The Home Altar

Each day, I make a sincere effort to journal using two distinct pages. One is a weekly page that allows me to track daily and weekly habits on one side and to reflectively plan for the week on the reverse. The other is dated blank page that provides space for writing down memories, thoughts, feelings, experiences, and initial interpretations of my day. I say initial, because even through the lens of contemplative examination, I want to hold open the possibility that a more nuanced and anchored understanding of the experience might emerge through my ongoing practice and meditation.

When I write, aside from brief corrections when I misfire with my pen, I don’t edit while I’m reflecting. I simply let whatever flows from the pen land on the page and trust that what I have added is essential in some way, and that what I have already forgotten is not something I should worry about.

This is less about making sense of what I have experienced than it is about documenting my experience and providing mile markers that I can use to ponder later, though not forever as rumination is not the same thing as meditation. In fact, I have made a practice of looking over things within the quarter in which I write them, and then I recycle the removable pages from my journal like the temporary art of a sand mandala. Each new quarter brings a chance to be present with what is happening now while gently setting down the work of what has gone before. In my experience, that which is going to resurface over time, simply will if I give space in the silence.

I really enjoy the analog experience of writing with pen and paper, and while I try not to accumulate endless journals or notebooks, I do keep my daily pages separate from my planner, my poetry/prayer journal, and my meeting notes. I prefer the focus that comes with having fewer purposes in one set of pages, though you may want to experiment with the system that works best for you.

Practice:

Here are some tips for beginning your own daily pages journal.

• Decide how many purposes this journal will have, fewer total uses might allow for greater focus.
• Blank pages or bullet pages offer the greatest flexibility for laying out a single day
• You may want to find inserts or a page layout for a habit tracker/weekly look ahead to remind you of your intentions for the week
• Don’t edit or revise while writing. Your thoughts, feelings, experiences, and initial impressions are worthy in their own right.
• Make a plan for what to do with your journal when it is full? Will you save it? For how long? How can you hold these first impressions loosely and allow the Spirit to continue its work in you?
• Don’t panic if you miss a page. There’s a really good chance that you chose the most necessary thing instead. Return to the practice as soon as you can, and with grace and gentleness.

Be gentle with yourself, you are worth it.

Peace and Everything Good,

The Rev. JM Longworth, OEF Spiritual Direction and Trauma Care

https://www.sdicompanions.org/sdi-profile/GreenMtFriarOEF/ To book an appointment: https://calendly.com/greenmtfriaroef

For Christians, today is the 6th day of Christmas, which puts us halfway through the celebration of the Incarnation. Beginning on the Feast of the Nativity on December 25th and ending with 12th Night. I came to a much deeper appreciation of this short season in 2020, when a worldwide pandemic had people isolated in their homes for Christmas. Something about the inability to travel and the long cold nights inspired a more thoughtful move through the season. With the help of friends and colleagues, I was able to produce a short devotional film, highlighting the themes, festival days, and various ways to celebrate Incarnation that the 12 days offer. It’s more than just the story of an unusual birthday, even if that’s how it starts. If you appreciate the low budget, on-the-fly style of 2020 digital media, you can watch it here!

While it feels like the world has changed many times over since December of 2020 and January of 2021, the lessons of this particular Christmastide have continued to bear fruit in my own spiritual journey. For one, I no longer feel the rush to treat December 25th as a deadline, but rather I can engage with it as a starting point. It’s okay if I’m still visiting people, listening to Christmas hymns, savoring the decorations and nativities, giving alms, engaging in charity, and distributing gifts right up to January 5th.

Making the time more spacious allows for moving more slowly through travels, visits, devotions, and worship. All of this helps to cultivate a sense of wonder at just how much of a gift genuine presence is. Not only the Divine presence we celebrate in the Incarnation, but the ongoing presence of the Indwelling, and the ubiquitous of the Creator in every growing edge of the universe.

Not only the divine presence, but our own presence, in the moment that matters, the current one. It remains the only time and space which we actually occupy, no matter how much our preoccupation with memories or imagined futures might be. We can actually miss the entire celebration by not showing up, mercifully and lovingly present in each moment of it.

