Blessed Maundy Thursday. . . God’s invitation to “wash up before dinner.”

Imagine a God who doesn’t demand your worship, mindless obedience, or tithes but actually serves you out of love, simply because that’s who God is. . .

Imagine a God, so located within God’s own identity that God isn’t concerned what others would think, nor bows to societal, religious, or cultural pressures but is present to what is most real. . .

Imagine a God who takes the most holy day of your tradition(s) and through God’s own presence throws open the table so that all are welcome, especially those who’ve been told in a thousand ways that they don’t deserve a seat. . .

Imagine a God who dines with those riddled with doubt, or who think that God isn’t revolutionary enough/or in the “right” ways, or who even deny or betray God. . .

Imagine a God who desires – even needs – real relationships, communing as the Godhead, and with friends…even if God’s friends can’t seem to stay awake. . .

Imagine a God who rejects violence enacted on God’s behalf, healing the oppressor and inviting followers to put away their weapons. . .

Imagine a God who suffers. . .

That’s the kind of God I’d be interested in getting to know. . .

As far as I understand, this is getting at the role Maundy Thursday plays in the annual enactment of Christ’s life; this is getting at what we are observing and remembering and discovering afresh. . .

Have a blessed Maundy Thursday, and for Christ’s sake wash up before dinner!

Gratitude and credit to Dr. Dwight Friesen, original post: ““

The post “The Kind of God I’d Be Interested in Getting to Know”: A Guest Post by Dr. Dwight Friesen appeared first on ������Ƶ of Theology & Psychology.

On January 13, 2023, we were grateful to have as our featured speaker , author, teacher, pastor, and creative, whose research on Black Church theology, liturgy, and ethics further undergirds his own ethics of justice, healing racial trauma, and racial solidarity. His lecture on “Between Liminality and Liberation: Altering and Alternative Narratives” included spoken-word poetry as well as explorations of narratives and liminal spaces both personal and cultural. Dr. Chelle Stearns, Associate Professor of Theology, and Dr. J. Derek McNeil, President and Provost, joined Phil Allen, Jr., for a panel discussion at the end of the evening.

A Ph.D. candidate in Christian Ethics at Fuller Theological Seminary, Phil Allen, Jr., advocated for understanding, appreciating, and responding to liminal spaces in our individual and collective lives, including revisiting liturgies that anchor us with imagination and creativity, leading to healing and solidarity. The narratives, or stories, that we live into are altered by the negative disruptions of trauma, as well as the positive influences of art and life-giving relationships.

Thanks again to Phil Allen, Jr., for speaking to our community at the 10th Annual Stanley Grenz Lecture Series.

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How was your time as a student at ������Ƶ?

I adored my time at the school. The hardest part for me was how quick it was. It was two years when I was there, which was almost a little whiplash-y. Because I was also not a Seattle resident, there were a lot of big transitions [at the start], and then, obviously, the first-year experience is most likely pretty disruptive.

How was the first-year experience disruptive?

So many mind-blowing things. So much newness. I was raised in an evangelical home: I’d never been asked to consider broadening my theology, my way of thinking, and my thinking about my own childhood trauma. None of that for me was the norm. So it was disruptive in that sense. There was support and care from the school community throughout that first-year experience.��

What led you to the MATC degree?

I’d heard about the program and the school and I kept feeling this tug to attend. The website, the materials, everything resonated with me. I thought, if it works out, I’ll keep moving forward. It all unfolded pretty easily for me. I chose MATC because I didn’t really know what I wanted to do. I never had a vocation in mind. I was 24 years old, and two years felt like a long time. And then I’d figure it out.

How has ������Ƶ shaped your life and vocation after graduation?

It was by and large the best investment of my life. There’s not even a question. I would do it again in a heartbeat. It completely changed the trajectory of my life. It impacted not just my vocation but also the understanding of who I am in the world. It led me on this path of self-exploration, understanding race, ethnic dynamics, what my impact is as a white woman in the world. I was never challenged to think about my whiteness. It completely changed how I carry myself in the world, how I do and will raise my kids.

