I’m sitting in my Jeep, waiting for my son’s track meet to start. The sun is bright, and in my little insulated corner of West Virginia, all is well. A sharp contrast with the currents that I know are running fast against the eroding banks of the United States I grew up in.

One of my favorite pieces of context when talking about scripture is that water is almost universally associated with chaos. In the opening lines of Genesis, when the Spirit of the Creator hovers over the water and the Word, speaks the first notes of creation, what we are seeing is not magic, it’s a deep spiritual truth that when God gets involved, his Word (the Logos of St. John) brings life, logic, and order to the chaos of deep and death.

Oddly, that’s what I started thinking about as I sat in my Jeep, top off, with the physical wind blowing up the wide hollow that empties into the Ohio River. It took some time to figure out why because the article I was reading from the National Catholic Reporter seemed, at first, to be completely unrelated: Pentagon-Vatican meeting latest flash point in Trump’s clash with religious leaders.

I’ve linked the article above, but to summarize, it seems the Pentagon summoned high ranking representatives from the Catholic Church and, in no uncertain terms, demanded they publicly take the side of American interests in the war with Iran after Pope Leo XIV publicly denounced the war, rightly stating the position that it was immoral and blasphemous to assign God’s blessing to something that is antithetical to God’s loving nature.

Or, to say it more clearly, “Keep God’s name out of your mouth when you’re openly talking about human genocide.”

These are natural landing points when we use the name of God to rationalize our human ambition. When human empires invoke divine mandate or privilege, what else is there to do when any remnant of the prophetic voice of scripture contradicts that belief?

The answer, historically, is to demand the fealty of the church to the current political movement.

The true prophetic voice of the Kingdom will never seek the earthly powers of wealth and prestige through force and coercion because that is not the example left by the incarnated Word of God. If it seeks its own power and does not seek to serve the least of these, it is not of God at all. We know this because the Christ spoke that plainly on multiple occasions without stutter or storm.

I’m not a Roman Catholic, though admittedly, my theology and spiritual practice have been heavily influenced by them. But I applaud this new papacy for its consistent stand with scripture and tradition over the political whims of political extremism and the oppression of our most vulnerable brothers and sisters.

It’s easy to sit in our local communities and forget that the headlines we scroll past mean something. It’s just as easy to read those headlines and lose sight that no matter what happens, we will still wake up and have to live our lives, raise our kids, and find joy in the small moments.

So, where’s the balance?

The pentagon doesn’t care what I have to say. Neither does the Vatican. That’s not the point. The point is that Christian Nationalism is demanding we do the same thing they are demanding of the Vatican.

We are being told that to dissent is to be unchristian.
We are being told that to choose life is to love evil.
We are being told that God is ordaining chaos and genocide.
We are being told to shut up and fall in line.

We must not.
We can not.
We will not.

We must not call evil good.
We must choose this day who we will serve.
We can not serve both God and Mammon.

When he entered the temple, the chief priests and the elders of the people came to him as he was teaching and said, “By what authority are you doing these things, and who gave you this authority?”

Jesus said to them, “I will also ask you one question; if you tell me the answer, then I will also tell you by what authority I do these things. Did the baptism of John come from heaven, or was it of human origin?”

And they argued with one another, “If we say, ‘From heaven,’ he will say to us, ‘Why, then, did you not believe him?’ But if we say, ‘Of human origin,’ we are afraid of the crowd, for all regard John as a prophet.”

So they answered Jesus, “We do not know.” And he said to them, “Neither will I tell you by what authority I am doing these things.

Mt 21:23–27

Reflection for the Coming Day

As I studied the overarching narrative of scripture in seminary, what became overwhelmingly evident to me and my classmates was how easy it is to read scripture with modern eyes that look for the good guys and bad guys.

And what do we do when we think we have that figured out? We almost instinctively align ourselves with the good guys. Because we see ourselves, and our motives, as ultimately seeking the good while holding a bias that others should be judged by their actions and not their internal motives.

We live in an age of division. We like to believe that we are free-thinking, but there may not be a period of history in all of human kind where our opinions and arguments have been more fully spoon fed to us than today. I am not immune, and neither are you.

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Now the serpent was more crafty than any other wild animal that the Lord God had made. He said to the woman, “Did God say, ‘You shall not eat from any tree in the garden’?”

The woman said to the serpent, “We may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden, but God said, ‘You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the middle of the garden, nor shall you touch it, or you shall die.’ ”

But the serpent said to the woman, “You will not die, for God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”

So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food and that it was a delight to the eyes and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate, and she also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate.

Then the eyes of both were opened, and they knew that they were naked, and they sewed fig leaves together and made loincloths for themselves.

Gen 3:1–7 (NRSVue)

Reflection for the Coming Day

Yesterday, on the way to church, our fourteen year old youngest daughter, normally sullen and borderline accosting, was full of deep, spiritual questions for some unexpected reason.

In the course of the conversation, we somehow ended back in the story of the Garden of Eden (not an uncommon thing for my spiritual conversations) where I was talking to her about part of my interpretation of the Judeo-Christian creation myth — namely that the primary issue that humanity has always experienced is that we are the only created thing who has the desire to be something beyond what we were created to be.

It was not enough to be made to be in communion with God and to co-operate within the divine conversation to cultivate the created into perfection. No, we wanted to step beyond our created self into a modality that we were not created for and therefore destined to fail and be ruined by.

As we enter Holy Week, I’m using this conversation with our youngest and my wife as a launching point for where I believe God wants me to focus my attention, and since you are reading this, I suppose you are coming along for the ride.

Yesterday was Palm Sunday. And as I sat in church with waving palm branches I thought how tragic it was that even though Jesus gave them all the symbols and teachings that should have shown them that he was finally a human who was living within the means of his created self in his time and place, the crowds still could not let him be that person. They could not accept that liberation came from a humble man on a donkey.

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“If I go forward, he is not there;
or backward, I cannot perceive him;
on the left he hides, and I cannot behold him;
I turn to the right, but I cannot see him.
But he knows the way that I take;
when he has tested me, I shall come out like gold.”

Job 23:8-10 (NRSVue)

Reflection for the Coming Day

Each morning I pray in community with my brothers and sisters in the Appalachian Order a piece of St. Patrick’s Breastplate Prayer:

”Christ, as a light illumine and guide me.
Christ, as a shield overshadow me.
Christ under me;
Christ over me;
Christ beside me on my left and my right.
This day be within and without me, lowly and meek, yet all-powerful.”

(The Northumbria Community. Celtic Daily Prayer. Kindle Edition.)

This section always strikes me because isn’t this what we all strive for? Wouldn’t our lives be filled with so much more peace if in every direction we looked the wisdom and foresight of Christ was not only apparent but actively engaged?

Ahh, those are good seasons when we are able to abide in them — “Lowly and meek, yet all powerful.” I’ll take those every day and twice on Sunday as they say.

But what about the seasons that Job references in the passage I’ve copied above? What about the seasons where you look around and the Spirit of God isn’t apparent, and where he seems to have left you all alone at best or altogether at worst.

These are the seasons of wilderness in our lives. The times of testing and trial that scorch our skin, test our faith, and push back against the niceties and spiritual platitudes that build up in seasons of plenty. They are the seasons that make us merciful, empathetic, humble, and quiet if we let them.

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See, the Lord God comes with might,
and his arm rules for him;
his reward is with him
and his recompense before him.
He will feed his flock like a shepherd;
he will gather the lambs in his arms
and carry them in his bosom
and gently lead the mother sheep.

Isaiah 40:10-11

Reflection for the Coming Day

One of humanity’s greatest blindspots is that we still, after the entire narrative of scripture, measure power and might by human standards rather than by the model laid out by the Creator.

We still favor force.
We still savor victory.

As I write this reflection, my own country has joined with an Israel that bears no resemblance to the nation God wished to lead in a war they are not so unabashedly labeling as a holy war.

But outside a small sliver of scripture, the God we see is not a God who demands military victory or the validation won on the battlefield.

In this passage from Isaiah, we see the Lord God coming in his might. The entirety of justice is within his arms.

And wh…

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But now you must get rid of all such things: anger, wrath, malice, slander, and abusive language from your mouth. Do not lie to one another, seeing that you have stripped off the old self with its practices and have clothed yourselves with the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge according to the image of its creator. In that renewal there is no longer Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, enslaved and free, but Christ is all and in all!

Therefore, as God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience. Bear with one another and, if anyone has a complaint against another, forgive each other; just as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive. Above all, clothe yourselves with love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony. And let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in one body. And be thankful. Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly; teach and admonish one another in all wisdom; and with gratitude in your hearts sing psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs to God. And whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.

Colossians 3:11-17

Reflection for the Coming Day

If I am anything these days, I am tired. Aren’t you?

I’m tired of the constant state of alert. I’m tired of being manipulated to feel outrage toward events and issues that don’t matter much to me in reality, and in contrast, I’m utterly exasperated at the things that should be causing outrage barely being talked about.

In times when the fog is the thickest, our response should not be to turn on the brightest settings of our headlights. The answer is to turn on the much dimmer fog lights that show us the edges of the road.

Our fog lights should always be our pursuit of righteousness and the type of justice that shows this world what the next world — the Kingdom of God — will be like.

Our conversations and news feeds are filled with language and ideas that are meant to divide us. And make no mistake of it, it is intentional.

Just like the church at Colossae that Paul is talking to, we would do well to remember that our primary citizenship and loyalties are not to one country or another. Once we put on the mantle of the Kingdom, we change the primary filter of our lives to something that blends the age to come with the age we currently live in.

And that starts with how we view (and treat) one another, particularly those who have the least.

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A couple years ago, I was backpacking on Labor Day weekend in the Dolly Sods Wilderness with my entire family — my wife, all six kids, my nephew, and my dad who I hadn’t been on trail with since I was in my twenties.

There is a campsite that exists on a now abandoned trail that no longer shows up on National Forest Service maps. My dad has been taking me there since I was a teenager. We’re not the only ones who know about it, but if you start to talk about it in community groups or message boards, the comments section immediately starts blowing up, telling you to keep your mouth shut about it.

But it was time I introduced my kids to it, to pass along the legacy. A place where you can be sure to have peace and quiet and one of the best swimming holes on Red Creek all to yourself.

I won’t have family land to pass down to my kids, but they’ll have that campsite.

The problem was I hadn’t been there in almost twenty years. The map my mind had filed away as the way looked absolutely nothing like the reality of the terrain.

There was no trail where I remembered it, and there were entire sections that I didn’t remember presenting themselves one after another.

So, after a long day hike, I found myself descending off the old logging road into a thicket of downed, decaying logs and rhododendron with my step-son and his girlfriend looking for familiar markers that didn’t exist.

I led them down into what I thought was a path that ran along the creek. Surely, it would be there. It was not. And when I turned around to go back, the Rhododendron had closed in around me, their gnarled trunks, twisting and turning into a maze of knotted branches reaching up to grab the scarce sunlight available along the creek bed.

Each way looked the same. The only marker I had to orient myself was the creek that ran along my right side.

But I’d grown up feeling lost and in-between, so I did what I’d always done, I slowed down, told myself that I was home, and went to work figuring out how to use the land to my advantage.

THE PLACES WE’RE FORMED IN

I grew up in the Northern Panhandle of West Virginia. For the uninitiated, we’re the middle finger of Appalachia that sticks up between the states of Ohio and Pennsylvania. There’s a whole lot of symbolism there that I’ll let you work out for yourself. We’ve been working it out for years.

Historically, we’ve run on coal, steel, and pottery. We’ve used the Ohio River as our modality to move goods across the country. Problem is, the whole economy for those things dropped out in the 80s and 90s when it became cheaper to buy them overseas.

Our air got a whole lot cleaner, but nobody could afford to live here anymore because there was no economy, so it was kind of a wash.

We went from being an indispensable part of the industrial machine to an ugly scar the pointed back to what some considered to be a better time. And so, instead of making sure we were okay, America just kept rolling along without us.

Appalachia has a deep history of being one of the notoriously forgotten and inaccessible part of this country. We’re mysterious and old, if not a little misunderstood to outsiders. But we were something different up here on the Northern Plateau. When industry left, we were just kind of sad.

The North didn’t claim us because we were seen as just some dumb hill-jack rednecks. The Mid-Atlantic didn’t claim us because while there’s a power in these hills and hollers, it’s never been the type that plays well in politics. And the South didn’t want us because we weren’t seen as truly Appalachian because we still got sun that shone on us after 3pm.

And so, we just sort of died. Slowly. Alone. With no fanfare or thanks. Just the slow agonizing death of a place that was once something. Now nothing. Not even to the people who still lived there.

This was the place I was formed in. This was the place I was formed by.

THE MESSINESS OF MANAGING IN THE MARGINS

The most defining part of being formed in forgotten places is that you’re always managing from a place of want. Scarcity isn’t a season. Scarcity is a way of life.

Even your more well-to-do friends have less than those in places where people want to live — the kind of places people move to in order to escape where they are.

That isn’t to say there isn’t happiness or contentment in forgotten places.

In fact, some of the most content people I’ve ever known come from the margins. Having a little will teach you how little you actually need to find joy in this life. It might even help in that pursuit if we’re to believe Jesus’ teachings.

But even when you find joy in the simple, there are still paychecks to stretch, bills that get rotated month-to-month so that nothing gets turned off when the money runs out before the demands from creditors. I remember a good friend of mine’s mom once told me that the water bill wasn’t due until she got the red envelope.

It’s only been the last few years that her little piece of working-poor wisdom wasn’t necessary in my own life from time-to-time.

Some of you may read that and quietly judge. To that, I say, “Good for you.”

I’m sincerely happy that you’ve not had to know the type of anxiety and pressure that comes from working forty-plus hours a week, or perhaps working two or three jobs at a time, and still not being able to make the ends meet of a rope that is far more tattered than anything you dreamed of as a child.

When you grow up in a forgotten place, you know that the things you see in magazines, television, or on social media aren’t really achievable without escaping, doing something illegal, or getting extraordinarily lucky.

You realize early that those things are not for you. They exist in places that might as well be fairy tales.

By the time you’re in high school, you’ve already turned around and realized the rhododendron has closed in around you.

So, you have two choices.

You can stop moving and set up camp, or you can start moving in a direction and hope its the right one — no compass, no sun breaking through most of the time. Just a gut feeling, some colloquial wisdom from others also stuck in the tangled maze of the margins — our life a living laurel hells.

THE CALL TO MOVE BEYOND THE CROOKED

Every person I’ve ever met from Appalachia who showed any promise — defined locally as having a chance of rising above the ever-present mist that hangs over the hills and hollows — has been taught that in order to be taken serious, you must first learn to not look or sound like where you’re from.

And so, we’re reprimanded early on for our bad grammar or “lazy” ways of talking. We spend much of our formative years trying desperately not to look or sound like the family and friends who raised us.

It’s an odd feeling to grow up in a place that teaches you not to be from that place. There’s a profound disconnect that happens when you’re taught to internally and externally reject the culture and people you should feel most profoundly linked to.

