The Slow Way

As much as it might be difficult to believe, you are not your intellect, your power, your success, your ability to fit in at a party. You are not your ability to be happy, or healthy, or rich. It's your weaknesses that bring you into the upside down of God's values.

When we let go of control, when we open our hands we are, as Richard Rohr writes,"in a very creative and liminal space where God is most free to act in our lives." And that is faith: letting go of control, believing that the life of weakness is actually the life of the Most Blessed.

Spend some time today considering Jesus's words in Matthew 5 and reflecting on what it might mean to tell the truth to yourself.

--

Links

• "The Beatitudes" is a list of blessings Jesus bestows in his Sermon on the Mount in the gospel of Matthew, chapter 5. You can read the Message translation that Micha reads in the slow practice here.
• Find Richard Rohr's book Jesus's Plan For a New World here.
• This essay originally appeared in The Slow Way Newsletter 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 recently that prayer is a returning to love. And maybe if that's the case, we can get rid of the upward image we often carry with us about what life is supposed to be. That we are moving up a line on a graph, moving from Point A (birth, at the left-side base of the graph) and ending up at the right hand corner. Complete. Final. Having checked off our big life dreams as we went. Instead, I think, life is like faith: circular, moving round and round, faster and faster, tighter as you get to the bottom. It's like a tornado, really. We move around and around the sun, but also around and around each other, being pulled tighter toward what we've made the center, as life brings us closer to the point at the bottom of things.

• 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
• 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

One of the greatest gifts I was given in my childhood in the Church was the idea that God wants to speak to me, that God could "lay" something "on our hearts" or "lead" us to a decision. That God cares about the state of our internal consciousness. And not just that, God actually moves within that consciousness to act and guide us if we learn to listen. That idea has shaped my life in ways I can't begin to name. Sometimes I wonder if that might just be the most important thing I learned in childhood: how to recognize when the Divine was stirring something inside me, forming me, inviting me to change direction.

What sounds complicated is actually simple enough for the ten-year-old I was. The Divine is calling, "Who will go?" And if we're listening, we're all invited to say, "I will."

Join me in thinking about divine compulsions and attention in this episode.

Links:

• This reflection and practice were also published this week in The Slow Way Newsletter.
• Read Simone Weil's Waiting for God 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

I have spent my life feeling somewhat outside of normal, experiencing my feelings in a way that felt unacceptable to the culture I was raised in. I cried too much as a kid, spent too much time alone in my room writing in my journal as a teen, or listening to sad, meaningful music as a young twenty-something. I often felt like my sadness didn't measure up with the story of God I wanted to live into. I was supposed to find joy in the Lord! I was supposed to be fun and cool and especially caring so other people would want to know about Jesus. But I often found sorrow in the stories of the Bible I read each day as a 16-year-old Jesus-kid. Why didn't people talk about how sad the Bible was? All those sick people needing healing? All the people who rejected Jesus's words and went away confused?

Maybe you've felt this way before too. Let's reflect on this together.

Links:

• This reflection and practice were also published this week in The Slow Way Newsletter.
• Read Bittersweet by Susan Cain 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

Today I'm reflecting on the recent events in our world and wondering what to do next. This is a question I ask myself, and that I asked that day when I got the news about the school shooting. What is the appropriate way to respond? Is there a moment when the suffering around us becomes too much? When we can't hold it all anymore, and we retreat into our small circles of relationships and focus on the world we can see and touch and experience in the places we live?

I believe that as we learn to value the goodness in our lives, we find the emotional strength to hold the pain of the world, to grieve collectively, and to recognize that no suffering outside of us or inside of us can be fixed to the accumulation of more.

Links:

• This reflection and practice were also published this week in The Slow Way Newsletter.
• Read Brené Brown's Atlas of the Heart 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

Love is all of it. Love is the force we call God. Love is the feeling. Love is the action between two old friends, and the generosity between you and your waiter at lunch today. And in that broad definition, I think those of us who call ourselves Christian can step toward theology: not the kind that draws lines of who's in and who's out, of who gets it and who obviously doesn't, but to lean toward a theology of God as Love that is moving toward all of us, calling each of us to come close, to experience a Love that transforms everything, and ultimately teaches us what to do with the feelings in our chest: how to turn the feeling of love into a way of living that transforms our relationships, visions of ourselves, and our small worlds.

I originally published this episode much earlier this year, but the message still rings true today. Enjoy this replay of one of my favorites this week, friends.

Links:

• 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

When I started writing my newsletter, I wanted to explore the "breathless pace" of our culture. I wanted to offer an alternative way of living that taps into our soul's need for rest, meaning, and authentic connection with ourselves, each other, and the world around us. What I didn't expect is how much my personal journey of grief would help me understand a core truth: that the hectic pace of our culture is actually an overflow of our failure to grieve. There is so much loss in our shared earth, and in our individual lives, and we don't know how to hold grief and hope in the same hand.

Real humanity must include grief over what has been lost. So where do we start?

Links:

• This reflection and practice were also published this week in The Slow Way Newsletter.
• Read The Wild Edge of Sorrow by Francis Weller
• 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

The more I explore rest, slowness, and the remarkable idea that we can't hustle enough to overcome our humanity (which is to say, our mortality), the more I feel drawn to a reality underneath these invitations toward slowness: our finitude. I'm talking about our limits, our inability to live a multitude of lives in this one. We are contained here, to the careers we've chosen or that have chosen us. To the people we've loved, and the small circles of relationship we can truly invest in. And, as much as we might wish otherwise, to the place where we live.

Every stretch outside of those finite realities will require an exchange. In this episode, I'm talking about the choices I've made and have not made, the reality of our human frailty, and our desperate need for hope. I'm also walking you through a list-writing exercise to write a poem about someone you love. Tune in for more.

Links:

• This reflection and practice were also published this week in The Slow Way Newsletter.
• Read No Cure For Being Human by Kate Bowler
• 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

Long before my dad got sick I had left behind (mostly) the notion of God making some divine plan out of our most horrible realities. I didn't want to be part of a divine will that left babies dead at birth, or that allowed 3-year-olds to get cancer. Not a divine will that determines who gets born into a dangerous family environment, allows children to be abused, or intends for an entire community to be devastated by drought, floods, or war. I don't want to believe that God had a special will that included one friend dying of cancer at the age of 43, or another dying suddenly at the age of 37. What I cling to is a faith that says there is a Holy One who makes all things new. There is a Spirit who reaches into the devastation (why the devastation happens is a mystery) and creates life in the death. I want to believe that every good and perfect gift is from above, whether or not I understand why there are ugly and devastating things that happen simultaneously, along with all the goodness.

I'm reflecting on grief and my own mortality this week. Join me in this new episode.

Links:

• This reflection and practice were also published this week in The Slow Way Newsletter.
• Listen to Evolving Faith podcast
• 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

When women are encouraged to find purpose and value wherever their gifts and desires lead them, whether toward traditional mothering or outside of it, the world thrives. When women are released from tired scripts about their purpose, they're able to make meaning in a way that serves us all.

As we move toward Mother's Day, I hope all of us, men, women, and gender non conforming, mothers and non-mothers, will take the time to ask what desire we are invited to open like a door, and what it might look like to invite God to transform that desire into devotion. Knowing that our God-given worth has nothing to do with the stories our culture tells us about what makes us valuable, but everything to do with the value inherent in us. We are made in the image of God, loved as our unique selves, and our desires, when offered to the world in love, can lead to the flourishing of all of us.

Links:

• This reflection and practice were also published this week in The Slow Way Newsletter.
• Read "Someone Other Than A Mother" by Erin S. Lane
• 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