I left Seattle. I got married and my husband got a job in Ohio. So when he got the job here in Ohio, it allowed me to stay home and write. I pursued my own writing career and I wrote for different publications. That started getting really lonely.

I ended up becoming a pastor. We started attending a small church here. I met with the lead pastor to see if he had any job opportunities, and I ended up getting a job with him. I started as the community pastor, pastoring the small group leaders, and then slowly started taking on more responsibilities. I would preach and lead the staff. My experience at the school completely set me up for it. I wouldn’t have been able to do it if I hadn’t gone to the school. ������Ƶ completely prepared me, without me knowing it, to be a pastor.

The church, after Covid, it closed, and so now I’m sort of in a middle space vocationally. I’ve done some work in the hospitality industry. I’m considering becoming a spiritual director — I took a spiritual direction class at ������Ƶ, and I really loved it, turning back to that love now later.

My experience at ������Ƶ is woven throughout my entire personhood. It bleeds out into everything I do. It was always meant to, that’s why I felt that tug. I needed the influence, education, and experience, academically and relationally, in order to be who I’m meant to be in the world, in and out of the workplace

How did ������Ƶ prepare you for ministry?

I think the way the school approaches theology in this expansive way allowed me to do that with our congregation. I preached much different sermons after the school than I would have if I hadn’t. I used the influence of my time at the school in that I could bring a different lens to stories that we’ve all heard so many times. Dwight’s class on hermeneutics, Chelle’s theology classes where we would read theologians from different people groups, these classes were so mind-blowingly expansive. Why didn’t anyone teach me this [before ������Ƶ]? We all read the same old white men. To my pastoring,�� I was able to bring the literal readings or theologians, but it also changed the way I look at theology. That expansiveness allowed me to use different authors, to be more expansive. It changed my posturing in how I wanted to deliver a theological message to a group of churchgoers.

Why are you interested in spiritual direction?

I’m looking for that one-on-one spiritual connection. There’s a part of me that’s always wanted to do counseling but I don’t want to do therapy. I do love sitting one-on-one with people and sort of being a guide or a mentor. I have a spiritual director and it’s been a beautiful experience. I was an AI [Assistant Instructor] when Keith Anderson taught a spiritual direction class and I just feel that’s what’s next for me.

What’s your life like currently?

I miss Seattle dearly. I miss it so much. I’m in Dayton, Ohio. I’m just in the thick of motherhood with a 4.5 and a 3-year-old, two girls, so I’m just figuring out how to raise girls in the world. I’m just loving being back connected more connected to the school, on the Alumni Quad, so I’m excited to continue with that.

What advice would you give to students starting at ������Ƶ?

To future students, I would say Bravo. You are doing big and brave work by pursuing any degree program or track at ������Ƶ. I believe it was Keith Anderson who called us students “provocateurs of change.” What a high calling in the world. And, we will not provoke change without first being provoked, so know that every emotional or academic hurdle is unto something greater, preparing you for the wild and holy work, healing, and inspiration that you will offer the world. Take care of yourself, welcome care from others, and know you are joining a unique, loving, and provocative community who are changing the world one conversation, sermon, painting, therapy session, bedtime story, or music lesson at a time.

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After connecting in the spring of 2020, President McNeil and Resmaa Menakem developed a friendship and sense of brotherhood through their shared work and goals. Their conversation at ������Ƶ on July 1 included the impact of white-body supremacy and the origins of racial trauma along with the need for somatic integration and perspective in the healing process for America.

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Last Christmas, my brother gifted me a plant propagation kit containing three beautiful hanging glass vases and clippings from his collection. Choosing to suspend them above my sink served two important purposes: it’s the only window with generous amounts of light, and being in the kitchen all day as a stay-at-home wife and mom makes me far more likely to remember to care for them. This was largely a “throw it in some water and see what happens” kind of thing. I found pleasure in looking for subtle changes, and I had no idea what adjustments my little plants would make in their effort to survive.