What do you do when the place you’re from teaches you that you’re “less than” for being from that place?

By the time I was in college, all I wanted was to be “not from here”. And as I branched out and formed relationships with different people from different parts of the country and world, I wondered at the pride they felt when they spoke of their home.

I was from West Virginia, and you’d be hard pressed to find a population that has more state-specific tattoos and pride, but when anyone I knew was asked where they were from, we would all answer by saying how far we were from Pittsburgh or some other major city.

And so, I learned to change the way I spoke, the way I wrote, the way I carried myself in the world. I learned to relax only when I was around family or particularly close friends who were also from similar beginnings.

But eventually, I stopped ever falling back into my embodied genesis. And, honestly, I was praised for it.

I was listened to more in both classroom and board room.
I was asked to speak at pulpits and large presentations.

And all the time, I had a growing sense that my voice was not my own. There was no connection to it.

Interestingly, I found I was very good at writing for others. At first, I thought this was some sort of professional talent, but what I think actually happened was that I exercised a very specific muscle — how to sound, think, and become someone I wasn’t.

WHEN THE MAN EMERGES FROM THE THICKET

In 2022, I logged into Twitter/X and began posting like I’d done more than a dozen times — speaking into the unlistening void of a platform that doesn’t know you exist yet. But instead of just posting, I decided to join the conversation that was already happening in spaces considering what it meant to reimagine the church in a post-Christian America, particularly in those deconstructing evangelicalism and engaging scripture from a more contextually nuanced and prophetic interpretive lens.

And for whatever reason, this time my voice found people who cared what I had to say. And what’s more, they seemed to appreciate my voice the most when the learned filters faded into the background.

My Appalachian background wasn’t a hindrance or obstacle to overcome. It was precisely the reason my voice was attractive and worth listening to.

To a room full of marginalized voices, polish and privilege has nothing to offer the conversation.

Even though most of us left Twitter/X after the 2024 elections, that community remains one of my core networks. I’ve been invited to join conversations at post-evangelical conferences, to join design teams with groups like The Wild Fig Network, and I’ve been humbled to be been invited into the ongoing work of the Parish Collective, hyper-local networks rethinking what it means to be the church in neighborhood settings instead of suburban campus destinations. It even led me to deeper study of scripture and contextual leadership with Pillar Seminary.

And in each setting, it is my experience in forgotten Appalachian and rust belt communities that provides the rooted grounding for anything important that I have to say or contribute.

My lived experience in the crooked, messy, and slightly dangerous communities that empire forgot are not things to hide and mask behind a more polished public presentation.

Those are exactly the things needed to move the church’s prophetic mission back into our communities.

Turns out, we were not left behind and obsolete. We were the prophetic warning of what was coming for the world at large.

WHAT IS “THE LAUREL HELLS”?

For most of my life, I’ve felt caught between two bad options.

We had to stay still in what we called “milltown mediocrity” or abandon my home and be unattached from my place.

That’s the dual danger of the laurel hells.

You can be frozen in place for fear of losing whatever familiarity you have by going deeper, or you can run headlong into the brambles and forget the context of where you came from in the hopes of arriving absolutely anywhere that doesn’t seem so suffocating.

How do you balance those two reactions into something useful to your own survival while still being true to your mission to find your way back to yourself?

The answer is to root your journey into what is known as you venture into the unknown future. Not trapped in place. Not pushing into terrain wildly without the care and respect the journey demands.

The answer is the creek to your right. The sun that peaks through the tree. The direction the water runs. A knowledge of how to read the land and where it is you’re trying to end up.

When I stood among the confused landscape, I knew a few things: one, the creek was on our right side, and our camp was along that same creek further north (so I had to keep that on my right side); two, I knew the approximate distance from the creek that the campsite was and how close to the creek we were; and three, I knew that somewhere along the way, a trail would open up that followed the creek past a tree with old items found among the old logging camps that littered the creek.

With those things in mind, I went backwards, moved a hundred yards or so west away from the creek while keeping it in sight. I followed the more open areas (because there had once been a trail and rhododendron take years to grow large enough to trap you) until I saw my dad come up over a rise, signaling that I was home and on the right path back to our camp.

You follow what you know in order to unlock what you do not.

You move among what the brambles give you because you know, deep down, the way they grow is in search of light. And where there is light, there is life.

The day ended with the kids losing themselves in laughter as they lept from the banks into Red Creek as we adults sat around the fire sharing stories and dreaming of the their future.

And that was enough.
Because they know where this place was now.
And how to find it again if they ever lose their way.

And they’d never hear from me that they needed to be anything else than what they were.

Place. Passion. Person.

Most of us were taught that being spiritual is about being above things.

Above our mess.
Above our body.
Above our neighborhood drama.
Above our ordinary lives.

We learned to think that faith was something clean and elevated. The reason we went to church on Sunday, at least partially, was to wash away the grit and grime of the week. To recharge. To remember where our true life and promise lay.

And that promise was something that happens inside you, or after you die, or somewhere else entirely.

But in all my years of study and practice, I’ve yet to find that supposed truth in scripture. The Christian story doesn’t begin in the clouds. It began, and still begins, in dirt.

The first pages of scripture don’t describe a God hovering at a distance, issuing decrees from afar. Instead, we see God’s hands in soil, breathing into lungs, an intimate presence walking in the cool of the day. The Creator stoops. The Creator shapes. The Creator stays.

And then, when humanity forgets, when it fractures and flees that presence to choose its own way, that same Creator doesn’t solve the problem by pulling us out of the world.

God found his way into it. “And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us.” (John 1:14)

God didn’t visit.
God didn’t hover.
God didn’t remain a quiet observer of our struggle.

God dwelt.

The Greek word John uses, eskēnōsen, means to pitch a tent. To tabernacle. To move into the neighborhood and stay long enough to smell like the place. To know it’s pain and its beauty in all of it’s fullness.

The idea of incarnational living begins right there, in our own desire and willingness to appreciate the clouds while getting our hands wrist deep in the mud.

Our primary role in this world is not to be defenders of a doctrine that we construct, because how is that much different than eating the forbidden fruit all over again? No, our primary decision must be to remain present, to let God meet us, and be known through us, in the particular bodies, places, relationships, and limitations it would be so much easier to escape or pretend didn’t pertain to our new holy life at all.

God Doesn’t Save Us From Our Humanity

Somewhere along the way, many of us were handed a version of Christianity that treated the body like a liability and the material world like a temporary inconvenience. Salvation was framed as extraction—getting souls out of flesh, believers out of history, heaven out of earth.

But the entirety of scripture seems to refuse that storyline.

Jesus doesn’t come to erase our humanity.

He comes to assume it.

Our Eastern elders said what is not assumed can not be healed. Christ didn’t redeem us by standing apart from the human condition, but by entering it fully. He lived a life of fatigue, hunger, touch, grief, sweat, joy, and a horrific death.

He was born to a poor family in an occupied land. He experienced life as a refugee. He grew up in the obscurity of a backwater community. He learned a trade that calloused his hands. He walked dusty roads. He ate what was put in front of him, and didn’t eat when that food wasn’t present. He let people interrupt him. He wept when his friends died. He bled when the empire decided he was expendable.

And somehow, that was and is the salvation of the world.

Incarnation isn’t a detour from holiness. It is holiness, made visible.

And living incarnationally is the only way to be and know true holiness, because that is where we experience the fullness of the universal Christ that is shared within all of creation.

The Christian life can never be about escaping reality because the only way to experience the fullness of Christ is to remain rooted in the pain of the mud without losing the hope of the clouds.

The Scandal of Staying Put

One of the quiet disciplines of incarnational living is staying when it would be easier to leave.

Staying in a body that’s aging or aching.
Staying in a marriage that requires daily choosing.
Staying in a neighborhood that doesn’t photograph well.
Staying with people who can’t be reduced to slogans.
Staying with neighbors who routinely ask more of you than they offer.

I’ve always admired the Anabaptists in this area. They didn’t just offer a teaching, they modeled it as a foundational ethos.

Faith wasn’t primarily something to be correctly believed intellectually. Orthodoxy wasn’t the primary motivation. Their faith was something practiced visibly, communally, and locally.

Discipleship happened more in the kitchens and fields of shared labor than it did in their Sunday sermons.

Following Jesus means learning how to love our actual neighbors — not the abstract ones, not the hypothetical ones, but recognizing that the people we share our fence line with (as well as our digital timelines) will be inconveniently different from us in seemingly important areas, but it is of no real matter. The mandate to love them only grows stronger as the divide widens.

That is, at least partially, the scandal of the Gospel. (Luke 6:27-36)

Incarnational living resists the fantasy of distance.

It says God is not more present “out there” than right here.
It says holiness is not waiting for us somewhere else.
It says heaven is not a promise after death, but a promise for now.
It says this place—this life—is the arena of redemption.

When Jesus announces his ministry in Luke’s gospel, he doesn’t speak in abstractions:

“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor … to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free.” (Luke 4:18)

Those aren’t spiritual metaphors floating free of material reality. They’re bodily, social, economic, and communal realities.

An incarnational faith has consequences.

For those who are a part our lives.
For the communities where we live.
For our own well being and joy.

Sacrament Is Everywhere, or It Is Nowhere

My own Celtic stream of Christianity had a way of seeing that feels almost dangerous to modern sensibilities. At the very least, it can feel silly in the beginning.

They didn’t look for God primarily in grandiose, carefully curated spiritual moments. They expected God to be threaded through daily life — through work songs, intentional thresholds, shared meals, and weather of all types.

They blessed the hearth.
They blessed the fields.
They blessed the waking and the sleeping.

Not because those things were useful, not because doing so was symbolic, but because they were alive with divine presence all on their own.

There was no hard line between prayer and labor, sacred and ordinary. Everything existed in thin places — where heaven and earth brushed up against each other if you were paying attention.

This is why incarnational living and prayerful living always feels slower than the curated religion offered by human empire-building, even when that empire building bears a cross on its banner.

Incarnational living asks you to notice what you’ve been trained to ignore.

The Orthodox, Catholic, and Anglican traditions speak of this through sacrament — not as magic, but as meaning. Bread and wine don’t stop being bread and wine. They become what they always were meant to be, carriers of a grace so thin that they cease to exist independently and become a spiritual reality that blends both together in much the same way that God entered the world as Jesus Christ, the original incarnation.

And if that’s true at the altar, it’s true at the table as well.

It’s true in the body you inhabit.
It’s true in the work you do.
It’s true in the land beneath your feet.
It’s true in the person you find least likeable.

“The earth is the Lord’s and everything in it.” (Psalm 24:1)

Not the parts we approve of.
Not the parts that are comfortable.
Not the parts that build our brand and reputation.
Not the parts we can monetize.

Everything.

Incarnational living is simply the refusal to live as though that isn’t true.

Jesus Had a ZIP Code

One of the most overlooked details in the gospels is how located Jesus is.

He doesn’t wander endlessly as a spiritual nomad. He returns to familiar towns. He’s known by name. He has a reputation. People remember him as someone’s son, someone’s neighbor.

When Philip tells Nathanael they’ve found the Messiah, he doesn’t say, “He’s from heaven.” He says, “Jesus of Nazareth, son of Joseph.”

And Nathanael’s response — “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?” — tells you everything you need to know about how incarnation works. And being someone born and raised in the Appalachian foothills of West Virginia in the United States, this line always felt particularly potent.

God often chooses a place with a dubious reputation.

A place people dismiss.
A place no one expects much from.
A place that is culturally backward.

And then he stays there long enough for the place to matter.

Incarnational living means resisting the urge to be everywhere and choosing instead to be somewhere.

It means letting your faith take on the accent of your region, the pace of your people, the wounds of your land. It means allowing yourself to be shaped by the limits you didn’t choose instead of constantly trying to outrun them.

The Orthodox call this kenosis, self-emptying — not self-erasure, but the humility of presence in place. It is the willingness to love without control, to serve without spectacle, to remain without expectation of success.

Jesus doesn’t redeem the world by managing it. He redeemed it by loving it from the inside.

Resurrection Always Has a Body

One of the quiet heresies of modern Christianity is, in my opinion, the idea that resurrection means leaving materiality behind for a more heavenly existence above.

Because the risen Christ still eats.
Because he still bears scars.
Because he can still can be touched.

Resurrection doesn’t discard the body. It restores it.

Our material bodies — yours and mine — are not obstacles to holiness. They are the place where holiness insists on showing up. They are the vehicles and modality that God chooses to inhabit to bring his Kingdom here to Earth.

Incarnational living holds this as a cornerstone of its wider theology.

It cares about how we eat, how we rest, how we touch, how we speak. It asks whether our lives are divinely inhabitable, not just productive.

It refuses spiritual shortcuts that bypass grief.
It refuses piety that avoids social and community responsibilities.
It refuses a hope that can’t be bothered to get its hands dirty.

“Faith by itself, if it has no works, is dead.” (James 2:17)

Our works don’t save us, but a spiritual life that never enters the world or cares enough to release it from the darkness of oppression (physical, economic, political, and spiritual) offers no real hope or good news in the first place, because what its desired distance says is that its light can not shine in the dark. Or even worse, it wishes to keep its light all to itself.

Practicing Presence in an Age of Escape

We live in a time that rewards disembodiment and distance.

We scroll instead of sit.
We curate instead of commit.
We brand instead of belong.

The incarnational living I’m proposing here is an act of resistance against normalizing that way of life.

I would have you learn the names of people you would rather ignore.
I would have you show up in the places you would hope nobody would see you visiting.
I would have you choose fidelity over novelty.

I would have ask you to choose a life that might at first appear painfully small.

A meal cooked.
A porch light left on.
A phone call returned.
A prayer whispered while sweeping a shared sidewalk.

But these are not insignificant acts. They are the slow, steady ways resurrection enters the world, at least if we are to believe scripture.

Jesus tells his followers that whoever welcomes a child, welcomes him.
Whoever gives a cup of cold water does not lose their reward.
Whoever loves the least participates in the life of God.

Incarnational living dares to take him at his word. Full stop.

A Benediction for Rooted People

This is not a call to do more. It is simply a call to stay.

To stay with your body.
To stay with your place.
To stay with your people.
To stay with the work of love.

You don’t have to go looking for God in grand gestures or distant destinations.

God is already where you are.

Pitching a tent.
Breaking bread.
Bearing scars.

Calling your name in a familiar voice.

I’m calling you to plant your feet in whatever dirt you were placed on and dare to grow roots so deep that you cannot be plucked from it.

Let your prayers learn the shape of your days.
Let your faith smell like the work of your hands.
Let your love take on weight.

Because the Word is still becoming flesh within you.

And the world is still waiting for people who believe that God meant what he said when he chose to dwell among us.

There Are No Unsacred Places

There’s an ongoing temptation to divide the world into the sacred and the temporal, into things that matter and things that don’t.

We measure worth by form and function. We rank space by perceived utility, by economic investment, market value, historical significance, human intent, and nostalgia. We build our lives toward the ends of comfort and economic benefit, forgetting that sacredness has never been bound to our benefit or convenience.

