The Slow Way

Today's replay is from Episode 18, in which I shared about how, after my dad died, I went months without the debilitating migraines that defined my two years before his death. How, when I recorded that episode, I hoped those months of lightness without pain were a true healing. I had been worried to share that story, because what if I called myself "healed" and then the migraines came back?

Listener, they did. In the summer of 2022 they returned with a vengeance and have remained.

What do I believe about those sweet months in my deepest time of grief, when I was free of pain? Was it an answer to my dad's prayer, to mine? Was it a gift in a season of suffering? Was it relief from the stress of watching my dad suffer?

In her book To Be Made Well, Amy Julia Becker writes that, "to live in God's healing presence is like swimming in the ocean: immense, frightening, powerful, beautiful. Where, as the Psalmist writes: 'deep calls to deep,' where answers don't come easily, where pain is exposed rather than covered over, where healing leads to transformation."

Whatever healing means for me, I want my pain—both the physical and emotional—to be exposed rather than covered over. Healing as transformation.

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 Threads
• Micha's other 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.

This replay of Episode 34 from August 2022 considers the language we use when we talk about "seeking God." What is authentic faith? And what does it mean for it to be a long-term, whole-hearted pursuit that involves the world around us, our stories, and our particular ways of being. Healthy spirituality needs the body. It can never be a mind-trick. It involves the kind of integration required in knowing our habits and motives and weaknesses, and connecting those to our pursuit of the expansive love of the Divine.

Links:

• This reflection and practice were also published in my Slow Way letter
• Read The Sound of Life's Unspeakable Beauty by Martin Schleske
• Find a transcript of this episode here.
• Find Micha's website and sign up for her weekly letter here
• Find Micha on Instagram
• Find Micha on Threads
• Micha's other 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.

May the last late light of summer glow spread wide enough to stir your longing for whatever it is your body, your soul, your heart is asking you to notice. May you walk slower this week into the end of the summer so you can listen to the stirring. May you notice the nudge of the Spirit pointing to love even in the close of one story and the opening sentence of another.

Links:

• I announced my new book and cover a few weeks ago on Instagram. So excited to share it with you!
• 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.

"Inasmuch as we are dying," Shannon K. Evans writes in her book Rewilding Motherhood, "we are also creating. Inasmuch as old things are passing away, we are also being made new. We are less of who we were and so much more of who we will be. . . God is all in all."

For something to become new, the old thing must let go—a shadow lengthening, a leaf releasing from the branch, the earth tilting ever so slightly away from the source of light.

Links:

• Here's a link to Shannon K. Evans' book Rewilding Motherhood
• I announced my new book and cover a few weeks ago on Instagram. So excited to share it with you!
• 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.

We only get two billion heartbeats. We can hummingbird them, or tortoise them. The faster we zoom, the more our souls—our engines—burn. That doesn't always have to be a terrible thing. But it does matter.

Links:

• Here's a link to Marjorie J. Thompson's Soul Feast: An Invitation to the Christian Spiritual Life
• And here's a link to One Long River of Song by Brian Doyle.
• I announced my new book and cover a few weeks agoon Instagram. So excited to share it with you!
• 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.

What does it mean to let our grief shape us into elders, choosing wisdom over bitterness? I'm certain the answer is in the circle of welcome: the magic of our fragile hearts holding one another's fragile hearts, and how, somehow, in this uncertain carrying we honor each other's experiences, loves, and sufferings. We learn to be vulnerable together, which just might be the hardest thing of all.

Links:

• Here's a link to The Wild Edge of Sorrow
• And here's a link to One Long River of Song.
• I announced my new book and cover a few weeks agoon Instagram. So excited to share it with you!
• 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.

Much of life is a choice to fling or not to fling. Will we be extravagant with the love we've been given, or will we hold ourselves back because of fear, the chance that all our flinging might not make a difference, or that we'll be hurt in the process? "An abundant imagination feeds us courage," my pastor Michael Rudzena said. "There is more than just one shot. There are seeds showering down all around us."

Links:

• Here's a link to some of Barbara Brown Taylor's sermon on this passage.
• And here's a link to my pastor Michael Rudzena's sermon on the same passage.
• I announced my new book and cover last week on Instagram. So excited to share it with you!
• 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. (Who needs Twitter?!)
• 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.

In his longest recorded sermon, Jesus taught about the importance of the process. "Ask, and it will be given you; search, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened for you. For everyone who asks receives, and everyone who searches finds, and for everyone who knocks, the door will be opened."

Asking, I've learned, isn't a one and done process. Just as searching is a thing that keeps on going. We turn the room over until we find one treasure, and then—amazingly?— that treasure leads us to hunt for the next one.

Ask and search, Jesus said. Knock. And do it together. Ask and search and knock together.

Links:

• I announced my new book and cover last week on Instagram. So excited to share it with you!
• 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. (Who needs Twitter?!)
• Micha's other 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.

I have a lot of regrets from my younger years of loving a God who seemed both demanding of sacrifice and somehow, simultaneously, filled with mercy. I didn't know how to reconcile the two. So I preached a message of both to myself. Struggling with how one might turn one's heart around without Love in the first place. Not knowing how, when I was most afraid, I leaned into the hollow how-tos, forgoing mercy when it felt too complicated. Sometimes exclusion is easier than the playful mercy of Jesus.

Links:

• I announced my new book and cover yesterday on Instagram! So excited to share it with you!
• 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. (Who needs Twitter?!)
• Micha's other 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.

I haven't written much about how I became LGBTQ+ affirming almost a decade ago. It was a slow process, one that was born of relationships with dear-to-me queer folks, revelations of the high percentage of LGBTQ+ people who have suffered deeply in the often abusive hand of the Church, and it was the work of Jesus in me, revealing the way of transforming love in a world where we cling to rules, even we see those rules destroying the lives of God's beloveds. This is about how I've come to know Jesus, how I've come to understand the movement of the Spirit of God in the world. It's not an argument where I try to convince anyone of my reading of particular verses that seem to reject LGBTQ+ relationships. Changing one's mind on this particularly thorny subject in the Church is not about finally understanding the original Greek of Paul's letters, or reading the right scholar. It's about perspective, experience, lens. I can't convince anyone that I'm right, and that's not my job. But I did feel joy in telling the story of how I put on my Jesus glasses, saw my queer siblings in the way I believe God had been inviting me to see for a long time, and learned to imagine scripture in a way I never had before. Mostly I wanted to tell you about the the quiet and holy sweetness of finally listening to my own conscience and finding that my relief was the voice of God there with me: "Hi, honey." God said. "I've been here the whole time. You can trust me."

Links:

• 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 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.