One way we savor this time at St. Clare House is to engage in service projects and generosity that specifically take place on or about January 6th, the Feast of Epiphany. Remembering this occasion of wise strangers giving gifts to honor the Christ child, we look for ways to bring the season to a close with a lot of love. Whether that looks like boots and toe warmers for the day shelter where we live, or bringing the final platters of cookies, fruit, and cheese to the day shelter where I serve. We remember how the Holy One sneaked into the world and tented among us, noticed only by outcasts at first, much like the shelter guests we are trying to help this year.

I have come to cherish this less anxious way to embrace the holidays and the holy days of this season, and I hope it gives you some thoughts about what you might do differently next year, or even in the 6 days that remain. What love might you experience just by being fully present in these sacred moments?

Merry Christmas, Happy New Year, Blessed Epiphany.

Be gentle with yourself, you are worth it.

Peace and Everything Good,

The Rev. JM Longworth, OEF Spiritual Direction and Trauma Care

https://www.sdicompanions.org/sdi-profile/GreenMtFriarOEF/ To book an appointment: https://calendly.com/greenmtfriaroef

The Christian liturgical season of Advent might be my favorite period of practice in the year. Anticipatory awe side-by-side with anticipatory joy, all bundled in the profound awareness of how much of the world is desperately awaiting relief of one sort or another. The need for food, shelter, companionship, and all kinds of safety are highlighted by the conspicuous consumption, overindulgence, illusions of peace, and chasing of happiness that seem to mark the end of the year in our broader culture. So many people are waiting on a hope that often feels like it may never come.

Adopting a posture of humility, patience, and wonder in response to the deeply worn ruts of our conditioned thinking and old habits, is a radical departure from the going along to get along that seems to be the prescription for these weeks. Waiting in hope might be the very medicine that striving in anxiety calls for.

There are plenty of reasons why anxiety can spike this time of the year. From the pressure to avoid conflict as family and friends engage in rhythms of gathering and celebrating, to the retailers praying to end the year in positive financial territory, to fundraisers hoping to remind all of us that giving generously will lift our spirits and provide a huge portion of their operating expenses in the year ahead. Whether December 31st marks the end, the end of the beginning, or the beginning of the end, so many of us are tracking goals and objectives.

Even neighbors in deep need are paying close attention to how much medical spending they can do with their remaining benefits (perhaps as an uninsured year ahead looms large), and households who rely on cold weather rules are hoping for a chance at survival by securing one of the limited number of emergency rooms for the winter. If anything, it seems like hesitating could cost some of us everything.

Contemplation that loses the capacity to be moved into loving action, especially life saving loving action, ceases to be of much value. It follows that the essential things ought to be done, even when the invitation to a posture of waiting is so strong. Discernment between what is necessary and sufficient, and what is wanted and superfluous will be of great significance here.

With that said, I invite you into the season of waiting, and the opportunity to set things down in order that you might experience the fruits of this practice more fully.

Practices:

• An Advent Wreath- putting up a wreath with four candles creates an opportunity to count down slowly, especially if you linger on each candle for every day of that week, rather than just making note of the passing time on Sundays. The nightly lighting can make room for a period of prayer and reflection, and is a perfect time to examine our consciousness for the ways we engaged the season that day.
• Centering Prayer- abiding with God in the silence is always a beautiful idea, and in this time of waiting we can experience the tender pull between the Holy One who is already deeply present, and the further expression of that presence that we long for.
• Devotions- the daily office is full of seasonal content that will enrich this time, but if that’s not one of your practices, these four weeks can be a time to engage in reading brief devotions. See an example here.
• Embrace the Earth- is the Summer Solstice drawing near as spring lengthens into the heart of growing season? Perhaps you’re contending with snow, ice, and long hours of darkness. Whatever is happening, take time to simply observe, and be present to those changes. Let your heart take inspiration from the simultaneous holiness of darkness and light, warmth and cold, rest and revival.
• A Nativity Set- this tangible reminder of the miraculous littleness and humility of it all can be a powerful experience. Consider building it piece by piece as the days go by.
• Meditate on Incarnation- the central miracle of the coming Christmas season, Emmanuel (God-With-Us) invites all sorts of creative pondering. I like to wonder which of the water bottle in the kitchen or in the aisle in the store secretly has the ocean hidden inside it. Whether it’s cherishing something in your heart, exploring it on journal pages, or making art that expresses the beautiful impossibility of it all, this theme holds infinite possibility.

I hope these ideas are a good starting point for you, as you tackle what must be done, and make space for what can be surrendered to the practice of holy waiting.

Be gentle with yourself, you are worth it.