If there’s a central conviction to our call and rhythm to reclaim forgotten places, it’s found in the prophetic words of Wendell Berry:

“There are no unsacred places; there are only sacred places and desecrated places.”

But human desecration doesn’t cancel sanctity. It only covers it in the dust of our ruined ambition until we forget what the Creator never does.

The problem isn’t that God left.
The problem is that we stopped caring to look for the divine in places (and people) we don’t see as personally valuable.

Drawing Lines Where God Never Did

Humanity is really good at drawing hard lines between what is holy and what is expendable, what we believe is lasting and what is temporary.

We build ornate sanctuaries and then turn our backs on cracked sidewalks.
We bless our communion tables of our spiritual community while ignoring the empty kitchen tables in our neighborhood community.
We praise the beauty and wonder of the Created earth in our praise and worship and then pave over that divine reminder with our parking lots and Walmarts.

We call that progress. We box the divine spark that flows through all of creation into buildings we build to contain the glory of God and act surprised when it shows up and calls out to us from the very places we’ve written off as godforsaken and destitute.

But we serve a Creator who doesn’t honor our categories. A Creator that never has.
The God of scripture is always showing up in the most ruined, unremarkable, and seemingly blasphemous places culture can imagine.

He shows up in deserts and wilderness. He is revealed in burning bushes. He finds his way through muddy riverbanks. Forgotten fig trees. Small, backwater hamlets and the blasphemed Samaria.

Jesus wasn’t born to the nobility of Rome or Jerusalem. He made His home in Nazareth. He broke bread with the poor. He gathered disciples in fishing towns that never made the maps. And when He was raised from the dead, the first person He spoke to was a woman that Jewish culture had learned to overlook and tune out.

We scoff at the obvious folly of those people in scripture, but we still do it in our own lives in the present.

We still overlook people and places.
We still expect the Creator to focus blessings into the people, places, and cultural behaviors we deem righteous and deserving.

When we box God into our value system, we become complicit in a lie that some things are worth saving and restoring while others aren’t. That some neighborhoods deserve our investment of time, attention, and dollars, while others don’t. That some of creation should be honored and preserved because it’s valuable to our devices and economy, and the rest can be strip-mined for parts and pleasure.

That some things are worth the trouble and others should be left to chaos until they’re needed again.

But the whole narrative of Christian scripture and the gospel of Jesus doesn’t work like that.

The gospel of Jesus teaches us that resurrection is possible in the very places we’ve already written off. Ezekiel speaks the breath of God into forsaken land so the old bones can breathe again. The places made desolate by sin, greed, or abandonment are still part of the story God is telling and we are not free to forget them because those are the places he seems to most enjoy making his presence known. Or perhaps, they are the places that most remember that it is only through divine providence that we are standing at all.

The Witness of Nehemiah

The prophet Nehemiah didn’t forget. He had every reason to stay in the comfort afforded him as a cupbearer. He had access. He had power. A front-row seat at the king’s table. But when word reached him that the walls of Jerusalem had been reduced to rubble, something in him broke.

He offered his thoughts and prayers. He wept and cried out to God. And then he let that anguish move him to action.

He didn’t start by issuing a public decree. He didn’t gather a team of visionaries to brainstorm strategies. He rode out at night and walked the ruins himself.

Quietly.
Patiently.
Letting his own heart absorb the truth before asking anyone else to act.

And when he did speak, it wasn’t with any sort of grandiose self-ambition. It was with solidarity.

“You see the trouble we’re in… Come, let us rebuild.”

That’s where reclamation, restoration, and true repentance and reconciliation begins — not with marketing language or branded campaigns, but with relational, shared lament and community vision.

We walk the ruins at night.
We listen first.

And then we roll up our sleeves and respond to the unique shadows and opportunities we’ve uncovered.

To reclaim a forgotten place, you have to love it enough to learn its wounds.

And respond from a position of relational intimacy not distance.

Restoration as Theological Justice

I believe this kind of reclamation of forgotten, desolate spaces is one of the clearest ways we continue the work of creation.

The Genesis call — to tend and to keep — isn’t just about stewardship of green space, though it certainly is that. It’s about the kind of creative labor that restores dignity to a place and people. It heals what the spirit of human empire breaks. It rethreads the fabric of belonging in places where it’s come unraveled.

This is justice work.

But not just political justice, though it is. Not just social justice, though it is. Not just economic or racial or ecological justice, though it very much is.

This is theological justice.

But not in the sense that this is about correcting or aligning ourselves with a certain way of thinking about God. What I mean is that this is a justice that predates human history. It is a justice that weaves itself though everything that is created.

It is the logos, the very Word of creation … the same Word that was manifested in Jesus Christ.

But reclaiming what has been lost and forsaken, we unite ourselves and our lives with the same work that Jesus Christ taught and modeled during his ministry in the Levant over two thousand years ago.

It asks us to believe that God is not limited to the places that still look “whole.” It is not limited to our ideas of right and wrong. It is not even bound by the Christian religion.

It calls us to participate in the healing of the land and the people — to treat restoration not as a project, but as a posture.

Theologian Willie James Jennings says it this way, that the “deformed imagination” of empire must be replaced by a “holy joining.” That the Christian call is not to escape the ruins, but to inhabit them with resurrection in our hands.

Showing Up Without a Strategy

Any type of spiritual vision requires patience. The Creator works on a timeline that is often uncomfortable and wholly unsatisfactory to our human conception of time and space. It always means choosing holy presence over human performance. In this case, it means tending to forgotten places even when the metrics don’t make sense, even when the grant doesn’t come through, even when the pews and workshops are left half-empty, even when the town says, “Why bother?”

We move ahead because we remember what our empires are ready to forget.
We walk on because we believe that the Spirit still walks the unpaved paths.
We keep speaking because we believe Christ still breaks bread at unwatched tables.
We keep building because we believe the Creator still weeps for the land we’ve left behind.

The Scriptural and Sacred Imagination

Christian scripture is full of promises that the Creator hears the cries of the forgotten and oppressed and restores the ruins of desolation.

Isaiah said the people of God would be known as “repairers of the breach, restorers of streets to dwell in.”

Amos declared that God would rebuild the ruined cities and replant the vineyards.

Luke opens with Jesus saying, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me… to proclaim good news to the poor… to set the oppressed free.”

And John tells us the Word didn’t float above us, it dwelt among us. It tabernacled. It took on the shape of its place like a particular skin.

That means if we want to follow Jesus, we’d better start paying attention to the places where He still dwells. We better start paying attention to the places he’s put us.

Not the cleaned-up places we would rather move to.

The broken ones.
The ones everyone moved out of.

Not the stories we’ve already shared.
The ones everyone else would like to silence.

The Real Work of Reclamation

It is frustrating how frequently and quickly talk of restoring a place turns to returning it to its former “hey-day”, the time when it was most useful and appealing to the ambitious and well-to-do.

Reclaiming forgotten places doesn’t mean we work to restore them to how they used to be. This isn’t about nostalgia.

Working in forgotten places means helping them become what they were always meant to be.

Justice and hope isn’t about restoring the dignity of a place by making it what we once created it to be. Justice and hope is about restoring the dignity of a place by making it what the Creator created it to be.

It’s about restoring balance.
It’s about restoring honor.
It’s about restoring livability.

This doesn’t always require a nonprofit, a platform, or a grant. Sometimes it’s just one person with a broom and a key. Neighbors who keep showing up. A porch light that stays on. A church or community space that stays open twenty-four hours a day. A meal that gets cooked before anyone knows who’s coming.

Sometimes it’s just a willingness to say,

This ground is still sacred.
This story is still worth telling.
This place still has breath in it.

Benediction of Behavior

This is my invitation to you, my call to embrace new rhythms that bring repentance and restoration to the forgotten places around you.

Stop believing that you can’t do the work.

Reclamation does not begin with money, though resources are nice to have when they are given freely. Reclamation doesn’t begin with the right credentials either necessarily.

It begins with presence.
It begins with memory.
It begins with the courage to look at what has been lost and refuse to call it worthless.

So pay attention.

To the street you’ve stopped noticing.
To the yard that hasn’t heard laughter in years.
To the voice in the meeting that always gets talked over.
To the church building that’s been empty for so long no one even prays for it anymore.
To the floodplain and the brownfield and the ravine.
To the hollow where the old folks still sit on plastic chairs under faded porch awnings.

Ask yourself — what’s still breathing under the ruin, and what would it mean to believe that resurrection might begin there?

Reclaiming forgotten places starts when we stop asking what a place can give us and start asking what it needs to become itself again. It starts with asking what we can give to it.

So sweep the steps.
Walk the alley.
Plant the native seeds.
Mend the fence without waiting for a permit.

Buy your produce from the guy who sets up beside the post office with a table and a tarp.
Call the elder who never left the neighborhood.
Light a fire in a place long cold and see who gathers.

Let your prayers become presence. Let your presence become practice.

Don’t wait for the system to catch up.
Don’t wait for the maps to change.
Don’t wait for someone else to remember.

You be the one who remembers.

You be the one who tends and keeps.

Because what was forgotten is not gone.
Because what was abandoned still bears God’s breath.
Because what was desecrated can be sanctified again.

And because there are no unsacred places, only those still waiting to be reclaimed by people with rooted feet, open hands, and a holy imagination.

May you have peace on your path and breath in your bones.

And courage enough to be the holy remembering.

Wilderness is the space we walk when we no longer belong where we were but aren’t quite ready for what is to come.

Spiritual seasons of walking wilderness are rarely predicted. They are seldom sought. They are never comfortable. But all that discomfort aside, they are the vehicle the Creator most often uses to move us from one level of our divine dance into the next.

He led Israel through the wilderness for forty years.

He drew the prophets into the wilderness to learn how to listen.

He sent John the Baptist into the wilderness to announce the coming kingdom of God.

He even led Jesus into the wilderness after his baptism to be tempted by the Satan before his ministry.

The wilderness, scripturally speaking, is not just a place. It’s a process or refinement. A proving ground. A pilgrimage. And if we’re honest, it’s often the place where the truest parts of us get carved out from the lies we’ve been telling ourselves.

Bone-Rattling Beginnings

My own passion for this was shaped by a seminary professor telling me that she felt like God was calling me to walk among the dry bones in this world and speak life to the places and people that had been forsaken. She gave me this verse and told me like a prophet herself, that she was certain this was why I had always been drawn to shadow and discomfort.

“The hand of the Lord was upon me, and he brought me out by the Spirit of the Lord and set me in the middle of a valley; it was full of bones… and he asked me, ‘Son of man, can these bones live?’” (Ezekiel 37:1–3)

You see, I’ve laid in that valley long before I learned to walk again. I’ve been the bones before I was the voice. I forgot what it was to see light or a smiling face. I forgot entirely how to dance.

I’ve also always had an eye for the bone piles modern life leaves behind: hollow-eyed men burnt out and at the end of themselves, tired women who have been wrung out by a world that only loves them when they’re young and beautiful, whole neighborhoods forgotten by time and policy and prayers that were never backed by presence.

I’ve walked through streets and hollows and sat in my own shadows. I felt the Spirit set me down and crushed my spirit when she said, “Preach to these bones.”

So I’m trying to live in that, and I’m encouraging you to do the same.

Not with microphones and pulpits, but with presence. With invitation. With fire pits and trail maps and prayers whispered over the broken who still don’t know they’re holy or can be holy again.

I carry Ezekiel’s question in my marrow: Can these bones live?

And my answer is always yes. Yes, they can. But I don’t know if we can get there efficiently with lectures. Not by branding campaigns or church growth models. Not by barking theology and doctrine into the wind.

The healing wind of the Creator comes to life when someone walks into the valley with them and stays long enough to see the sinews grow again.

We don’t revive people. That’s God’s work. But we do bear witness to the breath when it enters. And then we dare to dance with them again when they find their joy.

That’s the sacred work of wilderness walking.

Walking The Wild Without

There’s a reason I take those seeking council or direction into the woods when they’re facing periods of upheaval and unknowing in their lives.

The physical wilderness, whether it’s woodland, desert, or some other uncivilized region, strips away the distractions and lies we tell ourselves about who we are.

Something happens when our feet touch grass, dirt, and sand. There is something old that awakens in us when the smell of pine and life-giving decay gets into our lungs. We remember that we are both fragile and infinite at the same time, that we are a part of a creation so much bigger than ourselves, that we are uniquely created and creator.

It’s hard to stay in denial when you’re five miles from the nearest road. Nature doesn’t care about your personal brand, your inbox, or your theological hair-splitting, or your denominational background. She’s got her own doctrine. And if you get quiet long enough, you’ll hear the Holy Spirit speak through her, and she’ll give you a name.

The Celtic Christians called these quiet, holy places in the wilderness, thin places. Thin places are where the veil between heaven and earth feels worn and see-through. Where the wildness of the Creator meets the wildness of what was created. For me, the theology and experience of wilderness is a liminal kind of holiness that doesn’t fit neatly inside four walls or a cleanly organized systematic theology.

As St. Cuthbert of Lindisfarne said, “Take time to be holy. Find the quiet places where the soul can breathe.”

We go into the wild places on purpose, not just for solitude, but for soul-stripping.

For rewilding.
For rewiring.
For remembering.

But, like most things in life, it is entirely possible to enter into a physical wilderness without intent. And those experiences can be valuable in their own right. But, for me, the real power comes when we invite the Creator to join us with intent as we strip away our physical comfort and invite him to do the same in our inner life as well.

Walking The Wild Within

It is one thing to walk knowingly into the wilderness of creation. It is an entirely different thing to walk unknowingly into the wilderness of your soul.

There is a type of wilderness that doesn’t begin with neatly defined trailheads and offers no trail markers along the way. These are the seasons of wilderness that we all face in our lives. The hard years. The broken seasons without summit photos or influencer-worthy shots for Instagram. They are seasons of addiction, of divorce, of grief so heavy you forget what light feels like. They are marked only by grief, doubt, and a tangible sense that you may never see light through the canopy again.

None of us are immune.

The height of every mountain vista is only possible and present by the depth of the valley that runs below.

You’ve known people in these seasons. You’ve walked through a few yourself. Maybe you’re in one right now. If so, take heart.

Wilderness seasons are not always signs of failure, and even when they are entered through our own bad choices, they remain invitations to move into something transformational. If we let them, our dark valleys of the soul can shape us in ways that mountain top success never could.

The Scriptural Case for Spiritual Wildlings

Scripture and tradition are filled with wasteland walking spiritual wildlings.

Moses wandered the desert for forty years before he led the people to a promised land he would never set foot in.

Elijah hid in the wilderness under a broom tree and begged to die until an angel fed him through the mouth of ravens before sending him back out to his calling.

Jesus, as we said, went out for forty days and came back speaking with authority no man had seen before.

And in each case, it was the wilderness that shaped them into what they needed to be for the next season of their lives. They may have entered the wilderness for a myriad of reasons, but the Creator always used the seasons to forge them into something new and stronger than they thought possible before.