In 2017, I was getting towards the end of my second year as a special education teacher. As I sat down in front of my computer, I began searching for answers to some half-baked questions gnawing away at me. “Why do I feel like I can’t go on?” “Can I be burnt out so early in my career?” “Am I practicing self-care and keeping good boundaries?” “I don’t feel burnt out, but I cannot go on like this.”

I couldn’t keep it together, and I wanted to know what was wrong.

While I haven’t ventured to say this work was “my calling,” I can say with certainty that I longed to be there with a posture of participation in suffering, eager to live out the idea that we do our best work not when we see ourselves on the side of Christ giving to other people, but when we elevate others to the place of Christ and love and serve from there.

While my internet search assured me I was far from the only teacher feeling so depleted, it did little to help me understand my experience. And though I fantasized of ways to escape, I had loans to pay, a commitment for a grant I accepted in college to finish five years of teaching, and this twinge in my chest that seemed to say “but if you leave, Rachel, you will have failed.”

For the first few days, I casually monitored my little clippings, glancing up at them as I washed dishes or meal-prepped. Sometimes, I studied them a bit longer, though. Taking in every curve and hue, I anticipated the first sign of roots. But something else caught my eye first – their stems were turning brown. They were splitting apart. It was as if they couldn’t bother to keep themselves together anymore. They were so new, and yet, they were dying. I wondered in disappointment, what went wrong? But, I decided to let them sit there for a bit. Who knows, I figured, they might heal themselves.

For three more years, I thought I was dying, too. Demoralization, moral injury, vicarious trauma, burnout, postpartum anxiety, and depression: though I eventually stumbled upon language for my experiences, too often I could do little to affect the change needed to make my environment safe and my work sustainable.

As the days went by, I waited and I watched.�� Would the crack in the stem heal itself? Or would the wound go the whole way and kill my plant? To my surprise, I noticed strange black bumps appear – roots. My torn-open little clipping was growing roots, after all. That’s not a sign of a dying plant.

In yet another desperate search through the internet, I found ������Ƶ’s Certificate in Resilient Service. I was tired of hearing the word “resilience” weaponized to blame the failings of a broken system on teachers’ moral weakness. However, phrases on the school’s website – “to actively become more healthy, whole, and holy because of those challenges” and “live into their purpose regeneratively” – led me to conclude that this was a different, truer sense of resilience. I wanted in.

So here’s what I didn’t know about my plant clipping: that browning gap, the “wound,” is not the beginnings of death. It is an opening to make room for a new leaf. New life.

By the time I began the Certificate, I had chosen to resign from teaching. Though I stepped away in confidence, the breaking I felt over the last five years also felt like a wound. I knew I needed to let it break open if I wanted to heal.

It wasn’t long before the women in my circle group bore witness to me coming undone. In those first few days, they sat with me in the tearing open of my story and they held space for the ways I had learned to adapt in order to survive.

They watched with more patience and wisdom than I had with my little plant cuttings. When they looked at me, they didn’t see death – not because I was flourishing – but because they are mature council, experienced propagators. Without fixing or rushing, they bore witness to the subtle changes, waiting expectantly for more fullness to emerge. To me, splitting open felt like death; but they recognized that it was the beginning of life.

This isn’t how I thought new life comes about. But here it is in front of me, the breaking open is the entry point – not an obstacle – towards growth.

And oh, how my plant clipping continues to preach the gospel to me. I only have to read the Easter story to see I am in good company with people who think “death” when there is a tearing open. Jesus’ closest friends grieved when the Bread of Life was broken. But salvation didn’t come despite death, but through it. The Author of Life didn’t write the story of grace despite the fall, but through it. And God isn’t making me new despite my pain – but through it.

I’ve found the greatest peace in my greatest wounds when grace and restoration find their way there. From these wounds, I wait expectantly for more fullness of life to break through. So I praise God in the deepest pain; it’s there I experience the greatest joy.