Peace and Everything Good,

The Rev. JM Longworth, OEF Spiritual Direction and Trauma Care

https://www.sdicompanions.org/sdi-profile/GreenMtFriarOEF/ To book an appointment: https://calendly.com/greenmtfriaroef

Sometimes we seek comfort from our religious and spiritual practices. Whether we call it calm, equanimity, repose, inner peace, consolation, radical acceptance, or any other title, a sense of feeling safe, connected, seen and held can be a beautiful gift that enlivens us. It’s important to note, that if this is the only spiritual state that we seek out regularly, we may be missing an important opportunity to explore the rich invitations that are present in other states of being. Our spiritual lives are a container for the confluence of human experience and expression, not just for warm fuzzies (some mystics call this spiritual sweetness) or for deep peace no matter what comes.

In fact, when our connection to the divine is frequently a shortcut to a hypo-activated state (as opposed to a hyper-activated/reactive space or one that is regulated and balanced), we may be engaged in a contemplative misstep called “Spiritual Bypassing”, where genuine difficulty, suffering, joy, anger, rage, sorrow, love, and more are papered over by generic spiritual language that avoids rather than embraces, soothes symptoms rather than metabolizes the core challenge. This move to avoidance might be couched in deeply spiritual or religious language, but serves to depersonalize, disconnect, even dissociate from what is actually happening. It is a way our minds try to “go around” instead of “going through”, and it’s often a path to a colossal energetic traffic jam.

While there are many ways this bypassing might present, one that I see frequently is a desire to only involve the divine, the ultimate, the universal at a point when everything is already fairly neat and clean. We chase self-repair before showing up to ask for mercy or grace. Another one is the idea that any time God is introduced into deep discord or dysregulation, the practice brings a permeating calm and “okay-ness” that actually prevents spiritual growth, working through shadow material, or otherwise contending with the vicissitudes of life. In this scenario, the Holy One becomes its own form of thought terminating cliche, emotional bandage, or spiritual dissociation.

If abiding with God and our pain means we have to conform to some sort of “positive vibes only” or “deep peace and ease” framework, then our practices will not yield much in the way of growth, healing, or compassion. We are invited to a deeper relationship where not only can we be messy, but where God is ready to get messy with us. This is the miracle of incarnation. We are beloved by one who not only sees and acknowledges our dumpster fire, but who joins us in the smoke and flame, getting just as sooty, and in the midst of the fire, gives us the inspiration to imagine what it would be like to be a dumpster phoenix, remembering that death and resurrection go hand in hand.

There are too many modes of existence to tackle in a single essay, but I will endeavor to lift up a few, to encourage you to try out some of these ways of being present with God and in which, God can be present with you too.

Dryness- Sometimes we experience flow states, where it seems like inspiration, ideas, efforts, and even results are just pouring into, through, and out of us. This can be so intoxicating, mysterious, enjoyable and yet every river experiences low times, dry spells, and low flow. When we are dry, inspiration is hard to come by, our practice doesn’t feel lively, and we can find ourselves desperate for even a drop or two of invigoration. In dry spaces, we may be called on to wait, to wonder, to pay attention for places around us that we can see the trickle of flow. We can abide here with the one who says “I am thirsty” and who knows what it’s like when our bodies and our souls feel parched.

Righteous Anger- the ability to bear witness to the world’s suffering and not be activated at all, or at least to pretend that it is true, isn’t the ultimate asceticism, but more likely another version of bypassing. When we are activated by injustice, disaster, and the harm we see around us, in us, or even coming from us, we can abide in that anger and invite the one whose “nose burns hot” at what is wrong in the world to keep that fire alive in us, while also making sure that our anger helps us to transform and metabolize pain, not join in transmitting it to others.

Lament- lament begins with being overwhelmed, sharing in that overwhelm with others, and then crying out in honesty, “we are overwhelmed and our hearts are breaking within us.” Sometimes the pain in the world is an evil that can be restrained or resisted. Sometimes we are up against a disaster so complex, that identifying blame is a fruitless task, but identifying the harm and publicly mourning it and crying out for help are essential. We can abide in deep sorrow and lament what is not okay, joined by the very one whose “womb aches for the suffering of her children” and knowing that our outcry will be heard.