“He humbled you, causing you to hunger and then feeding you with manna… to teach you that man does not live on bread alone but on every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord.” (Deut 8:3)

The wilderness humbles us by stripping us of our own faculties.
The wilderness teaches us hard truths not accessible to us in our successes.
The wilderness nourishes us in simple ways we may have not appreciated in comfort.

Posture of a Pilgrimage

When we say “wild walking,” we’re not talking about a one-time occurrence or even something that happens occasionally. We’re talking about a way of life. We’re talking about being a people that actively patrols the boundaries and forgotten places of our communities to walk slowly with the hurting and forgotten. Wild walking assumes a posture of availability and the tending of a hearth in the middle of shadows that the rest of civilization has perhaps forgotten about but have certainly moved on from. We build a place not for leaving, but for tending, where the lost, lonely, and left out can find warmth, safety, and a nourishing meal at their lowest moments.

In the Eastern Orthodox tradition, the poustinia, a small cabin set apart for prayer and listening, was offered not just to hermits, but to those in grief, loss, or transition. You didn’t have to say anything profound to someone who came out of that silence. You just had to be ready with a warm cup of tea and an open heart.

St. Seraphim of Sarov once said: “Acquire a peaceful spirit, and thousands around you will be saved.”

That’s what wild walkers do. Spiritual wildlings carry peace and presence in the places where none of that exists natively, where people are apt to forget that hope springs eternal, where we are able to gently remind the world that on the first day, God spoke the light of life into the chaos.

We don’t have to fix people. We have to walk with them while they remember.

Community as Spiritual Wilderness Stewards

The Anabaptist stream of our faith gives us a different angle. The Anabaptists practiced a kind of community-based discipleship that didn’t just preach peace—it walked it out, even through persecution.

When one among them lost a child or was imprisoned, the others didn’t say, “Let us know if you need anything.” They didn’t send them a card or offer their “thoughts and prayers.”

They showed up. They brought bread. They did chores. They sat on front steps in the cold. They held their tongue unless it was time to pray.

There’s a kind of holy stubbornness to that. A refusal to let someone suffer alone. It’s what Deitrich Bonhoeffer meant when he said, “The person who loves their dream of community will destroy community, but the person who loves those around them will create community.”

Walking in the wilderness means choosing presence over performance.

Becoming A Companioning Spirit

And what people need in these seasons, and that includes ourselves, are often not platitudes or sermons. They need someone to simply walk with them through the bogs and boundaries. To sit with them silently by the fire through the night. To be present without performing. To fill spiritual space without needing to shape the space.

I think of the Emmaus road, where Jesus’ disciples walked heavy-hearted, confused, and grieving following the death of Jesus. A stranger joined them, walked with them for a while, and then asked them what was wrong.

They didn’t recognize him at first.

Imagine that, being so overcome with grief and shadow that you can’t see the light of the person you are grieving for right in front of you, that you can’t see that what you grieve for is actually cause for celebration and the opening of a new age.

Sometimes Jesus comes to us disguised as a stranger willing to walk beside us. Sometimes he sends us to be that stranger. But no matter what side of that equation we find ourselves, one thing is certain, when we invite the Spirit of the Creator to speak to us, the whisper reveals itself.

“And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he explained to them what was said in all the Scriptures concerning himself … Then their eyes were opened and they recognized him.”( Luke 24:27, 31)

The goal isn’t to be profound. The goal is to be faithful until the Holy Spirit lets them see.

Wild Love, Rooted Feet

So yes, we’ll keep taking folks on hikes and retreats.

We’ll keep gathering around the fire and telling the truth.

We’ll keep packing trail mix and ibuprofen and extra socks and telling people to leave their cotton clothing at home.

But more than that, we’ll keep walking with the ones whose wilderness can’t be seen on a topo map. The ones so deep in the unknown that there is no way of knowing when we’ll find the next water source. The ones whose marriages are breaking, whose faith is unraveling, whose addictions keep calling their name after dark.

We’ll be the kind of people who say: “I don’t have all the answers. But I’m not going anywhere.”

That’s the wild kind of love we’re after. Not quick fixes, but long obedience.

Not social niceties, but sacred shiva.

Not curated religion, but the raw gospel of Jesus with dirt on our sandals and ash under our finger nails.

As St. Brendan the Navigator prayed before launching his coracle into the wild sea:

“Shall I abandon, O King of mysteries, the soft comforts of home? Shall I turn my back on my native land, and forsake my friends for a desert of the sea? Must I go alone to a land unknown?”

Yes. For love’s sake, yes.

The Invitation

If you’re in a wilderness season, know that you don’t have to walk alone.

You are not forsaken. The manna is coming. The pillar of fire still burns by night. And the God who met Moses in the burning bush still knows your name.

If you’ve made it through your own dry season, look around. Someone near you is still in it.

Don’t rush them out. Don’t pull them forward. Just walk beside them. Carry their water. Let their tears fall without comment.

And if you’re neither here nor there, pack your bag anyway. Be ready.

I’d like to leave you with a quote from the Anglican mystic, Evelyn Underhill. “God is the only reality, and we are only real insofar as we are in his order and obey his will. Therefore, the soul’s first business is to find the way to God.”

Wilderness walking isn’t a program. It’s a calling.

Because the wild is where God does some of his best work.

In the beginning, God said “Let there be light,” but before He said anything, God hovered. God waited. God brooded over the waters like a mother hen, gently holding the chaos before she separated it into order (Genesis1:1-2). That hovering was the first act of God, the Wind before the Word.

God was still before God spoke.

Why then are we so hell bent on starting the creation narrative with action, when it is clear that a key part of what separated the Israelite creation from other similar narratives was this idea of rest?

Because the fallen spirit of humanity is the spirit of brick making, or more specifically, and left unchecked, it will always lead to people with power making those without power the brickmakers for them.

We always want to begin our stories with the bricks, with action that earns rest. Pharaoh doesn’t care about waiting. Pharaoh wants a headcount. Pharaoh keeps score.

But the Kingdom of God doesn’t ask, “What have you done?” It asks, “Have you been present in me?” (Matthew 11:28-290

In the words of singer, song-writer Josh Garrels, “My rest is a weapon against the oppression of man’s obsession to control things.”

Our “goodness” apart from production is the foundation of what God wants to remind us about being human well.

Sabbath as Resistance

Ancient Israel was given the Sabbath not just as a day off but as a declaration of war against the way of life and economy they had learned under pharaoh. In Egypt, rest was tantamount to open rebellion. Sabbath laws said that was the entire point.

St. John Crysostom said, “The Sabbath was given, not for idleness, but that we might be free from worldly cares and devote ourselves to spiritual things.”

Sabbath rest is not for the weary, it’s for the free.

And though most of us have read the creation narrative hundreds of times, we’re still trying to learn what that kind of freedom tastes like. Sabbath becomes a training ground for our imagination.

“Six days you shall labor,” God says, “but the seventh is a Sabbath unto the Lord your God. On it you shall do no work…” (Exodus 20:9–10)

But here’s the kicker: that commandment doesn’t start with the work, it starts with the memory, “Remember the Sabbath and keep it holy.”

Our Creator knows we forget. That’s why God tied it to the rhythms of the moon and stars (Genesis 1:14), into the very fabric of keeping time within creation. That’s why He let manna rot after one day but stay fresh on the sixth, so that we’d have no choice but to treat the seventh day as a holy hush (Exodus 16).

So, why do we still fight so hard against it? Why do we still make excuses to fill our Sabbath with productivity?

Because if we’re honest, silence is unnerving. Silence exposes how much we rely on noise and tasks to distract us from the chaos of our internal chaos. But silence is the sound God makes when God is shaping things. Silence is the hovering. Silence is the still small voice. Silence is the Wisdom.

You Are Not What You Produce

When God gives the Ten Commandments a second time in Deuteronomy 5, He adds a new reason for Sabbath not present in the first:

“Remember that you were slaves in Egypt and that the Lord your God brought you out … Therefore the Lord your God has commanded you to observe the Sabbath day.”

Sabbath is freedom school. It’s where we unlearn our empire addiction.

We are not the bricks we make.
We are not the sermons we preach.
We are not the children we raise or
We are not the papers we file.
We are not the likes we tally.
We are not the followers we amass.

You are a beloved image-bearer of the Creator.
Full stop.

Work proceeds from rest, not the other way around.

St. Maximus the Confessor went even further, saying that it is not what we do, but how we learn to love that is the true measure of our faithfulness.

“He who rests in God does not measure himself by what he does, but by what he loves.”

If that’s true, then Sabbath becomes the anchor for every other rhythm of our lives. It becomes the root system not only for what kind of energy with which we work, but also the place where we gather the love from which we will work. It’s not a pause in the “real week.” It’s the place we begin again. It’s the place where we learn to say, “Enough”, of ourselves and “More” of the Creator. (Galatians 2:20)

Enough is Holy

“God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it He rested from all the work of creation that He had done.” (Genesis 2:3)

We often miss something crucial there.

God didn’t bless the first day he entered the chaos or the day God created humans their own image. He blessed the seventh. The day God stopped creating.

God made our rest holy.

It is not as if God needed a breather. He wasn’t tired. He could have kept going, but he didn’t. God knew when to say enough. He knew when what needed to be done was done, and that it was time to stop and enjoy the fruit of the labor.

If you ask me to name the core difference between God and man, this will be high on my list—knowing when to say “enough.”

St. Basil the Great, one of the earliest Desert Fathers, had this to say.

“A tree is known by its fruit; a person by their works. A good deed is never lost; he who sows courtesy reaps friendship, and he who plants kindness gathers love.”

But Basil also took regular retreats into the silence of the hills. He knew good works don’t come from burnout. They come from abiding. From pruning. From stillness. From creating space to observe the fruit of our works.

Retreat as Return

If Sabbath teaches us to stop and learn to say, “enough,” retreats teach us to return to the beginning places of our created being, our imago dei.

The two are similar, but not the same. Both are holy, and both must be carved out with intention. But each is a different window looking into the same room.

St. Cuthbert entreated us to, “Go to your cell, and your cell will teach you all.”

Sabbath is a weekly rhythm.
Retreat is seasonal reckoning.

We ask those who join the Appalachian Order to take at least two retreats a year. One to the wild. One to the hearth.

Wild: In spring or summer, we return to the wilderness—not to conquer it, but to be humbled by it. The moss becomes our prayer rug. The trail becomes our liturgy. The stars remind us how small we are, and how held we are.

Hearth: In fall or winter, we come back to the fire. To slow soups and crackling wood. To solitude without isolation. To warmth that teaches us patience and stories that remind us we are not alone.

Jesus did both.

He withdrew into the wild to pray (Luke 5:16).
He broke bread by the fire with his disciples (John 21:9).
He went up the mountain and then came down to teach. (Luke 6:12-13)
He escaped the crowds so he could love them better. (John 6:15)

The 48-Hour Rule

We recommend that at least one of our retreats each year be a full 48 hours of solitude. Not just because it’s traditional within historical monasticism, but because it takes that long to quiet the noise—which is most likely why it was a recommended period of time in the first place.

The first 24 hours are detox.
Your mind races.
You think of your phone.
You worry about what you’re missing.
You itch for a to-do list.

The second 24?
That’s when the whispers start.

The Holy Spirit does not shout. (1 Kings 19:11–13)

She waits.
She waits until the hum of traffic dies down in your soul.
She waits until you stop checking your pockets.
She waits until you sit down and exhale.

And then she says things worth hearing.

But she only speaks to ears that are ready to listen.

Sabbath Is Not Worship

Now, let me say something that might ruffle a few feathers.

Sabbath was not made for worship. It was made for rest.

Jesus Himself said it:

“The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath.” (Mark 2:27)

Now sure, worship is good. And if worship brings you into rest, let it flow. But don’t replace rest with noise just because it’s sacred noise.

Some of us go to church on Sunday and call it sabbath, but we never stop. We go from pillow to pew to brunch to laundry to anxiety. That’s not Sabbath. That’s religion demanding more of your productivity to keep you in its rhythm.

Sabbath is when you do things that make your shoulders drop. When your breath slows. When you belly laugh. When you sit in the grass or curl up with a book or fall asleep on the porch.

It is the spiritual practice of being useless. And it is holy.

That is not to say that you should not come together for worship or gathering together for meals or teaching. I’m simply saying that it’s not the what makes a day, a Sabbath.

For myself, we hold our gatherings on Saturday evening at sundown so that those who gather with us begin their Sabbath with worship, yes, but also so they have a full 24 hours of doing absolutely nothing.

What Sabbath Teaches the Soul

Let’s name what Sabbath teaches us, clearly and simply:

We are not God. He keeps the world spinning without our help.

We are not machines.
Our worth isn’t tied to our output.

We need limits.
Even Eden had boundaries.

We are meant to delight.
God sees us as “good”.

We belong to a different Kingdom.
One built on abundance.

My brothers and sisters, you were not made for Pharaoh’s clock.

You were not made for constant scrolling or the endless grinding of over-caffeinated discipleship.

You were made for breath.
For body.
For beauty.

You were made to rest like God rests.
To say “enough” like God says “enough.”

To hover over your life and see that it is good.

The world won’t applaud you for resting or making space to get away.

But heaven will.

So go.
Unplug.
Sit down.
Watch the sky turn.
Trust the fire.

Take off your shoes and walk slowly into the hush of enough.

The Sabbath has already begun.

All that’s left is for you to remember it.

We like our theology clean. 

Neat lines. Quiet footnotes. Verses underlined in different colored pastel highlighters. Cross-referenced commentaries. Verses curated for Instagram posts with framed candles and praying hands.

But the Word wasn’t recorded on ink and paper to be debated and systematized.

It became flesh.

It got dust between its toes. It bled on cedar beams. It was spat on and laughed at and laid to rest in a tomb that didn’t belong to it only to rise to people who didn’t recognize him.

Incarnational living is what happens when theology breaks its bones, wipes the blood off its knuckles, brushes off its knees, and keeps walking anyway.

The Word was never a doctrine. It was, and is, a human body.

The Word Must Move In

In the old language, John’s Gospel says the Word came and tabernacled among us.

He set up a tent in the wilderness. He moved into the neighborhood.

Celtic Christians called this theological idea, thin places. The idea that Christ didn’t just visit earth, he infused it with presence. The veil between heaven and earth got thinner the moment a baby wailed from a borrowed feeding trough.

Our Eastern Orthodox brothers and sisters teach us of theosis—God becoming human so that humanity might become god. Not in might or pride, but in radiant union. Not by leaving our bodies, but by learning to live fully inside them. It’s where John Wesley formed the idea of sanctification—something I call theosis light.

And the Anabaptists, they were persecuted because they kept trying to make the Church visible not in buildings, but in people. 

Lived faith. Local witness. 

Small communities who didn’t just talk about Jesus—they resembled Him.

Embodied Truth in a Bruised World

I think there’s a dynamic difference between knowing scripture, even believing scripture with your mind, and embodying it.

You can be convinced of Jesus and still be contained. You can believe in healing and still cross the street when someone’s bleeding. You can preach forgiveness and still hoard your grudges like a 100 year old scotch. You can know a hundred names for Jesus and never say his name with your life.