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What does flourishing leadership look like in the real world? Resilient Leaders Project asked alumni of ������Ƶ of Theology & Psychology about how they’ve flourished while creating contextually-responsive ministry. In listening to these leaders, we found six common themes–practices and ways of being that other leaders can apply to increase their own flourishing. This blog series will share those themes, one at a time, through the stories of flourishing leaders. To see the other themes and leader profiles, read the . This week’s theme is boundaries: leaders need boundaries around time, sense of responsibility, and self.

Michele Ward

MDiv 2015

Associate Pastor, Brown Memorial Park Avenue Presbyterian Church
Clergy Community Organizer, Baltimoreans United in Leadership Development (BUILD), Metro IAF Affiliate

I enjoy ministry and find it life giving. With any work, though, the underside emerges when love of work becomes an addiction. I learned to be a workaholic through church and academia, receiving praise for unhealthy behaviors such as staying up late to finish projects, being constantly available to lead at church, and overscheduling myself. This all came to a head when I started my first ordained call in Philadelphia. The work culture there was entrenched in start-up mode concepts of work-life balance, which is typically more common in places like Silicon Valley and Seattle. I was not expecting start-up culture to follow me to the City of Brotherly Love and Sisterly Affection. We were serving a high needs population, with thousands of guests walking through the doors each week. My impulse was to reactively meet that need without thinking about the impact it might have on me. My colleagues and I had to work very hard to maintain and celebrate our boundaries so we could continue to serve.

To sum up my purpose in life and work, I come back to an ordination question that I said “yes” to: “Will you pray for and seek to serve the people with energy, intelligence, imagination, and love?” It is these four categories that I think about when I consider my flourishing and the flourishing of the community. In my work, I try to embody Christ through acts of compassion, play, hospitality, and neighborliness. My constant question is, “how can I be a better neighbor?”

Seth Thomas

RLP 2018-19
MDiv year 2016

Pastor, St. James Presbyterian Church

For me, flourishing in service to God and neighbor means calling out people’s ability to bear the image of God in them to its fullest form. It’s identifying people’s gifts and the opportunities they have to engage those gifts in the practical places they are in everyday. It’s an awakening of their image-bearing nature.

On the flip side, the challenges to my flourishing have been the denial of my own gifts and fear of using my voice that the image of God has placed in me. It’s easy to deny the gifts that we have and stay locked up in our brokenness, to not seek the healing that can happen in the community of the church. My own healing and growth are really key to my success as a leader and caretaker of others. I’m an enneagram 9; I am self-neglectful. So what I actually need to do is not go looking for ways to care for other people, I have to do the work of caring for myself, so that I can do the work of caring for other people. I need to tell people what I need, so an important practice for me is honesty about my needs. I need to attend to my whole being so I can attend to another’s whole being.

Flourishing requires slowing down. I have to do the prayerful and introspective work of asking “what’s going on that is so challenging, why is it so challenging, and what is it stirring in me?” Instead of running away from it, I have to take the time to engage with what the opportunity for growth is in that moment.

Learn more about and the .

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What does flourishing leadership look like in the real world? Resilient Leaders Project asked alumni of ������Ƶ of Theology & Psychology about how they’ve flourished while creating contextually-responsive ministry. In listening to these leaders, we found six common themes–practices and ways of being that other leaders can apply to increase their own flourishing. This blog series will share those themes, one at a time, through the stories of flourishing leaders. To see the other themes and leader profiles, read the . This week’s theme is body: leaders need to develop practices that honor their God-given body and connect body to soul.

Jenny Wade

MACP 2013

Psychotherapist and Yoga Instructor

As a therapist, I began to notice that after a full day of seeing clients I experienced tenderness and pain through my sternum, and taking deep breaths felt difficult. I realized that my body was mirroring my clients’ tension. As much as I worked during my sessions to metabolize the physical intensity of whatever emotion my client brought into the room, I was always leaving feeling physically and energetically depleted. I decided to practice a form of bodywork, SOMA, that acknowledges the ways that tension in the body reflects tension in the mind.