Desolation- sometimes we go dry for a long time. We are exhausted from resisting and pushing back. We feel disconnected and unable to join in community, even to wail. From a practice perspective, nothing seems to be medicine for the soul. It can be tempting to seek distraction, busyness, or even to court despair. In desolation, we are invited to look more carefully at the landscape of our interior selves, moving forward as slowly as necessary while we wait for something new to break through. We can abide in our desolation, inviting the one who cried “My God, My God, why have you abandoned me?” to be present, to see us in this low and help us to trust in what comes next.

Playfulness/Childlike Awe- even when things feel balanced, calm, relatively stable, we can be cautious about showing up for our practice unserious or without the requisite solemnity. We have a whole nervous system state for play, and yet as adults frequently avoid playing or being silly in order to be taken seriously by our peers. We shy away from approaching things we cannot explain or apprehend, when this is precisely the core of our spiritual lives. Let us be silly, playful, curious, childlike in our awe and as we abide in such spaces, we will be joined by the one who said “unless you become as a little child, you will never enter the kin-dom of Heaven.”

There are thousands of states beyond these few, but my hope is that if you can show up to your practice in the ones mentioned here, that it will be marvelous practice for showing up in them in other states as well. The Bypass isn’t the quick way around, because the path of a life well lived goes through, not around. If you find yourself in the traffic jam, don’t be afraid to turn off the car, stand on the hood, and raise your arms to the sky in an act of pure wonder.

Be gentle with yourself, you are worth it.

Peace and Everything Good,

The Rev. JM Longworth, OEF Spiritual Direction and Trauma Care

https://www.sdicompanions.org/sdi-profile/GreenMtFriarOEF/ To book an appointment: https://calendly.com/greenmtfriaroef

I had the privilege and joy of representing OEF at the 2025 Chapter of the Order of Lutheran Franciscans. We met from July 25 to 29 at the Bon Secours retreat center in Marriotsville, MD. I enjoyed the rhythm of worship, meals, meaningful conversations, sabbath time, and community deliberations. I was joined by Verleah Kosloske, TSSF and Br. Desmond Alban, SSF as the other official visitors.

Some highlights of my experience included singing lots of liturgical music during the offices and Eucharistic celebrations written by our own Louis Canter, OEF; morning spiritual practices including prayerful art explorations and centering prayer; and warm reunions with siblings I had met in 2018, the last time I was the visitor.

We engaged in some familiar activities, like sending cards to members who could not be present, and in some enjoyable experiments. The gathered chapter traveled to nearby Ellicot City, MD to attend Sunday worship at a local parish. It was such an invigorating experience of public witness, we even encountered a gentleman who was ready to inquire just based on the joyful spirit of the group. It made me curious and excited about what that would look like at an OEF Chapter or regional retreat.

During the Chapter, OLF officially installed a new minister general, Br. Jeff Brown; a new formation minister, Br. Ryan Roberts; and a new bursar (treasurer), Br. Mark Molter. Four new novices made their novice vows and two brothers made life profession during the annual celebration liturgy. There was also great attention to the ELCA Churchwide Assembly (Triennial Conference) taking place in Phoenix, AZ. OLF is now officially an Independent Lutheran Organization, with full legal status under the denomination's Churchwide offices. This is akin to canonical recognition in the Anglican or Catholic tradition. With this year's election of a new presiding bishop, they will be receiving a new denominational relator and are hoping to participate in the consecration and installation of the new leader on Saturday, October 4, 2025 (a perfect day to celebrate humility and peace in transforming the church and world!)

We engaged in really lovely peer triads, taking turns throughout the gathering for check-ins, rule reports, life sharing, and holy listening with curious questions from the two listeners. (I would highly recommend this for a future Chapter, we have done this in the past.) There were also small group JPIC conversations, where people could share joys and concerns about the many dimensions of corporate discipleship that come with a Franciscan vocation. (It's been too long since we've done this, and I'd love to see it again).

I brought greetings from the servant council and the whole order, sharing a bit about the history of OEF and OLF (their founders began their Franciscan exploration with us.)

While dates have not been settled on, next year's Chapter will be in Chicago, IL and I hope an OEF sibling nearby will have the time to experience this lovely community in person.

Practice

• When you are a guest in someone else’s home, community, or setting, how do you balance giving the gift of your presence with receiving the gift of theirs?
• Think of a time when you were welcomed heartily. How did it feel in your mind, your heart, your body? What told you that you belonged?
• How do you savor time well spent with gracious hosts?