But if you live incarnationally, your theology shows up in your body.

In how you treat the woman crying in the Kroger parking lot because her card was declined.In how you handle the zoning meeting at the courthouse when a halfway house is approved in your neighborhood.In whether or not your dinner table ever has an extra chair at it when you’re having steak.In the way you treat the person you silently believe has the least chance of entering the Kingdom of God because of your worldview.

If Christ is alive in you …

Your neighborhood should feel it. Your workplace should feel it. Your children should know the taste of it in how you approach them at their most frustrating. Your enemies should know it by the way you don’t flinch from their name and story. Your table should echo the Upper Room where bread is broken, sinners are seated, and betrayers are met with grace and hospitality.

Not Universal Truths. Local Practice & Presence.

Lived faith doesn’t follow templates. It follows footsteps. But still, we keep looking for universal formulas.

The “biblical” model of sexuality and marriage.
The “right” way to do church and life.
The “real” politics and cultural positions of true Christians.

But Jesus never taught in universal models. He taught in parables. He didn’t hand out clear blueprints. He told stories rooted in fields, fishermen, yeast, vineyards, and mustard seeds. He didn’t start a global campaign. He healed whoever was right in front of Him. 

And He never traveled more than about one hundred miles from the place he was planted.

Incarnational living demands a contextual theology and leadership model. Truth isn’t truth if it’s divorced from the place it’s meant to heal.

The widow on fixed income doesn’t need a lecture on stewardship—she needs her light bill paid and food in her cupboards.

The former addict in recovery doesn’t need a purity pledge—he needs someone to walk beside him at the Dollar General when the shame gets loud. The kid with a dead father doesn’t need a seminar on heavenly adoption, he needs someone to show up at his ballgame.

Jesus didn’t wait for people to come to the temple. He walked their roads. He asked for their water. He sat at their tables and blessed their crumbs. Incarnational living means we do the same.

Incarnation is Mutual

One of the mysteries of the Incarnation is that Jesus wasn’t just “God in a man-suit.”

He learned obedience (Hebrews 5:8). He grew in wisdom (Luke 2:52).

He wept, bled, ached, and hungered. He allowed Himself to be shaped by the people He came to save. He asked questions. He listened. He waited.

To live incarnationally is not to show up as the expert with the answers. It is never shaped by humans with a savior complex. It’s to be formed by the needs of the land and people you serve.

It’s why monks in the Celtic tradition would make vows to their particular village, to anchor themselves to a place—not as overlords, but as kin.

It’s why Orthodox icons don’t just depict Christ—they are meant to become windows to Christ, infusing even painted wood with presence and memory.

And it’s why, in the Anabaptist way, your neighbors, not your seminary degree, ought to be the ones who call you a pastor—it is a rank earned, not bestowed.

The Risk of Real Proximity

Here’s the trouble. Once you start living this way, you’re going to get hurt. It’s inevitable.

You’ll get your hands dirty, and your heart broken. 

You’ll stand up for someone or something and lose friends over it.
You’ll make meals for people who never say thank you and don’t return your casserole dish.
You’ll give your hard earned money to someone and they’ll waste it on harmful things.
You’ll have to repent in public when you get it wrong, but no one else will.

But Christ didn’t just become flesh. He suffered in the flesh. And somehow, by His wounds, we are healed.

So don’t be afraid of the wounds, brothers and sisters. Don’t be afraid to bleed a little for the place you’re in. You aren’t meant to stay sterile and safe anyway. You’re meant to become a living altar in the middle of the field.

Presence Over Performance

The world doesn’t need more flashy sermons. It needs more present people.

It needs people who show up when the crops fail. It needs people who know how to sit in silence when grief comes. It needs people who take PTO when floods ravage their community.

It needs eople who don’t run from tension, but walk toward it like Christ walked toward Jerusalem, knowing it would cost Him, and going anyway.

Your life preaches louder than your words ever will. And your body—your actual body—is the place where that sermon will live or die.

How to Begin

Start small.

Incarnational living doesn’t begin with a ministry plan—it begins with breakfast. Walk your street with intention. Know the names of your neighbors and forgotten alleys. Say grace out loud at the table, even at Taco Bell. Show up late to Bible study if it means walking your neighbor home. Spend your tithe at Dollar General if that’s what love demands that day.

Bless the land. Speak peace to your block. Write a psalm for your town.

Let the Word become you in such a way that someone might say, “I never picked up a Bible, but I feel like I’ve met this Jesus  you speak of already.”

Let the Word Take You Over

The Incarnation wasn’t a one-time event. It’s an ongoing miracle.

It’s what happens when you quit trying to “apply” scripture and start living it.It’s when right practice sets the agenda for right belief and not the other way around.It’s when your life smells like Jesus.It’s your faith becoming feral mercy.

Your place is waiting.Your people are watching.

And the Word still wants to become flesh.So hand it over. If the Holy Spirit wants a body, let it be yours.

It Is No Longer I Who Live

The Apostle Paul wasn’t being poetic. He wasn’t crafting a clever metaphor for Christian living that might earn a spot in the Roman Empire’s self-help section.

He was writing from the grave.

“I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.”

Galatians 2:19–20, NRSVue

These are not the words of a man clinging to future glory.

They’re the words of someone who burned his maps and walked barefoot into the now.

Paul’s letters weren’t drafted in comfort, and they were not written to a church that had ever known comfort.

They were scratched out from prison, with trembling hands and bloodied backs, written to a church that were threatened daily with the same. Still he speaks—not of vengeance or escape—but of union. The divine has come into him. Christ Himself is now living through him in some miracle of divine mystery, or maybe quantum grace.

Hear that again. Feel it fully. We skip over its depth too often in a lullaby effect.

The crucified One, still alive, is walking around fully present in the marrow and mind of his servant.

And for what?

So we can be enhanced by Christ?
Blessed by Christ?
Given a little afterlife insurance by Christ?

No. Let it never be said that life in Christ exists for our glory or gain.

We are called to lose them entirely in Christ and to Christ.

This is the death that leads to life here-and-now.

This is the path that sets dry bones dancing.

Spiritual Rhythm Begins in the Grave

You cannot carry the weight of the Kingdom and your ego at the same time.

You can’t chase applause and walk in fire.

You want to carry the Kingdom into your home? Your work? Your place?

You must die.

The Desert Father Abba Moses once said:

“Sit in your cell, and your cell will teach you everything.”

But the cell—your silence, your stillness, your obedience—has no place for your performance, no matter how holy it might seem.

Your cell, when authentically met, is where false selves go to die.

Only a crucified man can be trusted to carry the flame.

This Fire Isn’t Yours

“Our God is a consuming fire.”

Hebrews 12:29, NRSVue

Christ’s fire doesn’t come to warm you.
It comes to consume you.

Again.

Christ’s fire doesn’t come to warm you.
It comes to consume you.

Don’t read over that too quickly. I know it’s early in the section, and maybe you’re reading fast, but sit with that statement for a moment if you can.

Christ’s fire doesn’t come to warm you. It comes to consume you.

We’ve mistaken divine fire for a chance at spiritual influence.

We think it’s passion. A vibe. A holy badge we get to wear.

But the true fire of God burns away what cannot last, and what cannot last in the presence of God is … you.

It will torch your need to be liked.
It will reduce your half-truths to smoke.
It will rip off every mask until the face in the mirror is what was created to be, whether you desire it or not.

That’s why it scares us.
Or, in the very least, that’s why it should scare us.

But that’s the kind of fire worth getting burned by.

St. Seraphim of Sarov said:

“Acquire the Spirit of Peace, and thousands around you will be saved.”

Peace isn’t passive.

It’s the aftermath of the fire.

You Are an Ambassador, Not a Mascot

“So we are ambassadors for Christ, since God is making his appeal through us; we entreat you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God.”

2 Corinthians 5:20, NRSVue

You are not your own spokesman.
You are not the hero of your own story.

You are a body through which Christ pleads. A vessel of good news sent first, according to scripture, to the lost, the lonely, and the left out.

You don’t get to edit the message.
You don’t get to soften the call.
You don’t get to put your spin on it.
You don’t get to bend it to your own desires and worldview.

This Kingdom is not a performance.
This Kingdom is not a platform.
This Kingdom is presence.

Be Filled With Worthy Ambition

“Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus… who emptied himself, taking the form of a servant… and became obedient to the point of death—even death on a cross.”

Philippians 2:5–8, NRSVue

This is what leadership looks like.

Not charisma. Not clout.
Crucifixion.

Thomas Müntzer, the radical Anabaptist, once said:

“The only sword we may bear is the naked truth of the Spirit.”

We will not change the world by force.
We will not transform it with coercion.
We will not sanctify it with a sword.

We will change it by fidelity.

We don’t need better branding. We need bigger tables.
We don’t need more strategy. We need more stillness.
We don’t need to win arguments. We need to win trust.

We need to be the kind of people who bleed mercy and smell of smoke.

We shouldn’t worry about the legacy of our ministry. Legacy building is just empire by another name.

What God has always been after in his partners is obedience.

You Were Grafted, Not Hired

“Do not boast over the branches. If you do boast, remember that it is not you that support the root, but the root that supports you.”

Romans 11:18, NRSVue

You weren’t recruited.
You weren’t vetted for your usefulness.
You weren’t picked over someone else because God loves you more.

You were grafted.

Wild, unkempt, half-believing—yet chosen.

Now you, who was once a forgettable branch, are able to drink from the roots of divine mercy. And your fruit belongs to someone else entirely.

That means the pressure’s off, but the call is full.

You don’t have to impress.
You have to embody.

St. Aidan of Lindisfarne once prayed:

“Leave me alone with God as much as may be.

As the tide draws the waters close in upon the shore,

Make me an island, set apart with You, O God, holy to You.”

You are not set apart to escape.

You are set apart to carry fire back to the people who forgot what holy looks like.

Sanctification Demands the Whole Person

This isn’t a lifestyle.
This is war.

You will not be trusted with flame until you surrender the flint.

Sanctification—whether by the rhythms of this rule or another—is going to take everything from you.

But it will give you something back.

Something eternal. Something that can’t be bought, faked, or burned out.

It will take your tongue—
and teach you not to waste words.

It will take your eyes—
and teach you to see rightly.

It will take your hands—
and teach you to build altars, not empires.

It will take your feet—
and teach you to walk slowly, deliberately, toward the ache.

It will take your heart—
and teach you to love with wounds still open.

And it will give you Christ. In you. Through you. As you.

Christ Goes Before You

You are not the first to carry this weight. You will not be the last.

But you will not carry it alone.

“And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”

Matthew 28:20, NRSVue

So walk into your morning like one who no longer lives.

Walk into that meeting, that prayer, that silence—like one already burning.

Don’t look for applause—because it is no longer your approval.

Don’t measure your worth by the outcome—because the fruit is no longer yours.

Don’t wait to be ready.

You’re already dying.

And that’s the good news of the Gospel.

The One who lives in you is enough.

For the Edification of the Church and the Renewal of the World

When the breath of God gave shape to Adam, it didn’t only impart life, it imparted calling.

Each of us comes into this world with something knit deep into our being, a thread of divine shard of craftsmanship that can’t be replicated or replaced. Not merely talents. They are not just quirks, aptitudes, or personality types. They are charisms—gifts of grace given not for our own boasting, but for the building up of the body of Christ and the blessing of the world. (1 Corinthians 12:4–7)

But charisms are not just badges of spiritual potential. They are tools at our disposal, and like all tools, they demand a mastery that is earned in use and experience.

It is a dangerous thing when we wield spiritual gifts without the humility and wisdom to steward them well.

A plow without a gentle spirit can become a sword in self-seeking hands.

A teacher who refuses correction can warp truth into toxicity.
A healer who lacks prayerful grounding can slip into manipulation or pride.

Power without practice—without authentic spiritual formation—becomes performance.

Charisms are not proof of holiness. They are invitations into a deeper understanding of what holiness looks like in our own unique context.

The Apostle Paul is clear on this point.

In 1 Corinthians 13, sandwiched right between two full chapters describing the diversity and power of spiritual gifts, Paul reminds us: “If I speak in the tongues of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong.” (1 Corinthians 13:1)

Gifts without love are noise. That’s as true now as it was then.

Discerning the Work of the Spirit

For those of us daring to place orthopraxy (right practice) over orthodoxy (right belief)—particularly those shaped by the rhythms of Hearth & Hinterland—charisms are not something we merely name. We feel a responsibility to them.

We seek those divine gifts in prayer, test them in community, and refine them through action. Each gift is a seed, and it does not bear fruit without soil, water, and time. We must fill that time with obedience and righteous intention if they are to grow well.

The traditional twenty-seven charisms we recognize come from various lists throughout the New Testament (especially Romans 12, 1 Corinthians 12, Ephesians 4), and from the wisdom of the mosaic of Christian tradition.

Not all of these charisms are valued the same by current cultural experiences.

Charisms like prophecy, healing, and discernment are unmistakably spiritual in their expression. Others, like craftsmanship, administration, or writing may appear at first to be more natural talents, but when anointed by the Spirit, they become sacred instruments of Kingdom work.

Both are equally important. Some are more subtle.

The Celtic Christians believed deeply in the interplay between the natural and the supernatural. They had no interest in dividing the world into “holy” and “secular.” All ground was holy. All work, when offered to Christ, became liturgy. St. Brigid made butter with the same reverence she offered prayers. For them, a gifted blacksmith or bard served God as fully as the abbot or anchorite.

Likewise, the Anabaptists—often scattered, persecuted, and marginalized—relied on every member of their communities to use their gifts for the common good. No professional clergy. No spectators. Only participants in the redeeming and repair of this world as “Thy Kingdom Come on Earth as it is in heaven.”

The Orthodox tradition offers us perhaps the most important angle through the lens. Charisms, they remind us, are given “ … for the life of the world.”

Our spiritual charisms are not trophies. They are personal sacraments in motion.

The Danger of Disuse

It’s one thing to misuse a gift. But far more common, but just as tragic, is to bury it.

Some of us have been told our gifts don’t matter. Others have been punished for trying to use them in the wrong context. Women have been sidelined by their gender. Artists and mystics are maligned as distractions. Activists are labeled divisive. Those with disabilities are often treated as second-class kingdom citizens.

And slowly, the fire within dims.
But the Spirit does not forget.

Romans 11:29 reminds us that “the gifts and calling of God are irrevocable.” What God has placed in you, no one can take away. But you can neglect it. You can silence it. You can let fear and opinion win. It’s actually a much easier path than the narrow path to sanctification.

Your charisms are not decorations or identity markers. They are assignments.

Don’t sit on what God has given you. Don’t wait for the perfect context or the right permission.

Begin now.
Begin small.
But begin.

Naming and Nurturing Our Spiritual Gifts

Those beginning in this sanctifying work should not try to discern their gifts alone. This is the work of a community, of anamchara, of spiritual directors and soul friends who see what we cannot.