Now, when I experience discomfort in my physical body, I recognize these sensations as my body trying to alert me to some kind of emotional or spiritual disruption in my life. When I sense this tension I can nurture my body with massage, myofascial release, yoga, dance, or breath work – in these ways I’m able to discharge the accumulated tension that is a natural result of meditating on other’s trauma multiple times a day. I have learned how to use movement as prayer, and I see how being with my body is a worshipful experience.

Movement is my medicine, but there is a heavy, oppressive force that I have to push against internally in order to choose movement for myself. It’s a very real form of spiritual warfare that I have to engage on behalf of my own personal healing. The Desire Map by Danielle LaPorte taught me to ask the question, ‘How do I want to feel today/this week/this year?” and then to consider what I need to do in order to feel that way. Framing my choices from a place of desire vs. a ‘should’ helps me to choose movement that feels authentic!

Lang Charters

MDiv 2014

Yoga Pastor

I started seminary after a hiking injury ended my successful military career. At ������Ƶ of Theology & Psychology, I learned the importance of pastors being in and with the community they live in and serve. Teaching yoga became that point of community connection for me while I continued to primarily pursue and dream about being a more traditional pastor.

As this journey was beginning to unfold, I went through a divorce and was passed over by the church I wanted to work for. I had poured my “self” into both relationships, only to be left alone as an unrequited lover. The beautiful plot twist, though, is the failures and the undoing of my “self” were my salvation! While “husband” and “pastor” were things I did, or wanted to do, neither of them were who I was in my essence. Jesus emphasized how important it is to “lose your life to find it” because it’s precisely by losing our small selves (jobs, titles, relationships, possessions, accolades, etc.) that we find our true selves in Christ.

So, after “failing” at pastoring in a church, today my pastoring is teaching a person, or three, or ten in a yoga class … and I wouldn’t trade it for the world. As a yoga pastor I think of myself as a conduit for love and endeavor to help people tangibly experience the bliss of being in Christ. As we breathe mindfully we take in Spirit, as we move purposefully we integrate body, mind, and spirit, and as we unclutter our minds, we shift our experience from small selves to True Self. In a very real sense I’m never not pastoring: to pastor is to care for souls, which means journeying with people toward a beautiful and holistic existence.

Learn more about and the .

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What does flourishing leadership look like in the real world? Resilient Leaders Project asked alumni of ������Ƶ of Theology & Psychology about how they’ve flourished while creating contextually-responsive ministry. In listening to these leaders, we found six common themes–practices and ways of being that other leaders can apply to increase their own flourishing. This blog series will share those themes, one at a time, through the stories of flourishing leaders. To see the other themes and leader profiles, read the . This week’s theme is connection to God: leaders need practices that help them experience transcendence and guidance from God.

Martha Wood

MDiv 2015

Interim Released Minister at West Hills Friends Church

Being a minister in a Quaker setting is a unique playground. I get to contribute and
participate as one part of the whole body rather than get saddled with the weight and pressure of making the church “successful” or delivering “powerful” sermons. I do get to be up front more often, hosting meetings for worship and offering messages, but my task is to make space for each person to encounter the Divine, to offer prompts and opportunities to hear the Spirit as clearly as possible, to identify and connect folks’ swaths of gifts and contributions in the life of the community. Leading in this context is the ground of my flourishing.

My previous call brought my personal story, strengths and weaknesses into sharp relief: I will always hope for harmony within a community, and the community’s fractures will reflexively attempt to rend me. My job (on paper) was to hold this community together while trying to
reconcile its warring parties. I experienced disrupted sleep, chest pains, headaches, difficulty concentrating, weeping on my daily commute: I was play-doh-pressed by the demands. Many voices clamored for my attention, but I came to see that my task was to listen through and beyond all those voices for the voice of the Spirit, for the greater truth that we all needed to hear. Some people expected me to save their church, but I knew that the Spirit would be the one moving in people’s hearts; it wasn’t my job to change or save anyone. I had never before felt such dependence on and sustenance from God.