Be gentle with yourself, you are worth it.

Peace and Everything Good,

The Rev. JM Longworth, OEF Spiritual Direction and Trauma Care

https://www.sdicompanions.org/sdi-profile/GreenMtFriarOEF/ To book an appointment: https://calendly.com/greenmtfriaroef

Learning

I am frequently encouraging people to offer to the world what they have the personal and spiritual resources to give, which of course means accurately assessing that level and then making both under and over performance a finite and well discerned intention, rather than a trauma response. Which is a long winded way of saying that I don’t remember choosing to take a break from this space, but clearly I did make an intuitive choice to do what was in front of me, both in terms of the spiritual seasons of Lent and Easter, as well as the work of caring in the shelter, in my community, and with my clients.

During this time I’ve had some spectacular opportunities for learning and integration, and I’m glad that I took time this year for such moments. I attended the 35th anniversary conference of Spiritual Director’s International, Beyond the Field. Several days of workshops, keynotes, table chatter, affinity groups, and one one one conversations with other healers and listeners not only fed my mind, but my soul. It helped that wandering about the grandeur of Niagara Falls was a part of the experience as I was accompanied by the might rush and rumble of the river that shakes the ground when I stood close.

I also undertook a course of study with the Focalizing Institute, to enhance my practice and add a new therapeutic modality to my toolbox. Learning how to employ conditions for tending to shame and conditioned thinking was a real joy. The work was intense, but I’m pleased to say that I’m now a certified practitioner and excited to offer these skills to the people I serve. Embodiment work is spectacularly non-linear and often times has a feeling of mystery to it, but the more I learn about the neuro-biology of spirituality, the more convinced I am that recovering the wisdom of the body is a big part of healing so many profound wounds.

Loving

No one has mastered the art of living fully in the present quite like a dog. So even though we knew that she would face challenges as a survivor of an animal hoarding situation and some time in the shelter, our household has welcomed Phoebe with open arms. She is a boingy, beautiful, dainty, and wild lady. Watching her embody joy, play, sleepiness, hunger, fear, bravery, and more is constantly teaching me about the shared creatureliness that we have. Her confidence gained through attachment and agency is a reminder to me of the sacred slowness and intention that goes with accompanying survivors of trauma.

Praying

I also took time to celebrate with and discern alongside my religious community, the Order of Ecumenical Franciscans. While my other travels this year meant I opted for attending over Zoom, the hybrid gathering did some great work, selecting a new servant council, welcoming a new formation coordinator, professing four new brothers, and engaging in the important but difficult work of discerning our life together in the year ahead, with all of the challenges that the social, political, environmental, and health polycrisis has brought to many of our doorsteps.

I hope to be with the community in person in the coming year.

So now I cruise into July, many tasks finished. New relationships blossoming, old relationships being nurtured, and evidence of my efforts in hand (soon to be “on wall”). I can see my own level of resource and capacity more clearly. I am ready to refresh this space more regularly.

Practice Question

What would it look like to include in my personal examen each day, an honest accounting of my level of personal resource, and then find ways to live within that allotment for the day?

Be gentle with yourself, you are worth it.

Peace and Everything Good,

The Rev. JM Longworth, OEF Spiritual Direction and Trauma Care

https://www.sdicompanions.org/sdi-profile/GreenMtFriarOEF/ To book an appointment: https://calendly.com/greenmtfriaroef

Whether they are thoughts, memories, and sensations from things that happened in our past, or the spontaneous reactions that our minds and bodies are having to what we’re witnessing in the present moment, there are times when cultivating a contemplative consciousness feels like being sucked into a giant game of wack-a-mole.

This silly carnival game features targets that pop up at random from a grid and the objective is to bop the mechanical rodents with a mallet. I still remember playing for the first time at a raucous birthday party at a local Chuck E. Cheese franchise. While it might be a fun and exciting rush of endorphins in the context of a noisy arcade, this sort of action happening within us, can be quite distressing.

We experience the shock of the memory or the present distress and ride the surge of adrenaline and cortisol that comes with it. This temporary high leaves us anxious, searching for the exits, irritable, and feeling alone. Sometimes in our effort to combat the sense of powerlessness and isolation we seek to evade our suffering by transmitting it, either in unkindness towards the people around us, or by inviting the nearest safe person to join us in our state of activation and distress.