Sometimes our charisms are obvious. Other times they lie dormant, waiting to be awakened by service, trial, or encouragement.

Here’s a spiritual practice: Choose one charism from the list below that speaks to you in a deeper way than the others. Begin to pray about it and study it. Ask God to show you whether this gift has been planted in you. Seek opportunities to exercise it in service to others. Take notes. Reflect. Discuss with your spiritual guide. Then move on to another if you don’t sense any spiritual gravity around it.

Eventually, patterns will emerge. The gifts will come into focus—not as titles to be claimed or identities to put on like a mask, but as responsibilities to carry.

Here is the list of spiritual charisms for reference in no particular order (not even alphabetical):

• Administration

• Helps

• Pastoring

• Celibacy

• Hospitality

• Prophecy

• Craftsmanship

• Intercessory Prayer

• Public Tongues

• Discernment of Spirits

• Interpretation of Tongues

• Service

• Encouragement

• Knowledge

• Teaching

• Evangelism

• Leadership

• Voluntary Poverty

• Faith

• Mercy

• Wisdom

• Giving

• Mission

• Writing

• Healing

• Music

You don’t need all of them. Most of us will only be given a few. Be careful of choosing ones that you believe would bring you the most esteem, or the ones you believe your community would value most.

Seek only the ones God gave you. Nothing more. Nothing less.

This is the path to wholeness, sanctification, and your own personal satisfaction.

Mastery Over Ego & Vanity

Mastery of our spiritual gifts should not lead to the spotlight. It should not lead to spiritual elitism.

It should mean submission.
It should means repetition.

Mastering our spiritual gifts means that we get better as a way to elevate others, not ourselves.

Brother Roger of Taizé once wrote, “The more we let the Holy Spirit engrave in us the Gospel’s call to live for others, the more our lives become transparent to the divine.”

That’s the aim, that our gifts would become so refined, so aligned with divine love, that they point not to us—but through us—to Christ.

But one final word of warning that has shown itself over and over again in my own life.

The enemy would love nothing more than for the Church to forget her gifts or to convince us that our gifts are for the use of our own ambitions. There is a war on work and wonder, and the sanctification of your charisms are part of the resistance.

Refining your gifts is not just an act of spiritual growth. It is an act of spiritual warfare.

Let the Fire Fall

In Acts 2, when the Spirit came, it did not come as a whisper. It came as a wind of fire. It rested on each person gathered—not just the apostles, not just the men, not just the visible leaders. Each one received power. Each one received a voice.

That same Spirit still calls to us. It calls to you.

I pray that we become people who do not squander our own expressions of grace.
I pray we become faithful stewards of every charism entrusted to us.
I pray we walk this road with courage, curiosity, and community.

And when the world grows cold and weary, may the fire of our gifts warm the hearth again.

Practicing the Gifts: Five Simple Starting Points

1. Serve Without Spotlight
   If you think you may have the charism of helps, mercy, or service, volunteer for something that doesn’t require recognition. Help stack chairs after a gathering. Visit someone who’s sick without posting about it. Notice what it does to your spirit. Does it drain you or energize you? Gifts often come with joy, even in fatigue.

2. Write and Share One Thing
   If you feel drawn to writing, teaching, or encouragement, don’t wait for a book deal or pulpit to open up. Write a short reflection and send it to a friend who needs it, or post it quietly online. Watch for fruit. Not applause, fruit. Someone being moved, comforted, challenged. That’s how charisms make themselves known.
   

3. Make Something Useful
   For those sensing the gift of craftsmanship, music, or hospitality, start small. Make bread for a neighbor. Build a simple bench for a local garden. Learn a song that lifts the soul and play it at a small gathering. When the Spirit breathes on the work of your hands, even the ordinary becomes holy.
   

4. Speak the Truth in Love
   If prophecy, discernment, or wisdom stir in your bones, begin by asking God to give you one word of encouragement or challenge for someone you trust and who trusts you. Don’t try to sound impressive. Just be faithful. Share it with humility. Prophetic gifting is often refined in the crucible of quiet faithfulness.
   

5. Keep a “Formation Journal”
   Each week, reflect on moments when you felt most alive, most helpful, most spiritually connected. Write down the context, the people involved, and how your presence made a difference. What happened, what were you asked to do, what did it feel like to be obedient, and how did it bring change, healing, and repair? Over time, patterns will emerge. This is spiritual cartography—mapping the contours of your giftedness through lived experience and taking note of the spiritual gravity.
   
   

The tongue is so small, but it holds an immense amount of power over our lives, relationships, and communities. It is the swift vehicle of our inner life. When our inner life is chaotic, we sow chaos. When that life is fearful, we sow fear. When that life is at peace, we will sow peace.

The apostle James warns us of the power of unbridled speech (James 3:1-12). And while the rhythms of hearth & hinterland do not demand or encourage absolute silence as some other orders practice (may God bless their obedience), that does nothing to diminish the urge to speak needlessly or—far worse yet—to speak from our need for attention or esteem.

The Hebrew word for the idea of “word” or “speech” is davar. It is the same word used for “thing”, because there is an ancient recognition at the root of our faith that words do something on the threshold of the supernatural.

They materialize.
They incarnate.

A spoken word is never just an idea.
It becomes partially born in its utterance.

A rule that calls us to mindfulness of sight and speech is one that calls us to see the world through hopeful eyes while being gentle, firm, and careful with the ideas we give life to. It is a call to sanctify the world by allowing the Spirit of God to sanctify us through obedience. It is the yoke of maturity Christ alluded to when he said, “Let your yes be yes, and your no be no” (Matthew 5:37).

Eyes that See, Tongues that Bless

We are surrounded by noise. The world speaks loudly and constantly. We are rewarded with engagement when we give hot takes, cultivate a false urgency, and provide snide commentary dressed up as cleverness.

But we are not called to be clever. We are called to be wise.

Wisdom listens.

The early Celtic Christians, steeped in the rhythms of land and spiritual listening, believed that to see clearly was a gift to be stewarded, not exploited. They practiced a kind of “anam cara”—soul friendship—that required a slow and honest look, both inward and outward, before words were ever exchanged.

In the same spirit, Saint Ephrem the Syrian, a voice from the Eastern tradition, once wrote, “Speech is the organ of this present life. Silence is the mystery of the world to come.”

It is no small thing, then, to be a people who practice silence not as escape, but as formation.

This practice of patient speech is not about spiritualizing passivity or introversion. There is a time to speak, and speak boldly.

The wisdom of the Johannine spiritual tradition gives us a threefold test when we consider when to speak or be silent.

Is it true?
Is it necessary?
Is it loving?

If our thoughts and ideas do not easily pass through all three of these gates, we should practice silence and wait until they can.

Small Fire, Wide Forest

The apostle James doesn’t mince words.

“The tongue is a fire, a world of unrighteousness … It stains the whole body, setting on fire the entire course of life” (James 3:6).

A single unchecked comment can unravel trust. A sarcastic tone, poorly timed, can wound deeper than we intended. Even well-meaning chatter can clutter a soul’s landscape with unnecessary weight and consequence.

It is not about perfectionism.

It’s about awareness. Intention. Attention.

These are the building blocks of spiritual resilience.

A new monastic rhythm—however loose or lived-in it may look in your own context—must be one where speech and sight become tools toward sanctifying peace rather than striving pride.

Seeing Through the Eyes of Christ

How then do we place gates on the tone and tenor of our tongue?

We start with what we allow to enter our mind and heart.

What we see shapes how we speak and what we speak about. And what we allow our eyes to linger on slowly transforms our inner world.

Jesus said, “The eye is the lamp of the body. If your eyes are healthy, your whole body will be full of light” (Matthew 6:22).

In the spiritual life, attention is adoration.

What we give our visual attention to will eventually affect how we see the world around us.

Our modern empire monetizes distraction, and it is able to do it in ways previously thought impossible. It curates a world where our unchecked gaze is able to flit from one controversy to the next, to dwell on an overloaded sensual experience of sex and success. But to walk in the way of Jesus is to reclaim our eyes.

Following Christ is to see as he sees: with compassion, with clarity, without manipulation.

The Desert Fathers warned about the dangers of curiosity—not the holy seeking, but the unholy kind that gossips, meddles, and consumes. Abba Poemen said, “Teach your mouth to say that which is in your heart.” But we must ask: what has filled the heart in the first place?

That begins with how we see and what we allow ourselves to see.

No to Noise, Yes to Weight

Saint Basil the Great, one of the early architects of Eastern monastic life, said, “Do not make long speeches; say only what is necessary. Be brief.”

Sometimes, the most faithful thing you can do is to say less, or perhaps to say nothing at all.

Silence is not cowardice.
Brevity is not a sign of shallow thought.

In a culture addicted to endless commentary, restraint is resistance—resisting the need to explain yourself, resisting the ego’s hunger to be heard, resisting the idea that your opinion is always required.

Mindful speech is not sterile speech. In silence, we sharpen the words we do choose to say.

“Let your conversation be always full of grace, seasoned with salt,” Paul writes, “so that you may know how to answer everyone” (Colossians 4:6).

Notice the order: grace first, then salt.

Speech as Benediction

The Anabaptists, in their suspicion of worldly power and their deep love for community, cultivated a habit of speech that leaned toward blessing. They taught their children to ask not only, “Is this true?” but also, “Does it make the community better?”

Paul echoes this in his letter to the Ephesians:

“Let no unwholesome talk come out of your mouths, but only what is helpful for building others up according to their needs” (Ephesians 4:29).

That word “helpful” might be the most overlooked part of that verse.

You can speak truth in a way that harms.
You can be right and still be wrong.

But helpfulness? That implies humility.

Helpful humility demands that we first see the other as a whole person, not as a problem to be solved or a point to be made.

Speak less. But when you do speak, speak like someone who has an awareness that our words, no matter how mundane, carry weight and have rippling consequences.

Jesus himself lived this way. “He was oppressed and afflicted, yet he did not open his mouth” (Isaiah 53:7). There is mystery here. There is power in this kind of silence.

The Christ knew when to speak. And because of that restraint, his words were able to affect change.

Always timely.
Always true.
Always loving.
Never wasted.

Your speech reveals who you serve.

In the hearth-light of this common rule, let us be people who speak like Christ, see like Christ, and live like people who are not afraid of silence.

Let your “yes” be “yes”. Let your “no” be “no”.

Let your speech be rare, but let it be radiant.

Practicing the Rhythm of Mindful Sight & Speech

Here are some simple practices to embody in your daily life as you strive toward mindfulness of sight and speech:

1. Before speaking, breathe.

2. Ask: “Is it true?”; “Is it necessary?”; “Is it loving?”

3. If it fails any test, let it pass until it does.

4. If it passes, speak it with care, courage and clarity.

5. When you feel like giving an opinion, ask if your opinion bring clarity or clutter.

6. End your day by reflecting on what you said and what you chose not to say. What are the word that felt life-giving? What are the words you wish you could take back? Why?

There are some things we return to again and again, not because we’ve forgotten them, but because they become the wellsprings of our life—the water that flows from somewhere deep beyond our sight and makes our dry bones live again. Some things make all places feel thin.

Scripture is like that.

It meets us in different ways across seasons, not as a static archive or a systematic text book of rightness, but as a living word made active in our lives through the active presence of the Spirit of God.

And though we may come to it with questions, it often responds with presence and new questions to ask.

The rhythms of studying scripture and tradition shape us not only as thinkers, but as seekers—not as lawyers, but as pilgrims

Scripture as Invitation

We do not read scripture to win arguments.

We do not study it to stockpile answers or to defend our creeds or doctrine, no matter how firmly or loosely we might hold to them.

We study scripture because, within its pages, God stoops to speak to creation. In it’s overarching narrative, poetry, wisdom, and letters, God is teaching us about the character and nature of God.

That kind of divine self-disclosure should demand our full and reverent time and attention.

The old apostolic word spoken to Timothy still speaks to our day.

All scripture is inspired by God and is useful for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, so that the person of God may be proficient, equipped for every good work. (2 Timothy 3:16).

Mind you, Paul says that it equips us for every good work, not every good argument.

Scripture does not attempt to arm us with absolute certainty but to form us into people who are becoming more like Christ, together.

The profit of studying scripture is not in providing absolute static certainty for all time, but to invite us into a conversation with God as we work to bring healing and restoration (shalom) to our own time and place, beginning with our own lives.

This way of reading the scripture, modeled in the Hebrew testament and interpretive tradition that was shared by Jesus and the apostles alike, does not always set you down on solid ground, but instead draws you out into the wilderness to have your assumptions and worldviews tested and tried.

It breaks your categories open as it teaches you a new way to think and live.
It brings you face-to-face with a Jesus who will not fit tidy systems or cultural labels.

Our spiritual ancestors did not read with haste or hubris, but with embodied rhythms that guided them toward a conversation long lost in a garden but still known deep in our spiritual, God-breathed DNA.

Interpretation as Pilgrimage

While scripture is fully inspired, we are wholly not—at least not in our current state. That’s a hard word for our modern minds shaped by a desire for scientific certainty and the individualism normalized by the enlightenment.

We misread and misinterpret more often than we admit (or realize), and often we don’t know just how much we bring to the text until it resists us.

But scripture is generous. If we return to it—not once, but again and again—it opens us, not merely to knowledge, but to wisdom and greater understanding.

But, like most things in life, God meets us in our desire and striving to truly understand who God is and what he wants to teach us. To read scripture well is to ask not only what it says, but also when, where, and to whom it was written.

Context matters

To say context diminishes the authority of the scripture, which I have often heard from my “plain reading” brothers and sisters, is to say that we can learn all there is about a place simply by passing through it and observing from a park bench without ever bothering to learn its history, language, or the stories of its people.

Understanding the context of scripture does not diminish its message, it deepens our understanding of what it wishes to teach us.

The prophets didn’t speak in abstraction or for the benefit of a people born two thousand years into the future. They spoke directly into empires, droughts, exile, and return.

We were not the intent of scripture.
We benefit by applying the intent of scripture.

Paul didn’t write so that his words could be woven into a systematic theology. He wrote pastoral letters to fractious, struggling communities dealing within the context and place of their current situations.

If we want to rightly divide the word of truth (2 Timothy 2:15), then we must listen with ancient ears.

This isn't an academic detour like sprinkles on top of an ice cream sundae—it’s spiritual attentiveness rooted in a deep desire to really know what the writers of scripture are trying to teach.

The more we understand the world scripture came from, the more clearly we hear what the Spirit might be saying to ours.

This is the mind of studying scripture.

But what of the lungs?

Dwelling Within the Text

Lectio divina, an ancient monastic practice, teaches us to worry less about systematically dissecting the scripture, but to instead dwell within it—to let it seep into our hearts and speak as the Spirit leads.

Sitting with scripture is less like reading a book and more like watching the sunrise with someone you love—you notice different things each day about both the sunset itself and the person you are sitting with.

And some mornings, when everything is perfect, you may find yourselves simply sitting in silence together, enjoying each other’s presence.

The Celtic monks, wild-hearted as they were, often read scripture aloud under open skies or shaded glens, letting wind and birdsong interrupt their reading.