There was a rollercoaster year between my first and second call, during which I grappled deeply and encountered the thing that has reoriented my life: pilgrimage. I walked the French route of the Camino de Santiago, and six months later returned to Spain to walk the Camino Primitivo and to volunteer in a pilgrim shelter. These three experiences renovated the way I understand and experience God, faith, community, faith-community, fellowship, ministry, time, resources, provision, and myself in the world. Walking 800 km was a foil for encounter: encountering God, myself, others, creation. I could not comprehend the word “flourishing” apart from the experience of pilgrimage.

Hillary B. Kimsey

MDiv 2017

Hospital Chaplain, candidate for Episcopal Priesthood

When I was a resident chaplain at Harborview, I became deeply involved in a tragic case involving a child that dragged on for months. The grief of this child, these parents, and the many caregivers involved poured into me along with my own grief and crushing sense of helplessness. I finally said to my peers and my educator, “I don’t know if I can do this anymore.” I wept in front of them, letting loose all of my sadness, my anger, my doubts–both in God and myself. And when I had finished weeping, I wondered– have I shown them now that I can’t do it by this show of emotion? But no, what I found was the group weeping with me and joining me in the struggle.

At the same time, I was in discernment for my call to the Episcopal Priesthood. In sharing with my discernment group what I was going through, I broke down into tears and admitted to doubts and anger and despair of God even while I clung to my love for God and belief that God’s presence somehow remained with me and the family I’d come to care for so much. When my tears were spent, I wondered– have I shown them I’m unfit for the priesthood by this show of emotion? But no– they cried with me and said, “We are more sure now than ever that you are called.”

Both times, my vulnerability was welcomed and cared for, even seen as a strength! I learned that to flourish in this ministry, I must tend to my own grief in safe and supportive communities.

Lisa Henton

Certificate in Resilient Service 2018-2019

Pastor, Coast Vineyard Church

I believe there are three components to flourishing: belonging, being and doing. I get a picture of an amazing healthy fruit tree: deep roots and a solid trunk with far-reaching branches that are filled with good fruit. In this analogy, the belonging would be the root system, the being would be the trunk and the doing would be the branching out bearing much fruit.

As a leader, I have to ask myself what am I flourishing unto: the world or God’s Kingdom? The secular world tells us that flourishing is about our doing and that’s where we get belonging or our being. We have to retrain ourselves and the people in our community about what flourishing in the Kingdom really is.

As a leader, I try not to underestimate the power of prayer. I think we fall into this trap because it’s easier to put our best effort into it and see some results, even if they’re not a fraction of what we’re hoping for. Prayer is about our connection with God; it’s how we sink our roots in deep to get the nourishment for our being and the outflow of our doing. We need to be deeply grounded in the heavenly father’s love for us. The ancient future community in Acts joined together and prayed constantly; that’s how they were able to flourish under all kinds of conditions.

Obedience is also important, especially when I’ve had to face betrayal in my ministry. Like the community in Acts who obeyed the Spirit by replacing Judas, we also must carry on with what we have been commissioned to do even in the face of betrayal.

Learn more about and the .

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What does flourishing leadership look like in the real world? Resilient Leaders Project asked alumni of ������Ƶ of Theology & Psychology about how they’ve flourished while creating contextually-responsive ministry. In listening to these leaders, we found six common themes–practices and ways of being that other leaders can apply to increase their own flourishing. This blog series will share those themes, one at a time, through the stories of flourishing leaders. To see the other themes and leader profiles, . This week’s theme is self-compassion: leaders need to give themselves grace and permission to be fully human.

Wakaki Thompson

The Allender Center, Training Certificate 2018—2019

Reverend and Computer Systems Architect

I hope to flourish in the tension of love, disappointment, hurt and joy. I see flourishing as a mutual–but not transactional–relationship with peaks and valleys. It’s asking my neighbor more thoughtful and deeper questions to sufficiently attune to them; it’s seeking their story to better understand their development and the critical people in their lives. I would hope to see myself in their brokenness and rehearsed behaviors, so this mutual identification could help provide a shared grace and mercy for bonded neighborly connection. If we can relate with others as mysteriously and supernaturally as described, to intimately and spiritually connect with others in a series of moments, I believe that to be Christlike.

