcast, The Lucky Few, is all about Down syndrome advocacy. She cohosts it with Heather Avis and Mercedes Lara.

Preorder Micha's new book Blessed Are The Rest of Us: How Limits and Longing Make Us Whole at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and available everywhere books are sold.

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Mystery is the core of my faith these days. Because no matter how many people prop a pine tree in water and twist twinkle lights through it, no matter how many Playmobile nativity sets are opened and play-acted by little ones, the story of baby Jesus is wild. When we allow ourselves to sit with it, to ask all the questions there are to ask, we are left with a choice—to either believe in just how marvelous it would be if the Creator came to us as a babe, or to embrace a season of gifts and cozy and connections, but write the Jesus part off along with most of our culture. What do we do with a story of God that lies beyond any modern, practical notions of how the world works?

• Find Brian Doyle's book of essays, One Long River of Song here.
• This reflection and practice were also published this week in The Slow Way Newsletter.
• 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 Threads.
• Micha's other (award winning!) podcast, The Lucky Few, is all about Down syndrome advocacy. She cohosts it with Heather Avis and Mercedes Lara.

Preorder Micha's new book Blessed Are The Rest of Us: How Limits and Longing Make Us Whole at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and available everywhere books are sold.

This Thanksgiving, can we think about the concept of gratitude beyond lists or feelings? Let's consider gratitude as a practice that begins in our own bodies, in our choice to stop, our choice to quiet our minds. When we learn to stop and get quiet so we can really look, our graittude becomes more than a feeling. It becomes something we carry into our ordinary lives.

• Find the Ted Talk from Benedictine monk David Stendl-Rast here.
• Find the video A Grateful Day with Brother David Steindl-Rast here.
• This reflection and practice were also published this week in The Slow Way Newsletter.
• 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 Threads.
• Micha's other (award winning!) podcast, The Lucky Few, is all about Down syndrome advocacy. She cohosts it with Heather Avis and Mercedes Lara.

Preorder my new book Blessed Are The Rest of Us: How Limits and Longing Make Us Whole at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and available everywhere books are sold.