They understood that scripture was not merely ink on page but God’s presence in place.

Christ who met them in the Gospels was the same who wandered the green hills and tidepools with them. To study scripture in that way—prayerfully, poetically, with holy slowness—was to let it transform not just their thoughts, but the posture of how they navigated the mundane.

May it not only be theirs but also ours. (+)

Tradition as Illumination, Not Idolatry

There is a temptation, especially among those of us weary of broken and unprofitable church structures, to throw off anything that smells of tradition. But in doing so, we forget that tradition is the chain of the past; it’s the fire we carry forward from one generation to the next as we attempt to make a new way for a new people in a new place.

Scripture speaks.

Tradition helps us listen well.

It tethers us to the ancient as we work to contextually move within the present toward the new wineskins of the future.

St. Basil the Great said, “Time will teach you what you could not learn from teachers.”

And yet, he still had teachers. We all do.

It is not either-or.
It is both working together.

Tradition is not static doctrine carved in stone. It is the accumulated wisdom of those who have prayed longer than us, struggled more deeply than us, and whispered the name of Christ into the darkness that we are experiencing. They found the light again, were changed by the experience, and lived to tell about it.

Does tradition demand our unflinching obedience? No, it does not.

Does tradition call for our attention and open hearts to the possibility that it has something to teach? Yes, it absolutely does.

From the Anabaptists, we’ve learned a community-centered hermeneutic—an insistence that scripture should be read in circles, not silos.

From the Orthodox, we’ve receive the reverence of mystery—the willingness to leave some things undecided, not from apathy, but from awe.

From the Celtic stream, we inherit a spirituality that sees no division between soil and soul, word and wonder.

And on, and on, and on.

We do not study tradition the way we study scripture, surely. But we do study it.

We seek it out because it helps us see scripture (and it’s application toward faithful practice) through a mosaic of colors, cultural lenses, and a multitude of experiences.

Now, the early church fathers didn’t always agree—and neither do we. And that is okay. At their best, they (and we) share a disposition of humility as we seek to understand each other better. At their worst, they (and we) fall victim to the human propensity to silence the voices that disagreed with whatever the prevailing power and influence might be.

Christ is known in and through the Church—a communion that spans centuries, cultures, and a multitude of ways of knowing and practice. And as the Orthodox theologian Fr. John Behr reminds us, “It is not the past that is normative, but Christ.”

We Study not for Answers, but Attunement

The goal of scripture study is not mastery.

The goal of scripture study is attunement.

There are days we come to the text tired and unsure, and it meets us not with answers, but even more questions—with an open invitation to “Come and see,” as it says in John 1:39.

Sometimes, that seeing is like scales falling from our eyes.
Sometimes, that seeing takes years of sitting and study.

Both experiences are mystical and transformative in their own ways.

Both experiences should evoke an endless sense of wonder.

When Jesus walked the Emmaus road with two disillusioned disciples, he did not begin with a miracle or a manifesto.

“Beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he interpreted to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning himself” (Luke 24:27).

Only later, in the breaking of bread, were their eyes opened.

A growing desire.
A slow unfolding.
A patient revealing.

St. Teresa of Ávila once said, “All the troubles of the Church come from one source: that we do not know scripture well enough.”

Scripture surely does not give us clear rules for every new complexity, but because it shapes us into the kind of people who can listen well, act justly, and remain rooted when the wind shifts, it slowly prepares our hearts to apply what we learn of God’s character to every new situation we encounter.

Scripture, when truly experienced, should form us into a people of love, mercy, and justice without end because that is the character of the God we walk with. If it does not—if it bears different fruit—then perhaps we are sitting under the wrong tree.

Holding Difference, Holding Christ

As people walking in between places, we should learn how to hold our understanding in tension. We live at the edges—between mountain and meadow, old ways and new ones, our present and our eternity.

Our communities are often patchworks of opinion and practice. And yet, we are commanded to break bread together and fill our table with those least likely to expect an invitation.

The same is true in our theology. Matters of spiritual understanding and application are worth debating, yes. But those differences, even in the most passionate debates, should not divide us.

As the saying goes, “In essentials, unity; in non-essentials, liberty; in all things, charity.” This is not spiritual laziness—it’s spiritual maturity.

For all of Christian history, we should hold a tense awareness that we have never agreed on the non-essentials and we have barely agreed on the understanding and application of what we have deemed essential by creed and confession.

Romans 14 reminds us of this with remarkable clarity: “Let each be fully convinced in their own mind … Who are you to pass judgment on the servant of another?” (Rom. 14:5, 4). And again, Paul says in 1 Corinthians 13, “We know in part, and we prophesy in part.”

Our knowledge is fragmentary. But our love, grace, and mercy makes it’s practice whole as we learn to love and work with each other in spite of our differences.

Returning Again and Again to Study

So we return.

To scripture.
To the gathered community.
To the wisdom of those who’ve walked the long way home before us.

We do not return because we idolize the past or because we believe every interpretation holds equal weight but because we know that truth is not a weapon to wield—it is a light to walk by.

In this rhythm of return, we are shaped.

We come to scripture not to get what we want from it, but to let it have its way with us. And as we do, we are drawn deeper into communion—not only with God, but with one another.

The desert fathers often prayed a single verse over and over for hours, not to memorize it, but because they hoped to become it. That is the invitation we accept as we take on the rhythms of hearth & hinterland as well.

As St. Columbanus said, “Let us be Christ’s, not our own; for we are not our own, since Christ bought us at a great price.”

To belong to Christ is to belong also to seeking him in scripture, and to the quiet work it does in us over a lifetime.

We study.
We pray.
We wrestle.
We listen.
We return.

And in doing so, we make space to be changed.

Not all at once. But surely. In the perfect timing of the Spirit of God

And that is enough—more than we could ever hope for.

There is a kind of mercy to an intentional daily rhythm rooted in prayer. The body knows it. The land knows it. Our souls remember it too.

This discipline is often seen as some sort of lofty spiritual ideal that no longer fits in our current way of life, but that is entirely the point.

It is, in fact, the way we move through our life, modeled in the same practice of farmers and fishermen that rise, rest, and end their days within the cycles of the sun. Their lives moving in rhythm with earth and heaven.

We too order our days in relationship toward chasing the light.

Since the earliest days of Christianity, a life set apart for ongoing sanctification has always been ordered by prayer because a life ordered by prayer—instead of production—is the fastest way to remind ourselves that we are wholly baptized into a different way of life.

But this new monastic discipline does not stand on the ruins of old crumbled traditions.

It springs from them.

We are recovering ancient wisdom to root ourselves in the love of God right where we are, in this distinct time and place—in the kitchen, the woodshed, the classroom, the office, the school pickup line, or while we wait for the neighborhood barista to call our name.

“Pray without ceasing,” wrote Paul to the church in Thessalonica (1 Thessalonians 5:17). This practice wasn’t a metaphor. It was an invitation to a conversation that we are all too prone to losing without intention.

Still, most of us need a little help with the how.

Why?

Human beings are prone to leading lives that are scattered, not gathered. We spread out instead of slowing down to go deep. We want one hundred acres with roots that are one foot deep instead of one acre with roots that run one hundred feet.

We fill our time like we fill our baskets.

We don’t know when to stop working.
We don’t know when to stop harvesting.
We don’t know when to say enough.

A rhythm of prayer fights back against this basic human malady.

A Rhythm for the Dispersed

Most of us do not live lives where we can faithfully pray eight times a day like the old monastics. But the heart of their practice was not in the number of times or hours they prayed but in the rhythm they kept.

They knew that time itself could become a liturgy. Each rising and resting, each meal and moment of stillness, could become a doorway into divine communion and conversation. And it was those moments that set a better cadence for their day than any of the other things we so often use as our anchor points.

That’s the invitation of the simplified hours within The Way of Hearth & Hinterland.

Whether you pray at fixed times or use the more natural rhythms of daily moving—perhaps waking, your midday meal, the stoppage of work, and before sleep—you are stepping into a current of prayer that is ancient and alive.

And if you do this within a larger community that is sharing a rule of life, there is a deep knowledge that in that moment, no matter the distance between, you are not alone.

When you whisper the words of your morning prayers with a cup of coffee still warming your hands, somewhere a brother in another place is doing the same.

When you pause at noon to breathe and say thank you and ask God to bless the work of your hands, a sister is lighting a candle in her kitchen window.

When you kneel at night with nothing fancy to say but “help me” and “thank you,” the saints and angels bend low in solidarity over your bed and the beds of your shared community of brothers and sisters.

Our rhythm of prayer is the communion of the faithful, a divine conversation that is dispersed but not divided. It is what shortens the distance between us and sets us apart in unity.

The Celtic Witness

The monastics of Northumbria and Iona lived close to the land, forming communities where hospitality, humility, and holiness were not ideals but habits of life. They prayed as they worked, and they worked as they prayed. They understood that God was as near in the smoke from their hearth as in their chapel incense.

Aidan of Lindisfarne once said, “Leave me alone with God as much as may be. As the tide draws the waters close in upon the shore, make me an island, set apart.”

It’s a prayer not of escape but of availability—to be still enough to hear God’s voice and ready enough to respond when called.

Sanctifying the Ordinary

It’s tempting to think of prayer as something added onto life as though it were a holy appointment slotted in between meetings or chores. But this way of thinking misses the heart of the practice entirely.

The goal is not to divide our lives into sacred and secular. Our aim is to recognize that all ground is holy when we walk and fill it with our desire to be in conversation with the great mystery of our Creator.

“Whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus,” Paul writes to the Colossians, “… giving thanks to God the Father through him” (Colossians 3:17).

The simplified hours help us live this scripture out in its fullness of intent—not just in principle, but in practice.

When we pause before our meal to pray, we remember that food is a gift and our bodies are a blessing that still requires the providence of God to maintain.

When we rise with prayer on our lips, we place the day back in God’s hands before it even begins.

When we pause our work for our midday prayers, we remind ourselves that the work of our hands is a form of worship and sacrifice that require the blessings of the Creator to make useful to the repair and restoration of the world.

When we lie down with prayer, we surrender our striving and let grace carry us into a sleep that is both rest and worship.

When we make this adjustment to the way we view our rhythm of prayer, it becomes less an act we perform and more a posture we adopt.

We become like Brother Lawrence, who wrote in The Practice of the Presence of God, “There is not in the world a kind of life more sweet and delightful than that of a continual conversation with God.”

Praying in Common

One of the quiet beauties of keeping the hours (even modified hours as I do) is knowing that others are doing the same. Even if your prayers are said in solitude, you are part of a living liturgy—joined not only to those in our Appalachian Order, but to a long line of saints who have shaped time with prayer.

The Desert Fathers and Mothers in the East, the Celtic monks along the rugged coasts, the Anabaptist communities who sang their prayers underground—they all knew the power of a common rule and shared rhythm.

St. Basil the Great, one of the fathers of Eastern monasticism, once wrote: “It is impossible to live the life of the Gospel without the support and encouragement of brothers and sisters.”

That’s what praying modified hours give us—a way to be together, even when we are apart.

And in a world that constantly fragments our attention and scatters our hearts, a shared rhythm of prayer is more than a discipline.

It is healing.

A Fire on the Hearth

In Celtic households, the hearth was more than a place of warmth—it was the spiritual center of the home. It was a symbol of safety and love. Daily, the fire was kindled with prayer, and the smoke rose like incense.

Each morning, as they rose from their sleep, they prayed:

“I will kindle my fire this morning
In the presence of the holy angels of heaven
God, kindle Thou in my heart within
A flame of love to my neighbour,
To my foe, to my friend, to my kindred all …”

In keeping the hours, we do the same. We stoke the fire each morning and keep it lit throughout the day on the hearth of our hearts. And that flame, however small, is not ours alone. It warms our neighbors. It lights the path for the weary. It bears witness to a God who is near, even when we feel far.

Scripture as Compass

The simplified hours are not just framed by tradition, but saturated in Scripture. The Psalms, of course, are our steady companions:

“Seven times a day I praise you for your righteous laws” (Psalm 119:164).

“In the morning, O Lord, you hear my voice; in the morning I lay my requests before you and wait expectantly” (Psalm 5:3).

“Evening, morning and noon I cry out in distress, and he hears my voice” (Psalm 55:17).

And Jesus himself withdrew to pray at every stage of the day (Mark 1:35; Luke 6:12; Matthew 14:23), showing us not just the necessity but the possibility of living attuned to the Father’s voice.

A Way Forward

This isn’t about perfection. I’ve been practicing praying the modified hours for a few years now. And some days I forget or miss a prayer. Some days the prayers feel dry or rushed or tangled in distraction. But even then, the rhythm holds me in grace and mercy and time. The prayer is still prayed, even if it is done so in my spirit’s unconscious unrest.

A flame still flickers.

As we go about our work—tending children, stacking wood, answering emails, making soup—we return again and again to the hours. Not out of guilt, but out of a longing. Not to earn God’s nearness, but to remember it.

Perhaps, over time, you’ll find that what once felt like interruption becomes an invitation. Your heart will come to lean into these holy pauses like a well-worn walking stick. Even in the silence between the prayers, you will sense the nearness of the Spirit who walks beside us.

I pray that you will kindle the fire. I pray that you will keep it going.

Say the prayer. Keep the hours.

God is waiting.

Some lessons come hard. They are pried from our clenched fingers by grace. Other lessons come more gently, like a whisper riding the wind.

The practice of generosity, of giving freely without gripping the ledge of our own fears of scarcity, often falls somewhere between the two.

We are invited to give freely not because God needs our resources but because the act of that surrender recalibrates our hearts, reorients our desires, and reminds us that all we have (or don’t have) is a gift from something beyond ourselves in the first place.

It is tempting to think of our call to give with an open hand as purely financial, but giving is not merely about money. It’s about our heart (Matthew 19:16-22). It’s about loosening our grasp, releasing our need for control, and stepping into a wild trust of Kingdom economics exemplified by the widow’s mite (Mark 12:41-44).

Seasons of Scarcity, Seasons of Plenty

As we walk through life, there will be seasons when our hands are full, and giving feels like a joyous overflow. But there are other seasons—lean and uncertain—where every dollar and minute given feels like a leap into financial darkness, not only unsafe but perhaps even unwise.

The Apostle Paul knew both seasons well. “I know what it is to be in need, and I know what it is to have plenty. I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want. I can do all this through him who gives me strength” (Philippians 4:12-13).

Our fear and desire for a feeling of security is not an excuse to withhold generosity in times of scarcity. Nor is our own sense of security an invitation to guilt others into giving what we feel is appropriate during our seasons of plenty.

Instead, both should be a reminder that our ability to give has never depended on what is in our hands but on the Creator who fills them according to his will.

When we give from a posture of trust and obedience, we participate in a divine economy where provision flows not from our hoarding or empire-wisdom but from our willingness to be conduits of grace and abundance.

Listening to the Nudge

Obedience often defies reason.