To engage myself deeply and intimately is a challenge. I have developed a superhero persona and often suppress my feelings. I was taught to power through situations and to leverage logic over emotions. I was taught to look out for myself and to be the center of my decision tree. I was taught relationships should have a checklist and meet certain criteria.

However, past midlife, I am challenged to change who I am to be more like Christ. I’m challenged to reveal my pain, trauma, and brokenness, to realize that this does not make me weaker but in reality, makes me stronger and more worthy of trust and connection with others. I should not have to shoulder all the load when we as a community can bear it together more honestly. Being a superhero is not healthy or realistic. Having the strength to point to God is sufficient and embodies a more sustaining joy.

Suzanne Aultman

MACP, 2016

Structural Engineer

As a structural engineer who supervises several others, I am constantly juggling the demands on my time from others across all departments. My hope is to see each person and to know them beyond the role they fulfill at our company. If I can remember something specific about them to ask about or to acknowledge, maybe they will feel seen. It is in the small moments of seeing the other that we tend to have the most impact and sometimes not even realize it.

Something my time at ������Ƶ helped me refine was my ability to read a situation – to recognize when there is something deeper happening in an interaction. When I notice that something else is happening, I begin asking myself questions to determine how much I should engage it in the moment. Kindness is both acknowledging what you see in a person while also knowing when it is not the most appropriate time to name it, especially in a corporate environment. It is always a judgment call – sometimes I’m right and sometimes I’m wrong. I do not sit in shame for failing; instead, it pushes me to pay better attention to those around me and to respond when I notice a need. For the moments I happen to notice and engage, there is a reward in the connection with the other that encourages me to keep going.

Also, being a community, this is not a one-way interaction. I must be willing to be able to speak my needs so that others can respond to me and offer to me where I am lacking. It is in the giving and receiving that we can all grow and flourish together.

Ruth Wiley

MACP, 2016

Counselor

Two challenges to my flourishing are shame and overcommitment. Shame inhibits flourishing by not allowing psychic space for creativity to thrive, thus limiting how I share my gifts with the world. Overcommitment, which can be subtly fueled by shame, reduces the quality of my presence and work. The irony of both of these self-protective postures is that we try to hide the parts of ourselves that we deem unlovable and so we do not allow the gaze of compassionate others to reframe who we are in a fuller more nuanced way. I feel shame, so I do not want you to see me more fully for fear that you will deem me unworthy too. But when I can love the aspects of me that are “ugly,” the roots that support flourishing for self and others can authentically grow deeper into love.

I address these challenges through growing self-compassion. I believe that Jesus was the most self-compassionate person to live. It was because of his deep care and compassion for himself that he was able to love others so disruptively well. When I first began meditative centering prayer, I could not imagine being able to honestly say to myself Brene Brown’s now-famous sentence: “I am worthy of love and belonging.” As I avidly continued my contemplative practice, my own therapy, my academic pursuits and my engagement with my community, something changed where my chest cavity meets my thoughts and words are formed. One morning while lying on my floor in our attic apartment in Seattle, I, like C. S. Lewis, was surprised by joy: “Oh my God I am worthy of love and belonging.” Coming to love myself is and will be my leadership crucible. Love is what God is and is doing.

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What does flourishing leadership look like in the real world? Resilient Leaders Project asked alumni of ������Ƶ of Theology & Psychology about how they’ve flourished while creating contextually-responsive ministry. In listening to these leaders, we found six common themes–practices and ways of being that other leaders can apply to increase their own flourishing. This blog series will share those themes, one at a time, through the stories of flourishing leaders. To see the other themes and leader profiles, read the Flourishing in Service Report. This week’s theme is community: leaders need relationships in which they can be vulnerable about their experiences and collaborative in service.