When we are experiencing a steady drip of activating news and information, we begin to experience the pop, the decline, and then pop again! Pop! Pop! Pop! Startling, exciting our nervous system and never really allowing us to recover to a lower stress homeostasis. Which might make our less than helpful coping mechanism, whether grounded in anger, despair, or even spite a source of activation for the people around us. Pop! Pop! Pop! Wack! Wack! Wack!

I recognize this pattern in myself. I’m embarrassed by it. I want to be able to be present, even to the hard stuff, when things feel like they’re falling apart, and even when they are collapsing at a rate that is too quick for my rational mind to process and my body-mind to metabolize. Even so, I know that as a person called to suffer alongside my neighbors, I’m also desperate for relief.

I pray for a boring day, where nothing unsettling happens. I begin to crave a day when climate collapse, social disintegration, genocide, the march towards the formal resegregation of the United States, the violence of poverty, the terror of disease, war, loneliness, and death do not intrude on my consciousness. Pop! Wack! You can’t win the game if you don’t bop all the moles. At the same time, there is another part of me that is certain that flailing wildly with the mallet is the only way to lose the game. I can’t control what pops up. I can’t control what arises in me. I can control what I do with that impulse if I just slow down. Let each Pop arrive and recede. Just observe, don’t chase, don’t swing, try and notice what is happening in me, to me, around me.

This isn’t passive dissociation that I’m describing. I’m trying to create space to let go of first thoughts, of snap judgments, of unloving responses. I can simply observe, and I when I find that I can’t get myself to that space, I reach out, not to help spread the distress, but to connect with someone who can help me find that slower self.

I reach out, so that together, we can validate, notice, wonder, and begin to tip into curiosity. What is actually happening here? What are the things I cannot control? What are the ways I can act? Whom can I invite to act along with me? How can I attach to something solid outside of this present moment of dysregulation? How can I attune to each mole that pops without needing to smash it instinctively?

I can attune to what my soul actually needs in that moment, whether that’s to take a break, to move, to cry out, to lament, to grieve, to feel deeply, to gather community, to dance, to stomp, to sing, or any other human need that might begin the work of metabolizing that hard thing, those hard things, indeed many hard things.

None of this minimizes or invalidates the strong initial reaction. That too is body-mind wisdom trying to keep me alive. If anything, the increase in observable suffering all around me is an invitation into the heart of my contemplative practice. Beholding and bearing witness to the world as it is, sitting in contemplation and consenting to the divine presence in what is, being stirred to action and inviting others to freely choose action, engaging in robust and loving practice reflection, that the actual outcomes of our action would be the seeds of new beholding.

In my imagination, each mechanical mole slows down. The pop sound elongates and becomes mysteriously slow. Hands opening and palms facing up in a gesture of supplication, the mallet falls away. This latest worry is one more invitation to pray. So into the silence I go, so that into the world I go, so that into the silence…

Be gentle with yourself, you are worth it.

Peace and Everything Good,

The Rev. JM Longworth, OEF Spiritual Direction and Trauma Care

https://www.sdicompanions.org/sdi-profile/GreenMtFriarOEF/ To book an appointment: https://calendly.com/greenmtfriaroef

The 1976 Flexible Flyer used to help my partner race downhill with siblings and enjoy all of the magic that a New England winter had to offer to children playing in the snow. Everything about this piece of living nostalgia speaks to the adventure and even the riskiness of growing up with all of its bumps, bruises, and tumbles.

It seems like nowadays sleds are mostly made with molded plastic and aren’t nearly as flashy or fun as this metal rail mini sleigh. I also can’t help but wonder if the ever more rapidly shifting climate would even allow for enough deep snow long enough to use this treasure for its original purpose. There’s also deep questions of whether our now middle aged bodies should be rocketing downhill that fast.

We’ve helped my partner’s mother with a lot of death cleaning, the sort of relinquishment meant to reduce the burden on family and friends when the actual moment of bereavement arrives. Most of what we have removed from the childhood home has gone into annual yard sales, so a new family can enjoy the item for a few dollars. Some of it has ended up at the recycling center, doing our best to not create more landfill waste, where possible. The sled however stays.

It is a potent connection to the joys of childhood, even if it can’t be useful in the same ways today. It’s a reminder of the love of siblings, family, and adventures. As a part of rekindling this joy in a new context, we turned the sled into a part of the Christmas lights display this year. It was a wonderful way to celebrate past and present, and to recognize that this joy remains accessible, even now, when we are open to it.