This is a hard truth, especially for those of us who appreciate our ducks in neat, easily counted rows. Yet time and again, scripture testifies to the ways God invites His people to give beyond what would be considered wise and prudent.

Elijah, during a time of famine, approached a widow in Zarephath and asked for food. She had only enough flour and oil for a final meal for herself and her son. Yet at the prophet’s word, she gave fully and freely, and in return, “... the jar of flour was not used up and the jug of oil did not run dry” (1 Kings 17:14).

She gave not from abundance but from trust. And trust, as seen throughout scripture, is never misplaced when directed toward God.

St. John Chrysostom, perhaps the great preacher of the early church, once said, “If you have much, give of your abundance; if you have little, do not be afraid to give even of that little. For you are not poorer than the widow.”

Our giving with an open hand is not about the sum. It is about the heart that gives it. When God calls us to give, He is not measuring the number but the posture.

The Security Illusion

Fear of scarcity is often a greater hindrance to generosity than actual scarcity.

We too often believe that what we have is ours to safeguard because we have earned it. We labor under the illusion that our security rests in bank accounts and savings plans. Scripture reminds us otherwise at every turn.

Jesus speaks plainly in the Sermon on the Mount: “Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moths and vermin destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven … For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also” (Matthew 6:19-21).

St. Aidan of Lindisfarne, known for his radical generosity, embodied this truth. He refused to own property, giving away gifts and money as quickly as they were placed in his hands. In his spirit, clinging to wealth was an obstacle to faith, a weight that kept one tethered to earth rather than soaring toward heaven.

Do not misunderstand me. This is not to say that financial stewardship is unwise or unwarranted. What I mean is that when the Spirit nudges, we must hold our plans loosely and allow our hands (and our wallets) to fall open in sacrifice and obedience.

Security in the Kingdom of God is not about stockpiling resources but about being willing to trust that God is a provider who never fails His people, those who are in a season where they are in a position to bless or those in a season where they need a blessing–both are the same in the eyes of the Creator.

The Generous God We Reflect

At its core, giving is an act of divine imitation.

We give because God gives.
We give fully because God gives fully.
We give out of abundance because God is abundance.

The whole of scripture reveals a God whose nature is generosity itself. “Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights” (James 1:17).

From the breath in our lungs to the daily bread on our tables, all we have is an outpouring of divine love and generosity.

The Desert Fathers understood this deeply.

Abba Poemen once said, “If someone asks you for something, and you give it to him, you too will receive from God.” This should not be seen as transactional–to do so cheapens the act of giving itself–but as a participation in the deeper conversation of life.

When we give, we step into the very heartbeat and breath of God—an unceasing rhythm of grace, a cascade of provision and goodness that never dries up because it is the very building blocks of what we are created from.

Giving Beyond Money

When we talk about giving, we are too often only focused on monetary gifts. This is mostly likely because in an age of empire still so strong, money is seen as the most powerful resource at our disposal.

But financial generosity is only one form of giving.

Many of us, in times of financial strain, still have so much to offer–time, presence, encouragement, a shared meal, a listening ear—these, too, are gifts of great worth, perhaps even more valuable than money in the economy of the Kingdom.

Celtic Christianity, with its deep reverence for community, understood this well. Hospitality was considered a sacred duty, an act of worship. “Christ is the guest at every meal,” they would say, recognizing that in welcoming another, one welcomed Christ Himself (Matthew 25:35-40).

What if we embraced this vision of giving?

What if our generosity spilled over not just from our wallets and investment accounts but from the way we open our homes, our schedules, and our lives?

The Invitation

We will all face seasons where giving feels easy and seasons where it requires a trembling, “Yes.” The call remains the same: to give with an open hand, trusting that the Creator who calls us is faithful to meet our needs.

So we listen. We pay attention to the Spirit’s nudge. We let go of our grip on our own ideas of security and lean into the abundance of a God who gives to us from a divine abundance.

In doing so, we find that generosity is not merely something we do—it is the very shape of the life we are invited to live.

The Table as a Sacred Threshold

The Kingdom of God is not built sitting atop a conquered throne. It is cultivated around a shared table.

There is something holy about the way a table gathers people. It draws together the weary and the well-fed. It attracts the devout and the doubtful. It is equally inviting to the seeker and the skeptic.

In the pages of Scripture, we find meals acting as the setting of pivotal moments of transformation. Ordinary bread and wine became a sacred sacrament, fish and loaves feed a hungry crowd of thousands, Jacob’s stew buys a birthright–each of these meals became a vessel for the extraordinary.

It is at a table that Christ revealed himself to weary travelers (Luke 24:30-31), restored the shamed (John 21:12-19), and beckoned sinners into conversation (Luke 5:29-32). This is not a coincidence. The act of sharing a meal with those least expecting and deserving seems to be intentionally set as the chosen threshold where the mystery and spirit of God shows up—a human celebration uniquely positioned for the mundane and the miraculous meet.

For those of us shaped by the Celtic traditions, the table is more than furniture—it is an almost-altar where we offer the fruit of our labor with others and God shows up to join us.

Early Celtic Christians understood hospitality not as an act of charity but as a thin place where heaven and earth drew near. Setting the table was setting the stage for grace.

Likewise, Orthodox theologian Alexander Schmemann reminds us, “Man is what he eats.” The meals we prepare are a mirror of our participation in God’s sustaining life, and at its deepest, the Eucharistic table is our entry into divine communion.

A Table Open Yet Sacred

In a culture that increasingly fractures along lines of ideology, theology, and social standing, the invitation to the table must remain radically open.

Jesus most often dined with those whom religious authorities deemed unworthy: tax collectors, prostitutes, and the ritually unclean. He did not demand they fix themselves first; he simply welcomed the opportunity to share an intimate space with them.

His dining habits were revolutionary.
His dining parties were scandalous.

In this, we glimpse the heart of the Kingdom—an upside-down feast where the last are made first, the rich are made poor, and the lost are finally found (Matthew 22:1-10).

Within that tradition, the Eucharist, while offered freely, still maintains a particular sacredness. It is the meal for those who have chosen the way of Christ. The Didache, one of the earliest Christian texts that predates even some of the epistles, instructed that only those baptized in Christ should partake.

But what, then, of the curious, the hesitant, the forgotten, and the exiled—the ones whose heart aches toward the table but whose feet have not yet found the path of discipleship?

Should we turn them away?

The wisdom of the saints speaks here.

St. John Chrysostom writes, “Let no one who is a lover of God and a wayfarer be turned away from this divine mystery.”

The Eucharist is not a gate to be guarded but a grace to be given.

If one comes with hunger for Christ, we trust that Christ meets them in the breaking of bread.

We need not police the mercy of God.

Radical Hospitality as Witness

In opening our tables, we open our lives.

The early church understood this well.

The agape feasts—communal meals shared by believers and seekers alike—were a cornerstone of the early church’s prophetic witness in a culture built entirely on status and birthright. These were spaces where philosophical debate gave way to tangible love, where the stranger became family, and where bread and wine pointed to a greater spiritual reality.

St. Aidan of Lindisfarne, known for his radical hospitality, carried no purse, relying on the generosity of those he served. He believed the table was not his to possess but to steward.

When we live with such open hands, and open tables, we embody the Gospel more than any sermon could.

Paul exhorts us, “Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for by doing so, some have entertained angels unawares” (Hebrews 13:2). The table is where the presence of Christ is made manifest, not just in the elements but in the faces across from us.

The Weight of the Meal

When we break bread together with spiritual intent, we enter into an ancient space and rhythm.

It is no light thing to eat with another—to take part in the same sustenance, to acknowledge our mutual dependence on God’s provision, to see each other as vulnerable and even, at times, messy.

In the Eucharist, this truth reaches its fullness.

We do not merely remember Christ’s life and sacrifice.
We believe that Christ shows up and meets us in this sacred act.

St. Irenaeus said it this way, “Our way of thinking is attuned to the Eucharist, and the Eucharist, in turn, confirms our way of thinking.”

The sacred table shapes us, forms us, calls us deeper into the mystery of faith. To come to the table is to confess that we are in need, that we do not live by bread alone (Matthew 4:4), and that our truest sustenance is found in Christ himself.

A Call to the Table

So, as we practice The Way of Hearth & Hinterland, we must continue to set our tables. Even if nobody shows up, we must still continue to make a place.

We invite the weary, the seeking, the ones who wonder if there is still a place for them in the story of God.

We do not demand those who share the table with us understand it all before they sit.

We simply pass the bread, pour the wine, playfully throw a grape to see if they can catch it in their mouth, and trust that Christ is among us and honoring our intent to really see one another.

If those we invite to the table take and eat, let them.

If those we invite can only sit with us and can not yet eat out of shame or distrust, do not rush them. Simply continue to offer what you have with generosity and with a gentle spirit.

If their hunger is sincere, we believe the Spirit will move them when it is time.

And as we partake, may we remember: this is not our table, but the Creator’s. The Host is Christ, the meal is grace, and the invitation has never been ours to withhold.

Let the table be set.
Let the invitations be open.
Let all who hunger come and eat.

Jesus taught that the sure mark of spiritual advancement is not found in our pursuit of knowledge, wealth, or influence. The fruit of spiritual maturity is found in the way we bring justice, peace and welcome to the world around us that seem least deserving.

True spiritual growth isn’t measured in the number of prayers we utter or in the theologies we master. Instead, Jesus echoed the prophets when he taught that the heart of the Father does not beat to the rhythms of power but to the kindnesses extended to strangers, the bread broken for the hungry, and the space made for the weariest of travelers.

Following Christ is to align ourselves with the rhythms of the upside down mysteries of a relational God. It is a hearth-fire faith that warms the lost and gathers wayfarers under its glow.

The Way of Hearth & Hinterland sees the fruit of a spiritual life not in reputations of personal holiness, but in the reputations earned for the way we welcome the lost, lonely, and left out.

We find our worth not in pursuing our own ambitions but in the cultivation of potential we see in those our culture deems the least among us. To follow Christ by walking this way of Hearth & Hinterland is to be formed not for spectacle but for sustenance, not for dominance but for dwelling.

Throughout scripture, we find this holy hospitality woven into the fabric of God’s unique call to humanity.

The Torah instructs, “You shall also love the stranger, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt” (Deuteronomy 10:19). The prophet Ezekiel admonishes that the sin of Sodom was, “This was the guilt of your sister Sodom: she and her daughters had pride, excess of food, and prosperous ease but did not aid the poor and needy (Ezekiel 16:49). Jesus expands this call, teaching us that whatever we do “for the least of these,” we do for Him (Matthew 25:40).

Hospitality is not an optional virtue.
Hospitality is the sacrificial form and evidence of God’s divine love in our life.

St. Benedict, whose rule shaped monastic hospitality throughout the West, commanded that every guest be received as Christ Himself. In the Celtic Christian tradition, the welcoming of the stranger was considered a sacred duty—for in the wandering pilgrim, it was believed that Christ Himself walked the roads.

In the Eastern Orthodox tradition, this way of living is called philoxenia—“the love of the stranger.” The Desert Fathers knew that in welcoming the unknown guest, they welcomed the very presence of God. Abba Macarius once said, “If we see our brother in need, and shut ourselves from him, how can the love of God dwell in us?”

Radical hospitality is an act of defiance against a world that measures worth by productivity, welcoming only those who are valuable to our own individual or collective ambition.
Radical hospitality is a refusal to participate in the economy of exclusion, choosing instead to build a table large enough for the forgotten, the exiled, and the forsaken.

To live a life of radical hospitality is to embody the Beatitudes in a deeply incarnational way.

It is to welcome the poor in spirit and recognize them as the rightful inheritors of the kingdom because they bear physically the spiritual reality that we have all inherited.

It is to open the doors of our homes, our churches, and our hearts to those who have been told they do not belong, perhaps even by others who call themselves our brothers and sisters in Christ.

But this practice is not without cost.

Radical hospitality demands we let go of our need for control, for reputation, and even at times our own security. It requires an openness to interruption, an acceptance (and even an expectation) that love will upend our schedules and our comfort.

Like the pilgrim who sets forth into the wilderness, we must loosen our grip on certainty and trust that grace will meet us in the unknown. It is in that acceptance and obedience we will realize our true inheritance as co-heirs with Christ.

In fact, there is a deep awareness within Celtic spirituality that hospitality is not merely a human obligation but a reflection of the way God welcomes us into his presence.

The early Celtic monks, known as peregrini (Latin for “pilgrim”, “wanderer”, or “resident foreigner”), would set out in small boats on the open sea, allowing the Spirit to carry them where it willed. Wherever they landed, they made a home—a place of refuge and prayer—where all were received equally.

This is the way of Christ.

Jesus Christ did not build fortresses but walked dusty roads.

He did not establish elite institutions but sat at taboo tables with sinners and outcasts.

His way was one of invitation, of breaking bread, and calling the despised and forgotten into belovedness.

And so, we are called to do the same—to create spaces where the lost are found, the lonely are embraced, and those cast aside are restored to the dignity they were born into as God’s image bearers.

The call of Christ is echoed in each additional place we set at our table.

It is whispered in the welcoming sounds of broken bread.

It is present in the warmth of our fires.

These are not mere spiritual gestures. These actions are the holy architecture of a Kingdom that is coming and is already here.

But how do we live this radical hospitality in our time and places?

We embody radical hospitality by cultivating a posture of availability.

Radical hospitality is not always about inviting others into our homes, though that is part of it. It is about creating a way of life that is open to the interruptions of grace wherever we are.

It is in the willingness to listen to those nobody wants to acknowledge.

It is in a willingness to make eye contact with those the world looks away from.

It is in a willingness to offer what we have even when it is inconvenient.

St. Aidan of Lindisfarne, a great bishop in the Celtic church, was known for his refusal to ride a horse. Instead, he chose to walk so that he might truly see and engage with those he passed along the way. His journeys were slow, deliberate, and filled with divine appointments.

But it was not convenient.
Radical hospitality is rarely convenient.

In a world obsessed with efficiency, we would do well to recover such a sacred slowness, recognizing that the best ministry often happens in the unplanned moments when we simply make ourselves present and available.

This is the heart of radical hospitality.

Hospitality is not about grand gestures but about faithfulness in small things. It is setting an extra place at the table, in remembering a name, in the willingness to sit with someone in their sorrow without rushing to fix them.

It is sharing our resources with an open hand, knowing that what we have is not ours alone but given by God for the good of all. It is the warmth of a candle in a window, the steadying offer of bread and soup, the welcome that expects nothing in return—these are the quiet revolutions that build the upside down Kingdom of a God that still desires to walk with us in the cool of the evening.

This is the way of hearth & hinterland—not a spirituality of self-advancement, but of rootedness, of cultivating goodness in the places where we have been planted. It is a call to live not for ourselves but for others, to measure our success not by personal achievement but by the depth of our active love for the least.

The hinterland may stretch wide, full of mystery and uncertainty, but the hearth remains a steady beacon, a place where all are invited to come and find belonging.

And in this, we find the paradox of the gospel: in giving, we receive; in welcoming the stranger, we encounter Christ; in making room for others, we find ourselves truly at home.