Phil Doud

MDiv 2013

Life Coach at Heroically

As a life coach, I am driven by the questions of who people are and how they change, develop, and flourish. My work is focused on caring for those in the helping professions: educators, health care and medical professionals, mental health and social service workers, ministers and clergy. The name Heroically is word play. I want people to actually live heroically, taking on world-saving problems in challenging work. And I want to both be a heroic ally, helping the helpers to flourish along the way. Helpers have high rates of stress, compassion fatigue, disillusionment and burnout. To thrive, they need supportive community, safe spaces to grow, struggle, and yes, play. That’s why I’ve launched Heroic Ally Game Groups, inviting people to build community, reflect, and explore identity through a custom tabletop roleplaying game.

Roleplaying games are really storytelling games in which participants assume a contextual identity within a hypothetical setting. The games I lead are meant to be epic, with big stakes and powerful obstacles, giving people practice in taking on overwhelming challenges, handling setbacks, developing agency, and tolerating the distress of not knowing. You take a risk, roll the die, and play with what happens, good or bad.

The collaborative nature of the game helps people learn to depend on community. Groups include reflection time to process things that happened in the game and to discover how a particular character or situation connects to their real lives. Sometimes a werewolf in the game is just a werewolf in the game. But sometimes it’s a metaphor for that wild and ferocious hunger inside. It’s exciting when interpersonal and intrapersonal discoveries found in game play catalyze personal transformation. I have found that I am most alive helping people navigate into where they are most alive.

Barbara Tantrum

MACP 2010

Counselor at NorthWest Trauma Counseling

As a specialist in early childhood trauma, I work with kids who have been adopted and adults who had childhood trauma. I also supervise and encourage new therapists, and I have a book coming out in Fall 2020 about parenting kids with trauma. I am myself a parent of six: two kids I gave birth to, and four kids we adopted.

Before I was a therapist I was in full-time campus ministry. As a therapist, it can be less clear that I am doing Christian work. But good counseling embodies Christian values: forgiveness, redemption, wholeness, health. I feel that God loves adoption, and I see myself as an adopted child of God. Science is finding that when a kid has early childhood trauma and PTSD, what overcomes that trauma is having good connection with a caregiver. For me, that is so much a picture of Jesus: what overcomes our trauma is having good connection with Jesus and with other people. I think that is the gospel. That’s the work I do: helping build relationships and helping people find those connections.

A key to my flourishing is connections with other therapists that I’m in practice with, consult with, or do supervision with. I have seen other counselors try to be really independent; usually that does not go well. The people who do well are people who have connections with other people. I would not want to be doing this work by myself. It’s hard because you can’t have community like that without there being conflict, without there being stuff you need to work through. It’s tough, but it’s really worth it in the end to have a community that you can work with, dream with and have cammeraderie with.

Alex Zarecki

MATC 2016

Worship Music Director, Japanese Baptist Church of Seattle

Flourishing for me includes collaborative energy. I serve with a sense of lower case “p” pastoral; it enables more collaboration with the folks who have been at this church all their lives and with the newer folks who just walked in or found us from Google. This collaboration is especially important in my context of working in a historically Japanese-American church. I am not Japanese-American, I’m European-American, so it’s a little unusual for someone like me to be in such a space.

The fact that I have a team in my workspace makes a tremendous difference. It’s not just me trying to figure things out on my own; I can ask questions and be a student of the context. I’ve learned about the history of the organization, individual people’s histories, what sort of dynamics have existed, why things are the way they are. It’s a practice of collaboration that creates community with my coworkers and laypeople, and I think that sense of community is imperative to doing anything worthwhile.

Music can be a great way to invite everybody into a space. As a church, we’re becoming more multiethnic and confidently intergenerational. We’ve seen that there can be a holding together in the midst of theological diversity because of a greater sense of community. Music and art can help us navigate spaces that are otherwise impasses.

As someone who sees the role of the artist as close to the prophetic tradition, I have found that some social media has been helpful for hearing the voices of other Christians. These other voices reorient me as I am creatively thinking about problem solving and attending to the resistance in my work.

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