This can be true of our childhood practices too. Perhaps the paper crafts, homemade holiday treats, candle lighting, summer camp songs, and rhyming childhood prayers simply don’t land the way they used to. The truth is, they probably shouldn’t. The part of you that cherishes these things needs to be coaxed to the forefront of your consciousness in order for the emotional and spiritual impact to be truly felt. This brings with it the risk of surfacing the unprocessed memories and experiences of that part of you as well.

This doesn’t mean we have to scrap every practice that illuminated our childhood, youth, or early adulthood. In fact, that would be to deny ourselves and our very real journey in the life of the Divine. Perhaps what’s needed is to explore whether a gentle repurposing can help us connect in new and meaningful ways, like the sled that now announces the festive joys and wistful remembrances of the Winter Holidays.

This turning over of the calendar year and the waning of celebrations like Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, and Yule, can open us to exploring what we need to leave behind in 2024, what we might consider anew, and what things from our own past are ready to be purposeful in the present moment. It is in this moment that we, our practices, and the Holy One are all truly and fully present.

I wish everyone a Happy New Year, and whether you’re preparing for Winter adventures, or the beauty of Summer in the southern hemisphere, I hope that the days ahead give you moments of both joy and thoughtful pause.

Be gentle with yourself, you are worth it.

Peace and Everything Good,

The Rev. JM Longworth, OEF Spiritual Direction and Trauma Care

https://www.sdicompanions.org/sdi-profile/GreenMtFriarOEF/ To book an appointment: https://calendly.com/greenmtfriaroef

In the Christian liturgical calendar there are two seasons of preparation and reflection, Advent before the 12 days of Christmas, and Lent before the 50 days of Easter. These times can be useful for the renewing of spiritual practice, trying out new practices, and engaging with sacred story in a way that prepares us for the celebrations that follow. It’s also a great time for practice reflection, mindfully and heartfully engaging with what we have done and asking questions about what might be next.

For me, this involves sending a letter to all of the directees in my practice and inviting us to prayerfully consider what we have done, and what might still need doing.

I find that this invitation opens the door to important conversations around conclusions, adjustments, and deeper understanding that is needed to move forward. The insights gained here can lead to a new contemplative awareness of where we are now, in comparison to where we were when we began.

What’s posted below is the text of that letter.

Dearest Spiritual Companions,

This year has certainly had its share of ups and downs, marked by personal and corporate losses, dramatic shifts to the ministry landscape, and opportunities to test the limits of our daily practice as we attempt to remain lovingly and mercifully present with what is actually happening. We do this even as our mindful and heartful presence leaves room for lament, grief, sorrow, rejoicing, and deep unknowing of what comes next.

I completed a 12 week course through Spiritual Directors International in the spring to deepen my understanding of trauma informed principles in spiritual care work. I also helped teach a course of Queer perspectives in spiritual direction through SDI. I remain in the care of my director, Fr. B Simon Dinglassan, under the supervision of Joan Alexander, and involved in the Bethany House peer supervision group. In the year ahead, I’m looking forward to attending SDI’s annual conference in Niagra, NY for new insights, formation, and learning.

As we prepare for a confluence of religious, social, seasonal, and astronomical celebrations, as well as the passing of one calendar year into another, it is a good time to take stock, reflect, and visit anew our intentions. If we have been sitting together for a while, 6 months, a year, maybe more, now would be the perfect time to dedicate at least a portion of our next session to carefully discerning the following questions:

• Have we completed the work we were meant to do together?
  • If we connected over a specific question or incident, have we successfully navigated it and would new forms of support be beneficial?
  • Would you like a referral to a new or additional trusted listener (counselor, coach, etc.)?
• If we have ongoing wondering and witnessing to do, have your needs and central questions shifted significantly?
• Is there an area of practice that we have overlooked thus far, and that you would like to explore more intentionally in the year ahead?
• Are you anticipating any major changes in the year ahead to which we should give particular attention?
• Is there anything in our work together that you’d like to adjust?
  • Opening practice, Closing Practice, Mode of meeting, etc.

Be gentle with yourself, you are worth it.

Peace and Everything Good,

The Rev. JM Longworth, OEF Spiritual Direction and Trauma Care

https://www.sdicompanions.org/sdi-profile/GreenMtFriarOEF/ To book an appointment: https://calendly.com/greenmtfriaroef