The Slow Way

On the Southern Baptist Convention's vote to expel churches with women pastors, my calling to pastor (and the complicated denial of that call by my community and by me), and why I left the Southern Baptist church when I was twenty two, but still find myself brokenhearted for what could have been.

Links:

• Read about the Southern Baptist Convention's recent vote here.
• Find Martin Laird's book Into the Silent Land 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 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.

For years I've told myself that the Jesus I saw mass produced in mega churches, political stages, and trotted out as social capital by the Church-As-Corporation was just a confused version of Jesus. That somewhere along the line leaders had gotten their eyes all fuzzy when they read scripture so they missed some massive portions of teachings from the Son of God who started the whole shebang. But, friends, there was some clarity for me this week as I watched this Hillsong docuseries, which really didn't say anything new. We have all seen how reckless power, immaturity, and self-preservation practiced in the context of religious authority literally destroys lives, particularly the lives of the vulnerable under the spiritual care of those immature and reckless leaders.

But this time as I watched this Hillsong series, I thought: Oh. They actually don't love the Jesus of the Bible. They love a different Jesus.

On Unsexy Jesus: the small, downward, ordinary ideas that got Jesus in trouble. And might just save the Church.

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.

I've thought a lot about the way that water heals us, how we need its power. There've been scientific studies that show how even the sight and sound of bodies of water can increase neurochemicals in the brain, increase blood flow, which ultimately leads to relaxation. So maybe the ocean is talking to Ace, or maybe my child is uniquely designed to be more in touch (this is my suspicion) with the ways we humans are naturally oriented by our Creator toward goodness. We long for the beauty and power of water. We long for adventure. We long to be held and carried, to be released from the weight of our land-locked lives.

Maybe the water reminds us that the really real is always here among us. I'm pretty sure that the ache and the grace of seeing it are two sides of the same coin. Call it magic. Call it joy. Call it divine. See it in the ocean talking or the autistic boy who conducts the waves with his own arm flaps. Either way, the invitation is to pay attention, to allow ourselves space to see it.

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

Our desire whispers how the world is not as it should be, even as we move through our daily rhythms of work and dinner-making and dish-washing and Netflix-binging. What will we do with our unrest?

Links:

• This reflection and practice were also published this week in The Slow Way Newsletter.
• Find a transcript of this episode here.
• Read The Holy Longing: The Search For Christian Spirituality by Ronald Rolheiser
• Read Psalm 139 from The Message 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 don't always live this value, but I hope that when my boys look back at their childhoods they will remember that we taught them to show up for people they love. When we have the opportunity to love someone in action, we do it. Even if it means braving the Holland Tunnel on a Friday night, dealing with two hours of Jersey traffic heading toward New York, driving my eight year old minivan through Manhattan all the way to the East side, letting whoever must honk at me, honk. Parallel parking on 3rd Avenue at 5:45 pm. And no, not for a Broadway show. For a middle school play.

I imagine that's the kind of Friday night commute Jesus would have made too. Jesus would have cheered with delight for the drama kids, some of their voices cracking their way through songs, their costumes falling off their bodies, their families hollering in the audience, their teachers so openly adoring them.

In our culture of constant fretting and over-scheduling, taking the time to show up for the people we love, or perhaps, the people it feels difficult to love, can seem impossible. Today I want us to spend time imagining two different people in our lives: One, someone who showed up for you at some point when you needed it. Maybe, like me, you remember an adult who cared for you when you were young, whether they were significant during a vital life moment, or were simply a brief presence of kindness. Then, I want you to spend time imagining a person in your life you want to love with your presence. Someone you care about, but have struggled to make time for, or aren't sure how to love well. I'll guide you through it.

I am curious lately -- my hands pulling worm after worm out of my compost as I move the new soil from bin to vegetable garden -- about a God who might love the world enough to call plants and worms "kin." What if we did the same? How do we gain tenderness toward the earth we live in, becoming those most passionate about seeing the earth cared for, nourished and returned to what's right?

Perhaps that starts with our own hearts, with seeing the natural world as God sees it. Today we're asking the question: What if our neighbor is not only the human next door, but the living beings all around us?

Links:

• This reflection and practice were also published this week in The Slow Way Newsletter.
• Find a transcript of this episode here.
• Read Sing, Wrestle, Spin by Jennifer Grant
• Read Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Kimmerer
• Listen to and watch "Sycamore, Sparrow" by Good Shepherd Collective
• 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. On this week's episode they interviewed Noah Matthews Matofsky, Disney's first actor in a film with Down syndrome, who stars as the leader of the Lost Boys in the new movie Peter Pan & Wendy.

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

This Christmas Eve, despite the challenge we can feel to believe this story of God coming to us through a boy in ancient Palestine, I invite you to imagine it afresh with me. It may not be easy to believe, but the gift of the story is in its humanity. A God who knows what it is to sit with a mother in the quiet. A God who knows the sweet slowness of a sunset. A God who has had to learn some manners. What if we cling to the small deliberate truths of God-with-us actually means.

Take some time to sit with Episode 5 of The Slow Way, to quiet your body and come close to God.

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

In the midst of her joy, perhaps Mary also knew a certain kind of darkness. Maybe she knew that the particular love she shared with her baby in those nine months would always be different from that time on. And that was all mixed in with the utter relief of holding him, of being on the other side of the suffering.

I wonder about Mary's fragility. How weak and uncertain and terrified she must have felt.

And I wonder about you. How weak and uncertain and terrified you feel. I wonder what joy and sadness these weeks leading up to Christmas bring to the surface. Or if there's a dread you carry with you. If there's an uncertainty, or a fragility you don't know how to name.

Today, can you sit in the silence and name it?

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

Elizabeth and Mary held each other up, carried each other through their seasons of pregnancy, and their faithfulness to this turbulent moment in one another's lives set the foundation for the work of their little boys: John the Baptist who would go wild in the woods, eating locusts, preaching repentance, making baptism the sacred marker it is, and clearing a path for the ministry of his cousin, Jesus. John would die a gruesome death, and Jesus would grieve, and teach us how to grieve. John and Jesus loved and served each other well because their mothers set a path for them to do so.

Today, let's consider the foundation you're laying with your life. This may not be a season of giving birth (either literally or metaphorically), but the truth is that we're always prepping the land for something. And the foundation you lay now will be felt by the ones who come after you.

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

As we move closer to Christmas, I'm sharing with you a meditation on a poem about Glory. What if "glory"--that word we in the Church tend to overuse and undersell-- What if glory is actually the realest thing about Christmas. What if the angelic song is beyond our comprehension, because all of it a mystery of love, a mystery that changes the world. Sometimes prayer is simply sitting with the mystery. Will you join 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