A New Thing

Photo by Aaron Burden on Unsplash

One of my favorite poetic prayers is Ted Loder’s “I Tremble on the Edge of a Maybe” from his book, Guerillas of Grace (included below). I turn to this piece again and again, whether I’m sharing it with a new class of students I’m teaching, or during spiritual direction with someone navigating a new season in life and discerning what is next for them.

To do something new brings about eagerness and uneasiness. This is a tentative start. For me, a new endeavor always encapsulates excitement and anxiety. These two feelings are opposite sides of the same coin. The quickened beating of our heart can be nerves and momentum, sometimes holding us back, and other times, propelling us forward. When conversing with my kids waiting in line for a rollercoaster (as well as my chaplaincy students preparing for their first on-calls), I like to use the word “scited” = which is a combination of feeling scared and excited (coined by Glennon Doyle). I find as I commit to a regular writing practice, delivered to you all - I am definitely scited!

My goal for this Substack is to help reveal more of the sacred in our everyday lives. As a hospital chaplain, educator and spiritual director, I encounter others during moments of intense spiritual need. Reading about some of these moments of distress and resilience may help you connect with the sacredness in your own life. I seek to create a space to share reflections on what it is like to journey alongside others, which has been my vocational calling, but also to journey alongside you, as together we explore practices that can bring the spiritual more fully into our lives.

My hope is to leverage my experience to reveal all aspects of the spiritual journey, from the poetic to the practical. I’ll  do this through the sharing of stories from my ministries. Any personal details will be changed to respect privacy, but the crux of the lessons I learned will remain. And ultimately the stories of people I have journeyed alongside are too precious to keep to myself. While I have been a vessel holding them, I believe they will be a blessing to all of you.

I will include lessons from my role as a chaplaincy educator. I’ll share some of my teachings with chaplain interns and students on empathy, grief, listening, integration and other aspects of pastoral care. There will be some practical wisdom on how to do the work of journeying alongside others, yourself and the divine. 

And as a spiritual director, I will pepper in different types of spiritual practices and how you can incorporate them into your everyday life. These will include practices like gratitude, embodiment, journaling and self-care. 

Through bearing witness to others’ joys and sorrows, I believe we can be more present to our own lives. We develop a greater sense of empathic wonder. I hope you will see yourself in some of these stories and practices, and may they stir your heart as they’ve stirred mine. I’d like this to be an ongoing conversation about spirituality, vulnerability and deep listening: to ourselves, each other and the divine.

While I’m new to Substack, I’m not new to sharing my life and stories on the internet. I used to blog on a few different platforms when that was en vogue, but a decade and two kiddos later, here I am. On any given day, I embody the following roles:

• Presbyterian Minister   

• Hospital Chaplain

• Director of Pastoral Care

• Certified Educator of Clinical Pastoral Education

• Spiritual Director  

• Seminary Professor

• Mom/Wife/Daughter/Sister/Friend

This may lead to a chaotic life balance at times, but it also means that I’m constantly journeying alongside someone, somewhere…in one way or another. You likely signed up for this because you know me from that last category (thank you!) and in reading these newsletters, you will get to hear about experiences from all my different roles. 

Thanks for letting me carve out this space in your inboxes. I will attempt to post once a week and it will be free. Subscribing allows my musings to go directly to your email inbox as soon as they are published. 

I hope sharing the prayer below emboldens you to mindfully engage the new things emerging in your life.

What are you “trembling on the edge of maybe” about? What does being “scited” look like for you? Where are you called to do “a new thing” and make “a tentative start?”

I Tremble on the Edge of a Maybe

O God of beginnings
as your spirit moved
over the face of the deep
on the first day of creation,
move with me now,
in my time of beginnings,
when the air is rain-washed
the bloom is on the bush,
and the world seems fresh
and full of possibilities,
and I feel ready and full.
I tremble on the edge of a maybe,
a first time
a new thing,
a tentative start,
and the wonder of it lays its finger on my lips.
In silence, Lord,
I share now my eagerness
and my uneasiness
about this something different
I would be or do:
and I listen for your leading
to help me separate the light
from the darkness
in the change I seek to shape
and which is shaping me. Amen.

Excerpted from: Guerrillas of Grace by Ted Loder, 1984

This is me giving the benediction (closing words of sending) at my ordination service over a decade ago. This newsletter however is more of an invocation – the prayer at the start of a worship service that invites us to bless the space and set the tone for what may come forth. Also, I have lots more wrinkles now.

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